Chapter 1 - The Cauldron of God's Wrath

Summary

We cannot deal with the civilization even of a single country at a definite period without a preliminary glance at the world-culture upon which it was grafted. Thus the Middle Ages can be rightly understood only as a period of convalescence—slow at best, and with continual relapses— from the worst catastrophe recorded in the whole history of the Western World.

The Roman Empire had begun with benevolent despotism, an active and fairly healthy body: it ended as an unwieldy machine. “Augustus, with his genius, succeeded in restoring not only the State but also the prosperity of the people; Diocletian and Constantine, on the other hand, doubtless against their own will, sacrificed the interests of the people to the salvation and security of the State”; such is the summary of the greatest modern authority on this subject. The Empire was defended no longer by its old citizen armies, but by hirelings recruited mainly from the less settled frontier districts. Finances were disorganized; taxation pressed intolerably upon the middle class, and especially the yeoman-farmers, while multitudes lived upon the dole—Pattern et Circenses. Literature and art showed less and less originality. A period of peace, unexampled in world-history for depth and duration, had not in this case made for higher civilization, by whichever of the current standards we may judge. Crude experience had belied the philosophic ideal. The Higher Pacifism, an active virtue, was too heavily alloyed with that passively defensive mood which claims the same title: War had still her victories, but Peace had not.