RISE OF DEFENSIVE SYSTEM.

233

acteristic quality of the feudal system. This change, powerfully facilitated by Catholicism, was, however, a necessary result of antecedent circumstances, like Catholicism itself. When the Roman extension was complete, it became a primary care to preserve its dominions; and the increasing pressure of the nations which had resisted conquest made such defence continually more urgent in importance. The military régime must thencefor- Of territorial ward undergo that transformation into what is called independence. the feudal system, by making political dispersion prevail over a concentration which was becoming continually more difficult as its aim was disappearing: for the dispersion agreed with a system of defence which required the direct and special participation of individuals; whereas, conquest had supposed the thorough subordination of all partial movements to the directing authority. Then was the time when the military chief, always holding himself in readiness for a territorial defence which yet did not require perpetual activity, found himself in possession of independent power in a portion of territory which he was able to protect, with the aid of his military followers, whom it was his daily business to govern, unless his power enabled him to reward them with inferior concessions of the same kind, which, again, might in time become susceptible of further division, according to the spirit of the system. Thus, without any Germanic invasion, there was, in the Roman system, a tendency to dismemberment through the disposition of the governors in general to preserve their territorial office, and to secure for it that hereditary succession which was the natural prolongation and the most certain pledge of their independence. The tendency was evident even in the East, which was comparatively untouched by invasion. The memorable concentration wrought by Charlemagne was the natural, though temporary result of the general prevalence of feudal methods, achieving the political separation of the West from the empire, which was thenceforth remanded to the East, and preparing for the future propagation of the feudal system, without being able to restrain the dispersive tendency which constituted its spirit. The one remaining attribute of the feudal condition, that which relates to the modification of the lot of slaves, was another result of the change in the military system, which could not but occasion the transmutation of the ancient slavery into serfage, which was consolidated and perfected by the influence of Catholicism, as we shall presently see. As the importation of slaves declined with the decline of conquest, and finally came to an end, the internal traffic in slaves relaxed,—their owners being disposed to make an hereditary property of them in proportion to the difficulty of obtaining new supplies. When slaves became thus attached to families and their lands, they became, in fact, serfs. Thus, whichever way we look at it, it appears that the feudal system would have arisen without

Slavery be

come serfage.

any aid from barbaric invasion, which could do no more than accelerate its establishment; and thus we get rid of that appearance of fortuity which has disguised, even to the most sagacious minds, the true character of this great social change.

Before I proceed to consider the temporal characteristics of the feudal system, I must just point out the effect of the spiritual institution in preparing for it, and moderating the difficulties of the transition. From its station at the most general point of view, Intervention the Catholic authority saw the impending certainty of the Church. of the Germanic invasions, and had nobly prepared to soften the shock by means of courageous missions to the expected invaders and when they came, the northern nations found awaiting them a powerful clergy ready to restrain their violence towards those whom they vanquished, and from among whom the ranks of that clergy had been recruited. The moral energy and the intellectual rectitude of the conquerors were more favourable to the action of the Church than the sophistical spirit and corrupt manners of the enervated Romans; while, on the other hand, their comparative remoteness from the monotheistic state of mind, and their contempt for the conquered race, were difficulties in the way of the civilizing influence of Catholicism. It was the function of the spiritual body to fuse the respective favourable qualities of the conflicting races, and to aid their subsidence into the system which was to ensue.

The influence of Catholicism on each of the three phases under which the great temporal change to the feudal system presents itself is evident enough. It aided the transformation of offensive into defensive war by its own predominant desire to unite all Christian nations into one great political family, guided by the Church. By its intervention, it obviated many wars,-actuated, no doubt, by a desire to prevent all diminution of its authority over the military chiefs, as well as by the principles and spirit proper to itself. All great expeditions common to the Catholic nations were in fact of a defensive character, and destined to put an end to successive invasions which might become habitual: such, for instance, as the wars of Charlemagne against the Saxons and the Saracens, and, at a later time, the Crusades, which were intended as a barrier against the invasion of Mohammedanism.-Again: Catholicism aided the breaking up of the temporal power into small territorial sovereignties, favouring the transmutation of life-interests into hereditary fiefs, and organizing the relation of the principles of obedience and protection, as the basis of the new social discipline. Excluding the hereditary principle in its own structure, it countenanced it here, not under the form of custom or caste, but from a deep sense, however indistinct, of the true social needs of the age. Capacity was the title to power in the Church. On the land, capacity was best secured by that permanent attachment to the soil and to local traditions which secured stability at the same time, and involved

the admission of the hereditary principle. The training of the local ruler must be in his home, where he could be specially prepared for his future office, form his ideas and manners, and become interested in the welfare of his vassals and serfs; and all this could not be done without the hereditary principle, the great advantage of which consists in the moral preparation of the individual for his social function. In regulating the reciprocal obligations of the feudal tenure, the beneficent influence of Catholicism is unquestionable. It wrought by that admirable combination, unknown to antiquity, of the instinct of independence and the sentiment of devotedness which established the social superiority of the Middle Ages, when it exhibited a new spectacle of the dignity of human nature among privileged families who were few at first, but who served as a type to all classes, as they successively emerged into freedom.-Again: Catholicism influenced the transmutation of slavery into serfage. The tendency of monotheism to modify slavery is visible even in Mohammedanism, notwithstanding the confusion between the temporal and the spiritual power which it still involves. It is therefore eminently conspicuous in the Catholic system, which interposes a salutary spiritual authority between the master and his slave, or the lord and his serf, an authority which is equally respected by both, and which is continually disposed to keep them up to their mutual duty. Traces of this influence may be observed even now, through a comparison of negro slavery in Protestant and Catholic America; the superiority of the lot of the negro in the latter case being a matter of constant remark by impartial investigators, though unhappily the Romish clergy are not clear of participation in this great modern error, so repugnant to its whole doctrine and constitution. From the earliest days, the Catholic power has tended, everywhere and always, to the abolition of slavery, which, when the system of conquest had closed, was no longer a necessary condition of political existence, and became a mere hindrance to social development; and not the less because this tendency has been disguised and almost annulled, on occasion, through certain obstacles peculiar to a few Catholic nations.

These three characteristics of the temporal organization of the Middle Ages seemed to be summed up in the institu- Institution of tion of Chivalry. Whatever were the abuses attendant Chivalry. upon it, it is impossible to deny its eminent social utility during an interval when the central power was as yet inadequate to the direct regulation of internal order in so new a state of society. Though Mohammedanism had, even before the Crusades, originated something like the noble associations by which Chivalry affords a natural corrective of insufficient individual protection, it is certain that their free rise is attributable to the Middle Age spirit; and we discern in it the wisdom of Catholicism converting a mere means of military education into a powerful social instrumentality. The superiority

of merit to birth, and even to the highest authority, which was a principle of these affiliations, is quite in the Catholic spirit. We must however bear in mind the dangers involved in this institution, and especially the peril to the fundamental principle of the régime when the exigencies of the Crusades created those exceptional orders of European chivalry which united the monastic to the military character, for the purposes of their enterprise. As a natural consequence, this union of qualities bred a monstrous ambition, which dreamed of that very concentration of spiritual and temporal power that the spirit of the age had been occupied in dissolving. The Templars, for instance, were instinctively formed into a kind of conspiracy against royalty and the papacy at once; and kings and popes had to lay aside their disputes and unite for the destruction of their common foe. This was, it seems to me, the only serious political danger that social order had to encounter in the Middle Ages. That social order was, in fact, so remarkably correspondent with the contemporary civilization, that it sustained itself by its own weight as long as the correspondence lasted.

Operation of the Feudal

system.

Here then we see the feudal system to be, in a temporal sense, the cradle of modern society. It set society forward towards the great aim of the whole European polity,the gradual transformation of the military into the industrial life. Military activity was then employed as a barrier to the spirit of invasion, which, if not so checked, would have stopped the social progress; and the result was obtained when, at length, the peoples of the North and East were compelled, by their inability to find settlements elsewhere, to undergo at home their final transition to agricultural and stationary life, morally guaranteed by their conversion to Catholicism. Thus the progression which the Roman system had started was carried on by the feudal system. The Roman assimilated civilized nations; and the feudal consolidated that union by urging barbarous peoples to civilize themselves also. The feudal system, regarded as a whole, took up war at its defensive stage, and having sufficiently developed it, left it to perish for want of material and object. Within national limits its influence had the same tendency, both by restricting military activity to a diminishing caste, whose protective authority became compatible with the industrial progress of the nascent working class, and by modifying the warlike character of the chiefs themselves, which gradually changed from that of defender to that of proprietor of territory, in preparation for becoming by-and-by the mere dictator of vast agricultural enterprise, unless indeed it should degenerate into that of Courtier. The great universal tendency, in short, of the economy was to the final abolition of slavery and serfage, and afterwards, the civil emancipation of the industrial class, when the time of fitness should arrive.

MONOTHEISTIC MORALITY.

237

From the political, I next proceed to the moral aspect of the monotheistic régime.

As the social establishment of universal morality was the chief destination of Catholicism, some may wonder that I Morality under did not take up my present topic at the close of my Catholicism. account of the Catholic organization, without waiting till I had exhibited the temporal order. But I think I am placing the subject in the truest historical light by showing that it belongs to the whole system of political organization proper to the Middle Ages, and not to one of its elements alone. If Catholicism first secured to morality the social ascendency which is its due, feudalism, as a result of the new social situation, introduced pre- Rise of Moralcious germs of a lofty morality peculiar to itself, which ity over Polity. Catholicism expanded and improved, but without which it could have had no complete success. Both issuing from antecedent circumstances, Catholicism was the active and rational organ of a progression naturally occasioned by the new phase which human development had assumed. The military and national morality of antiquity, subordinate to polity, had given place to a more pacific and universal morality, predominant over polity, in proportion as the system of conquest became changed into one of defence. Now, the social glory of Catholicism,-a glory which mankind will gratefully commemorate when all theological faiths shall have become matters of mere historical remembrance,-is that it developed and regulated to the utmost a tendency which it could not have created. It would be to exaggerate most mischievously the influence, unhappily only too feeble, of any doctrines on human life, to attribute to them the power of so changing the essential mode of human existence. If Catholicism had been transplanted untimely among nations which had not achieved the preparatory progress, its social influence would not have been sustained by the moral efficacy which distinguished it in the Middle Ages. Mohammedanism is an illustration of this. Its morality, derived from Christianity, and no less pure, is far from having produced the same results, because its subjects were insufficiently prepared for a monotheism which was, in their case, far from spontaneous, and altogether premature. We must not then judge of Middle Age morality from the spiritual point of view, without the temporal; and we must moreover avoid any attempt to give precedence to either element, each being indispensable, and the two therefore inseparable.

A great error of the metaphysical school is that of attributing the moral efficacy of Catholicism to its doctrine alone, apart from its organization, which is indeed supposed to have an opposite tendency. It is enough, in answer to this, to refer to what I have already said of the action of the Catholic organization, and to the moral inefficacy of Mohammedanism, and of Greek or Byzantine Catholicism, which, with abundance of doctrinal power, have