History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [192]
* * *
3
THREE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
Four men are called the Doctors of the Western Church: St Ambrose, St Jerome, St Augustine, and Pope Gregory the Great. Of these the first three were contemporaries, while the fourth belonged to a later date. I shall, in this chapter, give some account of the life and times of the first three, reserving for a later chapter an account of the doctrines of St Augustine, who is, for us, the most important of the three.
Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine all flourished during the brief period between the victory of the Catholic Church in the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasion. All three were young during the reign of Julian the Apostate; Jerome lived ten years after the sack of Rome by the Goths under Alaric; Augustine lived till the irruption of the Vandals into Africa, and died while they were besieging Hippo, of which he was bishop. Immediately after their time, the masters of Italy, Spain, and Africa were not only barbarians, but Arian heretics. Civilization declined for centuries, and it was not until nearly a thousand years later that Christendom again produced men who were their equals in learning and culture. Throughout the dark ages and the medieval period, their authority was revered; they, more than any other men, fixed the mould into which the Church was shaped. Speaking broadly, St Ambrose determined the ecclesiastical conception of the relation of Church and State; St Jerome gave the Western Church its Latin Bible and a great part of the impetus to monasticism; while St Augustine fixed the theology of the Church until the Reformation, and, later, a great part of the doctrines of Luther and Calvin. Few men have surpassed these three in influence on the course of history. The independence of the Church in relation to the secular State, as successfully maintained by St Ambrose, was a new and revolutionary doctrine, which prevailed until the Reformation; when Hobbes combated it in the seventeenth century, it was against St Ambrose that he chiefly argued. St Augustine was in the forefront of theological controversy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Protestants and Jansenists being for him, and orthodox Catholics against him.
The capital of the Western Empire, at the end of the fourth century, was Milan, of which Ambrose was bishop. His duties brought him constantly into relations with the emperors, to whom he spoke habitually as an equal, sometimes as a superior. His dealings with the imperial court illustrate a general contrast characteristic of the times: while the State was feeble, incompetent, governed by unprincipled self-seekers, and totally without any policy beyond that of momentary expedients, the Church was vigorous, able, guided by men prepared to sacrifice everything personal in its interests, and with a policy so far-sighted that it brought victory for the next thousand years. It is true that these merits were offset by fanaticism and superstition, but without these no reforming movement could, at that time, have succeeded.
St Ambrose had every opportunity to seek success in the service of the State. His father, also named Ambrose, was a high official—prefect of the Gauls. The Saint was born, probably, at Treves, a frontier garrison town, where the Roman legions were stationed to keep the Germans at bay. At the age of thirteen he was taken to Rome, where he had a good education, including a thorough grounding in Greek. When he grew up he took to the law, in which he was very successful; and at the age of thirty he was made governor of Liguria and Æmilia. Nevertheless, four years later he turned his back on secular government, and by popular acclaim became bishop of Milan, in opposition to an Arian candidate. He gave all his worldly goods to the poor, and devoted the whole of the rest of his life to the service of the Church, sometimes at great personal risk. This choice was certaintly not dictated by worldly motives, but, if it had been, it would have been wise. In