A Short History of England | Page 5

and
equal slaves, it was only the slow growth of the power of the Church at
the expense of the power of the Empire. Now it is important to grasp
that the great exception to equality, the institution of Slavery, was
slowly modified by both causes. It was weakened both by the
weakening of the Empire and by the strengthening of the Church.
Slavery was for the Church not a difficulty of doctrine, but a strain on
the imagination. Aristotle and the pagan sages who had defined the
servile or "useful" arts, had regarded the slave as a tool, an axe to cut
wood or whatever wanted cutting. The Church did not denounce the
cutting; but she felt as if she was cutting glass with a diamond. She was
haunted by the memory that the diamond is so much more precious
than the glass. So Christianity could not settle down into the pagan
simplicity that the man was made for the work, when the work was so
much less immortally momentous than the man. At about this stage of a

history of England there is generally told the anecdote of a pun of
Gregory the Great; and this is perhaps the true point of it. By the
Roman theory the barbarian bondmen were meant to be useful. The
saint's mysticism was moved at finding them ornamental; and "Non
Angli sed Angeli" meant more nearly "Not slaves, but souls." It is to
the point, in passing, to note that in the modern country most
collectively Christian, Russia, the serfs were always referred to as
"souls." The great Pope's phrase, hackneyed as it is, is perhaps the first
glimpse of the golden halos in the best Christian Art. Thus the Church,
with whatever other faults, worked of her own nature towards greater
social equality; and it is a historical error to suppose that the Church
hierarchy worked with aristocracies, or was of a kind with them. It was
an inversion of aristocracy; in the ideal of it, at least, the last were to be
first. The Irish bull that "One man is as good as another and a great deal
better" contains a truth, like many contradictions; a truth that was the
link between Christianity and citizenship. Alone of all superiors, the
saint does not depress the human dignity of others. He is not conscious
of his superiority to them; but only more conscious of his inferiority
than they are.
But while a million little priests and monks like mice were already
nibbling at the bonds of the ancient servitude, another process was
going on, which has here been called the weakening of the Empire. It is
a process which is to this day very difficult to explain. But it affected
all the institutions of all the provinces, especially the institution of
Slavery. But of all the provinces its effect was heaviest in Britain,
which lay on or beyond the borders. The case of Britain, however,
cannot possibly be considered alone. The first half of English history
has been made quite unmeaning in the schools by the attempt to tell it
without reference to that corporate Christendom in which it took part
and pride. I fully accept the truth in Mr. Kipling's question of "What
can they know of England who only England know?" and merely differ
from the view that they will best broaden their minds by the study of
Wagga-Wagga and Timbuctoo. It is therefore necessary, though very
difficult, to frame in few words some idea of what happened to the
whole European race.

Rome itself, which had made all that strong world, was the weakest
thing in it. The centre had been growing fainter and fainter, and now
the centre disappeared. Rome had as much freed the world as ruled it,
and now she could rule no more. Save for the presence of the Pope and
his constantly increasing supernatural prestige, the eternal city became
like one of her own provincial towns. A loose localism was the result
rather than any conscious intellectual mutiny. There was anarchy, but
there was no rebellion. For rebellion must have a principle, and
therefore (for those who can think) an authority. Gibbon called his
great pageant of prose "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
The Empire did decline, but it did not fall. It remains to this hour.
By a process very much more indirect even than that of the Church, this
decentralization and drift also worked against the slave-state of
antiquity. The localism did indeed produce that choice of territorial
chieftains which came to be called Feudalism, and of which we shall
speak later. But the direct possession of man by man the same localism
tended to destroy; though this negative influence upon it bears no kind
of proportion to the positive