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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Influence of the Bible on Civilisation, by
+Ernst Von Dobschutz
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Influence of the Bible on Civilisation
+
+Author: Ernst Von Dobschutz
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2011 [EBook #36610]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE
+  ON CIVILISATION
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+  INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE
+  ON CIVILISATION
+
+
+  BY
+  ERNST VON DOBSCHUeTZ
+
+  PROFESSOR OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
+  HALLE-WITTENBERG
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+  1914
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright_, 1914
+  BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+  Published April, 1914
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+One of the greatest questions of our day is how modern civilisation and
+Christianity can go on in harmony. One can approach this question by
+several ways, but historical investigation has always proved to be the
+surest. The author has in mind to write in German a full "History of the
+Bible," when time will allow. Meanwhile this brief sketch may prove
+useful. Readers who look for references will find most of them in an
+article contributed by the present writer to Dr. J. Hastings's
+Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. II, on "The Bible in the
+Christian Church."
+
+The author wishes to express his thanks to his friend, Professor J. H.
+Ropes, for kindly reading the proofs for him, to Mr. W. J. Wilson and
+Mr. H. A. Sherman, who helped him in improving the diction, and to
+Professor Williston Walker for valuable information regarding early
+American documents. If any reader should find fault with the English
+style of this book, he must not blame any translator--the author himself
+is responsible.
+
+                                                  ERNST VON DOBSCHUeTZ.
+
+  CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
+  _January_, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE
+     I. THE BIBLE MAKES ITSELF INDISPENSABLE FOR THE
+          CHURCH (TO 325 A. D.)                                      3
+
+    II. THE BIBLE BEGINS TO RULE THE CHRISTIAN
+          EMPIRE (325-600 A. D.)                                    28
+
+   III. THE BIBLE TEACHES THE GERMAN NATIONS (500-800 A. D. )       47
+
+    IV. THE BIBLE BECOMES ONE BASIS OF MEDIAEVAL
+          CIVILISATION (800-1150 A. D.)                             67
+
+     V. THE BIBLE STIRS NON-CONFORMIST MOVEMENTS (1150-1450)        94
+
+    VI. THE BIBLE TRAINS PRINTERS AND TRANSLATORS (1450-1611)      117
+
+   VII. THE BIBLE RULES DAILY LIFE (1550-1850)                     138
+
+  VIII. THE BIBLE BECOMES ONCE MORE THE BOOK OF DEVOTION           164
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+  PLATE                                                   TO FACE PAGE
+     I. HARVARD PAPYRUS. ROMANS 1 : 1-7                             14
+    II. ORIGEN'S HEXAPLA                                            16
+   III. CODEX SINAITICUS                                            28
+    IV. ROLL AND BOOK                                               30
+     V. VIENNA GENESIS                                              32
+    VI. JOSHUA ROLL                                                 38
+   VII. THE LORD'S PRAYER ON A POTSHERD                             46
+  VIII. GOTHIC BIBLE                                                50
+    IX. ALCUIN'S BIBLE                                              52
+     X. THEODULF'S BIBLE                                            54
+    XI. LINDISFARNE GOSPELS                                         66
+   XII. BYZANTINE MINIATURE                                         70
+  XIII. ENGLISH MINIATURE                                           82
+   XIV. WYCLIFFE'S BIBLE                                           116
+    XV. GUTENBERG'S FIRST PRINTED BIBLE                            122
+   XVI. FIRST PRINTED GERMAN BIBLE                                 126
+
+
+
+
+THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ON CIVILISATION
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE BIBLE MAKES ITSELF INDISPENSABLE FOR THE CHURCH (UNTIL 325 A. D.)
+
+
+There is a small book; one can put it in one's pocket, and yet all the
+libraries of America, numerous as they are, would hardly be large enough
+to hold all the books which have been inspired by this one little
+volume. The reader will know what I am speaking of; it is the Bible, as
+we are used to call it--the Book, the book of mankind, as it has
+properly been called. It has been commented upon, treated in every way,
+but, curious to say, hardly any one has attempted to trace its history
+through the centuries and mark the influence which it exerted upon our
+civilisation.
+
+In order to do this we follow the traces of the Bible through the
+different periods of human or, to speak more accurately, of Christian
+civilisation. In the first period of Christian history, the time of
+persecutions during the first three centuries of our era, there is not
+much to say about the Bible as influencing civilisation. Christianity
+was but starting on its way and fighting for its place in the world. The
+Bible could not exert a civilising influence upon a hostile world. But
+by impressing its value upon the Christian mind it made itself
+indispensable for the church and thereby laid the foundation for the
+future development.
+
+Christianity was a living religion. The first congregations were
+dwelling in an atmosphere of enthusiasm. There was a general outpouring
+of the Holy Spirit. The prophet's words seemed to be fulfilled: "They
+shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother,
+saying: know the Lord; for they shall all know me." Christianity was not
+a religion of a sacred book, whose dead letter was to be artificially
+kept alive by learned men. It was a religion of living experiences.
+Nevertheless, Christianity from the beginning had a sacred book. Jesus
+and his disciples used the Bible of their people, the Old Testament, and
+Saint Paul carried it to the Christian communities of gentile origin,
+which had not known of it before.
+
+Christianity could not do without it. If it was necessary to convince
+Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, how could this be done without arguing
+from the Scriptures as proof? If the gospel was to be announced to the
+heathen they would give less heed to the new tidings than to the
+statement that it was really the most ancient form of religion as
+attested by this sacred book, which was superior to all the books of
+poets and philosophers and legislators by reason of its venerable age.
+Christianity without any hesitation claimed the Old Testament as its own
+book, its own Bible. Not only was Jesus the content of this book, he was
+even believed to be its author. It was the spirit of Jesus which dwelt
+in the prophets and made them seek and search concerning the salvation
+offered by Christ (I Peter 1 : 10-11). "The prophets having their grace
+from him, did prophesy unto him," we are told in the so-called letter of
+Barnabas. So the Old Testament seemed to be a Christian book both in
+content and in origin, and it was easy enough to add some properly
+Christian pamphlets, as Saint Paul's letters and some gospels, the Acts
+and other letters, and some books of revelation. It was as necessary as
+it was easy, if Christianity was not to lose contact with its proper
+origin.
+
+The New Testament, as we have it now, was not complete at the start. It
+was a collection of primitive Christian writings, larger in some ways
+than it is now; on the other hand lacking some of its present elements.
+Its precise content did not become finally established until a very late
+period, not earlier than the end of the fourth century.
+
+So also the size of the Old Testament was not quite fixed. There were
+more books in the Greek Bible of the Alexandrian Jews than in the Hebrew
+Bible of the Palestinian rabbis. The Christian church at first adopted
+the Greek Bible, but from time to time some scholar pointed out the
+difference, and many people thought they had better keep to the Hebrew
+canon. This view, championed by Saint Jerome, led to a partial rejection
+of the books which nowadays we usually call the Old Testament Apocrypha,
+until in the sixteenth century the churches accentuated their difference
+by a different attitude toward these books, the Calvinists rejecting
+them altogether, the Roman church including them as an integral part of
+the Bible, and the Lutherans giving them an intermediate position as
+books to be read with safety but without canonical authority. When,
+in 1902, King Edward VII was to be crowned, the British and Foreign
+Bible Society intended to present to his Majesty the copy of the Bible
+on which he was to take his oath. Then it was discovered that according
+to the old regulations the king of England had to take his oath on a
+complete Bible, that is a Bible containing the Apocrypha. The British
+and Foreign Bible Society on its part, by its statutes, was prevented
+from printing Bibles including the Apocrypha; so they presented to the
+king a most beautiful copy, but the king did not use it for the
+coronation service. It is the difference between the Alexandrian and the
+Palestinian canon which reappears in this little struggle and thereby is
+seen surviving to our own time.
+
+Unsettled as the size of the Old and of the New Testament may have been,
+nevertheless the principle was established at a very early date that
+Christianity was to have a holy Scripture in two parts, one taken over
+from Judaism, the other added from its own stores.
+
+Let us stop here for a moment and try to realise what this meant.
+Mohammed, when founding his new religion, acknowledged, it is true, the
+books of the former religions, but for his own believers the unique
+authority is the Koran, a book which originated within a single
+generation and therefore is pervaded by one uniform spirit. Christianity
+adhered to a Bible whose larger part originated in a period much
+anterior to its own and in a religion inferior to Christianity. The
+Bible covers a period of over a thousand years. What a difference in
+civilisation between the nomadic life of the patriarchs and the time of
+Jesus! What a difference in spirit between the sons of Jacob killing
+the whole population of Sichem in order to avenge their sister and
+Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan! or between the prophet Elijah
+killing four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and Jesus preaching the
+love of one's enemies! In fact, it was possible to overcome this
+difference only in an age which did not read the Bible with historical
+notions. Even so, the juxtaposition caused much difficulty. We shall see
+the problem of the Law troubling the church through all the centuries.
+We shall find the notions of sacrifice and priesthood adapted to
+Christian institutions. Looking at Charlemagne or Calvin, we realise
+that the Old Testament is ever introducing its views into Christian
+minds, as authoritative as any word of the gospel.
+
+Now, at the beginning the influence was rather the other way; the Old
+Testament was to be interpreted in the light of the New. And, in truth,
+much light came from the life of Jesus to the history of the ancient
+people and to the prophecies. We do not wonder that Christian minds were
+excited by all this fresh illumination, and we must not wonder that
+sometimes they remodelled the tradition of the life of Christ to accord
+with the Old Testament.
+
+The harmony between the two Testaments soon became a leading idea in
+Christian doctrine. Some heretics, indeed, would not accept the Old
+Testament. Marcion maintained that it came from an inferior god, while
+the supreme God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, had revealed
+himself only through his Son. He found a great many contrasts between
+the Old and the New Testament, and this criticism was supported by pagan
+philosophers, as, for example, Porphyry. The church, therefore, was most
+anxious to establish the harmony of the Testaments by any means at its
+command. Taste varies from century to century; the minute parallelism
+constructed by some early Christian writers, and evidently much admired
+by their contemporaries, seems to us rather ridiculous and fanciful. On
+the other hand, the church was right in maintaining the harmony. The New
+Testament needs to be explained from the Old Testament; it is open to
+much misunderstanding when taken apart. There was almost no sense for
+historical development at that time; the criticism of Ptolemaeus, in his
+famous letter to Flora, where he speaks of several strata of revelation
+running through the Old and the New Testament, is an exceptional one.
+For most of the faithful the Christian doctrine was directly looked for
+and found in the Old Testament; the gospel was contained in every one of
+its books, from Genesis to Malachi. Unity was conceived as uniformity.
+
+This was the system which appealed most to the average Christian mind.
+And the Bible was open to all Christians, as Harnack has brilliantly
+demonstrated in a recent publication. The ancient church laid stress
+upon this publicity and never tried to withdraw the Bible from the
+people. There was no hidden mystery regarding the Bible. On the
+contrary, all members of the church were anxiously urged to make
+themselves as familiar with the Bible as possible. They were supposed to
+have copies of their own and to read them privately as well as in the
+congregation. Even when the struggles about the right doctrine began and
+the heretics sometimes held to the Bible as their champion against the
+doctrine of the church, the church did not remove the Bible from public
+discussion. The ecclesiastical party maintained that the Bible was
+always in favour of the true doctrine; one needs but to know how to read
+it. Tertullian, it is true, once in the heat of controversy declared
+that it was no use arguing against heretics from the Bible, but he did
+it, nevertheless, and so did the other fathers.
+
+The Bible proved its spiritual value to the experience of every reader.
+A man familiar with the Psalms has a treasure which cannot be lost; in
+any situation he will find what is suitable for his needs. If one looks
+for examples of faith, the author of the epistle to the Hebrews in his
+eleventh chapter gives a splendid model for finding heroes of faith all
+through the Bible. The book of Genesis, especially its first chapters,
+was of particular interest for most of the readers on account of the
+sublime description there given of the beginnings of mankind. The
+creation story in Genesis implies much more than even the finest of all
+Greek myths, namely, the myth in Plato's Timaeus, with which it was
+compared by the emperor Julian. The mighty words, "In the beginning God
+created heaven and earth," proved to be the one true answer to all the
+cosmological questions of Greek philosophy, and besides there was ample
+room for introducing whatever was wanted--such as the creation and the
+fall of the angels--if only one knew how to read between the lines.
+
+In an old Christian book dealing with church regulations and the rules
+for individual Christian life we find the following admonition to use no
+other book at all except the Bible, because, as the author says, the
+Bible contains literature of every kind. The passage runs:[1]
+
+     Stay at home and read in the Law and in the Book of the Kings and
+     in the Prophets and in the Gospel (which is) the fulness of these
+     things. Keep far away from all the books of the heathen; for what
+     hast thou to do with foreign words or with false laws or prophecies
+     which also easily cause young people to wander from the faith? What
+     then is wanting to thee in the Word of God, that thou throwest
+     thyself upon these myths of the heathen? If thou wishest to read
+     the tales of the fathers, thou hast the Book of the Kings; or of
+     wise men and philosophers, thou hast the Prophets amongst whom thou
+     wilt find more wisdom and science than among the wise men and the
+     philosophers, because they are the words of God, of the one only
+     wise God. If thou desirest song, thou hast the Psalms of David or
+     if the beginning of the world, thou hast the Genesis of great
+     Moses; if law and commandments, thou hast the book of Exodus of the
+     Lord our God. Therefore keep entirely away from all these foreign
+     things, which are contrary to them.
+
+  [1] Didascalia, ch. ii, p. 5 in Mrs. M. D. Gibson's translation.
+
+The Bible, in fact, pervaded the whole life of a Christian. It was the
+Bible, its history, its commandments, that he was taught as a child in
+his parents' home. When the girls gathered in the women's hall to spin,
+they would sing and talk about God's revelations more eagerly than even
+Sappho had praised her luxurious love--according to an expression used
+by Tatian in his Apology. The prayers, private as well as
+ecclesiastical, all echoed Biblical phrases, and even at burials the
+Christians sang joyful psalms.
+
+So the Bible became familiar to the Christians of that time. We are
+astonished to find how well they knew it. The sermons of this period
+are full of Biblical allusions, and evidently the preacher could expect
+them to be understood.
+
+This is the more remarkable as the circulating of the Bible in this time
+met with the greatest difficulties. There was, of course, a large amount
+of Bible reading in the congregations. According to Justin's description
+of early Christian worship about 150 A. D., the service began with
+continuous reading of the Bible through many chapters, as far as time
+would allow. Then an officer, bishop or elder, would begin to preach.
+The office of reading was esteemed so highly that it was regarded as
+based on a special spiritual gift; the anagnostes, _i. e._, the reader,
+in the earliest time had his place among the prophets and spirit-gifted
+teachers. And, in fact, if we look at the earliest manuscripts of the
+Bible which have come down to us, we shall almost think that
+supernatural assistance was necessary for reading them: no punctuation,
+no accent, no space between the words, no breaking off at the end of a
+sentence. The reader had to know his text almost entirely by heart to do
+it well. From the "Shepherd of Hermas," a very interesting book written
+by a Roman layman about 140 A. D., we learn that some people gathered
+often, probably daily, for the special purpose of common reading and
+learning. But even granted that the memory of these men was not spoiled
+by too much reading, as is ours, so that by hearing they were able to
+learn by heart--it is said of some rabbis that they did not lose one
+word of all their master had told them, and, in fact, the Talmudic
+literature was transmitted orally for centuries--nevertheless, we must
+assume that these Christians had their private copies of the Bible at
+home. The evidence from the allusions of preachers to private reading is
+strong. Cyprian addresses a Christian: "Your life should be one of
+assiduous prayer or reading (of the Bible): now you speaking to God, now
+God to you."
+
+Here begins our difficulty: how did they get so many copies? There was
+an organised book-trade in the ancient world; publishers had their
+offices, using (instead of printing-presses) slaves who were trained in
+copying; they had shorthand writers, as well as calligraphers to do the
+fine writing. But as long as Christianity was still an oppressed
+religion it is doubtful if the Bible was among the books which
+publishers would care to take. The Christians were, most of them, poor
+people who could not spend much money for procuring Bibles. Besides, it
+was no easy thing to get a complete Bible. At that time the books were
+still written on papyrus rolls, not in book form. Only one side of the
+papyrus could be used; the roll would become unwieldy if too long. So,
+in order to get all the books of the Old and the New Testament, at least
+two dozen rolls had to be written. Maybe a simple Christian copied for
+himself one gospel or some letters or even one or more books from the
+Old Testament. There are preserved on papyrus some unfinished attempts
+which show what hard work it was (Plate I). We can scarcely imagine a
+man going with this heavy hand through all the books of the Bible.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE I--HARVARD PAPYRUS
+
+    An attempt to copy the letters of St. Paul (Romans counts as
+    A = first letter) giving the text only unto Romans 1 : 7; late
+    third or early fourth century.
+
+  From Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol. II, PI. II, Egypt Exploration
+  Fund--London.]
+
+We are told that wealthy Christians helped their brethren by procuring
+copies for them. Origen, the greatest Bible scholar of the ancient
+church, is said to have been supported by a rich admirer, who put at his
+disposal a number of slave copyists. With their help he succeeded in
+creating one of the greatest works which Bible criticism ever undertook,
+his so-called Hexapla, which is a comparison of more than six various
+Greek translations of the Old Testament. Scholars in the nineteenth
+century held that scarcely more than one copy of this enormous work had
+ever been written, but by recent discoveries we know that it was copied
+several times (Plate II). A later admirer of Origen, Pamphilus, is said
+always to have carried with him several rolls in order to provide poor
+brethren. Now that was the third century. Christianity had already begun
+to spread among the higher classes and to become a feature in the
+world's life.
+
+Devotional reading of the Bible was accompanied by scholarly
+interpretation. We mentioned Origen as the greatest Bible scholar of his
+time, if not of all times. It may be worth while to insert here a few
+words on his life. A native of Alexandria, he saw as a boy his father
+dying as a martyr for his Christian faith; he longed to become a martyr
+himself, and was only prevented from giving himself up by a trick of his
+mother's, who concealed all his clothes. He got a good training at the
+catechetical school of Alexandria, not restricting himself to mere
+Christian and Biblical studies, but reading the pagan philosophers of
+his time as well as the Greek classics. A youth of only eighteen years,
+he became the head of the school, and his fame spread all over the
+empire. He travelled to Rome, to Greece; he was even asked by the Roman
+governor to come to Arabia to settle certain questions. So zealous was
+he to fulfil the commandments of the gospel that, misunderstanding one
+of the Lord's sayings, he made himself a eunuch for the kingdom of
+heaven's sake, which brought him into trouble in his later life. When
+once on a journey through Palestine he, being still a layman, had
+preached before the bishop of Caesarea, he was summoned by his
+own bishop and ordered not to preach. Some years afterward the bishop of
+Caesarea, who was among his strongest admirers, ordained him a priest,
+which caused his bishop to banish him from Alexandria. He settled at
+Caesarea and lived there for twenty years without ever aiming at any
+ecclesiastical position, pursuing his study of the Bible and gathering
+around his chair the best men from every part of Christianity. So great
+was his fame that the empress Julia Mammaea, being still a pagan, asked
+him to see her when she was travelling in the East. He was the one man
+to refute the vigorous attack made against the truth of Christian
+doctrine by the philosopher Celsus. When persecution began again he
+wrote a tractate of comfort, "On Martyrdom," and another, "On Prayer."
+He himself suffered imprisonment and torture, and died after his
+release, as a result of these sufferings, at the age of sixty-nine.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE II--ORIGEN'S HEXAPLA
+
+     Fragment found in the Cairo-Genizah and published by E. Taylor in
+     1900; parchment, fifth century, with part of second, third, and
+     fourth columns: Ps 22 : 25-28; used later for copying Hebrew texts.
+
+  From "Hexapla of Origen," by E. Taylor, published by G. P. Putnam's
+  Sons.]
+
+We can scarcely do honour enough to this man, who three centuries after
+his death was proclaimed to be one of the most dangerous heretics, the
+church, however, using his learning in the form of extracts. The vast
+amount of reading, the sagacity, and the perspicuity of the man are
+alike admirable. He is said to have commented upon nearly all the books
+of the Bible, and this three times. He wrote short annotations, he
+compiled large and learned commentaries, and he preached before the
+congregation. Only a small part of his works has come down to us, but
+this fills volumes. Origen's great merit is that he brought Christian
+interpretation to a system which enabled the church to retain the plain
+historical sense alongside the so-called higher meaning.
+
+For a long time gentile philosophers as well as Jewish preachers had
+adopted the method of treating their sacred books allegorically. Homer,
+it was assumed, in telling his stories of battles of gods and heroes,
+meant quite another thing; otherwise he would be guilty of irreligion.
+He meant that the powers of nature and the energies of the human soul
+came into struggle, and therefore virtues and vices were fighting one
+with another. The same thing was done by Philo for the Old Testament.
+There was no real history; all was symbolical, allegory. Christianity
+tried to follow in this path. The gnostics indulged in the wildest form
+of allegory. But it was not safe to give up the idea of historicity
+altogether. Jesus and his gospel were historical facts, not mere ideas;
+they were emptied of all meaning if turned into allegory. And likewise
+the history of the Old Testament could not simply be reduced to
+allegorical metaphors. Origen saved the situation by asserting that each
+of these two views had its proper place. His theory is that as man
+consists of body, soul, and spirit, so the holy Scripture has a
+threefold nature, to which corresponds a threefold interpretation. The
+body stands for the plain historical meaning: Jesus did cast out of the
+temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves and the changers of
+money. There are some historical difficulties, Origen admits, if we
+compare the different gospel narratives and if we take account of the
+fact that a single man did this; Origen explains that it was a miracle
+showing the divine power in Jesus. But there are other aspects too. The
+soul represents the higher moral view: Christ is always casting out of
+his church, which belongs to the heavenly Jerusalem, the men who are
+profaning it by their money-making. And, lastly, there is the spirit,
+that is, the supreme mystical understanding. The spirit of Christ,
+entering its temple, the man's soul, casts out of it all earthly desires
+and makes it a house of prayer. Now that is very ingenious. These three
+strata of interpretation allow for a great variety in explanation and
+adaptation. Origen succeeds by this method in keeping the essential
+historical basis and adding what in those days was thought to be most
+significant. The Bible, being a divine book, seemed to require a higher
+form of interpretation; the Holy Ghost of God was supposed to be a
+spirit of mysteries; it was assumed that to interpret the Bible in a
+plain way was to think of God meanly.
+
+Of course, the Bible contained some allegories which might seem to
+support this theory of allegorical interpretation; for instance, the
+beautiful vision of Ezekiel, told in the thirty-seventh chapter of his
+book: he sees the valley full of dry bones, and at the command of God he
+prophesies over them and they begin to come together, and flesh came up
+and skin covered them above and at last breath came into them and they
+lived. It is a magnificent allegory of the people of Israel, scattered
+in the exile and brought to life again by the power of God. It is
+irritating to see the fathers just at this point declining to follow the
+path of allegorical interpretation. They insist upon the reality of the
+occurrence; it is to be taken literally as resurrection of the dead--so
+it has influenced all mediaeval pictures of the last judgment! I need
+only add that the rabbis took Ezekiel's description in the same way, as
+a real occurrence, arguing for the historicity by showing the
+phylacteries which the risen persons had worn--and one feels what a pity
+it is to treat allegory as history. But the opposite fault is still
+worse: the spiritualising and allegorising of real history is the
+greatest damage ever done to religion.
+
+Theologians tried to establish the authority of the Bible. This had
+already been done in some measure by the rabbis of the synagogue. In
+taking over the Bible the Christians had only to accept their estimate
+of it, but they were not quite satisfied with it. The rabbinical
+doctrine was a rather mechanical one: God had used men, just as a man
+uses a pencil to write with. The pencil does not act consciously: so the
+Old Testament writers, according to this theory, did not take any part
+in what they were writing; it was to them as another man's script.
+Commenting upon the last chapter of Deuteronomy, where the death of
+Moses is described, a rabbinical authority remarks: "Until this passage
+God dictated and Moses wrote; henceforth God dictated and Moses wrote
+weeping"--namely, the account of his own death. There was so little
+interest in the human author that he could be eliminated altogether. We
+are told by an early Jewish legend that all books of the Old Testament
+had been destroyed at the time of Nebuchadnezzar, when the temple was
+burned; so God dictated them all to Ezra. According to this theory Ezra
+would be the real author of the whole Old Testament. This is the most
+mechanical way of representing the equal inspiration of all parts of the
+Old Testament. The Jews of the dispersion had a somewhat similar theory
+about the inspiration of their Greek Bible; when Ptolemy Philadelphus,
+king of Egypt, gathered at Alexandria seventy elders of the Jews to make
+the Greek translation of their law, he put each one of them in a
+separate cell in order to avoid any communication between them, so the
+legend runs. Then, after working for seventy days, all at once they
+shouted "Amen" from their cells, having accomplished their task, and
+when the seventy copies had been compared they were found to agree even
+in the smallest detail. Here we have again an attempt to assert
+inspiration not only for the book itself but also for its translation.
+It is as mechanical as the former, all human co-operation being
+excluded.
+
+Christians did not want this. In Jesus they had experienced living
+revelation; they had prophets among themselves. So, at least at the
+beginning, they had a much higher view of inspiration. God enters a
+man's soul and fills it with his spirit; now the man acts and speaks in
+the power of this spirit, and yet he is not unconscious of his own doing
+and speaking. There are two ways of inspiration, we are told by Clement
+of Alexandria: either God snatches up the man's soul and conducts it to
+the unseen world and shows to it whatever he wishes it to know--this is
+ecstasy--or God enters the man and fills him and makes him his organ.
+The latter, less striking though it appears, is nevertheless the higher
+and more valuable concept. Therefore the fathers do not so much use the
+metaphor of the pencil as the similitude of a musical instrument,
+whether a flute through which the Holy Spirit is playing, or a harp
+which he touches with a plectrum.
+
+Much as they appreciate the holy Scripture, the early fathers usually
+talk about it in a very unpretentious manner. They have not yet
+developed those gorgeous formulas of quotation which are used in later
+times. They quote simply: "Scripture says," or "Paul says," not "the
+holy and glorious apostle in his most excellent epistle to the Romans
+says exceedingly well." They talk in simple words, but they are prepared
+even to die for this Bible.
+
+Eusebius, the first historian of the Christian church, to whom we are
+indebted for so much invaluable information, tells us a moving story
+about Marinus, a young Christian officer in the Roman army, at Caesarea,
+in Palestine. He had the confidence of his superiors and was to be
+promoted to the higher rank of captain. Then out of jealousy one of his
+comrades denounced him as a Christian. Summoned before his colonel, he
+was asked if this was true, and when he confessed he was urged to abjure
+his faith. The colonel gave him three hours' time. So he went to the
+small Christian church, where he found the venerable old bishop. The
+bishop, hearing his story, took the Bible in one hand and the soldier's
+sword in the other. "This is your choice," he said. And the soldier,
+without hesitating, grasped the Bible, went back, and declared himself
+to be and to remain a Christian. And instead of receiving military
+promotion he became a martyr.
+
+It is a significant little story. Indeed, after a hard struggle, lasting
+through nearly three centuries, when the Roman empire found it necessary
+to attempt the final destruction of Christianity the attack was mostly
+directed against the Bible. Diocletian, in 303 A. D., on the 24th of
+February, issued an edict ordering all Christian churches to be
+destroyed and all Bibles to be burned. He relied on the Roman law, which
+forbids not only the exercise of magical arts, but the science of magic,
+too, and therefore condemns all books of magic to be burned. The
+Christians were accused of employing magic, and their Bible was treated
+as a magical book.
+
+We have thrilling accounts of Christians trying to conceal their
+treasured Bible rolls from the eyes of the inquiring officials. They
+took them from the church into their private homes, securing the Bible
+in safety but many a time bringing persecution upon themselves. To the
+officials they surrendered books of various kinds in order to escape
+from surrendering the Scriptures. Asked if they had sacred books in
+their houses, many of them would answer: "Yes, in our hearts." The
+enthusiasm was so great that they believed the story of any miracle in
+support of the Bible. They maintained that copies of the Bible which had
+been thrown into the fire by the heathen were not burned or even touched
+by the flame.
+
+Naturally there were others who were not strong enough in their faith to
+resist, but these "surrenderers," as they were called, were cast out of
+the church and never admitted again. During the fourth century to bring
+against a clergyman the charge of having surrendered sacred books at
+that period of persecution was felt to be the most serious accusation
+possible. Even to be ordained by a bishop who was under suspicion of
+having surrendered his church's holy Scriptures was held a disgrace by a
+large party of zealous Christians who demanded that orders of this kind
+be invalidated. The records of a trial held at Carthage in 329 A. D.
+dealing with this question have come down to us. Here documents from
+303 A. D. were introduced as evidence against the clergy, and the whole
+forms one of the most illuminating pages of church history.
+
+Even to be found reading the Bible made a man guilty of obstinate
+resistance to the emperor's law and involved him in penalty. There was a
+deacon at Catania in Sicily named Euplus. He was reading the holy
+Scripture when the sheriff laid hold of him. Brought before the judge he
+takes his copy of the Gospel and reads from it (Matt. 5 : 10): "Blessed
+are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs
+is the kingdom of heaven," and (Matt. 10 : 38): "And he that doth not
+take his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of me." The judge asks
+him: "Why did you not surrender those volumes which the emperors
+forbade?" "Because," he replies, "I am a Christian and it was not loyal
+to surrender. It is better to die than to surrender." We do not need the
+addition made by a late Byzantine hagiographer that the copy of the
+Gospels was hung on his neck when he was conducted to execution. It is
+clear enough that he was suffering for his devotion toward the Bible and
+that it was the gospel which inspired his boldness.
+
+Euplus does not stand alone. I could mention a dozen martyrs whose acts
+all give the same impression. Sometimes a gathering of men and women is
+apprehended while reading the Bible, and the whole company is forthwith
+carried away to the most painful tortures.
+
+These Christians knew what the Bible was to them. All declamations of
+later theologians about the inspiration and the authority of the Bible
+count for nothing compared with this testimony.
+
+After all, we do not wonder that the Bible became a civilising power as
+soon as Christianity had won its victory.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE BIBLE BEGINS TO RULE THE CHRISTIAN EMPIRE (325-600 A. D.)
+
+
+After the persecution by Diocletian a new era began. Constantine
+proclaimed tolerance, and by and by Christianity became the religion of
+the empire. The victory of Christianity was a victory of the Bible as
+well. This finds its expression in the remarkable fact that the first
+Christian emperor, the immediate successor of those who persecuted the
+Bible and tried to destroy it, ordered fifty splendid copies of the
+Bible to be prepared at his expense for the churches of the newly
+founded capital, Constantinople. Some scholars have thought that one or
+two of these copies still survive in the famous manuscript discovered by
+Tischendorf in the Convent of Mount Sinai (Plate III), or in the Codex
+Vaticanus at Rome. I venture rather to think that both copies belong to
+the period of Constantine's sons. But the fact that the Bible, after a
+period of destruction when most of the earlier copies were burned, got a
+surprising circulation under official direction accounts, I think, for a
+puzzling feature in the transmission of the text. From the Old Latin
+and the Old Syriac, as well as from the testimony of the fathers, we can
+infer that various forms of the Greek text must once have been widely
+circulated, which have now almost disappeared, whereas most of our
+present Greek manuscripts give a text evidently based on a late official
+recension. Looking at Diocletian's attempt to destroy the Bible
+altogether and at Constantine's official order to provide a large number
+of manuscripts, we easily understand the situation. The older forms of
+text had been swept away; now there was room to supply their place with
+the learned attempts of later scholars from the schools of Origen or
+Lucian who endeavoured to bring in more critical texts.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE III--CODEX SINAITICUS
+
+    End of St. Mark (15 : 16-16 : 8) and beginning of St. Luke
+    (1 : 1-18); Mark 16 : 9-20 is missing; 15 : 47 is added at the
+    lower margin by a later hand; remark the numbers of Eusebius's
+    sections and canons. The eight columns of the open book recall
+    the roll-system.
+
+  Reduced one-fifth from the fac-simile edited by Prof. Lake and
+  published by the Clarendon Press (Oxford and London).]
+
+Another change is to be mentioned at the same time. The old form of
+papyrus rolls became obsolete and the parchment book took its place. The
+use of this latter form seems to originate in the law schools; the
+codex, or parchment book, is at first the designation of a Roman
+law-book. But at an early date the Christian church adopted this form as
+the more convenient one and gave it its circulation. We hardly say too
+much when we call the Bible the means by which our present form of book
+came into general use. Even if the Bible had done nothing else for
+civilisation than to give mankind the shape of its books that would be
+a great deal (Plate IV).
+
+The form of a parchment book, or codex, would admit of the copying of
+several books in one volume. The great Bibles of the fourth and fifth
+centuries of which we know contained all the books; they formed one
+volume. So the internal unity running through the Bible as a whole came
+to be represented even in the outward form.
+
+The copying of the Bible went on rapidly, monks and noble Christian
+ladies undertaking it as a form of ascetic work, providing a heavenly
+merit and sometimes earning bread and butter, too. Instead of the plain
+copies in an unskilled hand we now find sumptuous books of the finest
+parchment with purple colouring, in the most luxurious manuscripts the
+sacred text being written in gold and silver, and the margin sometimes
+being covered with beautiful paintings. A copy of Genesis in Greek at
+the Vienna library has forty-eight water-colours, one at the bottom of
+each page, telling the same story as the text. The manuscript when
+complete must have had sixty folios: this gives one hundred and twenty
+of such decorated pages for Genesis, and if it contained the whole
+Pentateuch we may allow for five hundred and ten illustrations (Plate
+V). And this manuscript does not stand alone; it is but one of
+a large group of illuminated manuscripts. This sumptuous appearance may
+be taken as a sign of the value attached to the Bible. Persecuted
+hitherto, it became the ruler of the Christian empire, invested with all
+the glory of royalty.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE IV--ROLL AND BOOK
+
+    St. Luke the Evangelist copying from a roll into a book (codex
+    form): miniature from a Greek manuscript at the Vatican library
+    (gr. 1158), eleventh century.
+
+  From "Vatikanische Miniaturen." Copyright by B. Herder, Freiburg.]
+
+The place given to the Bible is best shown by the fact that it presided
+over the great councils, a copy of the Bible lying upon the presidential
+chair. It was meant as a symbol for Christ himself taking the place of
+honour and deciding the great questions of faith. The same holds true
+for non-ecclesiastical assemblies. In an ordinance of the emperor
+Theodosius it is required that a copy of the Bible be present in every
+court-room. The Bible, or rather the Gospels, or to speak even more
+precisely the most prominent page in them, the beginning of the first
+chapter of St. John's Gospel, was used for taking an oath. The worn
+condition of this page in many a manuscript still attests this use.
+
+Presiding over the courts, the Bible began at once to exercise its
+influence upon the Law. We can already trace this influence in the
+legislation of Constantine himself: when he forbids to brand a criminal
+on his face, giving as reason that the image of God ought not to be
+marred, it is the Biblical notion of the man's face being the likeness
+of God which underlies this law. When, in a law published in 334, he
+insists that no man, whoever he is and whatever rank he has, shall be
+admitted as a solitary witness unless supported by another witness, it
+is the well-known Biblical rule that at the mouth of two or three
+witnesses every word shall be established. When he makes divorce more
+difficult, denying the right of remarriage to the man who repudiates his
+wife without sufficient reason on her part, we feel that it is the
+injunction of Jesus which is behind this law. I would not say the same
+of all parts of this legislation which various scholars have adduced as
+proving Christian influence. Roman law from the second century was
+influenced to a large extent by the Stoa, all the famous lawyers such as
+Gaius and Paulus belonging to this school and introducing its ideas into
+the practice of the courts and into the legislation of the magistrates,
+especially of the emperor. There is an evident development in the Roman
+law toward a more humane conception of slavery; this is due to the Stoa.
+The views on marriage and divorce, the position of "natural children,"
+as the Roman law calls illegitimates, all this is largely due to
+non-Christian influences. Nevertheless, there are unmistakable traces of
+a particular influence of the Bible upon the legislation of the
+Christian emperors, and this influence increases from decade to decade.
+Constantine gives a rather vague ordinance for keeping Sunday as a day
+on which courts are not to be held. Theodosius is much stricter; and the
+climax is reached with Justinian, when Sunday has become a legal
+holiday.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE V--VIENNA GENESIS
+
+    The paradise: Adam and Eve appear three times: (1) under the tree
+    of knowledge, Gen. 3 : 6; (2) when discovering their nakedness,
+    3 : 7; (3) when hiding themselves from the Lord among the trees,
+    3 : 8. The divine voice, represented by the hand from heaven,
+    belongs to this third scene; it is put in the centre merely for
+    artistic reasons.
+
+  From "Die Wiener Genesis." F. Tempsky, Vienna.]
+
+Justinian, of course, codifies the Roman law, but his Novellae, the laws
+issued by himself, show the new spirit of a legislation ruled by the
+Bible. He sometimes refers directly to the Bible as authority. Still
+more is this spirit prevalent in some provincial codes. One of these
+says that everything has to be judged according to the ancient and to
+the modern law, i. e., the law of Moses, which antedates the laws of all
+other nations, and the law of Christ, as it is contained in the laws of
+the emperors Constantine, Theodosius, and Leo. Lawyers of this period
+indulge in comparisons between the Roman law and the law of Moses.
+
+The Roman empire was Latin in some respects, Greek in others. Latin was
+the official language of the court, of the law, of the army. But the
+population spoke mostly Greek, though from the third century on large
+parts used their native language, Syriac and Coptic, as well. The Bible
+had been translated into these languages during the former period. Now
+the general political situation brings the empire into contact with the
+Goths in the North, with Armenians and Georgians in the East, with
+Libyans and Ethiopians in the South. As soon as the empire gains any
+influence among these neighbouring peoples, the Christian mission tries
+to get hold of them and we see the Bible translated into these
+languages, which hitherto have had no writing. The Bible marks for these
+peoples the beginning of a national literature. Their alphabets were
+made up from the Greek, thus showing that the reading of the Bible with
+these nations began in connection with their intercourse with the Roman
+empire.
+
+The Bible ruled even the Greek language of this empire. There are many
+changes in the later Greek which are surely due to familiarity with the
+Bible. Words previously unknown in Greek or used in a different sense
+became quite familiar; everybody knows what is the meaning of Beelzebub,
+Messiah, Paradise, Satan, and that an angel is not a mere messenger, but
+is a messenger from God, a spiritual being, and that the word demon
+always means an unclean spirit.
+
+Moreover, the Bible influenced the style of the writers, especially of
+the great preachers. One may distinguish three forms of influence in
+this department: artificial imitation; naive use of Biblical names and
+phrases (what is usually called in Germany the language of Canaan); and,
+lastly, the unconscious influence which the style of any book exerts
+upon a careful reader. I do not think that there are many instances of
+artificial imitation in this period. Sometimes a preacher skilfully
+composed his whole sermon by adding Biblical quotation to quotation;
+asked to preach a sermon on a saint's day, he did nothing else than
+comment upon the saint's life in Biblical phrases. The second type of
+influence is very common; the present emperor is usually spoken of as
+the new David; the story of a war is always told as if David were
+fighting the Philistines; each heretic is entitled to be called the new
+Judas Iscariot who betrays his Lord. The most famous example of this
+kind is the sermon attributed to Chrysostom after his first return to
+Constantinople, when he had fled from the wrath of the empress: "Again
+Herodias is furious, again she flurries, again she dances, again she
+desires the Baptist's head to be cut off by Herod." The preacher's own
+Christian name, of course, was John, and the empress was trying to get
+rid of him for political reasons.
+
+The most important influence, however, is the unconscious influence
+simply from the use of the Bible. The great power of Chrysostom's
+sermons was partly due to his eminent rhetorical talent and training. He
+knew how to gain his hearers' attention; yet for the greater part his
+thorough acquaintance with the Bible seems to be responsible. Reading
+the sermons of those great Greek Christian orators of the fourth
+century, we are often struck by the embedded quotations from the Bible.
+In the midst of this fluent Greek there is something quite different,
+something stern, something austere, something dignified and solemn,
+which immediately appeals to the hearer. As a matter of fact, the
+preachers themselves, proud as they were of their classical training,
+had rather the opposite impression; they apologise for introducing
+barbarous language. Chrysostom insists, in many a sermon, on the idea
+that the apostles were fishermen, unskilled in literary style, and that
+it is one of the proofs of inspiration that those men could write at
+all. He evidently is not aware of the fact, clear to us, that it is just
+the vigour and strength of Biblical language which gave to his own
+sermons their magnificent effect. He was filled with Biblical
+phraseology as was no other preacher of his time. He himself did not
+realise it, nor did, I presume, the greater part of his congregation,
+yet it was this which so impressed them. If only the modern editors
+would note all the Biblical allusions in his works! Yet they are hardly
+able even to recognise them. We find preachers noted for their
+brilliancy in extemporaneous speaking, and usually the remark is added,
+it was because the speaker knew the Scriptures by heart.
+
+In this way the people became accustomed to Biblical phraseology, and we
+do not wonder that at last the colloquial Greek also was influenced by
+the Bible. We can trace its influence even in the romances.
+
+The Bible ruled the home and the daily life; people had their furniture
+decorated with Biblical symbols; lamps showed Noah's ark or Jonah's
+whale, Jesus with his disciples in a ship or Jesus treading upon the
+lion and adder, the serpent and dragon (according to Psalm 91). At the
+Strassburg Museum there is a beautiful engraved glass cup made probably
+in a Roman manufactory in Cologne. On one side is engraved Abraham
+sacrificing Isaac, on the other side Moses striking water from the rock.
+Rich people wore sumptuous garments embroidered with representations of
+Biblical scenes. The preachers complain that these people wear the
+miracles of Christ on their coats instead of taking them to their heart
+and conscience.
+
+The great officials of the empire used to give to their friends ivory
+tablets commemorating their honours. In former times they had
+represented on them the emperor, the empress, or their own portraits,
+and scenes from the circus; now they chose Biblical subjects. People
+liked to have long rolls exhibiting the wars and triumphs of an emperor
+in a continuous series of drawings. Two gigantic rolls of this kind may
+still be seen at Rome; I mean the columns of Trajan and of Marcus
+Aurelius. Christian art produced rolls of the same kind, exhibiting the
+story of Joshua's battles (Plate VI). Senators and noble ladies vied
+with each other in arranging the history of the Bible and especially the
+life of Jesus in the form of poems, each word of which was taken either
+from Homer or from Vergil. It is a wonderful mixture of Bible and
+classical culture.
+
+The Bible rules not only the public and the private life, but also the
+church and its organisations. At the beginning the Christians were
+afraid of comparing the Old Testament rites with the ecclesiastical
+institutions. The Law of the Old Testament belonged to an earlier form
+of religion; it was abolished by the New Testament. Christ, according to
+Saint Paul, was the end of the Law. But by and by the Old and the New
+Testament were brought nearer together. An author of the first century
+remarks that God by his commandments in the Old Testament has shown
+himself to be a lover of order, therefore in the Christian congregation,
+too, order ought to rule. He does not call the Christian communion a
+sacrifice, the Christian minister a priest; but his parallelism comes
+very near to this, and a century later the step is taken. It becomes
+usual to speak of bishop, elders, and deacons as high-priest, priests,
+and Levites. Later on, even the minor degrees were taken back to
+Biblical models: the subdeacon, lector, exorcist, acolyte, janitor were
+found represented in the Old Testament. The clergy formed a separate
+class as distinct from other people as the tribe of Levi was among the
+tribes of Israel. It was upon the authority of the Old Testament that
+they claimed rights and prerogatives to be given and guaranteed by the
+empire. The monks found their models in Elijah and Elisha; common life
+was represented by the apostles; penitents were Job, David, and the
+people of Nineveh; widows (as ecclesiastical functionaries) had their
+models in Naomi, Hannah, Tabitha, etc. The church was the tabernacle of
+Moses and the temple of Solomon, and each detail in the description of
+these Biblical buildings was made to agree with a feature in the
+Christian church by means of allegorical interpretation. The feasts of
+the church correspond to the feasts of the Old Testament; Easter is
+usually called Passover, and Whitsuntide Pentecost. At a rather early
+date a festival of the dedication of the individual church was
+introduced to correspond with the festival of the dedication of the
+temple. As the Jews kept two days in the week for fasting, so did the
+Christians, choosing Wednesday and Friday instead of Monday and
+Thursday; and in doing so they remembered that it was on a Wednesday
+that Jesus was betrayed by Judas and on a Friday that he died on the
+cross. Even the usual hours for prayers were based on Old Testament
+authority; David, saying in Psalm 141 : 2 "The lifting up of my hands as
+the evening sacrifice," means vespers, while in the 131st Psalm he is
+speaking of compline, in the 63d of matins. The vigil was observed as
+well as commanded by Christ himself (Luke 6 : 12 and 12 : 37). The whole
+liturgy was explained as being in every detail a representation of
+the life of Christ. The sacraments, too, were prefigured in the Old
+Testament. This symbolism is very old and very commonly used; it has
+influenced Christian art. We see Noah's ark as a symbol of baptism
+(_cf._ I Peter 3 : 20); Abel's sacrifice, and Melchisedek offering
+bread and wine to Abraham, as symbols of the holy eucharist. Abraham
+entertaining at his home the three angels reveals the holy Trinity. All
+this is represented in splendid mosaics on the walls of the churches, as
+for instance in San Vitale at Ravenna.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VI--JOSHUA ROLL
+
+  (At the Vatican)
+
+    Joshua is sending from Jericho (at the left, walls tumbling down)
+    to Ai two men to spy out the land, Joshua 7 : 2. The towns are
+    represented by edifices as well as by allegorical figures (Tyche
+    of the City).
+
+  From "Vatikanische Miniaturen," by St. Beissel. Copyright by
+  B. Herder, Freiburg.]
+
+To us this system of Biblical references for everything in the Christian
+service seems strange. We feel that the worship of the Christian
+congregation rests on other principles than the ritual of the Old
+Testament and does not gain anything by such hazardous comparisons. It
+looks like comparing the stars in heaven with beasts on earth. But the
+fathers thought that this was the highest achievement at which they
+could arrive: to allegorise and spiritualise the Old Testament law in
+order to deduce from it the Christian liturgy. That was what they called
+worship in spirit and truth. It is exactly opposite to the great idea
+which Jesus conveyed in those words; it is one of the greatest
+confusions to which the juxtaposition of the Old and the New Testament
+in one Bible was leading. Nevertheless, it was of great influence upon
+civilisation for centuries.
+
+The church and the laity were ruled by the Bible; but the real Bible
+folk of this time were the monks. There had been a tendency toward
+asceticism from the very beginning of Christianity. At the moment when
+the church came into power this tendency increased rapidly. In Egypt as
+well as in Syria, wherever there was a desert place hermits gathered and
+monasteries were built. Now, in these monasteries the life was really
+filled with the reading of the Bible. Even the poorest monk would have a
+copy of the Gospels to read. Some of the monks, of course, were very
+simple, unlearned people. They could not read, so they learned it all by
+heart. And sometimes--we are told in the legendary tales of the
+monks--it happened that a monk who never before had learned to read was
+miraculously given the art of reading, God granting it to him as a
+recompense for his zeal. The monks had their hours for common worship
+and reading, but they were supposed to read each by himself as much as
+possible. "The rising sun shall find the Bible in thy hands," is one of
+the monastic rules, and legend illustrates how the divine grace
+recompensed assiduous reading: filled with heavenly light all through
+the night was the cell of a hermit as long as he was reading the Bible.
+When visitors came the talk was over questions raised by the Bible. It
+was with quotations from the Bible that the celebrated anchorite
+entertained the people who called upon him to ask for spiritual help.
+
+Among all Biblical books the Psalter was the one most favoured by the
+monks. They knew it by heart, almost all of them, and they used to
+recite it during their manual labour. The Psalter was their spiritual
+weapon against the temptations of the demons; the demon liked nothing so
+much as to turn a monk from reciting his Psalter. But besides the
+Psalter it was the Gospel which prevailed over all other books in these
+ascetic circles. Many of the hermits were induced to leave the world by
+attending a Gospel lesson in their church at home. "If thou wouldest be
+perfect, go, sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt
+have treasure in heaven: and come follow me," or "And every one that
+hath left houses or brethren or sisters or father or mother or children
+or lands for my name's sake shall receive a hundredfold and shall
+inherit eternal life." These are the words which occur again and again
+in the lives of saints as the decisive ones for their "conversion," that
+is for leaving the world and going to the desert or entering a
+monastery. The first saying quoted above is referred to in the life of
+Saint Anthony, the greatest of all hermits, and Saint Augustine had this
+in his mind when the time came for him to change his life. The second
+saying makes Saint Hypatius go away from home; his biographer, however,
+is honest enough to add that the saint, a youth of eighteen, had just
+received punishment from his father. An actor living luxuriously with
+two concubines chances to enter a church, and hears read from the
+Gospel, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"; so he repents
+and becomes a monk. I do not mean to say that these tales of the monks
+are historical and trustworthy in every point, but I venture to think
+that this statement about the motives for conversion is, after all, a
+correct one. The gospel is what appeals to the human heart, in all
+centuries and in all nations. And then the man will try to make the
+gospel the rule of his life. I think it is remarkable that whereas the
+church and the empire both were ruled mainly by the Old Testament, these
+ascetic circles took the gospel as their main rule, that is to say, the
+gospel as understood by the men of that time. It was to them a new law,
+a law of asceticism, of self-denial, and they kept to it as strictly as
+possible. Even if for other Christians it meant an almost inaccessible
+ideal, the monastery ought to be the place to fulfil it literally.
+
+Our picture would be inadequate, however, if we should neglect the abuse
+of the Bible, the Bible showing its importance and ruling force even by
+its influence upon the dark domain of human superstition. The ancient
+world was full of magic. We remember the story in Acts 19 of how Saint
+Paul overcame some Jewish exorcists, with the result that "not a few of
+them that practised curious arts brought their books together and burned
+them in the sight of all, and they counted the price of them and found
+it fifty thousand pieces of silver." I suspect many a scholar or
+librarian of to-day would like very much to have those books among his
+treasures, but they were burned; and Christianity scored its first
+triumph over superstition. Superstition, however, did not give way at
+this first defeat; on the contrary, it made a strenuous effort to draw
+over all the forces of Christendom to its own side. There was the name
+of Jesus, frightening the demons; black magic took this name and
+converted it to its detestable uses. There was the Gospel,
+representative of Jesus himself in his heavenly power; superstition made
+it a vehicle of its own magical rites. There was the Bible, the book of
+divine oracles; human inquisitiveness turned it into a book from which
+to read the dark future. The heathen had done this with the poems of
+Homer and Vergil. Turning over the pages they suddenly stopped at a
+verse and then tried to find in this verse the answer to their question.
+The fathers of the early church detested this method as something quite
+alien to a Christian mind, but as early as the end of the fourth century
+people came to feel that it was all right if only they used the Bible
+for the same purpose. In the sixth century even church officials kept to
+this practice. When a bishop had to be elected they almost always
+consulted the Psalter first on behalf of the man to be elected. Bible
+verses written on parchment were attached to easy chairs in order to
+keep away the evil spirits. Gospels in the smallest form were hung on
+the necks of the babies. It is astonishing to see how great was the
+esteem in which the Bible was held and how terribly contrary to the
+spirit of the Bible this practice was, especially when the Bible was
+used to do harm. Lead, by its dull lustre, always has reminded mankind
+of the realm of death; so it was used in black magic for bringing upon
+an enemy a curse from the gods of the underworld. A rolled sheet of
+lead, inscribed with a psalm and a dreadful curse against any robber,
+has been found on one of the AEgean Islands hidden in the ground of a
+vineyard. Evidently the psalm was supposed to be one of the most
+effective spells. Even the Lord's Prayer and other parts of the Gospels
+have been abused in the same way (Plate VII). Nothing is so holy that it
+cannot be turned into a crime by human sin.
+
+It is a dark page of human civilisation. I am afraid it is a large page,
+too. I could accumulate instance upon instance. But however interesting
+this might be, it would give a wrong impression. The Bible was not
+primarily used as a magical means in those centuries. It was
+acknowledged as something superhuman, bearing supernatural powers, and
+therefore ruling everything. It ruled the empire as well as the church.
+It influenced law, language, art, habits, and even magic.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VII--THE LORD'S PRAYER
+
+    On a potsherd found at Megara, sixth century; used probably as a
+    spell.
+
+  From "Mitteilungen des K. Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts,"
+  Athen. Published by G. Reimer, Berlin.]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE BIBLE TEACHES THE GERMAN NATIONS (500-800 A. D.)
+
+
+From the fourth century on the Germans, tribe by tribe, crossed the
+Danube and the Rhine and entered the boundaries of the Roman empire.
+Here part of them settled near the frontier, part took service in the
+Roman army. But the more numerous they became, the more hostile they
+were. At last the Roman empire in the West broke down, German kingdoms
+taking its place. It is a long and cruel history, this period of
+"Voelkerwanderungen" as it is usually called in German, the period of the
+great migrations. And only after some centuries did the new Roman empire
+of German nationality come to be established by Charlemagne.
+
+At first the Germans made a brilliant start in taking over Roman
+civilisation. The Goths had been Christianised and civilised at an early
+period. While it is true that the Visigoths under Alaric captured Rome
+and did not refrain from plundering it, the behaviour of the Vandals
+under Gaiseric was even worse, so that for all time to come their name
+is connected with the most brutal pillage. But the noble tribe of the
+Ostrogoths under their celebrated king Theodoric--called Dietrich von
+Bern in the German songs--tried another plan; they adopted Roman
+civilisation as far as possible and endeavoured to combine both nations
+under one dominion. Theodoric had as his minister or secretary of state
+a member of the Roman nobility, the most cultivated man of letters of
+the time, Cassiodorus. We have his collection of reports and letters,
+and we may infer from them how much, aside from his training in the
+Roman law school, he was influenced by his Christian belief and Biblical
+reading. Later on, when he retired into the monastery which he had
+founded on his estates at Vivarium, all his devotion was given to the
+study of the Bible. He is the man who inculcated on Western monasticism
+that love for scholarship which has been ever since a characteristic of
+the Order of Saint Benedict. Cassiodorus was a Roman, of course, but we
+have ample evidence that even among the Goths the Bible was read and
+studied. There was a Gothic translation of the Bible, which is supposed
+to have been made in the fourth century by Ulfilas. In order not to
+encourage the warlike spirit in his people he is said to have omitted
+the books of the Kings, wherein so many wars and battles are described.
+The educational aspect of the Bible as teaching the German nations
+comes out here distinctly. We are able to trace the history of the Goths
+by their Bible, which, having been translated in the East from Greek
+manuscripts, shows traces of a Latin influence, evidently introduced
+when the Goths settled in Italy. There still exist some copies, among
+them the famous Codex Argenteus, now at Upsala, which in its silver
+writing on purple ground, is a wonderful specimen of luxurious
+calligraphy, giving testimony to the degree of civilisation which these
+Ostrogoths had taken over from Rome (Plate VIII).
+
+There was, however, one great difference between the Germans and the
+Romans; the latter were Catholics, the former Arians. This religious
+difference is responsible for many troubles and persecutions brought by
+the Germans upon the population of the conquered land. The Germans had a
+church organisation of their own; they had their own clergy, and this
+clergy was well trained in Bible reading. We find the remarkable fact
+that the German Arian bishops show an even larger knowledge of the Bible
+than their Roman Catholic colleagues. The complaint was often heard that
+the watchwords of Catholicism, as, for example, _homousios_, had no
+Biblical foundation, while, on the other hand, the Arians were always
+ready to fill their creeds with Biblical phrases. These Germans had a
+profound reverence for the holy Scripture and bowed down to it. It was
+only by Scriptural proofs that the Catholic clergy of Spain succeeded in
+converting the Arian king to their faith.
+
+Theodoric built at Ravenna some churches which still exist. Here we see
+mosaics exhibiting the life of Jesus in a very simple way, but with that
+unmistakable touch of awe which is so characteristic of German piety.
+How different are the pictures which were added after Ravenna had become
+Byzantine! They are highly ceremonial, representing, among others, the
+emperor Justinian and the empress Theodora with all their suite.
+
+These were the first centuries of German invasion. The ancient
+civilisation, championed by the Roman church, was still strong enough to
+impose itself upon these invaders. Time went on and civilisation more
+and more lost its energy. Especially in Gaul, in the kingdom of the
+Merovingians, intellectual darkness spread all over the country. There
+was no layman who could read, hardly any member of the clergy. We hear
+of great monasteries, which were rich royal foundations, where no
+complete Bible was to be found. We see the troubles of a missionary like
+Boniface. In order to procure the necessary books, he has to apply to
+his English lady friends, who send him copies of the books he wants,
+finely written by their own delicate hands. It was a time when a book, a
+Bible, was a treasure, and to own one was a fact to be recorded by a
+biographer. This enables us to trace the history of more than one famous
+manuscript. We are surprised to find what journeys they made. One was
+sent from Naples to England, and then a century later again removed to
+the German shore and finally treasured among the rarities of the Fulda
+library. Another manuscript, now at Florence, came originally from the
+monastery of Cassiodorus in the extreme south of Italy and found its way
+to the monastery of Mount Amiata, near Florence, only by a roundabout
+route through the famous English monasteries, where it was copied. The
+few scholars of that period had to go a long way before they could get a
+copy of the Bible worth their attention, and they had to go a long way
+to find a monastery with hands able to copy manuscripts.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VIII--GOTHIC BIBLE
+
+    Codex Argenteus, now at Upsala. Sixth century, written on purple
+    parchment in silver and (some words) in gold. The figures at the
+    bottom give Eusebius's harmony of the Gospels: this particular
+    scheme is found in Syrian manuscripts and in the Old Latin Codex
+    Rehdigerianus at Breslau.
+
+  From "Deutsche Kulturgeschichte," by O. Henne am Rhyn. Grote, Berlin,
+  Germany.]
+
+A new epoch begins with Charlemagne, who has a real right to the name of
+the Great. If one wants to know a great man, one has only to see what
+attention he pays to minor things. It is simply wonderful how this
+German king, who restored the old notion of the Roman empire, whose
+dominion contained France, Germany, Spain, Italy, was taking care of
+the schoolboys and fixing his eyes on the way in which the Bible was
+being copied in the monasteries of his vast realm. In one of his
+ordinances he complains that they use unskilled boys for copying the
+most sacred book. It needs, he says, grammar--nay, good grammar--to
+understand what you are copying. It is no religion to pray to God in
+ungrammatical language and to have his holy Scriptures in a
+grammatically incorrect text. From the fact that the monasteries in
+their letters of application used a bad style he infers that Bible
+reading here was being neglected. Therefore, Charlemagne tried, in the
+first place, to bring the schools of his kingdom to a higher standard.
+Each monastery had to have a well-conducted school for the monks and for
+the young people who were sent there for education (as they are now sent
+to public schools). At his own court he had the _Schola palatina_ and
+the great emperor himself went there often and took lessons together
+with the boys. But he did not stop here. His intention was to secure a
+really good, trustworthy text of the Bible. He therefore invited
+scholars from everywhere; even some Orientals are said to have shared in
+the work. The leading man, the chairman of the Committee for the
+revision of the Bible, as we should say at present, was Alcuin, a monk
+from England, who by his great learning had won the confidence of
+Charlemagne and was appointed by him abbot of the famous monastery of
+Tours. Here, at the school of Tours, most of the work of revision was
+done (Plate IX); through Alcuin's influence the revision was mainly
+based on the text current in England. That this was the best text
+available at that time is now generally acknowledged by all competent
+scholars. This was not so in Charlemagne's time; other scholars,
+Frankish bishops, disapproved of Alcuin's work. They thought the
+revision would have come out much better if conducted according to the
+text prevailing in Spain. So Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, issued a
+version of his own (Plate X). It is always instructive to see how men
+were the same in former times as they are now: scholars seldom agree one
+with another. The result was that henceforth two forms of the Latin
+Bible were used through the next centuries--in the North, Alcuin's
+revision, in the South, the revision made by Theodulf.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE IX--ALCUIN'S BIBLE
+
+  (Brit. Mus. add. 10546)
+
+    Written at Tours, soon after Alcuin's death: a very good example
+    of fine Carolingian minuscule. The lines are of equal length.
+
+  From F. G. Kenyon, "Fac-similes of Biblical Manuscripts." By
+  permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.]
+
+Charlemagne would not have cared so much for the text of the Bible had
+he not esteemed the Bible to be the one great text-book for his people.
+He himself was filled with Biblical notions. In his private circle, a
+club for promoting classical reading, he was called David. And it was,
+indeed, the Old Testament idea of the theocratic king which governed
+his mind. The king chosen by God and elected by the people, the king a
+representative of God and the head of the people, the king a valiant
+warrior and a royal psalmist at the same time, this was his ideal, in
+which old German notions were combined with Old Testament views. While
+revering the priest, he always felt himself superior even to the bishop
+of Rome. He willingly accepted the role of a defender, of a protector;
+he never would have accepted his crown from the hand of a priest.
+Nothing is so alien to Charlemagne as the later mediaeval theory of the
+two swords, both given by God to Saint Peter, the one spiritual, kept by
+himself and his successors, the other worldly, given by them to the
+emperor. No, he had his sword from God directly, and his royalty
+included the power and the duty of looking after the church's affairs as
+well. The Bible tells of a king of Judah, called Josiah, who, on being
+informed that the book of the Law given by Moses and hidden for a long
+time had been rediscovered, forthwith ordered everything to be reformed
+and restored according to this law. That served as the model for
+Charlemagne's own ecclesiastical work. Being the king, he felt
+responsible for the purity of worship and of doctrine. Therefore, when
+the question arose in the East if worship was due to the pictures of
+Christ and the saints, and the bishop of Rome did not please him in his
+answer, Charlemagne himself, assisted by Alcuin and other theologians of
+his staff, wrote a treatise on the subject, which he himself thought to
+be decisive, the so-called _Libri Carolini_, a document of a rather
+Puritan character, showing the austere spirit of early Western theology.
+When in Spain a discussion began about the divine nature of Christ, he
+again interfered, sending his theologians to discuss the matter
+according to the true teaching of the Bible--as is said expressly in
+their instructions--and after they had decided he even took political
+measures against those whom he believed to be heretics. We can scarcely
+understand his attitude in those cases without keeping in mind that he
+felt himself a new David and a new Josiah.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE X--THEODULF'S BIBLE
+
+  (Brit. Mus. add. 24142)
+
+    Written in three columns like many Spanish manuscripts, and in lines
+    of various length, "cata cola et commata," as St. Jerome says.
+
+  From "Fac-similes of Biblical Manuscripts." By permission of the
+  Trustees of the British Museum.]
+
+Sometimes it is a true evangelical spirit which pervades his ordinances
+for the church. In a proclamation of 811 he says: "We will ask the
+clergy themselves, those who are not only to read the holy Scriptures by
+themselves but are to teach them to others also: who are those to whom
+the apostle says, Be my imitators? or who is the man of whom he says, No
+soldier on service entangleth himself with the affairs of this life?--or
+how to imitate the apostle and how to do service to God? What is it to
+leave the world? does it mean simply not to wear weapons and not to be
+married publicly? does it mean to enlarge one's property daily, oppress
+the poor and induce men to perjury?" Charlemagne is particularly strict
+about avoiding perjury, not only in the solemn form of public oath,
+which is taken on the holy Gospel or on the altar or on the relics of
+the saints, but in common conversation as well. He tries to introduce
+Matt. 5 : 16, "Even so let your light shine before men that they may see
+your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven," as the
+motto for every Christian's life. That is quite evangelical. But it is
+from the Old Testament that the tenor of his laws comes. They all have a
+strong mark of severity, in particular the so-called Saxon laws, which
+were imposed upon the Saxon tribes when after a very hard resistance
+they were finally defeated and subdued. Through this law runs, like a
+bloody thread, the frightful menace: _morte moriatur_, by death shall he
+die. This sounds harsh, but it is nothing else than the adaptation of a
+well-known Biblical phrase (Ex. 19 : 12; 21 : 12: "He shall surely be
+put to death," R. V.). That is an example of Biblical phraseology. But
+the Bible influenced the legislation of Charlemagne also in content. I
+choose three instances: in all three cases the work of Charlemagne was
+prepared for by church councils. Christianity had begun by voluntarily
+adopting Old Testament laws; then the church had made their observance
+compulsory; now Charlemagne gives to the ecclesiastical ordinances the
+sanction of the state and inflicts penalty upon trespassers. The first
+instance is Sunday; it was called the Lord's Day; from the sixth century
+synods and councils had tried to make the people keep this day in a more
+solemn fashion. They did not refer to the Old Testament commandment at
+first; they did not even demand that all manual work should be stopped.
+The frequent repetition of the decree seems to prove that it was rather
+unsuccessful even in this limited form. Now the government interferes,
+and its injunctions secure at once to the Lord's Day the strictest
+observance. It is remarkable that Charlemagne expressly refers to the
+Old Testament commandment. It is according to the Bible that the day was
+counted from sunset to sunset. This is the beginning of the Sabbatarian
+question in the West, the East preceding the West, as we have seen, by
+about two centuries.
+
+Our second instance is the tithe; it was to be paid, according to the
+Bible, by all the other tribes to the tribe of Levi, who served at the
+temple. Now Christians began to pay voluntarily a tithe to their
+priests, accommodating themselves to the Old Testament rule; but by and
+by the clergy derived from the Old Testament a right of asking for the
+tithe. The farmer had to pay his tithe to his parish priest. Charlemagne
+proclaimed this as a law of his kingdom, referring expressly to God's
+commandments.
+
+The third instance is given in the prohibition against taking interest.
+It is said in Deut. 23 : 19: "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy
+brother." Ecclesiastical authorities took this as forbidding to take any
+interest in lending money, and they tried to impress this prohibition
+upon the minds of the Christian people. Here, again, Charlemagne gave
+his sanction to this ecclesiastical view and made the prohibition
+against taking interest a part of the public law. It is obvious that the
+economic life of the nation was deeply influenced by this compulsory
+adoption of Old Testament laws.
+
+Justice, with the Germans, was to a large extent exercised by means of
+the ordeals. We scarcely realise the importance these proceedings had at
+that time. People believed in a divine power bringing out guilt and
+innocence by means of these curious trials. It was but natural that the
+Bible, representing the divine oracles, should be present at the
+ceremony, that both parties should revere and kiss it. But people did
+more; they made the Bible itself a means of deciding between guilty and
+innocent. They had a particular kind of ordeal which they called
+determining by means of the Gospels, and another which was called the
+ordeal of the Psalter, a copy of the Psalter being swung over the head
+of the suspected person.
+
+I have referred to the palace school. This had its continuation in a
+graduate school, if we may so call a Bible circle among the theologians
+attending the court. These theologians, headed by Alcuin himself, were
+first-rate Bible scholars. They knew great parts of the Bible by heart;
+they had read all accessible commentaries of the fathers. They had ideas
+of their own, too, but they were traditionalists to such an extent that
+they would not say anything of their own unless it was said and
+supported by the fathers. When asked to write brief commentaries on
+Biblical books, because the patristic commentaries were too large and
+comprehensive for the students of this time, they simply gave extracts
+from the fathers and carefully avoided adding anything of their own. One
+went so far as to take even the connecting words from the works of Saint
+Augustine; another, whose mental energy was too strong to keep him
+within the boundaries of pure traditionalism, excuses himself whenever
+he introduces an interpretation of his own.
+
+In these studies the ladies and gentlemen of the court took part. It is
+very interesting and often amusing to see what kind of questions they
+bring before Alcuin as the great oracle of learning. One lady reading
+her Psalter was puzzled by the words in Psalm 116, "All men are liars."
+How can babies be liars before they begin to speak, or dumb men? "The
+sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night" (Psalm 121 : 6)
+seemed to be incompatible with the fact that the moon never burns. A
+scholar who had come from Greece troubled the court by putting the
+question: To whom was paid the price with which we were bought according
+to I Cor. 6 : 20; 7 : 23. Charlemagne himself has other questions. He is
+troubled by finding that the hymn sung by Christ and his disciples after
+the Last Supper has not been recorded by any of the Gospels. I wonder if
+he really was satisfied by Alcuin's answer. After a very learned
+explanation of the term hymn, Alcuin gives, first, three views of
+different interpreters: (1) That there was no special hymn, only a
+general praisegiving; (2) that they had sung the twenty-second Psalm;
+(3) that it was some Jewish prayer. Then he proceeds to establish his
+own solution: that it is, in fact, the prayer of Jesus, recorded in
+John 17, which was meant by the word hymn here. Incidentally, he makes
+some important remarks upon the harmony of the Gospels: "Although we see
+in the Gospels some things told similarly, others in a different way,
+we nevertheless believe that everything is true." That was the leading
+idea for the criticism of the fathers, and it was the same for nearly
+all the mediaeval centuries. Historical criticism, directed upon the
+Gospels, would have seemed to show intolerable lack of piety or certain
+evidence of heretical views.
+
+Theological thinking does not go beyond the limits of Biblical doctrine.
+Scarcely one or two men dare to think in their own way or speculate on
+such problems as darkness and nothing (that is, what was before the
+creation) or on the nature of miracle. There was hardly any attempt at
+scientific theories. And the best men, indeed, as, for instance, Alcuin,
+were proud of basing their theology entirely on Biblical ideas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The one great event in the expansion of Christianity among the German
+nations is the mission of Saint Augustine to England. When Pope Gregory
+found some Anglo-Saxon youths at the slave market of Rome and perceived
+that in the North there was still a pagan nation to be baptised, he sent
+one of his monks to England, and this monk, who was Saint Augustine,
+took with him the Bible and introduced it to the Anglo-Saxons, and one
+of his followers brought with him from Rome pictures showing the
+Biblical history, and decorated the walls of the church in the monastery
+of Wearmouth. We do not enter here into the difficult question of the
+relations between this newly founded Anglo-Saxon church and the old
+Iro-Scottish church. Differences of Bible text had something to do with
+the pitiful struggles which arose between the churches and ended in the
+devastation of the older one. The one point which interests us here is
+the fact that both Iro-Scottish and Anglo-Saxon monks were driven into
+missionary work by the Bible. When, in the service, they heard read from
+the Old Testament or from the epistle to the Hebrews that Abraham and
+the patriarchs had all left their home, their parents, their native
+country, and had gone to a foreign land which they did not know, simply
+in order to please God, then they felt bound to do the same. When at the
+mass the Gospel was read, "And every one that hath left houses or
+brethren or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my
+name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and shall inherit eternal
+life," then they hurried away, not knowing where to go, looking only for
+a far-distant and desert place. It was this ascetic view of the Bible
+which drove the Iro-Scottish monks over the sea to France, Italy,
+Germany, which made them preach the gospel to the Germans who had not
+yet heard of it. It was this same motive which caused Willibrord and
+Boniface to cross the North Sea and come to preach among the Frisians
+and Saxons. Boniface is said to have received the deadly stroke from a
+pagan while holding his Bible over his head. They still show the copy at
+Fulda.
+
+Again, it was the Bible which determined Charlemagne to use force
+against the Saxons in order to bring them to baptism and Christian
+faith. Saint Augustine had discovered the passage in the Lord's parable
+of the great supper, where the servant is told to go out into the
+highways and hedges and "constrain" them to come in. This _coge
+intrare_, he explained, might excuse the using of secular power for the
+purpose of bringing heretics back to the church or of causing pagans to
+join the church. Charlemagne knew no better than to suppose that this
+was the true meaning of the saying of our Lord, and so he felt in
+conscience bound to use military force and the full strength of the law
+in christianising the Saxons.
+
+But it was the Bible itself and not Charlemagne's sharp sword and his
+cruel law which brought over the wild Saxon tribes into Christendom.
+They had among themselves a poet who had the gift of singing the gospel
+into their hearts. Charlemagne himself was fond of the national songs;
+he loved his German language as much as he esteemed Latin. He was
+convinced that a man ought to pray to God in his native tongue. There
+are not only three sacred languages, he says, in which to pray and to
+praise God--Hebrew, Greek, Latin--you may praise him in your German as
+well. Therefore he arranged that a priest should translate the Biblical
+lessons and the sermon to the people who did not understand Latin. He
+would probably have approved a German translation of the Bible; but the
+clergy were not prepared to do this. They took Latin as the basis of
+civilisation, and only a few of them had any regard for the uncultivated
+people. There are preserved some few attempts at translating parts of
+the Bible into German; they attest what might have come out of this
+Carolingian movement if the bigotry and narrowness of Charlemagne's son
+Louis had not stopped it. Among the Saxons a fresh and vigorous spirit
+was still alive. Having been introduced to Christianity by brute force
+of war, they embraced the gospel, trying to make it their own by putting
+it into the form of their national song. We do not know the name of the
+poet; he seems to have been a clergyman, instructed in the best
+commentaries of his time, such as were available at the monastery of
+Fulda. For the framework he used a Gospel harmony which is contained in
+the famous Codex Fuldensis of the Vulgate, originating at Capua (in
+south Italy) and brought probably by Boniface himself from England to
+Fulda. This Gospel harmony he translated freely into some six thousand
+Saxon verses. His poem is one of the finest assimilations of the Gospel
+history to national German feeling, to be compared only with Duerer's
+engravings and Eduard von Gebhardt's paintings. Christ is the heavenly
+king; the apostles are his loyal kinsmen; he wanders with them through
+the Saxon wood; he stops at a native spring; all Oriental character has
+gone, but the gospel has lost nothing. It is as fresh and as real as it
+ever had been. The fact our author detests most is Christ's betrayal by
+one of his own men; nothing is so bad as this according to the German
+mind. Christ on the cross is not suffering; he dies as a victorious
+warrior. When he says, "I thirst," he expresses by this the fact that he
+is thirsting after the souls of men, to bring them into paradise. It is
+wonderful how the gospel has penetrated the German soul in order to
+produce a harmony like this.
+
+This "Heliand" by the anonymous Saxon poet we shall admire even more if
+we compare it with the other attempt at bringing the life of Christ into
+German poesy. It is by Otfried of Strassburg, whose "Christ" is a very
+learned elaboration, partly in German, partly in Latin, therefore
+undoubtedly much preferred in the literary circles of that time, but
+infinitely inferior to the "Heliand" in freshness and popular quality.
+
+It is remarkable that there is something similar to the "Heliand" in
+the Anglo-Saxon poem, the "Genesis." The theory has been successfully
+started and proved by later discoveries that both have the same origin.
+The Saxons of Germany and the Saxons of England were not so far away one
+from the other that they could not have intercourse and exchange (Plate
+XI).
+
+However this may be, it is evident that the Bible had an influence in
+teaching the German nations from the beginning, and that the new
+civilisation which was to be built would have the Bible as one of its
+foundations.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE XI--LINDISFARNE GOSPELS
+
+  (Brit. Mus. Cotton: Nero D IV.)
+
+    Written about 690 in honour of St. Cuthbert ([dagger symbol] 687),
+    in English round style. The interlinear version was added two
+    hundred and fifty years later--remark in the midst of the
+    left-hand column the words: _xpi_ (=Christi) _evangelium_ with
+    _Cristes godspell_ above it.
+
+  From "Fac-similes of Biblical Manuscripts." By permission of the
+  Trustees of the British Museum.]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE BIBLE BECOMES ONE BASIS OF MEDIAEVAL CIVILISATION (800-1150 A. D.)
+
+
+The Middle Ages, the dark Middle Ages, that is what we are wont to call
+the period we now enter in our journey through the centuries. Scholars
+of the sixteenth century called it so, when they looked back to the
+classical period, from which they drew all their light and inspiration.
+The centuries between counted for nothing; they seemed to be barbarous,
+uneducated; the humanistic scholar would simply drop them out of the
+world's history. Time passed and men became enthusiastic about the
+beauties of these Middle Ages. At the beginning of the nineteenth
+century Europe was enchanted by romanticism. Nothing was fashionable
+that was not mediaeval in art, customs, manners. At present we view these
+centuries more calmly in the light of their own time; we see what was
+their defect, and we see at the same time what was their merit. It is
+true that civilisation had only begun to recover from the shock which
+the great migrations had given to it. If a chronicler thinks it worth
+while to mention that the emperor Henry IV was able to read to himself
+the petitions brought before him, we must infer that the art of reading
+was not wide-spread, even among the nobility. And the famous poet
+Wolfram von Eschenbach tells us himself that he was no friend of this
+art. On the other hand, I need only remind my readers of the beautiful
+buildings we still admire at Cologne: the massive old church of Saint
+Gereon in Romanesque style and the light and airy cathedral, whose
+Gothic arches and spires reach up toward heaven--to mention only these
+two well-known examples--in order to make them realise the power and the
+splendour of this civilisation, which never will cease to impress the
+human mind. We cannot drop this period from our history; nor can
+Americans deny that this mediaeval civilisation is an element even in
+their modern civilisation.
+
+There is an ingenious theory that history always repeats itself: the
+German migrations corresponded to the migrations of the Greek tribes;
+the time of chivalry was like the time of Homer's heroes; humanism
+represents the age of Plato and Aristotle; only the repetition always
+has the advantage of using the results of the former cycle. But we must
+not forget that from time to time new forces enter those cycles and
+change their relation. At the end of the classical period Christianity
+has come in and now runs as a straight line through the parallel cycles;
+therefore nothing in this parallelism is quite exact.
+
+It was the Christian church which served to keep the old civilisation
+alive through all troubles and dangers. When classical training had
+nearly vanished everywhere else, it was found in some remote
+monasteries. Esteem of good style, love of ancient poetry, some chance
+bits of philosophy had safely weathered the storm. But it was only in
+combination with the Bible that those remains of classical reading were
+allowed to persist. The mediaeval civilisation was Biblical at its base.
+
+Saint Jerome, who was a great admirer of classical eloquence but a stern
+defender of pure Christianity, tells in a friendly letter to a certain
+lady a sad experience of his own. He had read much of Vergil and Cicero
+and other pagan books, when one night he found himself suddenly summoned
+before the heavenly judge. "Who are you?" he was questioned. "I am a
+Christian," he replied. "Thou liest, thou art a Ciceronian," was the
+judge's answer. And forthwith he was given over to cruel constables, who
+beat him frightfully until he promised never to touch a pagan book
+again. When he awoke in the morning he still felt the blows. The story
+is mere fancy, and Saint Jerome never proves so guilty of imitating his
+adored classical models as in this very letter. He was an actor who knew
+how to pose. But by this letter he has caused plenty of people in later
+time to dream over again the frightful experience he describes so
+suggestively. Dozens of monks and nuns have felt blows struck upon them
+by invisible hands for having given themselves too much to the seduction
+of reading classical books instead of the Bible. Again and again the
+leaders of monastic institutions had to insist upon the rule that the
+Bible must be read and no pagan books. Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, the
+nun who celebrated the great acts of the emperor Otto I, wrote some
+Biblical comedies, in order to prevent the nuns from enjoying the
+comedies of Plautus and Terence.
+
+On the other hand, all the great fathers of the church insisted upon
+classical training; so did Saint Jerome himself and Saint Augustine, not
+to speak of the great classical scholars in Christian bishoprics in the
+East (Plate XII). And even in the later centuries, when classical
+civilisation had gone and was only kept up artificially by assiduous
+reading, it was the church which maintained the right and the necessity
+of a classical training for its clergy. Alcuin was proud of the
+classical training he had had at home, at the famous monastic school of
+York under the direction of Abbot AElbert. He enjoyed finding kernels of
+truth in the writings of the heathen, and he pointed out that Saint Paul
+had done the same. There was a time when there was no reading at all
+outside the clergy and the monasteries, but this reading was a
+combination of classical and Biblical. That is the great merit of the
+mediaeval church.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE XII--BYZANTINE MINIATURE
+
+  (Psalter, Paris B. N. gr. 139)
+
+    David, playing harp while watching his sheep, looks like Orpheus
+    in Greek art. The female figure at the left represents Melody,
+    while at the right-hand corner Echo, also personified, is
+    listening behind a pillar. The man in the cave to the right
+    is Mount Bethlehem.
+
+  From "Die Wiener Genesis." F. Tempsky, Vienna.]
+
+Mediaeval civilisation had various foundations, but the Bible was one of
+them, and the most important one. That is what we find wherever we try
+to analyse mediaeval culture.
+
+What was the aspect of the world at this period? The world seemed to be
+an edifice of three floors. Above was the heaven, a compact dome, in
+which the stars were fixed, while the planets moved in their own sphere;
+over the sky was the space where God or, let us say, according to the
+usual expression of that time, the holy Trinity dwells, surrounded and
+adored by millions upon millions of angels, who keep heaven and earth in
+continuous communication. Besides, the heaven can be rent asunder; then
+the angels look down to earth, and from time to time a pious man is
+allowed to enter and see the heavenly mysteries and the glory of the
+saints. The earth, the abode of man, is a large round plane; its centre
+Jerusalem, where, at the same place, Adam was buried and Christ was
+crucified, so that the blood of the Saviour dropping down reached Adam's
+skull. The earth was surrounded by the ocean. At its boundaries all
+kinds of strange beings--men with dogs' faces, giants, pygmies--were to
+be found. There was still an earthly paradise--not to be confounded with
+the paradise in heaven, the goal of human longing. This earthly paradise
+was unknown and inaccessible to the greater part of men, but from time
+to time a pious hermit or a favourite of fortune reached it; the lucky
+man on his return had exciting stories to tell about the wealth and the
+bliss of this paradise, but he never could find the way again. I have
+read an accurate description of the way from paradise to Rome, giving
+the exact number of days and months, but there was nothing said about
+how to come from Rome to paradise!
+
+Below the earth was the great dark cellar called hell; here the devil
+was at home with his companions. But these demons did not like their
+abode; they preferred to roam the earth and play jokes on men and women.
+As the angels from above were kind and helpful to man, so the devils
+were cunning and malicious. But many a time the devil showed himself
+stupid; a clever boy might easily cheat him. The devil's aim was to
+capture the frivolous and to seduce the pious in order to bring them
+all into hell. Here the various categories of sinners had their
+separate compartments, where they were punished according to the varying
+nature of their sins. Mediaeval writers describe these various tortures,
+and they know more about the geography of hell than they usually know
+about the geography of the earth.
+
+Now, according to the view of that time this is all Biblical. A modern
+reader would find difficulties in looking for it in his Bible; but he
+will recognise some of the motives as clearly Biblical. Further
+investigation will show him that other notions are brought in from the
+late classical philosophy, and finally he will discover a large amount
+of folk-lore, German folk-lore. All this mingled together made a very
+curious combination, and the most curious point was that this
+combination was regarded as Biblical. It was upon the authority of the
+Bible that the church accepted this whole view of the world and put it
+before the people, judging all doubts and divergences from its teaching
+as intolerable heresy. It is this naive way of reading between the
+lines, this allegorical method of making the Bible say what it does not
+say, which we have already found in the Greek fathers of the fourth
+century when, in commenting upon the _hexaemeron_, the six days' work of
+creation, they introduced whatever they had read about the world and
+nature in the works of Plato and Aristotle. In the time of which we are
+speaking these great Greek philosophers were known only indirectly, but
+nevertheless they exercised much influence through later imitators.
+Boethius was the one great authority of this time, besides the Bible.
+
+The Bible's influence is still more evident if we turn to the mediaeval
+view of history. What was history? People at this time had few notions
+about what was happening in the world; there were no means of
+communication, nor had they a conception of history as a coherent series
+of events in which each link is the effect of what precedes as well as
+the cause of what comes after. They simply registered the facts which
+chance made known to them. The chronicle is the form of record which
+prevails at this period. There was no history of the world; what passed
+for such was the history of the Jewish people as given in the Bible and
+the history of the Christian church as recorded by certain chronicles.
+Both together made up the history of mankind. The first part, the
+history of the Old Testament, was not regarded as the history of the
+Jews, but as the history of the people of God; it was the history of our
+fathers the patriarchs, the history of the first covenant finding its
+direct continuation in the history of the new covenant and the
+Christian church. There was only a very slight conception of chronology;
+everything was arranged according to the system of a week, the duration
+of the present world corresponding to one week, whose days, according to
+the 90th Psalm, each counted a thousand years. The world was not
+expected to endure beyond six thousand years, the seventh day being
+reserved for the millennium. Into this history of the world a few
+fragments of Greek and Roman history found their way by means of an odd
+synchronism: David was said to have been a contemporary of the Trojan
+War, and a correspondence was invented between the king of Troy and the
+king of Israel, in which the latter excuses himself for not coming to
+join the Trojan army. It was in the beginning of the twelfth century
+that a famous professor of the university of Paris called Petrus
+Comestor wrote his _Historia Scholastica_, which for all the Middle Ages
+served as the text-book of Biblical history.
+
+But, like the mediaeval aspect of the world, so the history of the world
+was not purely Biblical. The Bible always had to suffer the strong
+rivalry of apocryphal and legendary fiction. Already the Jews had
+invented a life of Adam, full of miraculous events, which appealed to
+the taste of the average man much more than the simple and severe story
+of the Bible itself; the lives of Abraham, of Moses, of Solomon were
+enriched in the same way. Christianity continued this kind of fancy. The
+story of the holy root was traced back into paradise; it was a branch
+from the tree of life, given to Adam's son Seth and planted by him on
+his father's tomb. It had been used as a bridge over the Kidron until
+the queen of Sheba arrived at Jerusalem. Being a prophetess, she
+worshipped this holy root; consequently Solomon tried to use it in his
+temple, but the carpenter did not succeed in cutting it to the necessary
+length; therefore it lay unused, "rejected by the builders," until the
+time came when a tree was wanted to crucify Jesus; so Jesus died--on the
+cross which was the tree of life--a splendid symbolism, indeed, but set
+forth in a strange legend. Or they investigated the earlier history of
+the thirty pieces of silver given to Judas Iscariot as the reward for
+the betrayal of his master, tracing the money back as far as Abraham.
+The life of Christ was surrounded by apocryphal legends of all kinds:
+the story of his birth and of his childhood; his stay in Egypt; how in
+their flight lions and all kinds of wild beasts accompanied the holy
+family; how a palm-tree bowed down before them in order to provide them
+with its fruits; how at Jesus' arrival in Egypt all the idols of the
+Egyptians fell down; how he helped his father Joseph in his carpenter
+shop; and so on. Again the miracles at his death, the descent to hell,
+the resurrection and ascension, everything was covered with an abundance
+of miraculous narratives, partly enlargements, developments of the
+canonical accounts, partly mere fiction. In addition to this apocryphal
+life of Jesus there is the life of the Virgin, giving a most curious
+description of her birth and childhood and again of her death, making
+every detail parallel to the life of Christ himself and yet keeping hers
+subordinate. The mediaeval life of Christ begins--one may say--with the
+birth of Mary (or with the story of her parents, Joachim and Anna) and
+ends with the death and assumption of Mary. The history of the apostles
+as read in this period is nearly all apocryphal except the few data
+taken from the canonical book of Acts. Then the history of Christianity
+is continued as the history of the church according to the scheme of
+Saint Augustine's _De civitate dei_ (the City of God): the church is the
+city of God and beside it is the city of this age, the kingdom of this
+world, the one spiritual, the other secular, with two parallel lines of
+development. This is best shown by the mural decoration in Charlemagne's
+palace at Ingelheim on the Rhine, where two series of pictures, one
+giving the Biblical history according to the Old and New Testaments, the
+other tracing the profane history from Ninus, king of Babylon, down to
+Charlemagne himself, were painted on opposite walls. That is the
+mediaeval view of history. We may add that, according to this view,
+history begins in heaven when the holy Trinity conceives the idea of
+creation, and ends in heaven at the last judgment. Our view of history
+is a different one, but we cannot help agreeing that this is a
+magnificent conception and that it is Biblical, too, in its main points.
+
+It is partly built upon the Apocrypha, of course. Regarding these
+Apocrypha the attitude of the church changed a good deal during our
+period. The early view is set forth in several utterances from the Roman
+bishops of the fifth and sixth centuries, and is represented in its
+sharpest form in the so-called decree of Pope Gelasius, which condemns
+all Apocrypha as heretical writings totally to be rejected and detested
+and not to be used in any way by a Catholic Christian. We found this
+Puritan view prevailing in Charlemagne's _Libri Carolini_. It is
+predominant among the theologians of the Carolingian time. They scarcely
+use apocryphal books, and when they do they always refer to them as to
+doubtful books devoid of all authority. But gradually the Apocrypha
+came into favour; they are used freely alongside the canonical books.
+They are very much of the same kind as the legends of the saints; and
+those legends of the saints are favoured by the people, too. At last, in
+the thirteenth century, even theologians do not distinguish between
+canonical and apocryphal books. They quote the Gospel of Nicodemus
+alongside the Gospel of Matthew or of John; they call it the fifth
+Gospel and have it copied in their Bible manuscripts. So they have a
+letter from Saint Paul to the Laodiceans and other Apocrypha inserted in
+or attached to the Bible. And the common people were fond of these
+Apocrypha and delighted to hear the preacher quote them because the
+bizarre miracles appealed to their taste.
+
+There was almost no science, no medicine in this time; the world seemed
+to be full of miracles having no rational connection with one another.
+There was no causality, no law of nature. This was exactly the same view
+that we have in most parts of the Bible. Therefore people did not feel
+any difficulty in identifying their own notions about miracle and nature
+with the Biblical ones. Nay, we may say that many of the legendary
+miracle stories are copied after Biblical patterns. Even the wording is
+often modelled according to Biblical phraseology. "Healing all manner of
+disease and all manner of sickness," from Matt. 9 : 35, is repeated in
+many a saint's life.
+
+Bible history in the embellished form which we have just now observed
+inspired mediaeval art. In the first place, there were the inner walls of
+the churches, usually painted from top to bottom. If we remember that a
+Romanesque church had only very small windows, we understand what a
+large space was given to painting. Pictures are the text-book for those
+who cannot read; so Pope Gregory the Great had said, and this dictum was
+repeated many a time. It is true, of course. These plain mural
+paintings, awkward as they often are, make a greater impression on a
+simple mind than even the best written account could produce. The art is
+nothing but illustration; the painter tries to bring before the people
+who view his work the main features of the Biblical text. One must,
+indeed, know the text in order to understand the pictures. Sometimes the
+spectator is helped by additional inscriptions. To the illiterates these
+may be read and explained by the priest; and then even the simplest
+peasant will understand and always remember the story. Some churches
+were decorated in this way twice or even oftener, the first painting
+being covered with lime and whitewashed and then another painting being
+put upon it, according to the style of the later time. Here, again, we
+see the Biblical history, pure and plain at the beginning, but by and by
+combined with motives taken from the apocryphal sources and the lives of
+the saints. At the annunciation the angel meets the Virgin Mary at a
+well; it is to his mother Mary that the risen Christ appears before he
+reveals himself to his disciples.
+
+In the Gothic period sculpture is more favoured, the walls being broken
+up into groups of columns and large windows. This arrangement lent
+itself more to the representation of individual figures of saints; but
+even so Biblical personalities, and sometimes even Biblical scenes, were
+chosen, and the large windows, with their stained glass, offered another
+possibility for decoration based on Bible stories. Besides, the whole
+building is directed by a scheme of Biblical symbolism difficult for us
+to understand but dear to the men of that period. They loved symbolism.
+The cult of the Virgin Mary was surrounded by it. She was the queen of
+heaven, she was paradise, she was the tower, she was the unicorn, she
+was the well, and so on, and all these symbols were taken from or
+related to the Bible.
+
+The growing wealth and the higher standard of civilisation created a new
+demand for illuminated manuscripts. The artists of this period did not
+follow the classical scheme of filling the lower margin with
+representations in water-colour; they put little pictures, framed like
+those on the walls, into the text itself, or they decorated the initials
+of each book or chapter (Plate XIII). In turning over the pages we
+admire the skill of these artists, their simplicity, and sometimes their
+sense of humour. We seldom recognise what an amount of reading and
+interpretation of the Bible is contained in these little pictures; and
+how, on the other hand, they helped and stimulated Bible reading. We are
+told of King Charles V of France (1364-80), that he read the Bible all
+through once a year during his reign. This means a period of sixteen
+years. We are quite sure that he had a beautifully illuminated copy, and
+we may assume that the pictures helped him in performing this religious
+exercise.
+
+The art of painting is often accompanied by the art of making verses, as
+I would rather call this mediaeval poesy. And again it is the Bible or,
+to speak more accurately, the Biblical history which finds its
+expression in this art. Besides the inscriptions added to the pictures
+and often given in versified form, there are a number of rhymed Bibles,
+as these versifications of the Biblical history are called. There are
+short verses giving the content of each book or chapter of the Bible for
+mnemonic purposes. There are some real poems, too, dealing with Biblical
+subjects.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE XIII--ENGLISH MINIATURE
+
+  (Latin Bible, Brit. Mus. Royal I D I)
+
+    Written in England, early thirteenth century. Initial I, Gen. 1 : 1,
+    shows creation, fall, and redemption.
+
+    The three upper little compartments give each of them the work of
+    two days: Christ is the creator; the fourth brings the seventh
+    day's rest: Christ on the throne; the next three compartments
+    contain the story of Adam and Eve: temptation, expulsion, and their
+    working under the curse; the eighth compartment shows the
+    Redemption as prophesied in Gen. 3 : 15.
+
+    The grotesque little figures are a beautiful illustration of
+    mediaeval sense of humour.
+
+  From "Fac-similes of Biblical Manuscripts." By permission of the
+  Trustees of the British Museum.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Bible and mediaeval art brings before us another feature of
+civilisation, which is important, indeed, in our own time and which one
+would scarcely think of as originating with the Bible. I mean the
+theatre. The old classical drama and comedy had entirely died out.
+Plautus and Terence were read in the monasteries, not played, and so
+were the Biblical comedies by Hrotswitha, of which we have spoken,
+intended to be read only, not played. There was nothing but jugglers,
+jesters, and dancers. On festival days people amused themselves by
+frivolous masquerades, which were looked upon by the church authorities
+with suspicion and contempt as survivals of heathen rites and therefore
+to be frowned upon and abolished. Things took quite a different turn
+when some of the clergy began at Christmas and at Easter to present the
+sacred story in acted form in order to illustrate the lesson. They did
+it inside the church, directly before the altar. It was nothing but a
+dialogue, developed out of the lessons from the Scripture, the angel
+addressing Mary, the shepherds coming to see the child, the three Marys
+at the tomb and the angel speaking to them, and so on, as simply and
+plainly as it was told in the Bible and as it was usually painted on
+the walls of the church. The people took delight in these
+representations and they were soon enlarged. They had to be removed from
+the choir to the front of the church, the steps of the entrance forming
+the stage. Soon more and more persons appeared on the stage; the laity
+joined the performers; the guilds (the trade-unions) undertook the
+performance of the play, and out of these naive little representations
+of the birth of Christ or his passion and resurrection sprang gorgeous
+miracle-plays which sometimes lasted four days and brought the whole
+story from the creation to the last judgment before the bewildered eyes
+of the spectators. Nothing could make the Biblical history so familiar
+to the people as these plays, in which hundreds took part as performers
+and thousands attended as onlookers. There was but little art. They had
+no scenery; the actors simply moved about in the open space. But it was
+highly realistic. We are told that they nearly killed the man who was
+acting Judas Iscariot. It was also amusing. Mediaeval piety did not
+refrain from putting in just before the crucifixion a sarcastic dialogue
+between the blacksmith, who had to provide the nails, and his wife,
+ending in a scuffle between them. People liked to see this. It was on
+account of these undignified scenes, which kept increasing, that the
+plays were abolished by secular and ecclesiastical authorities in the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when through humanism and the
+Reformation taste and piety had been refined. There are still a few
+survivals, such as the Passion Play of Oberammergau, which, however, has
+undergone a thorough change. There is now a revival of these popular
+plays, but I doubt if it will be successful. Possibly the film will take
+the place, as it has entered some churches already.
+
+Men nearly always like to travel and the Germans liked it exceedingly
+well. This tendency received a special direction from the Bible; there
+were so many sacred sites in Palestine which a Christian wanted to see.
+So since the fourth century we see many people from the West--from Gaul,
+Spain, later on from Germany and England--travelling to the Holy Land in
+order to visit all the places connected with the sacred history of the
+Bible. At the end of the eleventh century the pilgrims suddenly turned
+into crusaders, sailing by thousands, fighting, settling down for a
+while, going back again. Then after a period of nearly two centuries of
+vain struggle for the possession of the Holy Land they changed again
+into pilgrims. Meanwhile, the Holy Land had changed also, and Christian
+piety, too. They were now not so much interested in visiting the sacred
+sites themselves as in gaining the indulgences which were granted in
+abundance to the visitors to each of these places. We still possess a
+long series of descriptions of these pilgrimages, increasing from
+century to century not only in number but also in size. The pilgrims did
+not rest until they had fixed upon a certain location in Palestine for
+every event in the Bible. Sometimes we seem to catch the process of
+fixation. The hermit or monk who served as guide had just told the
+company everything he himself knew about the resurrection of Lazarus.
+Then suddenly some one broke in with the question, "And where was it
+that Jesus met Martha?" and the poor hermit would be sure to show him a
+rock or a doorway, of which he had never thought before. They showed the
+pilgrims the place where Abraham and Melchisedek met, the tomb of
+Rachel, the monastery of Elijah on Mount Carmel. They would show also
+the mantle Elijah left to Elisha or the widow's cruse of oil which was
+always full. At Nazareth one could see the rock from which the citizens
+tried to throw down Jesus headlong, and one could see on the rock the
+imprint of his body, which he left there--according to a legendary
+addition to the story--when passing through the crowd unhurt. On the
+Mount of Olives was the Chapel of the Ascension. Here the pilgrims
+could see and worship the footprints made by Jesus when he leaped up
+toward heaven. Nay, we are told that people used to carry away dust from
+this place to use for charms, and yet the footprints never disappeared.
+I am giving these examples in order to show how even here sacred history
+and legend were mixed together. It is obvious, however, from what I have
+said that the pilgrimages contributed a great deal to make people
+familiar with the Bible stories; for not only the pilgrims themselves
+but all their people at home were mightily interested in what they had
+seen and heard in the Holy Land. We see them build churches representing
+the Holy Sepulchre. In the later centuries they make calvaries and
+stations on the way to them, representing the main points on Jesus' way
+to the cross, on the so-called Via Dolorosa at Jerusalem. There is even
+(as I have pointed out in my book on _Christusbilder_) a mutual
+influence between the pilgrimages and the passion plays, which accounts
+for some changes in the order of scenes and the fixing of places at
+Jerusalem.
+
+The Bible continued to exercise its influence upon the Law. As King
+Alfred of England when collecting the laws of his people put the ten
+commandments at the beginning, so likewise the German collections,
+_Schwabenspiegel_, _Sachsenspiegel_, and so on, have prefaces which
+present the national law as an emanation from the law of God as
+contained in the Old and New Testaments. Still more important than these
+national laws was the so-called canon law, the collection of
+ecclesiastical canons and decrees of the Roman bishops. It is remarkable
+that this canon law, while incorporating naturally a good deal of
+Biblical matter, such as the degrees of relationship within which
+marriage is forbidden, does not make so much use of Biblical authority
+as one might expect. The decrees of the popes, it is true, usually begin
+with a quotation from the Bible, but that is more for the sake of
+appearances. The fact that the law of the church, in spite of all
+references to the Bible, was derived essentially from other sources, and
+that the study and the knowledge of this law were appreciated as the
+most important attainment of a bishop or even a clergyman, is very
+striking.
+
+We have already noted the influence which the Bible exerted upon social
+and commercial life. The German notion of the king as representative of
+the nation was easily combined with the theocratic theory of the Old
+Testament. David's court, with his mighty men (II Sam. 23), furnished a
+good example for any royal court of this period. Feudalism seemed to
+agree with the stories of the patriarchs, as when Abraham led forth his
+trained men, three hundred and eighteen in number, and pursued the
+invaders who had taken captive his brother's son Lot. Bondage, serfdom,
+even slavery, seemed to be sanctioned by the Bible. The church did not
+object to slavery provided the Christian faith of the slave was
+respected; he was never to be sold to a Jew or a pagan. The opposition
+against slavery in the Middle Ages came from the monasteries. Here the
+ancient Stoic doctrine that all men are equal and no man is to be
+treated as a brute animal had been combined with the Christian view of
+brotherhood that all are children of God, and with the doctrine of the
+simple life. But this theory, championed by the monasteries, spread only
+slowly. It did not put an end to slavery in the northern countries of
+Europe before the thirteenth century. In the eastern and southern
+countries, where Christianity bordered on Mohammedanism, slavery did not
+die out before the sixteenth century, and bondage remained everywhere
+until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Bible defined the
+position of the Jews, who as murderers of Jesus were thought of as
+living under the divine punishment. Whatever happened to them was
+regarded as a penalty due to the crime of their fathers. So they were
+exposed to all kinds of insults if they were not protected by the king,
+whose personal serfs they were held to be. A large part of this general
+hatred of the Jews was due to the fact that they were making money out
+of their trade and their medical science, being allowed by their own law
+to take usury from the Christians. The law of Moses (in Deut. 23 : 20)
+expressly says that a Jew may lend upon usury to a foreigner, while he
+is forbidden to do so dealing with a brother. Now, as we have already
+seen, the Christian church adopted this law as forbidding the Christians
+to lend at interest. The fatal result was that trade on the basis of
+credit was made almost impossible, and that the Jew was the only one who
+could lend money at interest. As he abused this opportunity by taking
+enormous usury, it became evident that the one remedy to be used from
+time to time was to take away from him by force all the money he had
+made, thus restoring it to its proper source. The Jew might be thankful
+if he got off with his life. Among the many accusations brought against
+the Jews on such occasions, one of the most effective was the indictment
+that they had falsified their Bibles, putting in curses against the
+Christians, or that they had insulted and destroyed Christian Bibles.
+The criminal charge of falsifying the holy Scriptures had been raised
+against many heretics, too, and in most cases had been proved to be
+untrue. It could be retorted that the Christian church itself, during
+the first centuries, had "improved" the Psalter in many a place by
+slight Christian interpolations. Destroying books by fire was at this
+time one of the most common means used by the church in fighting Jews
+and heretics, and vice versa. The Bible recorded not only the burning of
+the magical books at Ephesus but also the burning of the holy Scriptures
+by Antiochus Epiphanes. So this also was "Bible tradition."
+
+To sum up our survey of mediaeval civilisation we find the Bible
+recognised as one, if not as the one, foundation. Its influence was to
+be seen in every department: the view of the world, the view of history,
+arts and sciences, social life and commerce. It was to the Bible that
+people referred, even if the thing had not been deduced from the Bible;
+they made it appear Biblical, though it was not so in itself, because
+they felt that it had to be Biblical if it was to be recognised as an
+integral part of Christian civilisation. That is what makes it so
+difficult for us to define the real influence of the Bible, there is so
+much artificial Biblicality.
+
+The Bible was the leading norm, and it was recognised as such. Never had
+the Bible had a higher estimation or a more undisputed influence.
+
+And yet the real influence of the Bible was a limited one. It had not
+only to face the rivalry of the classics on one side but of the
+Apocrypha, legends, ecclesiastical traditions on the other. Its real
+influence was mostly indirect. Biblical ideas had been incorporated into
+the works on the world and nature; Biblical history had been used for
+the text-books of history, and now these books came to be substitutes
+for the Bible. All read the _Historia Scholastica_ of Peter Comestor;
+very few read the Bible. And those few again read mostly the historical
+parts of the Bible without caring for the books of the prophets and the
+letters of the apostles. A wide-spread substitute for the Bible was the
+so-called _Biblia Historialis_, which gave the Biblical history in a
+convenient not to say entertaining and even amusing form. Another
+well-known substitute was the so-called _Biblia Pauperum_ ("Bible of the
+poor)," showing the most important features of the life of Christ,
+together with typical scenes from the Old Testament and some verses from
+the Bible. By means of all these substitutes the people became very
+familiar with Biblical history, but they knew nothing about doctrines.
+Theologians, of course, did, but their eyes were blinded by the
+tradition of the church, the doctrine of the fathers. They interpreted
+the Bible according to tradition. That is the great demerit of this
+age; the people had free access to the Bible, but the Bible became alien
+to them by reason of its many substitutes and its successful rivals. The
+reaction against this will furnish the subject for our next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE BIBLE STIRS NON-CONFORMIST MOVEMENTS (1150-1450)
+
+
+Mediaeval civilisation has a twofold aspect. It looks backward, to the
+old church and the old Roman empire; so far it is Biblical and
+classical. But it also looks forward, to the development of the nations
+and later to the development of the individual personality, as this has
+been realised in the Renaissance; so far it is secular and, in a way,
+modern. In the earlier part of the Middle Ages the nations did not feel
+strong enough by themselves. They were parts of the empire, and all
+children of the one mother church. The church was training them, and it
+fulfilled this task in an admirable way. But the children grew up and
+the church lost its power over them. They declared themselves of age and
+independent at the very moment when the church seemed to have the
+largest and most undoubted influence.
+
+The church was training the nations by means of the Bible, and now it is
+the Bible which stirs the anti-ecclesiastical movements. The Bible had
+been used by the church chiefly in an indirect way; parts of the Bible
+or substitutes for it had taken its place. Now the complete Bible made
+its appeal to the people and gave directions which were exactly opposite
+to the training given by the church.
+
+The Bible had originally been accessible to everybody. In the first
+centuries the church itself had insisted upon this publicity, as we have
+seen in the first chapter. Then came a time when almost no one could
+read and the clergy had the Bible practically to themselves. They did
+not take away the Bible from the hands of the laymen; the laymen
+themselves did not care for it because they could not read it; they were
+totally dependent on the clergy. But now civilisation had made a new
+start; the art of reading became again popular. And suddenly a desire
+for reading the Bible spread among the people. The clergy were
+astonished to find the laymen using their right of reading the Bible
+themselves. That was something new, and we see the clergy puzzled, we
+hear them complain. They did not want people to read the Bible, for--as
+they said--this would introduce them to heresy. And so it proved.
+
+The movement starts from the south of France. As early as the eleventh
+century we hear of people here who gather in order to hear the Bible
+read. It is the cardinal Pietro Damiani, a friend of Gregory VII, who
+complains of their presumption. They are plain, simple folk,
+shopkeepers, farmers, women, having no theological education, and yet
+aiming at understanding the Bible. The theologians of this period
+treated the Bible as a book of secrets. In order to understand it aright
+one had to be initiated into the art of interpreting everything by
+allegory according to the authority of the fathers. They used to quote
+Saint Jerome, that the Bible was a mysterious stream; one man can walk
+through in safety while another would be drowned. They therefore
+disapproved earnestly of this reading of the Bible by unprepared
+tradesmen, women, and children. But reading did not stop. The same
+complaint occurs again and again during the next decades. We hear of
+people in the diocese of Metz, simple country folk, reading the Bible.
+The church authorities already began to be alarmed and to take a more
+severe attitude toward the offenders.
+
+The main movement, to be mentioned here, is the one connected with the
+name of Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, who was a zealous reader of
+the Bible himself, and travelling about held frequent meetings with
+people of the same sort. The story of his "conversion," as given by the
+best authorities, runs as follows. It was in 1176, the year of a great
+famine, that one Sunday afternoon he listened to a jongleur reciting the
+famous legend of Saint Alexis the poor. He was struck by this heroism of
+poverty, and the next day he asked a well-known master of theology what
+was the surest way to God. The master, following the best tradition of
+the mediaeval church, told him to follow Christ's advice: "If thou
+wouldst be perfect, go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the
+poor." So Peter separates himself from wife and children and begins to
+live the life of a poor man--a beggar. Others join him; two by two, on
+foot, they go preaching the gospel. They are not anxious for the morrow;
+they do not work; they have faith that whatever they need will be
+supplied to them. Thus they try to fulfil Christ's commandments and to
+imitate his disciples. They refuse to take an oath; they censure lying
+as a deadly sin; they condemn all shedding of blood either in war or in
+the execution of justice. The fraternity called itself the Poor in
+Spirit. At the beginning they thought themselves to be true members of
+the church; only later, when the church denied to them the right of
+preaching, did they form a sect, Peter being ordained bishop and giving
+orders to other members of the community.
+
+Meanwhile a similar fraternity of poor men, or _humiliati_ as they were
+called here, had made their appearance in the north of Italy. It was a
+kind of workmen's union. So far as we know there was no connection at
+the beginning between this movement and the one at Lyons. Both started
+independently, and it was only later that they came into contact,
+without, however, amalgamating. The Italian fraternity spread from Milan
+all through that region and was rapidly extended into Germany, while
+from Lyons the Poor went through France and even through Spain. It was
+an enormous movement among the laity, and it was stirred by the Bible.
+Peter Waldo desired to have the Bible translated into his own
+vernacular; and it was by reading the Bible that these people got their
+enthusiasm and their eagerness even to suffer persecution and death.
+
+Many scholars in former days treated this Waldensian movement as truly
+Protestant; they used to call Peter Waldo and his followers reformers
+before the Reformation. The Protestant church in Italy, calling itself
+Waldensian and growing in our own day more and more vigorously in the
+spirit of Calvinistic Protestantism, seemed to support this view. And
+yet it is wrong. The true Protestantism of the Waldensians dates only
+from the sixteenth century, when they came in contact with Geneva, and
+then went over to Calvinism. Before this they had been something quite
+different, a purely mediaeval form of Christianity. The characteristic
+point is that they take the gospel as a law, exactly as the monks did.
+If the monks kept to poverty, fasting, praying, and so on, in order to
+fulfil the gospel's commands, these people did the same; only they did
+not become monks and enter a monastery; they continued to live in the
+world, carrying on their ordinary business, because, they said, the
+commands of the gospel were not given to the monks only, but to every
+Christian. They abolished the double standard of morality which the
+church had established, the standard of perfection, reached only by the
+clergy and monks, and the standard of secular morality, kept by the
+average Christian; but they abolished it in the opposite way from the
+reformers, by making the ascetic ideal the rule for every Christian. It
+was from the Bible that they deduced this ideal and its binding force
+for every Christian, but it was, of course, the mediaeval understanding
+of the Bible which they followed.
+
+It is important to distinguish clearly this Waldensian movement from the
+so-called Albigensian one. This also has to do with the Bible, and
+sometimes seems closely akin to the former, but is based on an entirely
+different principle. It goes back to a very early time and originates
+outside of Christianity. It was in the third century after Christ in
+Persia, that a certain Mani tried to reform the religion of Zoroaster by
+adding Gnostic speculations. He failed, and was put to death together
+with some of his adherents. But the movement spread and reached as far
+as Gaul and North Africa in the West. Here this Gnostic doctrine of
+Persian origin took the form of a Christian heresy. Manicheism, as it
+was called, accepted the Christian Bible, or at least some parts of it.
+It accepted still more heartily the Christian Apocrypha, which seemed to
+be written for the very purpose of supporting its favourite doctrines.
+Saint Augustine, having been for a long time an adherent of Manicheism,
+afterward spent a great deal of his energy in arguing with this sect and
+refuting their theories and their criticism. The leading idea was a
+strictly dualistic conception of the world such as is characteristic of
+Persian religion: there are two gods, a good one and a bad one; in other
+words, God and the devil are of the same rank. The devil is the author
+of this bodily creation; whatsoever is material comes from him; while
+God, the good god, is purely spiritual and does not create anything but
+spiritual beings. So man, who is of a mixed nature, having a divine soul
+in a material body, is bound to defy the devil by weakening the
+material part of his being. He has to refrain from meat and wine, from
+marriage, and from a number of things which belong to the devil's
+dominion. This highest degree of perfection only few could reach.
+Therefore the Manicheans had several classes of members: the lower
+classes living in the world had to support the higher by their manual
+labour; the higher class of the so-called "perfect" lived entirely for
+prayer and spiritual exercises. It was a well-organised body, extending
+over all the countries. They had their own Pope, residing usually in the
+East. They were persecuted in Persia, persecuted in the Roman empire,
+persecuted later both by the church and by the secular powers; but in
+spite of all difficulties they kept on, living in secrecy and trying to
+conform as much as possible in outward appearance to the requirements
+for church members. They went to the Catholic church, even attended mass
+and took the holy communion--one charge brought against them was that
+instead of eating the consecrated bread they concealed it in their mouth
+and spit it out afterward--but they had their own clandestine
+congregations, often by night, often outside of the town. They appear
+here and there under different names. They call themselves Cathari, or
+the pure ones, from which is derived "Ketzer," the German word for
+heretics. In the East they often are called Bogomils or Paulicians; in
+the West the usual name given to them was Albigensians, from a town,
+Albi, in the south of France, where they had their headquarters.
+
+The attitude of these Albigensians toward the Bible was a somewhat
+divided one. They accepted the New Testament and interpreted it
+according to their dualistic theory as a law of asceticism, herein
+corresponding to the church's interpretation. They praised exceedingly
+the fourth Gospel, and used its opening verses at their solemn
+initiation, the so-called _consolamentum_, by which an adherent got the
+degree of "perfect" and became a member of the highest class. But they
+rejected the Old Testament, either the whole of it or the greater part,
+some admitting that the Psalter, Job, the books of Solomon, and the
+books of the prophets were inspired by the good god or (as they used to
+say) were written in heaven. The rest, they said, came from the devil,
+and they criticised strongly the historical parts of the Old Testament,
+in particular the account of the creation given in Genesis. They took
+this and all the other stories in a strictly literal sense, not allowing
+for any allegorical interpretation. It was in the discussions against
+the Manicheans that Saint Augustine, and through him the Western church,
+learned to value the allegorical method of interpretation. It was the
+easiest way of evading all the difficulties which were raised by the
+criticism of the Manicheans.
+
+This Manichean or, to use the mediaeval expression, Albigensian heresy
+could hardly be defined as a movement incited by the Bible. It was
+wholly different from the Waldensian movement and its allies. The
+Waldensians were at the beginning loyal members of the Catholic church,
+and were driven into opposition only by the resistance of the clergy,
+not being allowed to read and to use their Bible and being opposed and
+disturbed in their harmless meetings; but after having been separated
+from the church they kept aloof from it. The Albigensians, on the other
+hand, were at heart opposed to everything in Christianity. They were, in
+fact, adherents of another religion, pretending for the sake of safety
+to be members of the Catholic church. Yet just this attitude of the
+Albigensians was what made it so difficult to distinguish between the
+two movements, and has caused a curious confusion. The Waldensians, with
+their frank and open opposition to certain institutions of the church,
+were taken by many to be the more dangerous, and were therefore attacked
+and persecuted more severely than the Albigensians, who knew how to
+conform themselves to the outward appearance of church life.
+
+What was the attitude of the church toward these non-conformist
+movements? According to the current theory of the time there was no
+salvation outside the church; there was no room for various
+denominations. A man belonged to the church by the very fact that he was
+born in a Catholic community and consequently was baptised. He _had_ to
+attend the church, which procured for him eternal salvation, and if he
+neglected his duties, he was compelled to perform them by the church
+authorities perhaps with the help of the secular power. A man had no
+right to try his own way to salvation; he was forced to use the means
+provided for him by the church. And if he did not submit he was to be
+extinguished in order that his devilish spirit of heresy might not
+infect others; possibly he himself could be saved by being deprived of
+his sinful body and godless life. This theory gave a legal sanction for
+using all kinds of persuasion by force, for applying cruel tortures, and
+for inflicting death by burning, hanging, beheading.
+
+But the church found that the movements could not be mastered in this
+way. In order to extirpate the evil, the underlying cause had to be
+rooted out or else its energy turned in another direction.
+
+The first method was tried for the Bible. It was the Bible which had
+stirred the Waldensian and similar movements; so the Bible was to be
+kept away from the people. When asked by the bishop of Metz what he
+ought to do with regard to the associations of Bible readers in his
+diocese, Pope Innocent III replies (1199) that of course the study of
+the Bible is to be encouraged among the clergy, but that all laymen are
+to be kept from it, the Bible being so profound in its mysteries that
+even scholars sometimes get beyond their depth and are drowned. At the
+end of his letter he refers to the holiness of Mount Sinai as expressed
+in Ex. 19 : 12, 13: "Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the
+mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be
+surely put to death: no hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be
+stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live."
+Likewise, the Pope says, if a layman touches the Bible he is guilty of
+sacrilege and ought to be stoned or shot through. This amounts to a
+general prohibition of Bible reading for the laity. It was especially
+against the translations of the Bible into the vernacular tongues that
+the church's ordinances were directed. In the later centuries of the
+Middle Ages the prohibitions against Bible reading by the laity, against
+translating the Bible, and against selling the Bible became more
+frequent. But it is exactly this frequent repetition which makes it
+evident that the prohibitions were for the most part neglected. The best
+known is a book ordinance, issued by Bishop Berthold of Mainz in 1485-6,
+in which the bishop forbids the printing and selling of Bibles unless
+they are annotated by approved church theologians, the Bibles in the
+vernacular language being forbidden altogether. We know of a Strassburg
+printer who was at work printing a German Bible at the very time this
+ordinance was issued. He did not stop printing, he only took care not to
+mention his name in the book. Evidently he was sure that he could find a
+sale for his book.
+
+There was another way of overcoming these non-conformist tendencies, and
+it proved to be more successful; the church tried to direct them and put
+them to its own service. A good example of this method is given in the
+history of the movement started by Saint Francis of Assisi. At the
+beginning this was exactly like the Waldensian movement that spread
+through the south of France and the north of Italy, and may have
+received some influence from it; for we know that the family of Saint
+Francis had French relations and that the business of his father brought
+him into contact with people from the North. But the conversion of Saint
+Francis was independent, so far as we know. It again was caused by the
+Bible. Once at mass he heard the lesson from the Gospel, and was struck
+by the same words which had struck so many thoughtful Christians before
+him: "If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that which thou hast and
+give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come
+follow me." He at once throws away stick, bag, purse, shoes to become
+the true follower of the poor Jesus and of his poor apostles, to be
+himself the apostle of the gospel of poverty, the lover of his good lady
+Poverty, as he likes to call her. When the first two disciples had
+joined him he takes them at daybreak to a small chapel, takes from the
+altar the book of the Gospels, and (so the legend tells us), opening it
+three times, every time comes upon the words quoted above. Therefore
+they were made the basis of Saint Francis' rule for his community,
+together with the instruction given to Christ's disciples in
+Luke 9 : 1-6, and Matt. 16 : 24-27: "If any man would come after me, let
+him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me; for whosoever
+would save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for
+my sake shall find it; for what shall a man be profited if he shall gain
+the whole world and forfeit his life, or what shall a man give in
+exchange for his life?" It was the desire for martyrdom inspired by this
+passage which caused Saint Francis to go to Palestine and preach the
+gospel to the Moslems. In his retreat at Mount Alverno he assiduously
+read the history of the passion, until he became so deeply impressed by
+it that it had a corporal effect upon him. He became stigmatised, the
+five wounds of Christ appeared on his body. Saint Francis composed an
+interesting paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer, and his famous hymn to the
+sun is nothing else than a beautiful reproduction of the 148th Psalm.
+When dying he asked for John 13 to be read to him. Thus all his life is
+accompanied and profoundly affected by the Bible. His preaching is an
+attempt at bringing the pure gospel of poverty before the people as
+simply and plainly as he found it in the Gospels according to the
+ascetic understanding of that time.
+
+Now this would have turned into a non-conformist movement, like that of
+the Poor of Lyons or the Poor of Milan, had not the bishop from the
+beginning protected Saint Francis from his father's wrath. Then at a
+later period Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia, known from his later life as
+Pope Gregory IX, became a protector of Saint Francis and his fraternity
+and managed to make of it a regular order in the service of the church.
+It was not Saint Francis who founded the order of the Franciscans or
+Friars, but some of his first pupils and friends, and certain high
+dignitaries of the church abused him for their own purposes. They put
+upon Saint Francis and his fraternity the whole machinery of a religious
+body of the church. There was to be a general, and numerous provincials,
+and an annual meeting of delegates; there were monasteries ruled by
+abbots or guardians, and later these monasteries received endowments.
+Besides the monks and the nuns who formed the first and second orders,
+there was a third order of Saint Francis including those laymen who
+wished to belong to the order and enjoy its religious benefits but were
+prevented by their families from entering the monastery. This comes very
+near to the ideal put forth by the Poor of Lyons, but the organisation
+kept the whole body always in touch with the church and its authority.
+The non-conformist tendency of the movement had been taken out and it
+had been turned into an instrument of ecclesiastical policy.
+
+To be sure, the spirit of Saint Francis reacted against this system,
+inspired, as it was, more by ecclesiastical shrewdness than by Christian
+piety. The saint himself at the end of his life fell out with his
+friends and especially with the cardinal protector. He felt himself too
+much the gallant knight of his lady Poverty to make himself a tool of
+ecclesiastical policy. He detected a spirit of worldliness, and in his
+last will he warned his monks not to yield themselves to it.
+Nevertheless, the cardinal when promoted to be Pope ordered Saint
+Francis, two years after his death, to be worshipped as a saint, in a
+bull of canonisation very characteristic for the style of this time,
+filled as it is with Biblical allusions. "From this bull," says one of
+Saint Francis' recent biographers, "you learn much more about the
+history of David and the Philistines than about the life of Saint
+Francis."
+
+But the spirit of Saint Francis reacted even more after his death.
+One part of his followers insisted upon the strict rule of having
+no possessions at all; they treated the other part, which permitted
+possessions in common, as a set of worldly apostates from the master's
+ideals, far from the law of the gospel. And as the church authorities
+decided in favour of the less strict group, the spiritual party, as
+they called themselves, openly rebelled against the church, while the
+emperor, being on bad terms with the Pope, granted them his protection.
+From the book of Revelation they deduced that the official church
+was the great Babylon and the Pope the antichrist. So even this
+movement, started by the Bible, ended partly as a non-conformist
+anti-ecclesiastical undertaking.
+
+But the main part of the Franciscans, or Friars, as they are called
+from the Italian _frari_ (brothers), kept to the straight line of
+ecclesiastical discipline, and, together with the other order founded
+nearly at the same time by Saint Dominic the Spaniard for the special
+purpose of repelling heresy, they became the powerful army of the church
+directed against all non-conformist movements such as the Waldensians
+and Albigensians. Both orders made themselves at home at the
+universities--at this period Bologna and Paris, later Oxford and
+Cambridge--and soon became very influential. They had rich monasteries
+and great libraries, and made Bible study their favourite subject. It is
+a remarkable contrast between Saint Francis, who, having only one book,
+a New Testament, gives this away in order to help a poor widow, and the
+great stores of books in the convents of Saint Francis' fraternity. The
+saint himself did not wish his monks to possess, privately, anything,
+not even a Psalter, and now they owned huge Bibles and commentaries and
+read and studied like any scholar of the secular clergy. Saint Francis
+did not wish scholarship among his brethren; it was to him something
+worldly, opposed to the true principles of poverty. Now members of his
+order sat in the chairs of the universities and were among the leading
+teachers of the church.
+
+It is due to the Friars that Bible study is again favoured at the
+mediaeval universities. But even these Friars were taken away from the
+Bible by the current tendency toward scholasticism. Dogmatics,
+systematics, dialectics were what everybody wanted. The curriculum of a
+student of theology required first a training in Biblical studies, then
+he had to go to attend lectures on the _Sententiae_, as they called the
+text-book for systematics. Likewise the professor was bound first for
+two or three years to teach Biblical matters before he could touch upon
+systematics. In a number of German universities there still remain some
+traces of this mediaeval regulation. But we are told that both professors
+and students hurried on to get rid of their Bible course as quickly as
+possible in order to reach the higher level of dialectics and
+systematics. The Bible among these theologians was a text-book for the
+junior classes, but not held in great esteem as compared with the
+treasured text-book of the senior classes, the _Liber sententiarum._
+
+It is no wonder that a reaction against this system of scholasticism was
+stimulated by the Bible itself. Two streams we may distinguish, both
+starting within the boundaries of the church and of ecclesiastical
+theology, both inclined to overflow these boundaries, and both ending in
+non-conformist movements.
+
+One stream is represented by the mystics. They are pious people, led by
+high-church preachers, Master Eckhard, Tauler, Suso, and others. These
+preachers are given to thorough study of the Bible. But their allegory
+turns out to be far different from that traditional with the fathers.
+They care for God and the soul, and for nothing else in the world. Their
+favourite text-book is Canticles: the Christian soul as the bride of God
+or of Christ. This mysticism sometimes comes into collision with the
+sacramental view of the church. Being in complete spiritual union with
+God, the mystic wished no outward sign; piety was love, not creed. The
+church instinctively felt that where these ideas were prevailing the
+whole ecclesiastical system was in danger, and tried to stop the
+movement. But by this very opposition the movement became more
+anti-ecclesiastical than it had been before. The mystic circles withdrew
+themselves from the superintendence of the church, they read the Bible,
+they read the books of their spiritual fathers, and they became more and
+more sure of their own mystical theory as opposed to the doctrine of the
+church.
+
+The second stream is still more important. Some theologians reading the
+works of Saint Augustine discovered that the present church doctrine was
+not what it pretended to be, the true representation of the doctrine of
+the fathers, that there was a large difference between the real
+tradition of the old church and the scholastic doctrines of their own
+time. And, as they went on, they found that the Bible, viewed according
+to the interpretation of the fathers, did not support the theories of
+the modern scholars. So they departed from scholasticism and built their
+own systems on the basis of the Bible as interpreted by Saint Augustine.
+It was a general movement; men of this kind were found in many places.
+It is difficult to say how far they were dependent one upon another.
+Some were quiet men of letters; some gained high positions, like John
+Gerson, who was elected chancellor of the University of Paris; others
+were aggressive reformers. Mixing in politics, these became leaders of
+an anti-hierarchical and at last anti-ecclesiastical movement. We are
+not concerned here with the political side of the question, which
+sometimes seems to be predominant. Thus in England John Wycliffe stirred
+up a long-lived struggle. Influenced by his writings John Huss in
+Bohemia entered on a campaign for true Christianity which instead led to
+a national Czech movement. In 1409 the German students of the University
+of Prague left the city and moved to Leipzig. After the martyrdom of
+their hero at Constance in 1415 the Hussites became an aggressive
+national and militant party, constantly invading and devastating
+Germany. It needed shrewd politics and the united forces of the empire
+to keep them back from the Silesian and Saxon frontiers.
+
+As so often happens in history, at the end it is hard to recognise the
+causes which have led to the result. In spite of all political
+appearances it is true that it was really the Bible which stirred up
+these two movements, the Wycliffite and the Hussite. The proof is given
+in the fact that both Wycliffe and Huss not only were fond of reading
+the Bible, but both tried also to make their people familiar with the
+Bible by procuring translations into the vernacular. In this way they
+aimed to provide the laity with the evidence of this one true authority
+and so to protect them against the adulteration of Christianity due to
+scholasticism and hierarchy.
+
+The circulation and influence of the English version made by
+Wycliffe--or, as some scholars think, at Wycliffe's instance--is shown
+by the fact that in spite of persecution and destruction one hundred and
+seventy copies are still preserved, one hundred and forty of which
+belong to a second revision, made by a younger friend of Wycliffe's,
+John Purvey (Plate XIV). It was the first English translation of the
+whole Bible, a good specimen of English, but, like most mediaeval
+translations based upon the Latin Vulgate, preserving the faults of that
+version and adding others of its own. There are numbers of Czech Bibles
+in existence, both in manuscript and in print, but not yet thoroughly
+studied. It is remarkable that in this Hussite Bible, as well as in some
+German translations of the same time, readings are found which go back
+to the very earliest period of textual development. They belong to the
+southern branch of French tradition and are supplied probably by Latin,
+French, or Italian copies which came from Lyons or Milan. This is clear
+evidence that it was through the Waldensians that the Bible spread in
+the vernacular of Italy, Bohemia, and Germany, and that the later
+movements, while originating independently, were in close relation with
+the earlier ones. It is the Bible which not only stirred all these
+movements but connected them one with the other.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE XIV--WYCLIFFE'S BIBLE
+
+  (Brit. Mus. Egerton, 617-8)
+
+    A beautiful copy in folio of the first edition; it is interesting to
+    compare Egerton, 1171, a small octavo copy of the second edition,
+    written for private use.
+
+  From "Fac-similes of Biblical Manuscripts." By permission of the
+  Trustees of the British Museum.]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE BIBLE TRAINS PRINTERS AND TRANSLATORS (1450-1611)
+
+
+We have been led in the last chapters far back into the Middle Ages. Now
+we approach the great time of discoveries. It is difficult to say who
+made the most important discovery, Columbus crossing the Atlantic to
+find a new world, in which a new civilisation was to arise, or Gutenberg
+inventing the art of printing and thereby revolutionising the world of
+intellectual life and consequently the history of the Bible.
+
+During the last centuries of the Middle Ages the Bible had been much
+copied. At the University of Paris booksellers, helped by some scholars,
+undertook to issue a special edition for the benefit of the students.
+This Paris edition, easily recognised by its fine type of handwriting
+and its blue and red decoration, became the standard Bible text for men
+of learning. At the same time many a pious member of the Fraternity of
+the Common Life, which was founded by Gerhard de Groot at Zutphen (in
+Holland), copied the Bible in his miserable cell with great skill. The
+monasteries began to have large collections of Bible editions. There
+were large copies consisting of four or eight volumes in folio, for use
+in chapel, and smaller ones, in one volume, for private reading. We know
+of a regulation made for all monasteries of the Order of Saint
+Augustine, that in the catalogues of their libraries all Bibles should
+be put under the letter A. There was no need for such a regulation in
+the pre-Carolingian time, when a monastery would scarcely have one
+complete Bible.
+
+But now let us try to realise what it meant that each copy should be
+made by itself, the writer painting (as we may say) letter by letter,
+and this through hundreds and thousands of pages. The copyists showed
+wonderful skill. Some of these manuscripts look exactly like printed
+books; one letter is just like the other; no slipping of the pen!
+Nevertheless it was inevitable that the copyist should make mistakes
+from time to time. He dropped a letter, a word, even a line;
+unconsciously he changed the order of the words. He brought in something
+which he happened to have in his mind. When he was familiar with his
+Bible, some parallel confused him. It is only natural that in copying a
+book of this size even the best copyist should make some hundreds of
+blunders; the next copyist would introduce other hundreds, sometimes
+even by an unhappy attempt at correcting the blunders of the former. So
+it went on till in the end the text became filled with mistakes. Of
+course, there was a remedy. After having finished the copy the writer
+himself or some one else was expected to compare it carefully with the
+original and correct all the blunders. But from personal experience in
+reading proofs we know how easily a real blunder escapes our attention.
+One ought to go over a proof-sheet three times at least in order to
+avoid all mistakes. So we cannot wonder that the Bibles copied by hand
+contained errors, and considering all the difficulties it is surprising
+that the copies were most of them so nearly correct.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Johann Gutenberg, a native of Mainz, residing some time at
+Strassburg as a silversmith, then again returning to Mainz, who made the
+great discovery that several copies could be printed at once by using
+letters cut out of wood or metal. People had used woodcuts before his
+time. Engraving large blocks of wood with pictures and letters, they
+printed the so-called block-books, as a cheap substitute for illuminated
+manuscripts. Gutenberg's great idea was that instead of using a woodcut
+block for the page one might compose a page by using separate, movable
+letters, putting them together according to the present need, then
+separating them and using them again. We are not interested here in the
+technical part of the work; imperfect as it was, it was surely a great
+advance. Now one got a hundred copies, two hundred, or even more without
+any difference between them. When the proofs had been corrected
+carefully the Bible was sure to have as few mistakes as possible; and if
+the printer still found some errors, he could easily correct them for
+the whole edition by adding a printed list of errata, or necessary
+corrections, at the end of the volume. It was only by printing that
+uniformity of text became possible.
+
+The important fact for our present investigation is that it was the
+Bible which Gutenberg chose to be the first printed book. This fact
+illustrates the estimation in which the Bible was held. It shows at the
+same time the demand for Bible copies; the printer felt sure that it
+would sell and pay. It was an enormous enterprise to put the fresh,
+inexperienced art of printing straightway at a task so big as this. It
+took four years to print the first Bible, from 1453 to 1456. While
+working at it Gutenberg had to try some smaller things which would bring
+him money immediately, school-books, letters of indulgence, and so on,
+but his main care was given to the Bible. It contained six hundred and
+forty-one leaves, with two columns on each page, and forty-two lines in
+each column (Plate XV). The initials were not printed, but were supposed
+to be illuminated by hand; a small letter was printed in the free space
+to indicate what kind of letter the illuminator had to paint. Probably
+not more than one hundred copies were printed, a third part of them on
+parchment. Out of the thirty-one copies which have been preserved, or,
+to speak more accurately, are known as such, ten are luxuriously printed
+on parchment and illuminated, each in a different way, but all very fine
+and costly. It is obvious that Gutenberg put into this printing not only
+a great amount of labour but much money, too; and there was no assurance
+that it would come in again in a short time. Like many ingenious
+discoverers and inventors, he was no business man; he was always in need
+of money. So when his first Bible was not yet finished one of his
+creditors, John Fust, of Mainz, took all his apparatus from him and,
+associating himself with an apprentice of Gutenberg's, Peter Schoeffer by
+name, brought the printing of the first Bible to completion, thus
+depriving the inventor of the financial success as well as of the glory.
+But Gutenberg was not discouraged. He immediately began, with a new set
+of letters, the printing of a second Bible, containing thirty-six lines
+in each column and so amounting to eight hundred and eighty-one leaves
+in size. He printed it in the years 1456 to 1458. Again his rivals, Fust
+and Schoeffer, published, in 1462, a third Bible, called sometimes the
+Bible of Mainz. It has forty-eight lines in each column.
+
+Thus the printing of the Bible was inaugurated. The new art quickly
+spread all over Germany, and printing-presses were established at
+Strassburg, Bamberg, Nuremberg, Basel, Cologne, Luebeck, and many other
+places. The art entered France and England with less success, the
+government in both countries being partly opposed to it and partly
+trying to make it a royal privilege. Good printers worked at Paris and
+Lyons. The most splendid presses were at Venice, where the Doge
+championed the new art even against attacks from Rome. Before the year
+1500 ninety-two editions of the Latin Bible were issued by these various
+presses, according to Mr. Copinger, who possessed the largest collection
+of printed Bibles. (He registers four hundred and thirty-eight editions
+of the Latin Bible during the sixteenth century.) In addition to these
+we have a great number of printed Bibles in the vernacular of Germany,
+France, Italy, Bohemia, and so on. There was a sudden outpouring of
+Bibles. But we must not overestimate the circulation. These editions
+contained scarcely more than two hundred copies each; they were most of
+them in large folio, very unwieldy, and the price was enormous, though,
+of course, not so high as it is now, when for one copy of Gutenberg's
+first Bible $20,000 is paid. The Bible was not available for the average
+man. We know of scholars copying for themselves the Bible or the New
+Testament from a printed Bible. The clergy were rather opposed to this
+printing. They did not in the least encourage the printers; on the
+contrary, they tried to cause as many difficulties as possible.
+Therefore the circulation was a limited one. Copies were bought by
+churches for their services, by princes, and by very rich merchants, as
+to-day a splendid work is bought more as a luxury than as something for
+daily use. One cannot say that at this period the Bible, even by
+printing, acquired a circulation among the people.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE XV--GUTENBERG'S FIRST BIBLE
+
+  (42 lines, Mainz, 1453-1456)
+
+    Copy at Leipzig, on parchment, beautifully illuminated. The capitals
+    are painted by hand, but indicated by small printed letters.
+
+  From "Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst." Published by
+  Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld, Germany.]
+
+This was accomplished only through the Reformation. It was Luther's
+German translation which made the printed Bible popular and caused a
+number of similar translations. In order to make the Bible what it was
+destined to be, the book of the people, the printer and the translator
+had to work together.
+
+In former times many Protestants held the view that Luther rediscovered
+the Bible, which had been almost entirely forgotten. They thought that
+there had been a meagre transmission of the Bible and no translation
+into the vernacular at all. This view, of course, is untenable. We have
+seen what a circulation the Bible had in the last century before the
+Reformation, and that it had been translated into almost every
+vernacular. Nevertheless, Luther's version is a landmark in the history
+of translation; it marks a new period and represents the beginning of a
+new sort of translation.
+
+In order to realise this, let us look back over the former history of
+translations. In the first period we found the Bible translated from the
+Greek into Latin, Syriac, Coptic; in the next period Gothic, Armenian,
+Georgian, Libyan, and Ethiopic were added, not to mention the several
+revisions of the former translations. About 600 A. D. the Bible was
+known in eight languages; in each of them there had been several
+attempts at translating. There were different dialects, too; in Coptic
+no less than five. The spread of Christianity in the next period is
+shown by the fact that the Bible is translated--and this again several
+times--into Arabic and Slavonic from the Greek, and into German,
+Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and French from the Latin--rather, I should say,
+parts of the Bible, for it was only parts which people at this period
+tried to translate. We hear of a Gospel, of a Psalter, of one or another
+book translated into the vernacular. Only when stimulated by the popular
+movements of the next period, as we have seen in the fifth chapter, was
+the work of translating into the vernacular prosecuted on a larger
+scale; from the thirteenth century on we may speak of Bibles in the
+vernacular. Beginning in the southeast of France, the tendency spread
+over Italy and Germany. We can still trace the influence of the French
+Waldensian Bible in the earliest Italian translations and also in some
+of the German ones. Another circle is defined by the northern French
+translation, which influenced the Flemish and Dutch and possibly even
+the Scandinavian. All these are based not so much upon the Bible itself
+as on a rearrangement known as the Historical Bible, telling the stories
+and omitting the doctrinal portions. A new start was made in England by
+Wycliffe, and this caused the Bohemian translation into Czech, which was
+again influenced by the Waldensian Bible. It is like a net thrown all
+over Europe. We may count more than a dozen languages, many of them
+represented by different dialects and by several separate renditions,
+which were added to the eight languages of the former periods. The
+culmination came in the fifteenth century, when everywhere fresh
+translations were attempted. In Germany more than forty different types
+of translation can be counted, and one of them, containing the whole
+Bible, was printed fourteen times before the period of the Reformation
+(Plate XVI). There was only one translation, however, with a value of
+its own, and that was the Spanish, for this was made from the Hebrew Old
+Testament by the help of some Spanish Jews. Both the king of Spain and
+the high clergy showed at that time a remarkable breadth of view in
+trying to get a trustworthy translation. All other versions in the West
+were based upon the Latin Vulgate as the recognised Bible of the church,
+and they were made with more devotion than knowledge. The translators
+usually did not know Latin well nor were they masters of their own
+language. They translated word for word, and the result was sometimes
+strange. It is of no great importance that, not recognising in "Tertius"
+and "Quartus" proper names, one of these translators said "the third"
+and "the fourth." It was worse when another explained "encaenia" in
+John 10 : 22, the feast of dedication, as meaning "wedding," or declared
+the words in Matt. 27 : 46, "Eli, Eli," to be Greek. Sometimes the
+translation resulted in pure nonsense, and even where it made sense, it
+was difficult and often far from the true meaning. Now humanism
+insisted upon going back to the original languages. Erasmus, in 1516,
+published the first edition of the New Testament in Greek. We see how
+Luther, at this time professor at the University of Wittenberg,
+lecturing upon Romans when this edition came into his hands, was
+impressed by this new source of information. He eagerly set himself to
+learn Greek with the help of his friend Melanchthon, and so he was
+prepared for the great task of translating the New Testament directly
+out of the Greek into German. It was during his exile in the Wartburg
+that he found the necessary time to make this translation. It appeared
+in print in September, 1522, and it is astonishing in how short a time
+this New Testament circulated all through Germany. It was reprinted
+everywhere, and often very carelessly, so that Luther had to complain
+against the printers as falsifying his translation. He himself did not
+take any payment for his work; he wanted the publishers to sell it as
+cheaply as possible. And it was a masterpiece, not only for the beauty
+of the language, which was the best and most popular German that had
+ever been written but also in the way Luther translated, giving not the
+single words but the meaning of the sentences, not transferring from one
+vocabulary to the other but transmuting (if one may say so) the whole
+expression of thought from Greek into German. The Bible became a German
+book; one hardly feels that he is reading a translation. Luther had more
+trouble with the Old Testament. In order to master the Hebrew he had to
+rely on friends; he even asked some Jewish rabbis to join their
+meetings. He tells us that they often had to look for a single word
+three or four weeks; that in particular Job was so difficult that they
+scarcely finished three lines in four days. The Pentateuch was ready in
+the year 1523; then year after year the work went on. The prophets were
+not finished until 1532, and in 1534 the first complete Bible was
+issued. The work was highly praised by Luther's friends and unduly
+criticised by his antagonists. He himself replied sharply to such
+criticism, and he had a right to do so because the attempts made by Eck
+and Emser, the champions of Roman Catholicism, to translate the Bible
+themselves were feeble and betrayed much dependence on Luther's
+translation, which they had so severely criticised. Luther himself never
+felt satisfied with his own work and always tried to improve it. At two
+different periods he held meetings with his friends for the purpose of
+revising the Bible. The records of these meetings of the committee for
+the revision of the Bible (if one may call it so) have come down to us,
+and it is highly interesting to see how carefully they discussed every
+word and how it is always Luther himself who at last finds the most apt
+expression.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE XVI--FIRST GERMAN BIBLE
+
+    Printed at Strassburg by G. Mentell in 1466: the progress in
+    printing made in these ten years is remarkable.
+
+  Entnommen aus W. Walthers "Deutsche Bibeluebersetzung des
+  Mittelalters." Verlag von Hellmuth Wollermann in Braunschweig.]
+
+It is a great privilege of the German nation that it received this
+excellent Bible at the very beginning of the new era. The German
+language is moulded by this Bible. In Luther's time the dialects still
+prevailed. Luther's Bible had to be translated into the dialect of lower
+Germany. The south of Germany and Switzerland had quite another dialect.
+The Zuerich reformers, in 1529, published a Bible in this dialect,
+translating from Luther's Bible as far as it existed at this time and
+providing for the rest a translation of their own. It is unquestionably
+due to Luther's Bible that the Germans have now one language for all
+literary purposes. The German classic writers Herder, Wieland,
+Klopstock, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe were all trained from their
+childhood by the language of this Bible. Even now there is a remarkable
+difference in style between authors of Protestant and of Roman Catholic
+origin in Germany. In the easy and fluent language of the former we see
+the influence of Luther and Goethe, whereas the latter often show a
+certain stiffness and a greater number of provincialisms. The attempts
+to translate the Bible independently of Luther have never succeeded in
+gaining any large circulation, although there have been many such, not
+only from the Roman Catholic side but also from Protestants. A famous
+one is the so-called Berleburg Bible, by certain mystics, published in
+1726-42 in eight volumes. In the nineteenth century scholars undertook
+to give more scientific and more exact translations, but, valuable as
+these may be for scholarly purposes, the German people will never
+abandon its classic Bible. It is difficult even to introduce a revision.
+There was a revision some twenty years ago, but in this Luther's text
+was retouched and altered only at a very few points, most of the
+corrections introduced by the revision committee being rather
+restitutions of Luther's original renderings, which had been badly
+"improved" by former printers. It is remarkable that even the printed
+Bible never stands still, but is always changing, the printers acting as
+the copyists did in former times. The copies of the revised text printed
+at Stuttgart differ slightly from the copies printed at Halle and
+Berlin, to mention three of the modern centres of German Bible printing.
+
+Luther's translation was the signal for a general movement in this
+direction. It is not so much translating the Bible into new
+languages--only a few which had no Bible before were added to the list
+given above--as rather the making of new translations in all languages
+of the Christian world as far as this was influenced by the Reformation.
+Of course some of these translations were inspired by humanism more than
+by the spirit of the Reformation. The humanists abhorred the vulgarity
+of the monkish Latin, and they extended their aversion to the official
+Bible of the church, the Vulgate of Saint Jerome; therefore they tried
+to translate the Bible into what they thought to be Ciceronian Latin,
+and some of them translated this again into French or German. But most
+of the translators were simply following Luther's model; nay, they used
+Luther's translation even more than the original. King Christian III of
+Denmark gave orders that the translators should follow Luther's version
+as closely as possible. In this way the Dutch, the Danish, the Swedish,
+the Finnish, the Lettish, and the Lithuanian Bibles were more or less
+influenced by or even based upon Luther's.
+
+It is different with the English and the French Bible. Wycliffe's
+translation never had been printed. William Tindale, a pupil of Erasmus,
+translated the New Testament and parts of the Old during his exile in
+Germany and Holland, whither he had gone under Henry VIII because, as he
+says, there was no place to translate the New Testament in all England.
+Printed copies of them were brought to England, but most of them were
+confiscated and destroyed. Once again the Bible was burned, but this
+time by the Christian king in agreement with the bishops of the English
+church; and with the Bible suffered many of its zealous readers. Tindale
+himself died a martyr for his faith and his Bible in October, 1536, at
+the hands of the imperial authorities in Flanders. But the work of Bible
+translation went on, nevertheless, and Henry VIII was still on the
+throne when the Bible gained the victory. Miles Coverdale, who had
+undertaken another translation, issued the year before Tindale's death,
+failed to get royal sanction for its publication, but the book was not
+suppressed. John Rogers, a friend of Tindale's, the year after his
+death, under the assumed name of Thomas Matthew, published a Bible,
+chiefly made up from Tindale's and Coverdale's work. Through Crumwell's
+mediation Cranmer secured the king's permission to sell this Bible in
+the realm. But the convocation was not satisfied with it. It asked for
+another translation, and therefore the so-called Great Bible was
+published in 1539, Coverdale revising his former work under the
+direction of Crumwell, Cranmer, and others. This Great Bible was ordered
+by a royal warrant to be exhibited in all parish churches; copies were
+fastened to the pulpits by means of chains, and the public was allowed
+to read them "with discretion, honest intent, charity, reverence, quiet
+behavior," as is said in the admonition published by Bishop Bonner. This
+happened in the last years of Henry VIII. Under Queen Mary--bloody Mary,
+as she was called--the printing of Bibles was stopped, but the exiles
+who went to Geneva undertook a new revision, which was much more radical
+and had the privilege of bearing an introductory letter by Calvin
+himself. At the very moment of Queen Elizabeth's coronation, among other
+prisoners (according to the expression of one of her courtiers) the four
+evangelists and Saint Paul were released, having been long shut up in an
+unknown tongue, as it were in prison. The Great Bible was revised by
+some of the bishops under direction of Archbishop Parker, who did not
+shrink from using improvements from the Geneva Bible. This Bishops'
+Bible, published in 1568, was the official one, but the Geneva Bible was
+far more popular, while the Roman Catholics made a translation of their
+own, printed in France at Rheims and Douai. The rivalry between the
+Bishops' Bible and the Geneva Bible was confusing. Therefore, in order
+to overcome it, King James, in 1604, appointed a committee for the
+revision of the Bible, consisting of about fifty members, and divided
+into six groups, two of which met at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge
+respectively. They did excellent work, the result of which was published
+in 1611 and is known as the Authorised Version. It is in this version
+that the English translation attained its highest excellence. It is this
+form which gained the largest circulation and the greatest popularity
+among all English-speaking peoples. It still survives the recent attempt
+at revision, which was made by an English and an American committee,
+both working on the same principles and in constant communication with
+one another. It is a well-known fact that the final corrections were
+cabled from England to America in order to procure a simultaneous
+publication on both sides of the Atlantic. Here again, as in the German
+revision, the two issues are not identical. It marks, however, a clear
+distinction between the German and the English Bible that the former
+reached its final form at its very beginning, whereas the latter did not
+achieve this result until a hundred years later. The Bible of Luther was
+creative of the German language, as we have seen, while the English
+Bible is rather a product of the period of highest literary culture in
+England. Luther produced Goethe. Shakespeare (d. April 23, 1616) is
+practically contemporaneous with the Authorised Version.
+
+The development of the French Bible is still more slow and varied. There
+was a pre-Reformation translation, printed several times, at Lyons and
+at Paris; but it was of a purely mediaeval character. Then a humanist,
+Jacques Lefevres d'Etaples (Faber Stapulensis, d. 1536), undertook a new
+French translation from the Vulgate. The first French Bible translated
+from the original Hebrew and Greek was published in 1535 by Peter Robert
+Olivetan, a cousin of Calvin. The author himself, and Calvin, and others
+corrected and improved it from time to time, and nearly every twenty or
+thirty years a new editor would try to revise it. In this series of
+revisions one of the most successful was that of Frederic Ostervald of
+Neuchatel, in 1744. But the process is still going on, French and Swiss
+theologians vying one with another in fair competition. Moreover, the
+Protestant translation found many rivals in the work of Roman Catholics,
+especially in the great period of French literature in the reign of
+Louis XIV. Some of these translators, for example Bossuet, aimed at
+making the style of their translation as elegant as possible, while
+others, under the influence of Port Royal, paraphrased the text with a
+view rather to clearness. None of these versions had real success; none
+has become final. France still suffers from the lack of a classic form
+for its Bible.
+
+The attitude of a nation toward its Bible is largely determined by the
+development of the translation. It is obvious that the Germans hold to
+Luther's Bible even more insistently than the English do to their
+Authorised Version, and that in France there is an open field for every
+fresh attempt at revising and translating. The nation has not become
+united with its Bible, and, as regards language, the famous
+"Dictionnaire de l'Academie," aiming at a standard of literary
+uniformity, is but a poor and artificial substitute for the influence
+exercised in a living and natural way by the Bible.
+
+It is not our task here to trace the history of translations in Italy,
+Spain, Portugal, Hungary, and elsewhere. It is to a large extent a
+history of enthusiasm, devotion, and martyrdom, and at the same time of
+failure and oppression. Wherever the so-called Counter-Reformation,
+started by the Jesuits, gained hold of the people, the vernacular was
+suppressed and the Bible kept from the laity. So eager were the Jesuits
+to destroy the authority of the Bible--the paper pope of the
+Protestants, as they contemptuously called it--that they even did not
+refrain from criticising its genuineness and historical value.
+
+To sum up: it was the Bible which trained printers and translators and
+thereby made a noble contribution to modern civilisation and literature;
+on the other hand, it was printing and translating which made it
+possible for the Bible to become the popular book that ruled daily
+life.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE BIBLE RULES DAILY LIFE (1550-1850)
+
+
+The Reformation gave the Bible a new position--not that there had been
+no Bible before, nor that the Bible had had no influence. We have seen
+that there were numbers of Bibles, in Latin as well as in the
+vernacular, and that the Bible had been one of the foundations of
+mediaeval civilisation, yet it was only by Luther's translation and the
+other versions made on his model that the Bible became a really popular
+book, and it was only by the Reformation that the Bible was established
+as the authority for daily life in a modern, that is, non-ascetic,
+sense.
+
+The two points insisted on by all the reformers were, first, that the
+Bible is perspicuous, that is, that every reader can by himself find out
+in his Bible what is essential for salvation; and, secondly, that the
+Bible is sufficient. The Christian does not need anything else; the
+Bible tells him everything which he requires--of course in its own
+domain, religion, or, to use the language of that time, the "doctrine of
+salvation." By the Reformation the Bible got rid of all its rivals,
+such as tradition, Apocrypha, legend, canon law, and so on. It is
+wonderful to see--and I doubt if modern Christianity has realised the
+fact in all its importance--how by the preaching of the reformers all
+these things, which hitherto had been thought of as integral parts of
+Christianity, simply fell away. No cult of the saints, no adoration of
+their images, no legends, no fancy, no merriment connected with
+religion, but the pure Bible and the stern doctrine of it and the
+austere attitude of Puritanism corresponding to it were now uppermost.
+Nay, the letter of the Bible was binding in a stricter sense than it had
+ever been before. Catholicism made it possible to mitigate the
+strictness by allegorical interpretation; Protestantism insisted upon
+taking the Bible in its literal sense. There was now no way of escape; a
+man had to take whatever the Bible said or refuse the Bible altogether.
+In principle the mystery had gone; the Bible was plain and made itself
+understood.
+
+It was the literal sense, as established by lexicon and grammar, which
+was to be followed. This caused the reformers to encourage and
+facilitate the study of the original languages of the Bible. When they
+tried to improve the grammar-schools and to found as many new ones as
+possible, it was not so much the humanistic delight in the classical
+languages as the desire to secure a sure knowledge of Greek and Hebrew
+which might enable a boy to read and to interpret the Bible. It is
+evident from many utterances both of Luther and Calvin that their aim in
+all their school work was to provide good preachers of the true gospel,
+or good teachers of the genuine doctrine of the Bible.
+
+To be sure, there are differences of character, both personal and
+national, between the two great reformers, which account for a somewhat
+different development of their churches. In Luther's piety the joyful
+experience of salvation brings in a happy note; the children of God
+praise his love and grace. In Calvin's devotion the feeling prevails
+that God's majesty is above all creatures and that his holy will is the
+supreme rule for our life. Religion with Luther is bright and cheerful,
+whereas with Calvin it has a darker tinge. But both are building on the
+same foundation and with the same end in view: from salvation to
+salvation, from grace to grace. The difference is but one of attitude
+toward the present life.
+
+The difference finds its best expression in a varying use of the phrase
+Word of God. Both, of course, believed in an historical revelation of
+God to mankind, and they were convinced that this revelation was to be
+found in the holy Scriptures. God had spoken through his prophets; he
+had given his promises to his people; he had sent his Son and had
+fulfilled his promises through him. All this was to be found in the
+Bible and only in the Bible. The reformers refused the authority of
+tradition, just as they declined to acknowledge the present individual
+inspiration of enthusiasts, or "Schwarmgeister," as Luther
+contemptuously called them. It was in the Bible that Christianity had to
+look for all necessary information about God and salvation. And yet
+Luther, when using the expression Word of God, scarcely thinks of the
+written book. It is the living word as represented by the preaching of
+the prophets and the apostles, and perpetuated by the preaching of the
+ministers of the church. It is to him not a formal authority but an
+energising inspiration. Not everything in the Bible is authoritative,
+merely by the fact that it stands in the Bible; only what witnesses to
+Christ is authoritative and is to be taken as the Word of God. On the
+other hand, Zwingli and Calvin frequently use the term Word of God when
+speaking of the holy Scriptures themselves. It is characteristic that
+the reformed churches of Switzerland felt it their duty to fix the exact
+number of writings included in this Word of God, just as the Roman
+Catholic church did at the Council of Trent, while no Lutheran creed
+ever defines the exact content of the Bible. To the former it was a book
+of law, to the latter a book of inspiration.
+
+Luther, owing to his familiarity with Saint Paul, understood that
+Christianity had nothing to do with the Law; the whole notion of the Law
+had to be dropped out from the field of religion. Law there must be in
+the government of the state--it would not be necessary even there, if
+all people were true Christians--but for the wicked there must be a law
+and there must be punishment. The Christian's life, however, is not a
+slave's obedience to injunctions but a child's glad doing of his
+father's will; he knows what his father wants him to do and he does it
+joyfully. Luther is especially interested in proving that Jesus'
+teaching, in particular the Sermon on the Mount, does not exhibit an
+ascetic law, but gives principles for the moral life of every Christian.
+One need not enter a monastery in order to fulfil Christ's commandments.
+It is in the tasks of the daily life that a Christian has to prove
+himself a true disciple of Jesus. The Bible is to rule the daily life of
+the Christian, but not in the sense of a law. When, in 1523, a preacher
+at Weimar aimed to introduce the Mosaic law instead of the common law,
+Luther treated him as a "Schwarmgeist," and, in fact, it was that
+proposal which lay at the basis of all the "Schwarmgeisterei." Such
+experiments, aiming to constitute a kingdom of the Saints on earth, as
+the Anabaptists made at Muenster and elsewhere, always failed, and made
+Luther and his friends suspicious of any such attempt.
+
+It is different with Calvin. He is interested in realising the kingdom
+of God in the Christian congregation, or, to put it more accurately, in
+the commonwealth of Geneva, which is to him identical with the Christian
+congregation of that place. So it is the commonwealth which is to be
+ruled by the Bible, and the Bible in this role acts as a law to which
+the whole community as well as the individual has to submit. And again
+it is characteristic that Calvin takes the Bible as a unit. It is the
+Old Testament law as well as the gospel which is to be regarded as the
+indispensable rule both of public and private life. With the Calvinists
+the ten commandments become an integral part of the regular Sunday
+service.
+
+Of course there are many gradations between these two positions.
+Zwingli, the Zuerich reformer, was of a different type from Calvin, while
+he was even more opposed to Luther than was the Genevan. Luther's rule
+was to abolish whatsoever was contrary to the Bible. Zwingli would
+permit only what was based upon or commanded by the Bible; he objected
+to the use of an organ, to the keeping of festival days except Sunday,
+and so on. Luther even tolerated pictures in the church. He was sure
+that no one would adore them if pervaded by the true spirit of the
+gospel, and he was convinced that this spirit could be successfully
+inculcated by means of preaching. Zwingli and Calvin both did away with
+all pictures in the churches. They had the walls whitewashed and the ten
+commandments and other passages from the Bible painted on them. Nothing
+is so characteristic of this difference between the Lutheran and the
+Calvinistic feeling as the history of an epitaph in an East Prussian
+church, the monument of the noble family of the earls of Dohna. At the
+time of the Reformation they joined the Grand Master, later Duke,
+Albrecht of Brandenburg in taking Luther's part. The epitaph, which was
+erected in the church of Mohrungen on the death of Earl Peter in 1553,
+was decorated with a picture showing the holy Trinity adored by the
+family of the donor. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the
+family went over to Calvinism, and the painting was altered by covering
+the image of the holy Trinity with black varnish and putting over it
+some Bible verses in gold letters.
+
+The different attitude toward the Bible finds its expression also in the
+fact that the Lutherans used hymns, whereas the Calvinists adhered to
+the Biblical Psalter. Of course the vigorous songs composed by Luther
+are most of them based upon Psalms and other Biblical passages, and so
+were the greater number of hymns in the Lutheran church. On the other
+hand, the Calvinists did not agree with the English church in taking
+over the alternative recitation of the Psalter from the mediaeval
+exercises of the monasteries and large cathedral choirs. They used the
+Psalter in a rhythmical paraphrase adapted to modern singing, but
+keeping so near to the wording of the Psalms that they even called it
+the Psalm-book. The difference was, in fact, slight, but they felt it to
+be essential. The Lutherans followed the usage of the church, the
+Calvinists the very word of the Bible. It is remarkable, however, that
+hymns gradually gained more importance among the Calvinists, especially
+since the time of the eighteenth-century revivals, and that nowadays the
+hymn-book, enriched by the contributions of recent time from poets of
+all denominations, is in favour with all Protestants and in some circles
+is even in danger of becoming a substitute for the Bible.
+
+In spite of all these differences, these two great forms of
+Protestantism manifest almost the same attitude toward the Bible, and we
+see them changing their attitude almost at the same time and in the
+same direction. The theologians of the orthodox period exaggerated the
+authority of the Bible to such an extent that critics like Lessing could
+speak of Bibliolatry or Bible-worship. They extended the notion of
+inspiration even to the smallest details in the printed text which lay
+before them, with no regard for the fact that those details were late
+additions, sometimes even misprints, and that the various editions did
+not agree in these details. True scholastics as they were, they had no
+sense for facts but an unlimited desire for theory; the facts had to
+submit to the theory, and whoever would appeal to the facts against the
+theory was denounced as a heretic and driven out as a disreputable
+person. This doctrinal attitude changed when, at the end of the
+seventeenth century, Pietism in Germany and Methodism in England once
+again turned religion from ecclesiastical doctrine to personal devotion.
+The estimation of the Bible is not diminished--quite the contrary; yet
+it finds its expression not in stiff formulas of dogmatics but in
+beautiful hymns. Under the direction of P. J. Spener (d. 1705) people
+once more gather in private circles to read and to interpret the Bible;
+once more the students are drawn away from dead scholasticism to the
+living study of the Bible. To the _theologia dogmatica_ is opposed a
+_theologia biblica_. People begin to realise again what is the true use
+of the Bible, not as a text-book for dogmatic competitions and
+controversies, but as the divine word of comfort and exhortation, a
+guide to salvation, and an expression of salvation already gained. There
+is a beautiful tract written by A. H. Francke of Halle (d. 1727) and
+very often printed as a preface to the Bible in German, "A brief
+direction how to read the Bible for edification." It sounds thoroughly
+modern, as it deals not with questions of theology but entirely with
+piety. This attitude was again changed by the so-called rationalism.
+That movement, too, entered the Protestantism of Germany as well as of
+England and America in various forms and under various names (deism,
+unitarianism), but with the same tendency. It may be that it had an
+easier start and a wider spread in the Lutheran church of Germany. We
+shall speak of its influence in the next chapter. The Bible was
+submitted to reason or explained according to reason. The Bible was to
+be followed for the sake of the precepts of reason contained in it or
+else not at all. It was, however, the common conviction that the Bible
+gave the most reasonable injunctions, and whereas orthodoxy had been
+mostly intellectual and Pietism emotional, rationalism by its moral
+strictness helped the Bible to retain its influence on daily life.
+
+This influence was due to the fact that since Luther's time the Bible
+was in every house; it was the centre of the regular morning and evening
+prayers, the father reading and explaining to his family some chapters
+of the Bible. What a knowledge of the Bible had been gained by the laity
+soon after the Reformation is shown by the prince elector of Saxony
+Johann Friedrich, who at the important meetings held at Augsburg in 1530
+was able to quote from memory all necessary passages of the Bible.
+
+In Lutheran countries the influence of the Bible found expression in
+arts and crafts. Not only were the walls of the churches decorated with
+pictures taken from the Bible but also the walls of private houses. The
+furniture of a farmhouse was painted with Biblical stories, very awkward
+paintings, indeed, but showing the spirit of simple and plain devotion.
+It is otherwise when a rich lady's dressing-table in baroque or rococo
+is decorated with such scenes. We feel that they are out of place there
+and that scenes taken from ancient mythology would suit such a purpose
+much better. We should consider it a little profane that, at a wedding
+dinner in the sixteenth century, between the several courses elaborate
+dishes were passed, representing Biblical scenes. We cannot help
+remembering the remark of that preacher of the old church who
+exclaimed: "Oh, that they had these stories painted in their hearts!"
+
+Much more important is the art of music. Luther was fond of it; he would
+never have given up a choir and an organ. He made it possible for the
+Lutheran church to produce the greatest masterpieces that music has ever
+achieved--Bach's oratorios. While the Roman church directed the work of
+its great musicians toward the glorification of the mass, and the
+Calvinistic church became rigorously opposed to the very art of music,
+the Lutheran composers were inspired by the Bible itself. The Biblical
+sonatas of Johann Kuhnau (d. 1722) seem to us mere trifling. The real
+work was done by Heinrich Schuetz (d. 1672) and Johann Sebastian Bach,
+the cantor of Saint Thomas in Leipzig (d. 1750), who succeeded in giving
+to the Bible a new voice, a voice which is still sounding and entering
+circles where the printed Bible would scarcely be read. The combination
+in Bach's oratorios is very striking--the majestic church hymns sung by
+the choir, the simple recitative of Scripture, and, last but not least,
+the arias giving the response of the pious individual to the words of
+God in the Bible. This is the most characteristic part of it. Protestant
+piety cannot be without the personal expression of individual feeling;
+it is thoroughly subjective in the highest sense. As Luther in his
+catechism explains the Apostles' Creed thus, "I believe that God has
+created me...; I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord, who has saved
+me...; I believe that it is impossible for me to come to Jesus Christ
+without the help of the Holy Ghost...," so Protestant piety gives to
+everything this subjective note. There is a Greek manuscript of the
+Gospels from the fourteenth century, written in several colours to
+distinguish the words of Jesus, of his apostles, of his enemies, and of
+the evangelist. The narrative of the evangelist is given in green ink,
+the words of the Pharisees and other adversaries of Jesus in black, the
+words of the disciples in blue, and the sayings of Jesus himself are in
+red. It is a curious piece of work, showing the tendency of the Greek
+church to dramatise the sacred history of the Gospel. With this Greek
+copy we may compare a Protestant family Bible mentioned by a modern
+German preacher. It is a plain old printed Bible, but the pious
+great-grandfather has marked it all through with various colours, which
+he explains in a note: "What touched the sin of my heart:--Black. What
+inspired me to good:--Blue. What comforted me in sorrow:--Red. What
+promised me the grace of God in eternity:--Gold." The difference
+between objective facts and subjective relation to them, between
+apprehension and appreciation, is evident. This is the new spirit which
+pervades the Protestant reader of the Bible, and therefore the Bible is
+much more to him than it had been to Christianity in former times.
+
+Where the Bible was read in such a spirit it was bound to gain an
+influence upon the daily life. We must admit this even if we have no
+direct evidence. The inward acting of the spirit in the individual is
+inaccessible to scientific observation and statistics.
+
+We are in a much better position regarding the Calvinistic circles, for
+here the influence of the Bible was a public one. The Bible here was
+recognised as the only rule to be followed in public life as well as in
+private. The most characteristic feature is the attitude toward the
+Sabbath. Luther had explained the third commandment (according to his
+numeration, the fourth according to the Calvinists) as meaning "den
+Feiertag heiligen," to use the day, granted by God as a holiday, for
+going to church and listening to the preaching of the gospel; so the
+Lutherans, who never called it Sabbath, did not insist upon avoiding all
+work, but upon attending the holy service; besides, human feeling led
+them to relieve their servants and employees so far as possible from
+their labour. The Calvinists kept the Sabbath, as they said, exactly
+according to the Old Testament commandment: "Thou shalt not do any
+work." It reminds us sometimes of the minuteness of rabbinical Sabbath
+controversies when we see how carefully the Sabbath is kept as a day for
+doing no work whatever; even the children are forbidden to play with
+their toys. It is a concession made to the gospel if works of piety, of
+charity, or of necessity are permitted.
+
+Another prominent feature is the use of Biblical names. Among Lutherans
+and members of the English church the use of Christian names, mostly
+derived from famous saints or kings, as Edward, George, Richard, Robert,
+Thomas, William, continued; while the Calvinists preferred Biblical
+names such as Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Jeremiah,
+Nathaniel. They often chose the names of obscure persons from the Bible,
+such as Abia, Abiel, Ammi, Eliphalet, Jared, Jedidiah, Jerathmeel,
+Reuben, Uriah. It was not so much the admiration for this or that hero
+in the Bible as the simple demand for something Biblical which gave to
+the children such unfamiliar names. Parents did not care for the real
+character of the man to whom the name first belonged provided he was
+mentioned in the Bible; neither Delilah nor Archelaus had a reputation
+which would make their names desirable; but, nevertheless, they were
+given. Gamaliel was a Pharisee, a scribe, very far from being a
+Christian, but the name, being in the Bible, became a Christian name
+among the descendants of one of the Pilgrim fathers. Biblical
+reminiscences also are to be found in Christian names, such as Faithful,
+Faintnot, Hopestill, Strong; Praise-God Barbone, one of Cromwell's
+followers, is said to have had two brothers, baptised with the Christian
+names of "Christ-came-into-the-world-to-save Barbone" and
+"If-Christ-had-not-died-thou-hadst-been-damned Barbone" respectively;
+but this is apocryphal, and so is probably the American counterpart:
+"Through-many-trials-and-tribulations-we-must-enter-into-the-kingdom-of-God"
+(Acts 15 : 22) as a Christian name.
+
+One can hardly deny that this Biblicism sometimes became an abuse of the
+Bible. The Scriptures were used for investigating the future. This
+method, which we have already noted in the second chapter, was made an
+official one in the Moravian church. People used Bible verses in their
+games; riddles were taken from the Bible. As the one and only book the
+Bible had to serve as a whole library and provide all kinds of
+entertainment. That is the other side of the matter.
+
+The influence of the Bible on public life in the time of Puritanism is
+illustrated best by the records of the first plantations in New
+England.[2] When, in June, 1639, "all the free planters" of the colony
+of New Haven "assembled together in a general meeting to consult about
+settling civil government according to God," the first question laid
+before them by John Davenport was: "Whether the Scriptures do hold forth
+a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties
+which they are to perform to God and men as well in the government of
+families and commonwealth as in matters of the church." "This was
+assented unto by all, no man dissenting, as was expressed by holding up
+of hands." The second question was whether all do hold themselves bound
+by that (plantation) covenant that "in all public offices, etc., we
+would all of us be ordered by those rules which the Scripture holds
+forth to us." This was answered in the same way. Therefore it was voted
+unanimously, "that the Word of God shall be the only rule to be attended
+unto in ordering the affairs of government in this plantation." Before
+they go on to select officials from their number, the chapter on the
+institution of the seventy elders (Ex. 18) is read, together with
+Deut. 1 : 13 and 17 : 15 and I Cor. 6 : 1-7, and one of the planters
+declares that he had felt scruples about it, but that these had been
+removed by reading Deut. 17 : 15 at morning prayers. When a difference
+arises between two members of the colony they refer it for arbitration
+to brethren, in accordance with I Cor. 6 : 1-7. A prisoner is pressed to
+confess his crime by reminding him of that passage of Scripture: "He
+that hideth his sin shall not prosper, but he that confesseth and
+forsaketh his sins shall find mercy" (Prov. 28 : 13). When a murder has
+been committed they sentence the guilty to death "according to the
+nature of the fact and the rule in that case, He that sheds man's blood,
+by man shall his blood be shed" (Gen. 9 : 6). They refer to Lev. 20 : 15
+in a case of bestiality in order to justify the sentence of death. When
+questions and scruples arise between New Haven and Massachusetts about
+the justice of an offensive war, New Haven refers to the story of
+Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, "who sinned and was rebuked by two prophets
+Jehu and Eliezer for joining with and helping Ahab and Ahaziah, kings of
+Israel" (II Chron. 17-20). From this, they say, one might infer that
+even a defensive war and all leagues are forbidden by the law of God. On
+the other hand, they rely on the conquest of Canaan and David's war
+against the Ammonites (II Sam. 10) as examples for the justice of an
+offensive war and even a vindictive war of revenge.
+
+  [2] _Cf._ C. T. Hoadly, _Records of the Colony and Plantation
+        of New Haven from 1638 to 1649_, Hartford, 1857, and
+        _Records of the Colony or Jurisdiction of New Haven from
+        May, 1653, to the Union_ (1665), Hartford, 1858.
+
+It is their fundamental agreement, not to be disputed or questioned
+hereafter, "that the judicial law of God given by Moses and expounded in
+other parts of Scripture, so far as it is a hedge and a fence to the
+moral law and neither ceremonial nor typical nor had any reference to
+Canaan, has an everlasting equity in it and should be the rule of their
+proceedings." This fundamental law, as it is fixed in 1639 and
+reinforced in 1642 and 1644, shows clearly the spirit of this
+legislation. At the same time we learn from the many restrictions how
+difficult it was to adapt the Old Testament law to the needs of this
+Christian commonwealth.
+
+The first records of the Massachusetts Bay Company[3] show indeed a
+marked difference. They are less Scriptural. In the royal charter given
+to the company by Charles I in 1628 the Bible is not mentioned; the aim
+of the colony is said to be "to win and incite the natives of the
+country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour
+of mankind and the Christian faith." The governor is bound by his oath
+"to do his best endeavour to draw on the natives of this country, called
+New England, to the knowledge of the true God and to conserve the
+planters and others coming hither in the same knowledge and fear of
+God," or, according to another form of oath, "to act according to the
+law of God and for the advancement of his Gospel, the laws of this land,
+and the good of this plantation."
+
+  [3] _Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts
+        Bay_, edited by N. B. Shurtleff. Boston, 1853.
+
+But in the laws framed by the colonists themselves, the Bible is
+constantly appealed to. Passing a law against drinking healths, in 1639,
+the General Court declared this to be a mere useless ceremony and also
+the occasion of many sins, "which as they ought in all places and times
+to be prevented carefully, so especially in plantations of churches and
+commonwealths wherein the least known evils are not to be tolerated by
+such as are bound by solemn covenant _to walk by the rule of God's word_
+in all their conversation." This statement is a solemn one, and they put
+it into effect as far as possible. When discussing in the General Court
+the question whether a certain number of magistrates should be chosen
+for life, a question which had a good deal of importance for the future
+development of the colony, they decided in favour of it, "for that it
+was shown from the word of God, etc., that the principal magistrates
+ought to be for life." Nay, even a question of minor importance raised
+by the Scriptures, whether women must wear veils, was eagerly
+discussed, both parties relying on Scriptural proofs.
+
+When, in 1646, the General Court found it necessary to convoke a public
+assembly of the elders, they did so, protesting, however, that "their
+lawful power _by the word of God_ to assemble the churches or their
+messengers upon occasion of counsel" is not to be questioned, and
+therefore the said assembly of elders, after having "discussed,
+disputed, and cleared up _by the word of God_ such questions of church
+government and discipline ... as they shall think needful and meet," is
+to report to the General Court, "to the end that the same being found
+_agreeable to the word of God_, it may receive from the said General
+Court such approbation as is meet, that the Lord being thus acknowledged
+by church and state to be our Judge, our Lawgiver, and our King, he may
+be graciously pleased still to save us as hitherto he has done ... and
+so the churches in New England may be Jehovah's and he may be to us a
+God from generation to generation." It is remarkable that not only the
+church synod is to judge what is "agreeable to the holy Scriptures" but
+the civil government takes it as its own duty to make sure that the
+resolutions of the synod are really in accordance with the Scripture and
+only then to give their approbation. It is the secular power which
+feels bound to the Word of God and to superintend its strict observance.
+But in fact state and church are not to be distinguished in this period
+of New England history.
+
+In 1641 the Rev. John Cotton, "teacher of the Boston church," published
+at London "An Abstract or the Laws of New England as they are now
+established." The first edition does not mention Cotton's name; this was
+added only after his death in a second edition, published in 1655 by his
+friend William Aspinwall. This Abstract by John Cotton does not
+represent, as its title seems to indicate, the actual law; it is a
+proposed code of laws for New England. But it has influenced to a great
+extent, if not the legislation of Massachusetts, at any rate the "Laws
+for Government, published for the use of New Haven Colony" in 1656. The
+remarkable feature is that Cotton gives marginal references to the Bible
+for each one of his rules, for instance: "All magistrates are to be
+chosen (1) by the free Burgesses--Deut. 1 : 13; (2) out of the free
+Burgesses--Deut. 17 : 15; (3) out of the ablest men and most approved
+amongst them--Ex. 18 : 21; (4) out of the rank of Noblemen or Gentlemen
+amongst them--Eccles. 10 : 17, Jer. 30 : 21," and so on. It is according
+to the Old Testament rule that the eldest son ought to inherit twice as
+much as his brothers; it is a true expression of the Old Testament
+meaning when punishment is extended even to animals which kill a man
+(cp. Ex. 21 : 28). The spirit of this legislation is almost as severe,
+not to say cruel, as the spirit of Charlemagne's Saxon law. Twenty-four
+kinds of trespassing are enumerated which are to be punished with death.
+It is evidently against the legislator's own view that an exemption is
+made for simple fornication, "not to be punished with death according to
+God's own law," as he adds by way of apology. In the second edition the
+Bible verses are printed at length in the text itself, the margin being
+devoted to learned remarks on different translations. The motto which
+expresses the character of this abstract is taken from Isaiah 33 : 22:
+"The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King;
+He will save us."
+
+The official Laws of Massachusetts, as established in 1658 and printed
+in 1660, have no Bible references in the margin; but in the restriction
+of flogging to the effect that no more than forty stripes should be
+applied, and in the requirement that sentence of death may be imposed
+only when two or three witnesses testify to the guilt, the Biblical
+rules given in Deut. 25 : 5 and 19 : 15 are seen to be at work.
+Sabbath-breaking is to be punished with a fine of ten shillings, the
+penalty being doubled in the second case. In 1630 a man had been whipped
+for shooting on the Sabbath.
+
+In 1647 the General Court passed a law ordering that each township
+containing over fifty households should appoint a schoolmaster, and if
+there were more than a hundred families, a grammar-school was to be
+supported. This care for education is inspired by the desire of securing
+a true interpretation of the Bible, as is proved by the following
+statement of motives: "It being the chief project of that old deluder
+Satan to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former
+times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by
+persuading from the use of tongues, that so at least the true sense and
+meaning of the original might be clouded by false glosses of
+saint-seeming deceivers; that learning may not be buried in the grave of
+our fathers in the church and commonwealth, therefore ordered," etc.
+
+After the college had been founded in 1636, they chose in 1643 for its
+seal a shield containing three books with _Ve-ri-tas_ written on them,
+two open and one seen from the back. Oxford has between three crowns one
+book with seven clasps. This book evidently is the Bible; it has
+_Dominus illuminatio mea_ (Psalm 27 : 1) written on it. The seven
+clasps are said to indicate the seven liberal arts and the three crowns
+the three modes of philosophy. It is characteristic of the Puritan
+spirit that their shield had nothing but three Bibles. The meaning of
+_Veritas_, of course, is not (as it has been taken in recent times) that
+the aim of all research is truth. The Puritan fathers were not concerned
+with research; they believed in revelation, and it was by the revelation
+laid down in the Bible that truth was transmitted to mankind. The three
+Bibles may or may not be a symbol of the holy Trinity; the script on the
+front and on the back recalls the book written within and on the back in
+Rev. 5 : 1. They meant that the Bible was the fundamental source of all
+knowledge. Harvard College was founded to be a training-school for
+ministers, who should know the truth and its source. _Christo et
+ecclesiae_ became the second motto of the college. That it has developed
+into a university, containing, besides a college and the divinity
+school, schools for law, medicine, applied science, etc., is due to a
+total change of public opinion at a much later time. The Puritan use of
+the Bible has disappeared, but something of the Puritan spirit may still
+be seen in the inscription on the front of the modern building of the
+Harvard Law School, drawn from Ex. 18 : 20: "Thou shalt teach them
+ordinances and laws and shalt shew them the way wherein they must walk,
+and the work that they must do."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE BIBLE BECOMES ONCE MORE THE BOOK OF DEVOTION
+
+
+Having made our way through the centuries, we now approach our own time,
+and at once we remark two facts: Never before had the Bible such a
+circulation as it has now gained. On the other hand, it seems to have
+lost most of its influence. We must look at these two facts before we
+raise the question what value the Bible has for the civilisation of
+to-day.
+
+Printing greatly facilitated the circulation of the Bible and, as the
+result of the Reformation, it had become the book of the Christian
+family. And yet during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the
+circulation of the Bible was rather limited. The Bible might be a
+treasure of the household, but not the personal property of the
+individual. The first editions, as we have seen, scarcely exceeded one
+or two hundred copies. In contrast, one of the most assiduous and
+industrious promoters of Bible reading, Baron von Canstein, who settled
+at Halle in A. H. Francke's institute, published during the last nine
+years of his life (d. 1719) forty thousand Bibles and one hundred
+thousand New Testaments. To-day the British and Foreign Bible Society
+issues more than five million copies--one million Bibles, one and a half
+million New Testaments, and two and a half million parts of the
+Bible--yearly. The progress is due to the invention of the rotary press
+and other improvements in printing machinery.
+
+Besides, the circulation of the Bible has received strong support
+through the foundation of Bible societies. The story is well known how
+Thomas Charles discovered the great desire for copies of the Bible among
+his Welsh countrymen, how, when he gathered some friends for the purpose
+of providing them with Bibles, the Baptist preacher Thomas Hughes put in
+the question, "And why not for other peoples, too?" and how on his
+motion the Society was started on March 7, 1804, as the British and
+Foreign Bible Society. It is wonderful to hear of the work done by this
+Society in the last hundred years. If one visits the Bible House in
+Queen Victoria Street in London he gets an impression of the extent and
+the importance of the work done there. The Society has its presses as
+well as its translators all over the world; it has its agents scattered
+through all the nations, and it has begun to do not only a publishers'
+business proper but scholarly work as well. A vast collection of Bible
+editions from all times and in all tongues has been gathered, and a
+valuable catalogue published which is of great importance for
+bibliography in general.
+
+The greatest merit of the British and Foreign Bible Society, however, is
+the fact that it stimulated the foundation of other great Bible
+societies. There were some small beginnings in Germany and Switzerland.
+They suddenly became strong and influential in consequence of the report
+made concerning the British and Foreign Bible Society by its secretary,
+Doctor Steinkopf, and Basel and Stuttgart made a new start in 1804 and
+1812. After the Napoleonic War in 1814, Mr. Pinkerton travelled through
+Germany with the result that Bible societies were started at Berlin,
+Dresden, Elberfeld, and Copenhagen, and in Holland, Norway, and even
+Russia. In 1808 Philadelphia joined the movement. The American Bible
+Society has twice canvassed the entire United States, finding that five
+hundred thousand families were without any Bible, and selling sixty
+million Bibles. It is remarkable that in the beginning Roman Catholics
+joined the Bible societies enthusiastically. A Bible society was founded
+at Regensburg in 1805, supported almost exclusively by the Roman
+Catholic clergy. But as early as 1817, soon after the restoration of the
+Jesuits by Pope Pius VII, these Bible societies were dissolved; the
+Roman Catholics were forbidden to be members of the other Bible
+societies, and in the syllabus of Pius IX, in 1864, the Bible societies
+are reckoned among the dangers of our time, together with Masonry and
+other secret societies.
+
+By the help of the Bible societies it has become possible that Bibles
+should really spread among the people. In Germany each boy and girl who
+goes to school has his own Bible. Bibles and New Testaments are
+distributed among the soldiers. Most churches make a present of a Bible
+to each couple who are to be married. There is rather a superabundance
+of Bibles, which contrasts sharply with the estimation in which the
+Bible is held. As Spurgeon, in his drastic way, said in one of his
+stimulating sermons: "The Bible is in every house, but in many the dust
+on it is so thick that you might write on it: _Damnation_." It was a
+veteran Bible agent who, after thirty years' experience, said: "It is
+easy to give away dozens of Bibles, but only the one which you sell will
+be valued."
+
+The circulation has been greatly enlarged by numbers of translations. We
+remember that the first translations of the Bible were connected with
+Christian missions; they were epoch-making for the languages, creating a
+written alphabet and a national literature. The translations of the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were of a different character; they
+were the result of a religious reformation; they represented for the
+nation the culmination point in language and a remarkable stage in
+literature. Now again Christian missions revived, and started on a
+wonderful career all over the world, and they needed to have the Bible
+translated. The Bible societies did their best to provide as many
+translations as possible. From the eight languages of 600 A. D. and some
+twenty-four in the sixteenth century the number of languages into which
+the Bible has been translated has grown up to four hundred, and if we
+count the dialects separately we have over six hundred. The whole Bible
+has not been translated into all these languages and dialects, but in
+every case parts of it, sometimes the New Testament, sometimes only one
+Gospel, have been translated, and other parts will follow. It is
+interesting to hear the translators speak of the difficulties they have
+to overcome. One sees what influence the Bible has on civilisation.
+Often a language lacks some word which is indispensable for the
+translator; he has to adapt one or coin a new one. There is no idea
+more frequent in the Bible than the idea of God. The Chinese had no word
+which exactly corresponded, the usual words indicating either spirits or
+the sun or something of that sort. The Amshara lacks the idea of
+righteousness, the Bantu the idea of holiness. If the translator uses as
+an equivalent the word for separateness, his reader will get rather the
+notion of something split. Sometimes the translator will prefer to keep
+the Greek word, as in the case of _baptise_, but he must be careful, for
+_batisa_ in Bantu means "treat some one badly." So the language has to
+be remodelled in order to become suitable for the purpose of translating
+the Bible. The Bible once again exercises a civilising influence on the
+languages of many peoples. With very few exceptions, such as a Malayan
+Bible of 1621 and a translation by John Eliot into the Massachusetts
+Indian dialect published in 1666, most of these translations originated
+in the nineteenth century and are due to the present missionary energy
+of Christianity. Here again it is mortifying to see how the Bible is
+spread among peoples who never had had civilisation before, while among
+the Christian nations, who, to a large extent, owe their civilisation to
+this very Bible, it is disregarded.
+
+Besides the circulation we may also mention the enormous amount of
+mental energy spent on Bible studies by the scholars of this last
+century. Not only students of theology but also classical and Oriental
+scholars have joined to study the Bible, to comment upon it, and make
+everything in it understood. Specialisation in its inevitable course has
+caused a separation of Old Testament and New Testament studies. In order
+to understand and explain thoroughly the Old Testament one has to know
+several Oriental languages and follow up the daily increasing evidence
+for Oriental history, culture, and religion, whereas the New Testament
+scholar is bound to study the development of the Greek language and the
+whole civilisation of the Hellenistic period. Nay, even the Old and the
+New Testament departments are each specialising into the textual and the
+higher criticism, the theology or the religious history both of the
+Jewish people and of primitive Christianity. One scholar studies the
+life of Christ, another makes the apostolic age the topic of his special
+research; one is commenting upon the Gospels, another upon the letters
+of Saint Paul. The literature in these different departments has grown
+so rapidly that it is almost impossible to follow it and to survey the
+whole field. Nevertheless, we need a comprehensive view, and a large
+number of scientific journals, in German, English, French, some few
+also in other languages, are devoted to the summing up of results which
+have been attained by special research. There are dozens of dictionaries
+and encyclopedias dealing with Biblical matters either separately or in
+connection with other material. It is, indeed, wonderful what progress
+has been and is being made. One is astonished to find that every day
+brings new problems and new attempts at solution, and one cannot help
+admiring the energy and sagacity which are put into these studies.
+
+But in spite of this circulation never attained before, and in spite of
+this active work of research, the fact remains indisputable that the
+Bible has lost its former position. There was a time, in the Middle
+Ages, when the Bible was at least one foundation of Christian
+civilisation, not to say the one foundation (as the men of that period
+would have said). Then there was a time, during recent centuries, when
+the Bible ruled daily life almost completely. Whether we regret the fact
+or approve of it, it remains a fact, and we have to face it, that those
+times are gone.
+
+The Bible nowadays is one book among a thousand others. It is still
+revered by the majority of the people, but it is not so much read as it
+was in the time when it was the one book the people possessed. The
+enormous statistics for Bible circulation lose in effect if we compare
+the figures of the book-trade in general, the number of books published
+every year, and the numbers of editions and copies which some of the
+notable successes have attained.
+
+The old problem, the Bible or the classics or a combination of both, is
+revived in a new form. There is a neopaganism in literature, and often
+it seems incompatible to read both the Bible and modern literature, and
+most people decide in favour of the latter. Once again the Bible has its
+rivals very numerous and strong.
+
+The Bible in former times was held to be the divinely inspired text-book
+for all human knowledge. It was in the Bible that one had to look for
+information not only about God and God's will and everything connected
+with God, but also about philosophy, natural science, history, and so
+on. Now a secularisation of science has taken place by which all these
+departments of human knowledge are withdrawn from the ecclesiastical,
+theological, and Biblical authority.
+
+The mediaeval view of the world as taken from the Bible, or at least
+believed to be taken from it, had been utterly shattered by the great
+discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. When Columbus
+found the way to America and Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape to
+India, and later others crossed the Pacific Ocean, the earth could no
+longer be considered as a round plane, it was proved to be a globe.
+Copernicus deciphered the mystery of heaven, the movement of the earth
+around the sun; Galileo Galilei followed in the same studies, and Kepler
+reached the climax of probability for the new theory. The church did not
+follow at once. It is remarkable that Copernicus did not win the assent
+of Luther. The great reformer, critical as he was, felt bound in this
+question to the authority of the Bible, and called the contradicting
+Copernicus a fool. It is well known how the Roman church by its
+inquisition treated Galileo until he withdrew his theory--formally,
+still holding it in his heart (_e pur si muove_, "and yet the earth does
+move"). Johannes Kepler, himself a Protestant and brought up with the
+fullest reverence for the Bible, found his own way out of the difficulty
+by distinguishing between the religious and the scientific aspect of the
+Bible, an anticipation of the modern solution. And if one is willing to
+maintain the modern scientific view of the universe as it has been
+established by the three men just named, and strengthened by their
+followers, he must renounce the Bible as authority in matters of
+science. It is a notable fact that even the Roman church, in 1817,
+withdrew the verdict against Galileo's theory and similar theses,
+thereby admitting that a Christian may safely deny the Biblical
+assumption that the sun moves round the earth.
+
+The Bible in its first chapter tells us that the world was created in
+six days; geology now speaks of twenty million years and more. The Bible
+says that man was created on the sixth day by a special act of God;
+Darwin's theory is that the human race is the result of an evolution
+which eliminated numbers of former beings and developed ever higher
+species. The Bible tells of many miracles which can have no other
+meaning than that in certain cases the law of gravitation and other laws
+of nature are suspended; the scientist tells us that a law loses all
+meaning if it admits of exceptions. Of course, there are miracles and
+miracles: the healings of Jesus we may accept as historical without any
+hesitation, but the standing still of the sun in Josh. 10 : 12 is
+nothing but a poetical form of speech, and the floating axe-head is as
+legendary in the story of Elisha (II Kings 6 : 6) as it would be in any
+other legend.
+
+In former times scholars wrote large volumes on the animals mentioned in
+the Bible and the flowers and the stones and so on; this they called
+sacred zooelogy and sacred botany and sacred mineralogy. It was not for
+their amusement: it was a serious study. The Bible was thought to be a
+text-book for every science, and it seemed to be much more valuable to
+get information of all kinds from the Bible than to collect real
+animals, flowers, or stones. Likewise the human body was dealt with in
+the same scholastic way; it is a comparatively modern thing for
+physicians to be allowed to study the body and find out its real
+structure by dissection. Nowadays it is universally agreed that science
+and medicine are autonomous and are not dependent on the Bible.
+
+The Bible was also the text-book for history, as we have seen. The
+history of mankind, according to this view, was limited to six thousand
+years. A great amount of mental energy was spent upon the question of
+Biblical chronology, which, however, proved to be hopelessly confused by
+the fact that various systems were used by the Biblical authors
+themselves. History was the history of the Jewish people, enriched by
+some glimpses of contemporaneous pagan history. Now, the discoveries in
+Egypt and Babylon and the deciphering of the Oriental inscriptions have
+illustrated the fact that the Jewish people was only one among others
+and one of the weakest of all these Oriental nations. Assyrian kingdoms
+were established as early as 6000 B. C. The famous code of Hammurabi is
+much older than the Mosaic law. If we compare them, we find that the
+former represents a high level of civilisation, while the latter
+establishes rules for nomadic life, a relation similar to that which
+exists between the Roman law and the national laws of the German tribes:
+though codified later, they represent, nevertheless, an earlier stage.
+The occupation of Canaan has come to be viewed in a new light through
+the exploration of Palestine. The history of the kings of Judah and
+Israel is now seen much more clearly than before to have been determined
+by politics; they are for ever steering between the influence of Egypt
+and that of Babylon. The accounts given in the Babylonian archives and
+the Egyptian inscriptions are to be compared with the Biblical account,
+and some may feel that the comparison is not always in favour of the
+latter. Even the social and religious position of the prophets is
+nowadays compared with contemporaneous facts in Greece, Persia, and
+India. The life of Jesus and the Acts of the Apostles have changed their
+aspect with the possibility of literary comparison. It is not so much
+the literary criticism of the Gospels and the Acts by themselves as it
+is this facility of comparison which contributes to shake the authority
+of the Bible. We find the same miracles told of Jesus and of the emperor
+Vespasian; some sayings of Jesus can be compared with utterances of
+Caesar and Pompey. Many of his words have parallels in the Jewish
+literature as well as in the writings of the Stoa. I feel sure that the
+originality of Jesus will but gain by such comparison, but it is obvious
+that originality must be taken in a higher sense than is often the case;
+it is not the wording but the meaning attached to it which is new and
+original.
+
+In this way everything which loomed so large when viewed standing by
+itself in the Bible has been reduced to its natural size; the earth has
+lost its central position; man is only one in a long line of similar
+beings; the history of Israel enters the large field of universal
+history; and even the personality of Jesus is subject to comparison and
+analogy.
+
+This reduction is the necessary complement of the independence and
+autonomy attained for human science as the result of a long development.
+Already in the sixteenth century the humanists claimed for science the
+right to follow its own rules without being led and limited by the
+church's authoritative doctrine. They aimed at a civilisation free from
+ecclesiastical tutelage; going back to the classicism of pre-Christian
+times, they did not want the guardianship of the Christian church and
+its clergy. But the time was not yet ripe for this view. Even the
+reformers, Luther as well as Calvin, while they broke with the authority
+of mediaeval scholasticism and of the Roman church, were not prepared to
+acknowledge the autonomy of science; they established the primacy of the
+Bible in an even stricter sense than it had borne in the Middle Ages.
+The Bible was to rule everything, and it was the Bible in its plain and
+simple meaning, without the mitigations which tradition and allegory had
+allowed in former times. To be sure, Luther occasionally granted some
+independence to secular science. He was furious when Aristotle was
+quoted as an authority in matters of religion, but would himself
+introduce him as an authority for civil government or for logic. He had
+a curious proof for this from the Bible itself. It was on the advice of
+his father-in-law, Jethro, a pagan, that Moses appointed the seventy
+elders to help him judge the people. Therefore for secular organisation
+one may take the counsel of the heathen, of the philosophers. But Luther
+was not consistent; as we have already seen, against Copernicus he
+insisted upon the authority of the Bible. He did not see that it was a
+question of astronomy without any relation to religion. In the
+seventeenth century the philosophers began to claim independence for
+the human reason, and soon they established reason as the highest
+authority, even in religious matters. It is very interesting to see the
+effect of this claim at the beginning. Even the most advanced liberals
+were so convinced of the infallible authority of the Bible that they
+tried by all means at their disposal to reconcile with the contents of
+the Bible the principles which the rational philosophy of Descartes or
+Spinoza had established. They started a new method of interpretation in
+order to make the Bible agree with reason. A long time had to pass
+before it became obvious to all competent minds that the Bible and
+reason were not to be reconciled by means of a makeshift harmony. It was
+only in the nineteenth century that the view forced itself upon all
+scholars that the Bible has to be understood in an historical way; that
+it does not give inspired information upon natural science and history,
+its revelation dealing with God and religion only.
+
+By recent discoveries it is proved that the creation story in Gen. 1 is
+by no means a unique and original one; there is something similar in the
+Babylonian mythology; it may have been taken from there. The same holds
+true regarding the story of the deluge and others. So there is no reason
+for claiming for these stories the authority of revealed science; the
+Biblical author simply shares the ideas of his time. We are not bound to
+the scientific notions of a period two thousand years before Christ and
+four thousand years before our own time. And yet there is something
+unique in this creation story, as told in Gen. 1, for which one looks in
+vain in all the alleged parallels in Babylonian and other religions; it
+is the idea of the one God Almighty, who by his supreme will creates
+heaven and earth. That is the revelation conveyed to mankind by this
+chapter. We must not trouble about the specific description of creation;
+that belongs to the historical form. We cling with all our heart to the
+wonderful idea of the one creating God, and we realise that here
+revelation is given to us.
+
+It is only by comparison that the real importance of a thing comes out.
+On a map of America, made on a small scale, the distances may seem
+short; comparing a map of Europe on the same scale one realises how long
+they are in fact. We are always in danger of taking some accidental
+feature for the main point. The frame does not make the worth of the
+painting.
+
+As the Bible has lost its exclusive authority in the domain of science,
+so in the fine arts it has ceased to be the single source of
+inspiration. Since the Renaissance motifs taken from ancient mythology
+and poetry have come into competition with the Biblical scenes; the
+Dutch school cultivated the illustration of the life of the people and
+presented even the sacred story in this fashion--the mystery of
+sacredness has gone; it is purely human, not to say profane. The French
+liked landscapes and used Biblical subjects only as accessories.
+Pictures of battles, triumphs, apotheoses filled the galleries. Art
+to-day is anything but Biblical; modern painters have, most of them, no
+sense for sacred art. I venture to think they do better to keep away
+from it. For if a modern painter, when trying to illustrate the parable
+of the prodigal son in a triptychon, puts in the large middle field the
+man feeding the swine, giving only the left-hand corner to the return to
+the father, he has proved himself incapable of a religious understanding
+of the story, however finished a work of art his painting may be.
+
+By all this process of secularisation the Bible has been drawn back from
+general civilisation and restricted to its own proper domain, religion.
+We must not insist on the fact that even here the Bible seems to have
+lost somewhat of its infallible authority. It is in the domain of
+theology as distinct from religion that this holds true. Strange as it
+may seem, it is a fact that the Bible is no more the text-book of
+theology. Theology, of course, can never do without the Bible, but here
+also the Bible is the source of historical information, not the
+authoritative proof for doctrine. Already in the period when the
+orthodox Protestants vied with one another in asserting the inspiration
+of the Bible in the boldest terms and relied on the Bible for answers to
+every question, Samuel Werenfels (d. 1740), a professor at Basel, wrote
+the distich:
+
+  "Hic liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque,
+  Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua."
+
+  "This is the book where each man seeketh his own ideas,
+  In it accordingly each findeth his own beliefs."
+
+It was the support given by the Bible to every doctrine and every theory
+which made critical people doubt the propriety of proving truth by
+adducing proof-texts; and this not only for dogmatical questions but
+also for moral ones. It is well known how both parties in the
+controversy over slavery appealed to the authority of the Bible, and it
+would be difficult to say which party found the stronger support in the
+letter of the text. The same holds true regarding other questions of
+modern life; one can argue from the Bible pro and con regarding the use
+of wine. The Bible has been adduced in the question of polygamy. It can
+be quoted on both sides with reference to woman suffrage. It is
+indicative of the present attitude toward the Bible that this is so
+seldom done. The use of the Bible for the settling of modern social
+problems has brought upon many Christian minds a pitiful confusion. It
+has proved impossible to deduce from the Bible, even from the teaching
+of Jesus, rules for modern life. Times have changed and the conditions
+of life have altered.
+
+All this prepared the way for the historical view of the Bible. Then the
+period of higher criticism began. It was to many a hard lesson; but we
+had to learn it. It was started--curious to say--by Roman Catholic
+scholars in France. Having the authority of the church behind them, they
+felt more free as regards the Bible than the Protestants did. Richard
+Simon made it evident that the transmission of the Bible excludes a
+mechanical view of inspiration. Astruc, a doctor, the physician of Louis
+XIV, discovered that in the Pentateuch two different sources were used.
+During the eighteenth century the theories of literary criticism were
+applied to all the books of the Old and the New Testament, and the
+scholarship of the nineteenth century has taken up the task, perfected
+the method, and reached in some questions a general agreement. To-day
+the principles of literary criticism in their application to the Bible
+are generally acknowledged. The books of the Bible are like other books;
+they are not to be treated as divine Scriptures but as human writings.
+One has to inquire in each instance about the author, his methods of
+writing, the sources of his information, his tendencies, and so on.
+
+Criticism did not stop here; it overstepped the boundaries of purely
+literary criticism; it became historical criticism, too. The historicity
+of the facts reported in the Bible was called in question; recently the
+historicity of Jesus has been denied; and where his existence was
+admitted, still his teaching was criticised. Some people found it too
+ascetic, to others it was purely eschatological; in either case it could
+not be adapted to our own time. So even in its central points the Bible
+seemed to be attacked and its authority shaken. Instead of being
+restricted to the domain of religion, the Bible seemed to be denied even
+to the uses of devotion. But the present situation is not so desperate
+for the pious Bible reader as it looks.
+
+We have once more to face the two facts: the circulation of the Bible
+has grown rapidly--immensely--and the estimation of the Bible has been
+reduced in nearly every field. Many a pious Christian, while rejoicing
+in the first fact, is greatly troubled by the second. Has the Bible
+ceased to be authoritative? Has it lost its infallibility? If the Bible
+is not true from cover to cover, then it seems to be not trustworthy at
+all. We had better put it aside and leave it to deserved oblivion. That
+is an argument frequently brought forward nowadays, both by people who
+disbelieve in the authority of the Bible and the truth of the Christian
+religion and by those who eagerly try to assert the old authority of the
+Bible as the inspired Word of God which reveals everything. They argue,
+and apparently not without plausibility, that if you destroy the
+authority of the Bible at any point, it is lost altogether; there is no
+limit to the destructive energy of our time. Therefore do not touch this
+question; leave the Bible as it stands--the sacred book, undisturbed by
+profane hands. It is the book by which our fathers were taught. Why
+should we disbelieve in it? Both these positions seem to be logically
+consistent: everything or nothing; infallible or no authority. But, in
+fact, the truth is never on one side. Hard as it may sound to our
+philosophers, the truth is very seldom logical. What seems to be
+consistency is, in fact, a confusion of two different aspects which
+ought to be kept separate. The Bible is not a text-book for any
+science--nay, not even for the science of theology. It is the book for
+Christian devotion. This was its original intention, and I venture to
+think that it is not a loss but a gain if the Bible is once more applied
+to its proper purpose.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As we have seen in the first chapter, the Bible proved itself to be an
+inexhaustible source of comfort and strength, of exhortation and
+inspiration to the Christians of the first period. They would not leave
+this book for any consideration--nay, they would even die for it. And so
+whenever the Bible was read by a pious Christian a new stream of life
+flowed through him and through the church. And this new life has always
+caused a strong desire for the Bible. There is a reciprocal influence
+between Bible and piety; the Bible creates piety, and piety demands the
+Bible. This is the experience of nineteen centuries; it is impossible
+that the twentieth century should alter it. As long as a pious Christian
+lives on earth, the Bible will exercise its influence upon him, and as
+long as there is such thing as the Bible there will be Christians. That
+is sure! It is not always easy to measure this private influence of the
+Bible on individual piety and devotion. People who read the Bible for
+edification usually do not talk much about it. In biographies it is not
+mentioned, either because the biographer took it for granted or because
+he did not care for it himself. Seldom do we have an opportunity, like
+the one given in Bismarck's letters to his wife, where he mentions
+frequently what Psalm or passage of the Bible he read before going to
+bed and discusses some points which have struck him. It is impossible to
+say how many people read the Bible privately for their own edification.
+Seeing how few know the Bible thoroughly, we might suppose that very few
+read it, but it is said that Bible reading among the boys in the English
+public schools is again increasing. And I feel sure that the time must
+come, and will come, when private reading of the Bible will again be a
+common practice among Christians.
+
+But the Bible's task is not only to sustain individual piety; it has a
+second duty to perform. Christianity is not a mere aggregation of
+Christian individuals but a community--a church, if you will. It is
+necessary for any community to have a standard, for any church to have a
+creed. It is the Bible which has to supply this. Herein lies the danger
+of aberration, as we have seen in the second and the following chapters.
+The history of the church and of its doctrine gives ample proof of the
+fact that, taking the Bible as a rule for the church's dogma,
+Christianity not only missed the right path for the development of
+doctrine, but even lost the right use of the Bible. It is only by
+aiming at an historical orientation that the church can gain from the
+Bible the right direction for the setting forth of its doctrine. The
+doctrine of the church never can be, and never has been, identical with
+the doctrine of the Bible, because it is impossible to stop the
+development of history; besides, there are as many doctrines in the
+Bible itself as men who wrote the several books of the Bible, or even
+more. Saint Paul has not one doctrine of the atonement but half a dozen
+theories about it. The church has to formulate its own doctrine
+consistently with the Bible; that means a doctrine which keeps to the
+main line of religious development as testified to by the Bible; or,
+rather, to do justice to the variety of Biblical doctrines, permits a
+modern adaptation of the several modes in which religious experience is
+expressed. This seems vague, but it is the path which Christianity is
+bound to follow; and it promises success.
+
+The modern view is that it is the religious experience of men, as
+testified to in the Bible, from which both the individual and the church
+take their start. But Christians believe that through this human
+experience God himself is revealing his grace. Therefore it is still, as
+our fathers said, God's Word. And God will teach the church to
+formulate the common experience by the help of his Word. That is the
+present position.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But now what of the influence of the Bible on civilisation? Has it gone?
+It seems under present conditions reduced to very small proportions, if
+not made impossible altogether. I am prepared, however, to declare that
+just the opposite is true. The influence of the Bible on civilisation
+still continues, and it will grow greater the more the Bible is used in
+the proper way, as an influence not on outward form but in inward
+inspiration.
+
+The results of the influence exerted by the Bible in former centuries,
+when it was an outward rule of life, still go on. We cannot imagine what
+would have become of mankind if there had been no Bible. We cannot drop
+the previous history out of our life. We still speak the language which
+was modelled by our Bible; we still quote many proverbs which originate
+in the Bible, even without knowing that they come from the Bible. Our
+artists will go on choosing motifs from the Bible. The civilised nations
+will never give up Sunday, although not keeping it as a Sabbath. They
+will continue to aim at a fuller measure of legal and social equality,
+convinced as many may be that it is impossible to create an outward
+equality among men as long as there is no equal sense of responsibility
+and duty in all members of the nation.
+
+The influence of the Bible in its present position as the book of
+devotion is of supreme importance for civilisation. Progress in
+civilisation is guaranteed not by constitution nor by law but only by
+the spirit which rules the individual and through the individual the
+community. We need strong characters who know the great truth of
+self-sacrifice. Such characters are formed by the inward inspiration
+given by devotional reading of the Bible. Making men devout, it makes
+them strong and influential in the common effort to promote civilisation
+by removing everything which is contrary to the welfare of others. That
+is the most important influence which the Bible can have; and that
+influence it still exerts and ever will exert on civilisation.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Influence of the Bible on
+Civilisation, by Ernst Von Dobschutz
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