Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/145

 THE CITY OF GOD 109 over thirty years' duration. In the East itself, moreover, Christian Egypt was already tending toward the formation of a distinct Coptic Church, and the Nestorians, treated as heretics in the Empire, built up a strong church of their fown in the Persian Kingdom, whence they were soon to spread as missionaries to the Far East. Meanwhile there had ceased to be an emperor in the West, and the pope was freed from the danger that a ruler at Rome might interfere with his ecclesiastical D , , t-» • *» Papacy and supremacy as the Byzantine emperor often did barbarians in the case of the Patriarch of Constantinople. in the West The barbarian kings in Italy, Odoacer and Theodoric, had little desire to interfere in ecclesiastical matters; and the Germans generally were to prove docile to the dictates of the Western Church. For the time being, however, the break-up
 * >f 1 he Roman Empire and the war and disorder separated

the Western churches outside of Italy from papal influence. The other-worldliness of Christianity has already been emphasized. There are many passages of Scripture which have led men to hate their bodies, to withdraw Growth of from the world, to devote themselves to the con- asceticism templative life, and to exercise their souls in holiness. But we do not hear much of Christian hermits and monks until the close of the third century. Martyrs had been the heroes Df the early Church ; but as the chance of winning an immor- tal crown by being thrown to wild beasts ceased with impe- rial toleration and recognition of Christianity, ascetics came to be considered the holiest Christians. During the fourth md fifth centuries every one was reading with awe and ad- miration the Lives of St. Antony and St. Martin of Tours, ind many were fired with the desire to imitate their self- renunciation and austerities, and with the hope to triumph like them over the flesh and the Devil and to work miracles. Hie early Christian communities had been composed largely
 * >f those whose ordinary worldly life was hard enough, and

whose secret meetings and communistic views shut them off sufficiently from the world. But when Christianity became the state religion and the majority of the population became