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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.^[1] 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.^[2] At length the night of super-*

[Footnote: For a good summary of the peaceful settlement of barbarians in the

Roman territories see Bury, op. cit., i, p. 31.]*

↑ See Gieseler (op. cit., i, 99), where the assimilation of heathenism is well summarized and instanced. Augustine (c. 400) draws a striking picture of the impostors, who, in the garb of monks, tramped the country selling sham relics, phylacteries, etc.; De Op. Monach., 28, 31, etc.; Epist. ad Jan. (118). Jerome, in his diatribe against Vigilantius, unwittingly makes a display of the gross superstition which that earnest reformer sought to suppress. Bayle's article on Vigilantius (Dictionnaire, etc.) is a full and interesting account of the subject, but there is more still in Gilly's V. and his Times, Lond., 1844.
↑ The first victims of ecclesiastical rancour were the Priscillianists, who arose in Spain about 380. They were tainted with Manichaeism, and two bishops persuaded the tyrant of Gaul, Maximus, to put several of them to death in 385. Generally the Fathers of the Church were shocked at this execution, but the utility of subjecting heretics to the capital penalty was soon perceived and the practice thenceforward became an intrinsic part of Christian discipline. The result is well known to students of Church history and the religious wars waged against the Paulicians, Albigenses, Huguenots, etc., and the horrors of the Inquisi-*

[1] See Gieseler (op. cit., i, 99), where the assimilation of heathenism is well summarized and instanced. Augustine (c. 400) draws a striking picture of the impostors, who, in the garb of monks, tramped the country selling sham relics, phylacteries, etc.; De Op. Monach., 28, 31, etc.; Epist. ad Jan. (118). Jerome, in his diatribe against Vigilantius, unwittingly makes a display of the gross superstition which that earnest reformer sought to suppress. Bayle's article on Vigilantius (Dictionnaire, etc.) is a full and interesting account of the subject, but there is more still in Gilly's V. and his Times, Lond., 1844.

[2] The first victims of ecclesiastical rancour were the Priscillianists, who arose in Spain about 380. They were tainted with Manichaeism, and two bishops persuaded the tyrant of Gaul, Maximus, to put several of them to death in 385. Generally the Fathers of the Church were shocked at this execution, but the utility of subjecting heretics to the capital penalty was soon perceived and the practice thenceforward became an intrinsic part of Christian discipline. The result is well known to students of Church history and the religious wars waged against the Paulicians, Albigenses, Huguenots, etc., and the horrors of the Inquisi-*

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