than was fashionable at the time. Clerical vestments were developed from two pieces of ancient Roman dress - the tunic and the toga. Thus the clergy were gradually separated from the people, or laity, by differences in dress, by their celibate lives, and by their abstention from worldly occupations.

While the Church was perfecting her organization, she was also elaborating her doctrines. Theologians engaged in many controversies upon such subjects as the connection

Heresies

of Christ with God and the nature of the Trinity. In order to obtain an authoritative expression of Christian opinion, councils of the higher clergy were held, at which the opposing views were debated and a decision was reached. The Council of Nicæa, which condemned Arianism, formed the first, and one of the most important, of these general gatherings of the Church. After the Church had once expressed itself on any matter of Christian belief, it was regarded as unlawful to maintain a contrary opinion. Those who did so were called heretics, and their teachings, heresies. The emperor Theodosius, whose severe laws finally shattered the ancient paganism,2 devoted even more attention to stamping out heresies among his Christian subjects. He prohibited meetings of heretics, burned their books, and threatened them with death if they persisted in their peculiar doctrines. During his reign a Spanish bishop and six of his partisans were executed for holding unorthodox beliefs. This was the beginning of the persecutions for heresy. As soon as Christianity had triumphed in the Roman Empire, thus becoming the religion of the rich and powerful as well as the religion of the poor and lowly, more attention Worship was devoted to the conduct of worship. Magnificent church buildings were often erected. Their architects seem to have followed as models the basilicas, or public halls, which formed so familiar a sight in Roman cities.3 Church interiors were adorned with paintings, mosaic pictures, images of saints and martyrs, and the figure of the cross. Lighted candles on the altars and the burning of fragrant incense lent an additional impressiveness to worship. Beautiful prayers 2 See page 236.

1 See page 258.

See page 284.

and hymns were composed. Some of the early Christian hymns, such as the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum Laudamus, are still sung in our churches. Organs did not come into use until the seventh century, and then only in the West, but church bells, summoning the worshiper to divine service, early became attached to Christian edifices.

RELIGIOUS MUSIC

From a window of the cathedral of Bourges, a city in central France. Shows a pipe organ

on the Lord's Day, but otherwise did not rigidly and chimes. abstain from worldly. business and amusements. churches, and especially in the East, was strong enough to secure an additional observance of Saturday as a weekly festival. Saturday long continued to be marked by religious assemblies and feasting, though not by any compulsory cessation of the ordinary occupations. During the fourth century Sunday, as the Lord's Day was now generally called, came more and more to be kept as a day of obligatory rest. Constantine's Sunday law 2 formed the first of a long series of imperial edicts imposing the observance of that day as a legal duty. In this manner Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath on the seventh day of the week, was dedicated wholly to the exercises of religion.

The Jewish element in some

The great yearly festivals of the Church gradually took shape during the early Christian centuries. The most important

1 John, xx, 1, 19; compare 1 Corinthians, xvi, 2.

2 See page 235 and note 1.

anniversary to be observed was Easter, in memory of the resurrection of Christ. A period of fasting (Lent),

Festivals

which finally lasted forty days, preceded the festival. Whitsunday, or Pentecost, was celebrated on the fiftieth day after Easter. Two other festivals of later adoption were Christmas, the celebration of which was finally assigned to the 25th of December,2 and Epiphany (January 6), commemorating the baptism of Christ. In course of time many other feasts and fasts, together with numerous saints' days, were added to the calendar of the Christian Year."

Christianity

121. Eastern Christianity

By the time of Constantine, Christianity had spread widely throughout the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Asia Minor Expansion of was then largely Christian. Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, and Greece were all ecclesiastical provin the East inces with their own metropolitans. Many Christians were found in Syria and Egypt. Churches also existed in Mesopotamia and Arabia, and even beyond the boundaries of the empire in Armenia and Persia. Between the time of Constantine and that of Justinian, Christianity continued to expand in the East, until the gospel had been carried to such distant regions as Abyssinia and India.

Union of
Church and
State

Most of the Christian communities in the Orient owed allegiance to the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. The Roman emperor, however, was the supreme religious authority in the East. He felt it as much his duty to maintain the doctrines and organization of Christianity as to preserve the imperial dominions against foreign foes. Since he presided over the Church, there could be no real independence for its officers. Bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs were in every respect subordinate to his will. This union of Church and State formed one of the most characteristic features of Christianity in the East.

1 See Acts, ii, 1–4.

See page 229, note 1.

Eastern Christians, far more than those in the West, devoted themselves to theological speculations. Constantinople and the great Hellenistic Theological

cities of Antioch and disputes; Alexandria contained

heresies

many learned scholars who had prolonged and heated arguments over subtle questions of belief. After the Arian controversy had been settled in the fourth century, other disputes concerning the true nature of Christ broke out. These gave rise to many heresies.

The heresy known as Nestorianism, from Nestorius, a patriarch of Constantinople, spread widely in the East.

Nestorianism

Nestorian missionaries even penetrated to India, China, and Mongolia. The churches which they established were numerous and influential during the Middle Ages, but since then most of them

.

have been destroyed by the Moham- THE NESTORIAN MONUMENT

medans. Members of this sect are still to be found, however, in eastern lands.1

After the formation of the Nestorian and other heretical sects, the orthodox faith was preserved in the East only by the Greeks of Asia Minor and

Orthodoxy

Evidence of Nestorian missions in

China is afforded by the famous monument at Chang'an, province of Shensi. The stone which was set

up in 781 A.D., commemorates by an inscription in Chinese characters and

the figure of a cross the introduction

of Christianity into northwestern

China. A replica of the Nestorian monument was taken to the United States in 1908 A.D. and was de

Europe. The Greek Church, which posited in the Metropolitan Museum calls itself the "Holy Orthodox

Church," for a time remained in unity with the Roman Church

1 In modern India (Malabar) there are no less than 400,000 Syrian Christians who owe their religion to Nestorian missionaries.

in the West. The final separation of these two churches occurred in the eleventh century.1

122. Western Christianity: Rise of the Papacy Christianity in the West presented two sharp contrasts to eastern Christianity. In the first place, the great heresies which divided the East scarcely affected the West. The Papacy In the second place, no union of Church and State existed among western Christians. Instead of acknowledging

PAPAL ARMS According to the well-known passage in Matthew (xvi, 19), Christ gave to St. Peter the "keys of the kingdom of heaven," with the power "to bind and to loose." These keys are always represented in the papal arms, together with the tiara or headdress, worn by the popes on certain

occasions.

the religious supremacy of the emperor at Constantinople, they yielded obedience to the bishop of Rome, the head of the Roman Church. He is known to us as the pope, and his office is called the Papacy. We shall now inquire how the popes secured their unchallenged authority over western Christendom.

Rome an
apostolic
church

A church in Rome must have been established at an early date, for it was to Roman Christians that St. Paul addressed one of the Epistles now preserved in the New Testament. St. Paul visited Rome, as we know from the Acts of the Apostles, and there he is said to have suffered martyrdom. Christian tradition, very ancient and very generally received, declares that St. Peter also labored in Rome, where he met a martyr's death, perhaps during the reign of the emperor Nero. To the early Christians, therefore, the Roman Church must have seemed in the highest degree sacred, for it had been founded by the two greatest apostles and had been nourished by their blood.

1 See page 362.