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unusual force, against infanticide and the sale and exposure of infants. A new day, indeed, had come the proud Emperor of the mighty Romans sits high on his throne, listening to, and moved by -a Christian Father!

This is Lactantius's plea for the new-born, from the sixth book of his Divine Institutes':

"Therefore let no one imagine that even this is allowed, to strangle newly born children, which is the greatest impiety; for God breathes into their souls for life, and not for death. But men, that there may be no crime with which they may not pollute their hands, deprive souls, as yet innocent and simple, of the light which they themselves have not given. Any one truly may not expect that they would abstain from the blood of others who do not abstain even from their own. these are without any controversy wicked and unjust. What are they whom a false piety compels to expose their children? Can they be considered innocent who expose their own offspring as a prey to dogs, and as far as it depends upon themselves, kill them in a more cruel manner than if they had strangled them?

But

"Who can doubt that he is impious who gives occasion for the pity of others? For, although that which he has wished should befall the child —namely, that it should be brought up-he has certainly consigned his own offspring either to servitude or to the brothel? But who does not

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Plea of Lactantius

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understand, who is ignorant what things may happen, or are accustomed to happen, in the case of each sex, even through error? For this is shown by the example of Edipus alone, confused with twofold guilt. It is therefore as wicked to expose as it is to kill. But truly parricides complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children; as though, in truth, their means were in the power of those who possess them, or God did not daily make the rich poor, and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from marriage than with wicked hands to mar the work of God."

As an additional protective measure Constantine withdrew the right of liberty that the Antonines had secured to foundling children, and in order to encourage strangers to pick up waifs cast away by parents, the Emperor made them the slaves of those who raised them. The father was punished for rejecting his infant by being no longer able to claim a right that had previously been his. Rather than that there should be murder, the Emperor went further; he gave poor parents the right to sell their new-born children.

One more step and the story of the Roman child ends. The Emperor Valentinian, a strange mixture of cruelty and sense-the same who kept two ferocious she-bears near him and saw that they had human food a-plenty,-is in the books as the

author of the law condemning the exposition of new-born infants. It was in 374 that this edict was issued in the name of the Emperors Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, declaring that whosoever should expose his children should be subject to punishment.'

'Justinian Code, viii., 52, 2. Quod si exponendam putave.it; animadversoni, quæ constituta est, subjacebit.

CHAPTER XVIII

PLEAS OF THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS.

T has been said that the only way to understand the Middle Ages is to comprehend that the Roman Empire did not die down, or fade away; it remained, or continued to be the centre of civilized government, until comparatively recent times. In fact, nominally the Holy Roman Empire, the direct descendant of the Roman Empire, did not pass away as an idea until 1806, when the Emperor Joseph II. announced to the Germanic Diet his refusal to carry any longer the title of Emperor of the Romans.1

Even when the Roman Empire was at its greatest point of power and wealth, the actual founders of the Holy Roman Empire were at work in Rome itself, in the persons of the Christian Fathers; for, after all, it was the Church that was to rule the world once swayed by Roman legions. The men who, as representatives of Christ, were later to tame the barbarians, really laid the foundations for the future greatness of Christian Rome, amid

I Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, p. I. E. A. Freeman, Historical Studies.

the very luxury and opulence of the pagan Rome soon to pass away.

The struggles of these Christians among the polished and cruel Romans was, in a way, a preparation for the struggle to come later with the unpolished, but equally cruel, barbarians. In their conquest of the Roman world, the Christian founders saved their religion; in the conquest of the barbarian hordes, they saved civilization; without Christianity the German and Celtic races, with their lustful, revengeful, and passionate natures, either might have overwhelmed Roman civilization entirely, bringing on a night of barbarism, or have been themselves "corrupted and destroyed by the vices and sensuality which surrounded them."

Amid all the differences of opinion and doctrine that we find among the early founders of Christianity, there was one thing on which they were unanimous, and that was the attitude toward children. It was a ceaseless war they waged in behalf of children-those early and ofttimes eloquent founders. From Barnabas, contemporary of the Apostles, and by Luke even called one of them, to Ambrosius and Augustine, they did not cease to denounce those who, no matter what their reasons, exposed or killed infants.

2

No distinction was made by the Fathers between infanticide and exposure. Both were murderous acts, particularly bitterly condemned by the

Charles Loring Brace, Gesta Christi, p. 111.

2 W. E. H. Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii., p. 27.

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