Page:The golden days of the early English church from the arrival of Theodore to the death of Bede, volume 1.djvu/22

ness and managed the estates of the Church wisely and righteously. He had high ideals of morals and conduct, combined with courage and energy; he presided over the hierarchy of the Church with a master's skill, administered its eleemosynary functions with a magnificent, if too lavish hand, and was doubtless tempted to do so by the then enormous income of the Holy See. He reformed the Church's ritual and music, and he wrote many able commentaries on the Bible, and some fine sermons marked by a highly mystical exegesis, but in which the essence of personal goodness was largely enforced, and he discussed dogmatic issues within limited conditions with a certain subtlety and imaginative power of his own. Lastly, he had a vigorous Latin style, and, like Erasmus, treated the language as a living one and not merely as a mummified echo of that of Cicero and Horace. These things were all to his credit, and they involved gifts which had become exceedingly rare at the end of the sixth century. On the other hand, he shared the prejudices and the obscurantism of his day. The transference of the capital of the Empire, with the home of the civil administration, the upper law courts, and the civil service of the State, to Constantinople left Italy very poor in men who cultivated literature, art, science, and affairs. The Byzantine reputation for vice and luxury is still with many people its chief title to fame. The closer study devoted to Byzantine history in recent years has shown, however, that under this sybaritic veneer there