The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Эдвард Гиббон
were likewise named Cathari, or the pure, by corruption, Gazari, &c.
Ref. 038
Of the laws, crusade, and persecution against the Albigeois, a just, though general, idea is expressed by Mosheim (p. 477-481). The detail may be found in the ecclesiastical historians, ancient and modern, Catholics and Protestants; and among these Fleury is the most impartial and moderate. [C. Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares, 2 vols., 1849. Rački, Bogomili i Catareni, Agram, 1869. These sectaries begin to appear in southern Gaul about ad 1017. Their chief seat was Toulouse; they were called Albigeois from the town of Albi, and Tisserands because many weavers embraoed the doctrine. For the Ritual of the Albigeois, preserved in a Lyons MS., see Conybeare, Key of Truth, App. vi. Cp. below, Appendix 1.]
Ref. 039
The Acts (Liber Sententiarum) of the Inquisition of Toulouse (ad 1307-1323) have been published by Limborch (Amstelodami, 1692), with a previous History of the Inquisition in general. They deserved a more learned and critical editor. As we must not calumniate even Satan, or the Holy Office, I will observe that, of a list of criminals which fills nineteen folio pages, only fifteen men and four women were delivered to the secular arm. [In an annotation on this note Dr. Smith says: “Dr. Maitland, in his Facts and Documents Relating to the Ancient Albigenses and Waldenses, remarks (p. 217, note) that Gibbon ought to have said thirty-two men and eight women.”]
Ref. 040
The opinions and proceedings of the reformers are exposed in the second part of the general history of Mosheim; but the balance, which he has held with so clear an eye, and so steady an hand, begins to incline in favour of his Lutheran brethren.
Ref. 041
Under Edward VI. our reformation was more bold and perfect: but in the fundamental articles of the church of England a strong and explicit declaration against the real presence was obliterated in the original copy, to please the people, or the Lutherans, or Queen Elizabeth (Burnet’s History of the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 82, 128, 302).
Ref. 042
“Had it not been for such men as Luther and myself,” said the fanatic Whiston to Halley the philosopher, “you would now be kneeling before an image of St. Winifred.”
Ref. 043
The article of Servet in the Dictionnaire Critique of Chauffepié is the best account which I have seen of this shameful transaction. See likewise the Abbé d’Artigny, Nouveaux Mémoires d’Histoire, &c., ii. p. 55-154. [The remarkable theological heresies of Servet were as obnoxious to the Protestants as to the Catholics. For an account of his system see H. Tollin’s Das Lehrsystem Michael Servets, in 3 vols. (1876-8). The documents of the trial of Servet may be conveniently consulted in the edition of Calvin’s works by Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, vol. 8. There is a good account of the transaction in Roget’s Histoire du peuple de Genève, vol. 4 (1877).]
Ref. 044
I am more deeply scandalised at the single execution of Servetus, than at the hecatombs which have blazed in the Auto da Fès of Spain and Portugal. 1. The zeal of Calvin seems to have been envenomed by personal malice, and perhaps envy. He accused his adversary before their common enemies, the judges of Vienna, and betrayed, for his destruction, the sacred trust of a private correspondence. 2. The deed of cruelty was not varnished by the pretence of danger to the church or state. In his passage through Geneva, Servetus was an harmless stranger, who neither preached, nor printed, nor made proselytes. 3. A Catholic inquisitor yields the same obedience which he requires, but Calvin violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by: a rule which I read in a moral treatise of Isocrates (in Nicole, tom. i. p. 93, edit. Battie), four hundred years before the publication of the gospel. Ἃ πάσχοντες ὑϕ’ ἐτέρων ὀργίζεσθε, ταυ̑τα τοι̑ς ἄλλοις μὴ ποιει̑τε. [The part taken by Calvin in the transaction seems to have been chiefly the furnishing of the documents on which Servetus was condemned.]
Ref. 045
See Burnet, vol. ii. p. 84-86. The sense and humanity of the young king were oppressed by the authority of the primate.
Ref. 046
Erasmus may be considered as the father of rational theology. After a slumber of an hundred years, it was revived by the Arminians of Holland, Grotius, Limborch, and Le Clerc; in England by Chillingworth, the latitudinarians of Cambridge (Burnet, Hist. of own Times, vol. i. p. 261-268, octavo edition), Tillotson, Clarke, Hoadley, &c.
Ref. 047
I am sorry to observe that the three writers of the last age, by whom the rights of toleration have been so nobly defended, Bayle, Leibnitz, and Locke, are all laymen and philosophers.
Ref. 048
See the excellent chapter of Sir William Temple on the Religion of the United Provinces. I am not satisfied with Grotius (de Rebus Belgicis, Annal. l. i. p. 13, 14, edit. in 12mo), who improves the Imperial laws of persecution, and only condemns the bloody tribunal of the inquisition.
Ref. 049
Sir Walter Blackstone (Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 33, 54) explains the law of England as it was fixed at the Revolution. The exceptions of Papists, and of those who deny the Trinity, would still leave a tolerable scope for persecution, if the national spirit were not more effectual than an hundred statutes.
Ref. 050
I shall recommend to public animadversion two passages in Dr. Priestly, which betray the ultimate tendency of his opinions. At the first of these (Hist. of the Corruptions of Christianity, vol. i. p. 275, 276) the priest, at the second (vol. ii. p. 484) the magistrate, may tremble!
CHAPTER LV
The Bulgarians — Origin, Migrations, and Settlement of the Hungarians — Their inroads in the East and West — The monarchy of Russia — Geography and Trade — Wars of the Russians against the Greek Empire — Conversion of the Barbarians
Under the reign of Constantine the grandson of Heraclius, the ancient barrier of the Danube, so often violated and so often restored, was irretrievably swept away by a new deluge of Barbarians. Their progress was favoured by the caliphs, their unknown and accidental auxiliaries: the Roman legions were occupied in Asia; and, after the loss of Syria, Egypt, and Africa, the Cæsars were twice reduced to the danger and disgrace of defending their capital against the Saracens. If, in the account of this interesting people, I have deviated from the strict and original line of my undertaking, the merit of the subject will hide my transgression or solicit my excuse. In the East, in the West, in war, in religion, in science, in their prosperity, and in their decay, the Arabians press themselves on our curiosity: the first overthrow of the church and empire of the Greeks may be imputed to their arms; and the disciples of Mahomet still hold the civil and religious sceptre of the Oriental world. But the same labour would be unworthily bestowed on the swarms of savages who, between the seventh and the twelfth century, descended from the plains of Scythia, in transient inroad or perpetual emigration. Ref. 051 Their names are uncouth, their origins doubtful, their actions obscure, their superstition was blind, their valour brutal, and the uniformity of their public and private lives was neither softened by innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty of the Byzantine throne repelled and survived their disorderly attacks; the greater part of these Barbarians has disappeared without leaving any memorial of their existence, and the despicable remnant continues, and may long continue, to groan under the dominion of a foreign tyrant. From the antiquities of, I. Bulgarians, II. Hungarians, and III. Russians, I shall content myself with selecting such facts as yet deserve to be remembered. The conquests of