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By Root 3122 0

held by the Catholic Church—are to be found in the writings of St Paul, particularly the Epistle to the Romans. These are treated by Augustine as a lawyer treats the law: the interpretation is able, and the texts are made to yield their utmost meaning. One is persuaded, at the end, not that St Paul believed what Augustine deduces, but that, taking certain texts in isolation, they do imply just what he says they do. It may seem odd that the damnation of unbaptized infants should not have been thought shocking, but should have been attributed to a good God. The conviction of sin, however, so dominated him that he really believed new-born children to be limbs of Satan. A great deal of what is most ferocious in the medieval Church is traceable to his gloomy sense of universal guilt.

There is only one intellectual difficulty that really troubles St Augustine. This is not that it seems a pity to have created Man, since the immense majority of the human race are predestined to eternal torment. What troubles him is that, if original sin is inherited from Adam, as St Paul teaches, the soul, as well as the body, must be propagated by the parents, for sin is of the soul, not the body. He sees difficulties in this doctrine, but says that, since Scripture is silent, it cannot be necessary to salvation to arrive at a just view on the matter. He therefore leaves it undecided.

It is strange that the last men of intellectual eminence before the dark ages were concerned, not with saving civilization or expelling the barbarians or reforming the abuses of the administration, but with preaching the merit of virginity and the damnation of unbaptized infants. Seeing that these were the preoccupations that the Church handed on to the converted barbarians, it is no wonder that the succeeding age surpassed almost all other fully historical periods in cruelty and superstition.

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5

THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES

The fifth century was that of the barbarian invasion and the fall of the Western Empire. After the death of Augustine in 430, there was little philosophy; it was a century of destructive action, which, however, largely determined the lines upon which Europe was to be developed. It was in this century that the English invaded Britain, causing it to become England; it was also in this century that the Frankish invasion turned Gaul into France, and that the Vandals invaded Spain, giving their name to Andalusia. St Patrick, during the middle years of the century, converted the Irish to Christianity. Throughout the Western World, rough Germanic kingdoms succeeded the centralized bureaucracy of the Empire. The imperial post ceased, the great roads fell into decay, war put an end to large-scale commerce, and life again became local both politically and economically. Centralized authority was preserved only in the Church, and there with much difficulty.

Of the Germanic tribes that invaded the Empire in the fifth century, the most important were the Goths. They were pushed westwards by the Huns, who attacked them from the East. At first they tried to conquer the Eastern Empire, but were defeated; then they turned upon Italy. Since Diocletian, they had been employed as Roman mercenaries; this had taught them more of the art of war than barbarians would otherwise have known. Alaric, king of the Goths, sacked Rome in 410, but died the same year. Odovaker, king of the Ostrogoths, put an end to the Western Empire in 476, and reigned until 493, when he was treacherously murdered by another Ostrogoth, Theodoric, who was king of Italy until 526. Of him I shall have more to say shortly. He was important both in history and legend; in the Niebelungenlied he appears as 'Dietrich von Bern' ('Bern' being Verona).

Meanwhile the Vandals established themselves in Africa, the Visigoths in the south of France, and the Franks in the north.

In the middle of the Germanic invasion came the inroads of the Huns under Attila. The Huns were of Mongul race, and yet they were often allied with the Goths. At the crucial moment, however, when they invaded Gaul