Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/318

 The condition of the proletariat was not elevated by the diffusion of the Gospel after their wholesale acceptance of it had been assured by coercion. Whatever ethical purity may have adorned the lives of the first converts, Christianity as an established religion was not less of a grovelling superstition than Paganism in its worst forms. The worship of martyrs, of saints, the factitious miracles wrought at their graves, the veneration of their relics and images, were but a travesty of polytheism under another name without the saving graces of the old belief. A large section of the community were encouraged to fritter away their lives in the sloth of the cloister; and the ecclesiastical murder, disguised under the charge of heresy, of opponents who dared to think and speak became a social terror in grim contrast with the easy tolerance of Pagan times. At length the night of super-*

Roman territories see Bury, op. cit., i, p. 31.]*
 * [Footnote: For a good summary of the peaceful settlement of barbarians in the