OH. IVI.]

MUTUAL CRUELTIES OF CHRISTIANS.

173

We shall conclude this chapter by a melancholy truth, which obtrudes itself on the reluctant mind; that even admitting, without hesitation or inquiry, all that history has recorded, or devotion has feigned, on the subject of martyrdoms, it must still be acknowledged that the Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other, than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels. During the ages of ignorance which followed the subversion of the Roman empire in the west, the bishops of the imperial city extended their dominion over the laity as well as clergy of the Latin church. The fabric of superstition which they had erected, and which might long have defied the feeble efforts of reason, was at length assaulted by a crowd of daring fanatics, who, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, assumed the popular character of reformers. The church of Rome defended by violence the empire which she had acquired by fraud a system of peace and benevolence was soon disgraced by proscriptions, wars, massacres, and the institution of the holy office; and as the reformers were animated by the love of civil, as well as of religious freedom, the Catholic princes connected their own interest with that of the clergy, and enforced by fire and the sword the terrors of spiritual censures. In the Netherlands alone more than one hundred thousand of the subjects of Charles the Fifth are said to have suffered by the hand of the executioner ; Cyprian's letters, there is inserted one from Lucianus to Celerinus, written from his prison cell, and naming seventeen of his brethren, who had died, either in the quarries, in the midst of tortures, or of hunger in their dungeons. "By the emperor's order," are his words, we are doomed to die of hunger and thirst; we are shut up in two cells, so that smoke, hunger, and thirst, may do their work upon us." Cypr. Epist. 22.-GUIZOT.] [It may be seen in Cyprian's letters, No. V and others, that the unimprisoned Christians were allowed to visit and relieve those in confinement. If then any confessors died in prison of hunger and thirst, and the word "necari" be not a mere figurative or hyperbolical term, it must have been through the neglect of those, who certainly had the means and the opportunity of preventing it, and were moreover urgently required by their spiritual superior to employ them. These disputes as to the greater or lesser number of martyrs, are however comparatively unimportant. The early Christians were often persecuted; this cannot be denied. Numbers ought not to affect the question. The single murder of Servetus has stamped 's dark a blot on the name of Calvin, as the slaughter of hosts has on

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CHRISTIAN CRUELTIES.

[CH. ZVI. and this extraordinary number is attested by Grotius, a man of genius and learning, who preserved his moderation amidst the fury of contending sects, and who composed the annals of his own age and country, at a time when the invention of printing had facilitated the means of intelligence, and increased the danger of detection. If we are obliged to submit our belief to the authority of Grotius, it must be allowed, that the number of Protestants, who were executed in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries, and of the Roman empire. But if the improbability of the fact itself should prevail over the weight of evidence; if Grotius should be convicted of exaggerating the merit and sufferings of the reformers;† we shall be naturally led to inquire what confidence can be placed in the doubtful and imperfect monuments of ancient credulity; what degree of credit can be assigned to a courtly bishop, and a passionate declaimer, who, under the protection of Constantine, enjoyed the exclusive privilege of recording the persecutions inflicted on the Christians by the vanquished rivals, or disregarded predecessors, of their gracious sovereign.‡

those of Gardiner and Bonner, of Philip and Katharine. Christians have certainly been more ferociously cruel to each other, than the heathens were to their forefathers.-ED.] * Grot. Annal. de Rebus Belgicis, lib. 1, p. 12, edit. fol. + Fra Paolo (Istoria del Consilio Tridentino, lib. 3) reduces the number of Belgic martyrs to fifty thousand. In learning and moderation, Fra Paolo was not inferior to Grotius. The priority of time gives some advantage to the evidence of the former, which he loses on the other hand by the distance of Venice from the Netherlands. Professor Schreiter, in a note principally addressed to his German readers, assigns among his reasons for not having made any observations on the two last chapters, the hope at that time entertained, that Professor Wenck was preparing a separate treatise on them. It has been seen in M. Guizot's Preface (p. 12), that this expectation was disappointed. The note also refers to Dr. Lüderwald's then recently published work, On the propagation of the Christian religion by its own evidence. Helmstädt, 1788. There is some ground for the Professor's complaint, that Christianity, Church, and Hierarchy are too often confounded by Gibbon, and the errors of the latter improperly attributed to the former; yet it must be borne in mind that it has not long been safe anywhere, and is not even now everywhere, to make a distinction between the Hierarchy and Christianity.-ED.

A.D. 323]

THE EMPIRE IN THE EAST.

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CHAPTER XVII -FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE. -POLITICAL

SYSTEM OF CONSTANTINE AND HIS SUCCESSORS.—MILITARY DISCIPLINE -THE PALACE. THE FINANCES.

THE unfortunate Licinius was the last rival who opposed the greatness, and the last captive who adorned the triumph, of Constantine. After a tranquil and prosperous reign, the conqueror bequeathed to his family the inheritance of the Roman empire; a new capital, a new policy, and a new eligion; and the innovations which he established have Deen embraced and consecrated by succeeding generations. The age of the great Constantine and his sons is filled with important events; but the historian must be oppressed by their number and variety, unless he diligently separates from each other the scenes which are connected only by the order of time. He will describe the political institutions that gave strength and stability to the empire, before he proceeds to relate the wars and revolutions which hastened its decline. He will adopt the division unknown to the ancients, of civil and ecclesiastical affairs: the victory of the Christians, and their intestine discord, will supply copious and distinct materials both for edification and for scandal.

After the defeat and abdication of Licinius, his victcrious rival proceeded to lay the foundations of a city, destined to reign, in future times, the mistress of the east, and to survive the empire and religion of Constantine. The motives, whether of pride or of policy, which first induced Diocletian to withdraw himself from the ancient seat of government, had acquired additional weight by the example of his successors, and the habits of forty years. Rome was insensibly confounded with the dependent kingdoms which had once acknowledged her supremacy; and the country of the Caesars was viewed with cold indifference by a martial prince, born in the neighbourhood of the Danube, educated in the courts and armies of Asia, and invested with the purple by the legions of Britain. The Italians, who had received ConEtautine as their deliverer, submissively obeyed the edicta

176

CHOICE OF A SITUATION.

[CH. XVIL which he sometimes condescended to address to the senate and people of Rome; but they were seldom honoured with the presence of their new sovereign. During the vigour of his age, Constantine, according to the various exigencies of peace and war, moved with slow dignity, or with active diligence, along the frontiers of his extensive dominions; and was always prepared to take the field either against a foreign or a domestic enemy. But as he gradually reached the summit of prosperity and the decline of life, he began to meditate the design of fixing in a more permanent station the strength as well as majesty of the throne. In the choice of an advantageous situation, he preferred the confines of Europe and Asia; to curb, with a powerful arm, the barbarians who dwelt between the Danube and the Tanais; to watch with an eye of jealousy the conduct of the Persian monarch, who indignantly supported the yoke of an ignominious treaty. With these views, Diocletian had selected and embellished the residence of Nicomedia: but the memory of Diocletian was justly abhorred by the protector of the church; and Constantine was not insensible to the ambition of founding a city which might perpetuate the glory of his own name. During the late operations of the war against Licinius, he had sufficient opportunity to contemplate, both as a soldier and a statesman, the incomparable position of Byzantium; and to observe how strongly it was guarded by nature against a hostile attack, whilst it was accessible on every side to the benefits of commercial intercourse. Many ages before Constantine, one of the most judicious historians of antiquity* had described the advantages of a situation, from whence a feeble colony of Greeks derived the command of the sea, and the honours of a flourishing and independent republic.t

If we survey Byzantium in the extent which it acquired with the august name of Constantinople, the figure of the imperial city may be represented under that of an unequal triangle. The obtuse point, which advances towards the

*Polybius, lib. 4, p. 423, edit. Casaubon. He observes that the peace of the Byzantines was frequently disturbed, and the extent of their territory contracted, by the inroads of the wild Thracians.

+ The navigator Byzas, who was styled the son of Neptune, founded the city 656 years before the Christian era. His followers were draw

OH. XVII.

THE BOSPHORUS.

177

east and the shores of Asia, meets and repels the waves of the Thracian Bosphorus. The northern side of the city is bounded by the harbour; and the southern is washed by the Propontis, or sea of Marmara. The basis of the triangle is opposed to the west, and terminates the continent of Europe. But the admirable form and division of the circumjacent land and water cannot, without a more ample explanation, be clearly or sufficiently understood.

The winding channel through which the waters of the Euxine flow with a rapid and incessant course towards the Mediterranean, received the appellation of Bosphorus, a name not less celebrated in the history, than in the fables, of antiquity. A crowd of temples and of votive altars, profusely scattered along its steep and woody banks, attested the unskilfulness, the terrors, and the devotion, of the Grecian navigators, who, after the example of the Argonauts, explored the dangers of the inhospitable Euxine. On these banks tradition long preserved the memory of the palace of Phineus, infested by the obscene harpies,† and of the sylvan reign of Amycus, who defied the son of Leda to the combat of the cestus. The straits of the Bosphorus are terminated

from Argos and Megara. Byzantium was afterwards rebuilt and fortified by the Spartan general Pausanias. See Scaliger, Animadvers. ad Euseb. p. 81. Ducange, Constantinopolis, lib. 1, part 1, cap. 15, 16. With regard to the wars of the Byzantines against Philip, the Gauls, and the kings of Bithynia, we should trust none but the ancient writers who lived before the greatness of the imperial city had excited a spirit of flattery and fiction. [A second Megarian colony, under Zeuxippus, strengthened Byzantium, B.C. 628 (Lydus de Mag. Rom. iii. 70, p. 280). It was taken by Darius, B.C. 505, and recovered from the Persians by Pausanius, about 470.-ED.]

*

The Bosphorus has been very minutely described by Dionysius of Byzantium, who lived in the time of Domitian (Hudson, Geograph. Minor. tom. iii.), and by Gilles or Gyllius, a French traveller of the sixteenth century. Tournefort (Lettre 15) seems to have used his own eyes and the learning of Gyllius.

+ There are very few conjectures so happy as that of Le Clerc, (Bibliothèque Universelle, tom. 1, p. 148,) who supposes that the harpies were only locusts. The Syriac or Phoenician name of those insects, their noisy flight, the stench and devastation which they occasion, and the north wind which drives them into the sea, all contribute to form this striking resemblance. The residence of Amycus was in Asia, between the old and the new castles, at a place called LauruInsana. That of Phineus was in Europe, near the village of Mauroa mole and the Black sea. See Gyllius de Bosph. lib. 2, c. 23. Tour

VOL. II.

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