Mediaeval Ethics

MEDIAEVAL ETHICS Christianity.—In the present article we are not concerned with the origin of the Christian religion, nor with its outward history. Nor have we to consider the special doctrines that have formed the bond of union of the Christian communities except in their ethical aspect, their bearing on the systematization of human aims and activities. This aspect, however, must necessarily be prominent in discussing Christianity, which cannot be adequately treated merely as a system of theological beliefs divinely revealed, and special observances divinely sanctioned ; for it claims to regu late the whole man, in all departments of his existence. It was not till the 4th century A.D. that the first attempt was made to offer a systematic exposition of Christian morality ; and nine centuries more had passed away before a genuinely philosophic intellect, trained by a full study of Aristotle, undertook to give complete scientific form to the ethical doctrine of the Catholic Church. Before, however, we take a brief survey of the progress of system atic ethics from Ambrose to Thomas Aquinas, it may be well to examine the chief features of the new moral consciousness that had spread through Graeco-Roman civilization, and was awaiting philosophic synthesis. It will be convenient to consider first the new form or universal characteristics of Christian morality, and afterwards to note the chief points in the matter or particulars of virtue which received development from the new religion.

The first point to be noticed is the new conception of morality as the positive law of a theocratic community possessing a written code imposed by divine revelation, and sanctioned by divine prom ises and threatenings. It is true that we find in ancient thought, from Socrates downwards, the notion of a law of God, eternal and immutable, partly expressed and partly obscured by the shif t ang codes and customs of actual human societies. But the sanc tions of this law were vaguely and, for the most part, feebly imagined; its principles were essentially unwritten, and thus referred not to the external will of an Almighty Being who claimed unquestioning submission, but rather to the reason that gods and men shared, by the exercise of which alone they could be ade quately known and defined. Hence, even if the notion of law had been more prominent than it was in ancient ethical thought, it could never have led to a juridical, as distinct from a philosophical, treatment of morality. In Christianity, on the other hand, we early find that the method of moralists determining right conduct is to a great extent analogous to that of jurisconsults interpreting a code. It is asssumed that divine commands have been implicitly given for all occasions of life, and that they are to be ascertained in particular cases by interpretation of the general rules obtained from texts of scripture, and by inference from scriptural examples. This juridical method descended naturally from the Jewish theoc racy, of which Christendom was a universalization. Moral insight, in the view of the most thoughtful Jews of the age immediately preceding Christianity, was conceived as knowledge of a divine code, emanating from an authority external to human reason which had only the f unction of interpreting and applying its rules. This law was derived partly from Moses, partly from the utterances of the later prophets, partly from oral tradition and from the com mentaries and supplementary maxims of generations of students. Christianity inherited the notion of a written divine code acknowl edged as such by the "true Israel"—now potentially including the whole of mankind, or at least the chosen of all nations—on the sincere acceptance of which the Christian's share of the divine promises to Israel depended. And though the ceremonial part of the old Hebrew code was altogether rejected, and with it all the supplementary jurisprudence resting on tradition and erudite com mentary, still God's law was believed to be contained in the sacred books of the Jews, supplemented by the teaching of Christ and his apostles. By the recognition of this law the Church was consti tuted as an ordered community, essentially distinct from the State ; the distinction between the two was emphasized by the withdrawal of the early Christians from civic life, to avoid the performance of idolatrous ceremonies imposed as official expres sions of loyalty, and by the persecutions which they had to endure, when the spread of an association apparently so hostile to the framework of ancient society had at length alarmed the imperial Government. Nor was the distinction obliterated by the recogni tion of Christianity as the State religion under Constantine.

Thus the jural form in which morality was conceived only emphasized the fundamental difference between it and the laws of the State. The ultimate sanctions of the moral code were the infinite rewards and punishments awaiting the immortal soul here after; but the Church early felt the necessity of withdrawing the privileges of membership from apostates and allowing them to be gradually regained only by a solemn ceremonial expressive of repentance, protracted through several years. This formal and regulated "penitence" was extended from apostasy to other grave —or, as they were subsequently called, "deadly"—sins ; while for minor offences all Christians were called upon to express contri tion by fasting and abstinence from ordinarily permitted pleasures, as well as verbally in public and private devotions. "Excommuni cation" and "penance" thus came to be temporal ecclesiastical sanctions of the moral law. As the graduation of these sanctions naturally became more minute, a correspondingly detailed classi fication of offences was rendered necessary, and thus a system of ecclesiastical jurisprudence was gradually produced, somewhat analogous to that of Judaism. At the same time this tendency to make prominent a scheme of external duties has always been counteracted in Christianity by the remembrance of its original antithesis to Jewish legalism. We find that this antithesis, as exaggerated by some of the Gnostic sects of the and and 3rd cen turies A.D., led, not merely to theoretical antinomianism, but even (if the charges of their orthodox opponents are not entirely to be discredited) to gross immorality of conduct. A similar tendency has shown itself at other periods of Church history. And though such antinomianism has always been sternly repudiated by the moral consciousness of Christendom, it has never been forgotten that "inwardness," rightness of heart or spirit, is the preeminent characteristic of Christian goodness. It must not, of course, be supposed that the need of something more than mere fulfilment of external duty was ignored even by the later Judaism. Rabbinic erudition could not forget the repression of vicious desires in the tenth commandment, the stress laid in Deuteronomy on the necessity of service to God, or the inculcation by later prophets of humility and faith. "The real and only Pharisee," says the Tal mud, "is he who does the will of his Father because he loves Him." But it remains true that the contrast with the "righteous ness of the scribes and pharisees" has always served to mark the requirement of "inwardness" as a distinctive feature of the Chris tian code—an inwardness not merely negative, tending to the repression of vicious desires as well as vicious acts, but also involving a positive rectitude of the inner state of the soul. In this aspect Christianity invites comparison with Stoicism, and indeed with pagan ethical philosophy generally, if we except the hedonistic schools. Rightness of purpose, preference of virtue for its own sake, suppression of vicious desires, were made essen tial points by the Aristotelians, who attached the most importance to outward circumstances in their view of virtue, no less than by the Stoics, to whom all outward things were indifferent. The fundamental differences between pagan and Christian ethics depend not on any difference in the value set on rightness of heart, but on different views of the essential form or conditions of this inward rightness. In neither case is it presented purely and simply as moral rectitude. By the pagan philosophers it was always conceived under the form of Knowledge or Wisdom, it being inconceivable to all the schools sprung from Socrates that a man could truly know his own good and yet deliberately choose anything else. This knowledge, as Aristotle held, might be perma nently precluded by vicious habits, or temporarily obliterated by passion, but if present in the mind it must produce rightness of purpose. Or even if it were held with some of the Stoics that true wisdom was out of the reach of the best men actually living, it none the less remained the ideal condition of perfect human life. By Christian teachers, on the other hand, the inner springs of good conduct were generally conceived as Faith and Love. Of these notions the former has a somewhat complex ethical import ; it seems to blend several elements differently prominent in different minds. Its simplest and commonest meaning is that emphasized in the contrast of "faith" with "sight"; where it signifies belief in the invisible divine order represented by the Church, in the actuality of the law, the threats, the promises of God, in spite of all the influences in man's natural life that tend to obscure this belief. Out of this contrast there ultimately grew an essentially different opposition between faith and knowledge or reason, according to which the theological basis of ethics was contrasted with the philosophical; the theologians maintaining sometimes that the divine law is essentially arbitrary, the expression of will, not reason ; more frequently that its reasonableness is inscrutable, and that actual human reason should confine itself to examining the credentials of God's messengers, and not the message itself. But in early Christianity this latter antithesis was as yet unde veloped ; faith means simply force in clinging to moral and reli gious conviction, whatever their rational grounds may be ; this force, in the Christian consciousness, being inseparably bound up with personal loyalty and trust towards Christ, the leader in the battle with evil, the ruler of the kingdom to be realized. So far, however, there is no ethical difference between Christian faith and that of Judaism, or its later imitation, Mohammedanism.

A more distinctively Christian, and a more deeply moral significance is given to the notion in the antithesis of "faith" and "works." Here faith means more than loyal acceptance of the divine law and reverent trust in the lawgiver; it implies a con sciousness, at once continually present and continually tran scended, of the radical imperfection of all human obedience to the law, and at the same time of the irremissible condemnation ,which this imperfection entails. The Stoic doctrine of the worth lessness of ordinary human virtue, and the stern paradox that all offenders are equally, in so far as all are absolutely, guilty, find their counterparts in Christianity; but the latter overcomes its practical exclusiveness through faith. This faith, again, may be conceived in two modes, essentially distinct though usually com bined. In one view it gives the believer strength to attain, by God's supernatural aid or "grace," a goodness of which he is naturally incapable ; in the other view. it gives him an assurance that, though he knows himself a sinner deserving of utter con demnation, a perfectly just God still regards him with favour on account of the perfect services and suffering of Christ.

But faith is rather an indispensable pre-requisite than the essen tial motive principle of Christian good conduct. This motive is supplied by the other central notion, love. On love depends the "fulfilling of the law," and the sole moral value of Christian duty —that is, on love to God, in the first place, which in its fullest development must spring from Christian faith ; and, secondly, love to all mankind, as the objects of divine love and sharers in the humanity ennobled by the incarnation. This derivative phil anthropy characterizes the spirit in which all Christian perf orm ance of social duty is to be done ; loving devotion to God being the fundamental attitude of mind that is to be maintained throughout the whole of the Christian's life. But further, as regards absti nence from unlawful acts and desires prompting to them, we have to notice another form in which the inwardness of Christian mor ality manifests itself. The profound horror with which the Chris tian's conception of a suffering as well as an avenging divinity tended to make him regard all condemnable acts was tinged with a sentiment which we may describe as a ceremonial aversion mor alized—the aversion, that is, to impurity. In Judaism, as in other, especially Oriental, religions, the natural dislike of material defile ment has been elevated into a religious sentiment, and made to support a complicated system of quasi-sanitary abstinences and ceremonial purifications ; then, as the ethical element predomi nated in the Jewish religion, a moral symbolism was felt to reside in the ceremonial code, and thus aversion to impurity came to be a common form of the ethico-religious sentiment. Then, when Christianity threw off the Mosaic ritual, this religious sense of purity was left with no other sphere besides morality ; while, from its highly idealized character, it was peculiarly well adapted for that repression of vicious desires which Christianity claimed as its special function.

The distinctive features of Christian ethics are obedience, unworldliness, benevolence, purity and humility. They are nat urally connected with the more general characteristics just stated; though many of them may also be referred directly to the example and precepts of Christ, and in several cases they are clearly due to both causes, inseparably combined.

I. We may notice, in the first place, that the conception of morality as a code which, if not in itself arbitrary, is yet to be accepted by men with unquestioning submission, tends naturally to bring into prominence the virtue of obedience to authority; just as the philosophic view of goodness as the realization of rea son gives a special value to self-determination and independence.

2.

Again, the opposition between the natural world and the spiritual order into which the Christian has been born anew led not merely to a contempt equal to that of the Stoic for wealth, fame, power and other objects of worldly pursuit, but also, for some time at least, to a comparative depreciation of the domestic and civic relations of the natural man. This tendency was exhibited most simply and generally in the earliest period of the Church's history. In the view of primitive Christians, ordinary human society was a world temporarily surrendered to Satanic rule, over which a swift and sudden destruction was impending; in such a world the little band who were gathered in the ark of the Church could have no part or lot. On the other hand, it was difficult practically to realize this alienation, and a keen sense of this difficulty induced the same hostility to the body as a hindrance, that we find to some extent in Plato, but more fully developed in Neoplatonism, Neo pythagoreanism, and other products of the mingling of Greek with Oriental thought. This feeling is exhibited in the value set on fast ing in the Christian Church from the earliest times, and in an extreme form in the self-torments of later monasticism ; while both tendencies, anti-worldliness and anti-sensualism, seem to have combined in causing the preference of celibacy over marriage. Patriotism, again, and the sense of civic duty, the most elevated of all social sentiments in the Graeco-Roman civilization, tended, under Christianity, either to expand itself into universal philan thropy or to concentrate itself on the ecclesiastical community. We might further derive from the general spirit of Christian un worldliness that repudiation of the secular modes of conflict, even in a righteous cause, which substituted a passive patience and endurance for the old pagan virtue of courage. Here, how ever, we clearly trace the influence of Christ's express prohi bition of violent resistance to violence, and his inculcation, by example and precept, of a love that was to conquer even natural resentment. An extreme result of this influence is shown in Ter tullian's view, that no Christian could properly hold the office of a secular magistrate in which he would have to doom to death, chains, imprisonment ; but even more sober writers, such as Am brose, extend Christian passivity so far as to preclude self-defence even against a murderous assault. The common sense of Christen dom gradually shook off these extravagances ; but the reluctance to shed blood lingered long, and was hardly extinguished even by the growing horror of heresy. We have a curious relic of this in later times when the heretic was doomed to the stake that he might be punished in some manner "short of bloodshed." 3. It is, however, in the impulse given to practical beneficence in all its forms, by the exaltation of love as the root of all virtues, that the most important influence of Christianity on the particu lars of civilized morality is to be found; although the exact amount of this influence is here somewhat difficult to ascertain, since it merely carries farther a development traceable in the his tory of pagan morality. This development appears when we com pare the different post-Socratic systems of ethics. In Plato's exposition of the different virtues there is no mention whatever of benevolence, although his writings show a keen sense of the importance of friendship as an element of philosophic life, espe cially of the intense personal affection naturally arising between master and disciple. Aristotle goes somewhat further in recogniz ing the moral value of friendship; and though he considers that in its highest form it can be realized only by the fellowship of the wise and good, he yet extends the notion so as to include the domestic affections, and takes notice of the importance of mutual kindness in binding together all human societies. Still in his formal statement of the different virtues, positive beneficence is discernible only under the notion of "liberality." Cicero, on the other hand, in his paraphrase of a Stoic treatise on external duties (De officiis), ranks the rendering of positive services to other men as a chief department of social duty; and the Stoics generally recognized the universal fellowship and natural mutual claims of human beings as such. Indeed, this recognition in later Stoicism is sometimes expressed with so much warmth of feeling as to be hardly distinguishable from Christian philanthropy. Nor was this regard for humanity merely a doctrine of the school. Partly through the influence of Stoic and other Greek philosophy, partly from the natural expansion of human sympathies, the legislation of the empire, during the first three centuries, shows a steady development in the direction of natural justice and humanity; and some similar progress may be traced in the gen eral tone of moral opinion. Still the utmost point that this devel opment reached fell considerably short of the standard of Chris tian charity. Without dwelling on the immense impetus given to the practice of social duty generally by the religion that made beneficence a form of divine service, and identified "piety" with "pity," we have to put down as definite changes introduced by Christianity—(r) the severe condemnation and final suppression of the practice of exposing infants; (2) effective abhorrence of the barbarism of gladiatorial combats; (3) immediate moral miti gation of slavery, and a strong encouragement of emancipation; (4) great extension of the eleemosynary provision made for the sick and the poor. As regards almsgiving, however—the impor tance of which has caused it to usurp, in modern languages, the general name of "charity"—it ought to be observed that Chris tianity merely universalized a duty always inculcated by Judaism.

4. The same may be said of the stricter regulation which Chris tianity enforced on the relations of the sexes ; except so far as the prohibition of divorce is concerned, and the stress laid on "purity of heart" as contrasted with merely outward chastity.

5. Even the peculiarly Christian virtue of humility, which pre sents so striking a contrast to the Greek "highmindedness," was anticipated in the Rabbinic teaching. Its far greater prominence under the new dispensation may be partly referred to the express teaching and example of Christ ; partly, in so far as the virtue is manifested in the renunciation of external rank and dignity, or the glory of merely secular gifts and acquirements, it is one aspect of the unworldliness which we have already noticed ; while the deeper humility that represses the claim of personal merit even in the saint belongs to the strict self-examination, the con tinual sense of imperfection, the utter reliance on strength not his own, which characterize the inner moral life of the Christian.

We have, however, yet to notice the enlargement of the sphere of ethics due to its close connection with theology; for while this added religious force and sanction to ordinary moral obligations, it equally tended to impart a moral aspect to religious belief and worship. "Duty to God" had not been altogether unrecognized by pagan moralists ; but the rather dubious relations of even the more orthodox philosophy to the established polytheism had gen erally prevented them from laying much stress upon it. Again the emphasis laid on inwardness in Christian ethics caused ortho doxy or correctness of religious belief to be regarded as essential to goodness, and heresy as the most fatal of vices, corrupting as it did the very springs of Christian life. To the philosophers (with the single exception of Plato), however, convinced as they were that the multitude must necessarily miss true well-being through their folly and ignorance, it could never occur to guard against these evils by any other method than that of providing philosophic instruction for the few ; whereas the Christian clergy, whose func tion it was to offer truth and eternal life to all mankind, naturally regarded theological misbelief as insidious preventible contagion. Indeed, their sense of its deadliness was so keen that, when they were at length able to control the secular administration, they rapidly overcame their aversion to bloodshed, and initiated that long series of religious persecutions to which we find no parallel in the pre-Christian civilization of Europe.

Lastly, we must observe that, in proportion as the legal concep tion of morality as a code of which the violation deserves super natural punishment predominated over the philosophic view of ethics as the method for attaining natural felicity, the question of man's freedom of will to obey the law necessarily became promi nent. At the same time it cannot be broadly said that Christianity took a decisive side in the metaphysical controversy on free-will and necessity ; since, just as in Greek philosophy the need of main taining freedom as the ground of responsibility clashes with the conviction that no one deliberately chooses his own harm, so in Christian ethics it clashes with the attribution of all true human virtue to supernatural grace, as well as with the belief in divine foreknowledge. All we can say is that in the development of Christian thought the conflict of conceptions was far more pro foundly felt, and far more serious efforts were made to evade or transcend it.

In the preceding account of Christian morality, it has been already indicated that the characteristics delineated did not all exhibit themselves simultaneously to the same extent, or with perfect uniformity throughout the Church. Changes in the exter nal condition of Christianity, the different degrees of civilization in the societies of which it was the dominant religion, and the nat ural process of internal development, continually brought different features into prominence ; while again, the important antagonisms of opinion within Christendom frequently involved ethical issues —even in the Eastern Church—until in the 4th century it began to be absorbed in the labour of a dogmatic construction. Thus, for example, the anti-secular tendencies of the new creed, to which Tertullian (I 6o-2 2o) gave violent and rigid expression, were exaggerated in the Montanist heresy which he ultimately joined; on the other hand, Clement of Alexandria, in opposition to the general tone of his age, maintained the value of pagan philosophy for the development of Christian faith into true knowledge (Gnosis), and the value of the natural development of man through marriage for the normal perfecting of the Chris tian life. So again, there is a marked difference between the writers before Augustine and those that succeeded him in all that concerns the internal conditions of Christian morality. By Justin and other apologists the need of redemption, faith, grace is indeed recognized, but the theological system depending on these notions is not sufficiently developed to come into even apparent antag onism with the freedom of the will. Christianity is for the most part conceived as essentially a proclamation through the Divine Word, to immortal beings gifted with free choice, of the true code of conduct sanctioned by eternal rewards and punishments. This legalism contrasts strikingly with the efforts of pagan philosophy to exhibit virtue as its own reward; and the contrast is tri umphantly pointed out by more than one early Christian writer. It is plain, however, that on this view it was impossible to main tain a difference in kind between Christian and pagan morality , the philosopher's conformity to the rules of chastity and benefi cence was indistinguishable from the saint's. But when this inference was developed in the teaching of Pelagius, it was repudi ated as heretical by the Church, under the powerful leadership of Augustine ; and the doctrine of man's incapacity to obey God's law by his unaided moral energy was pressed to a point at which it was difficult to reconcile it with the freedom of the will. Augustine attempted to Christianize the Platonic list of virtues. This was probably due to the influence of his master, Ambrose, in whose De o fciis ministrarum is found the first at tempt to systematize Christian duties on a Platonic plan. Under the influence of Ambrose and Augustine, the four car dinal virtues furnished a basis on which the systematic ethical theories of subsequent theologians were built. With them the triad of Christian graces, Faith, Hope and Love, and the seven gifts of the Spirit (Isa. xi. 2) were often combined. In antithesis to this list, an enumeration of the "deadly sins" obtained cur rency. These were at first commonly reckoned as eight ; but a preference for mystical numbers characteristic of mediaeval theo logians finally reduced them to seven. The statement of them is variously given—Pride, Avarice, Anger, Gluttony, Unchastity, are found in all the lists; the remaining two (or three) are variously selected from among Envy, Vainglory, and the rather singular sins Gloominess (tristitia) and Languid Indifference (acidia or acedia, from Gr. &KfSta) . These latter notions show plainly, what indeed might be inferred from a study of the list as a whole, that it represents the moral experience of the monastic life, which for some centuries was more and more unquestioningly regarded as in a peculiar sense "religious." It should be observed that the (also Augustinian) distinction between "deadly" and "venial" sins had a technical reference to the quasi-jural ad ministration of ecclesiastical discipline, which grew gradually more organized as the spiritual power of the Church established itself amid the ruins of the Western empire, and slowly developed into the theocracy that almost dominated Europe during the latter part of the middle ages. "Deadly" sins were those for which formal ecclesiastical penance was held to be necessary, in order to save the sinner from eternal damnation; for "venial" sins he might obtain forgiveness, thre'igh prayer, almsgiving and the observance of the regular fasts. This ecclesiastical jurisprudence, and indeed the general relation of the church to the ruder races with which it had to deal, necessarily tended to encourage a somewhat external view of morality.

Aquinas.—Scholastic ethics, like scholastic philosophy, at tained its completest result in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, whose moral philosophy is Aristotelianism with a Neoplatonic tinge, supplemented by a view of Christian dogma derived from Augustine. All action or movement of all things irrational as well as rational is directed towards some end or good—that is, really and ultimately towards God himself, the ground and first cause of all being, and unmoved principle of all movement. This uni versal though unconscious striving after God, since he is essen tially intelligible, exhibits itself in its highest form in rational beings as a desire for knowledge of him ; such knowledge, how ever, is beyond all ordinary exercise of reason, and may be only partially revealed to man here below. Thus the summum bonum for man is objectively God, subjectively the happiness to be de rived from loving vision of His perfections ; although there is a lower kind of happiness to be realized here below in a normal human existence of virtue and friendship, with mind and body sound and whole and properly trained for the needs of life. The higher happiness is given to man by free grace of God ; but it is given to those only whose heart is right, and as a reward of virtuous actions. In his Summa theologiae Aquinas gave a de tailed account of particular duties. This was frequently drawn upon when the quasi-legal treatment of morality came again into prpminence as the philosophic interest of Scholasticism faded in the 14th and 15th centuries. One result of this movement was the development of casuistry (q.v.).

Humanism.—In the 17th century, however, the interest of this quasi-legal treatment of morality gradually faded ; and the ethical studies of educated minds were occupied with the at tempt, renewed after so many centuries, to find an independent philosophical basis for the moral code. The renewal of this at tempt was only indirectly due to the Reformation; it is rather to be connected with the more extreme reaction from the mediae val religion which was partly caused by, partly expressed in, that enthusiastic study of the remains of old pagan culture that spread from Italy over Europe in the I 5th and i6th centuries. To this "humanism" the Reformation seemed at first more hostile than the Roman hierarchy; indeed, the extent to which this latter had allowed itself to become paganized by the Renais sance was one of the points that especially roused the Reformers' indignation. Not the less important is the indirect stimulus given by the Reformation towards the development of a moral philo sophy independent alike of Catholic and Protestant assumptions. Scholasticism, while reviving philosophy as a handmaid to the ology, had metamorphosed its method into one resembling that of its mistress; thus shackling the renascent intellectual activity which it stimulated by the double bondage to Aristotle and to the Church. When the Reformation shook the traditional author ity in one department, the blow was necessarily felt in the other. Not 20 years after Luther's defiance of the pope, the startling thesis "that all that Aristotle taught was false" was prosperously maintained by the youthful Ramus before the university of Paris; and almost contemporaneously the group of remarkable thinkers in Italy who heralded the dawn of modern physical science Cardanus, Telesio, Patrizzi, Campanella, Bruno—began to pro pound their Aristotelian theories of the constitution of the phy sical universe. It was to be foreseen that a similar assertion of independence would make itself heard in ethics also; and, indeed, amid the clash of dogmatic convictions, and the variations of private judgment, it was natural to seek for an ethical method that might claim universal acceptance from all sects.