§ 18. INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON LEGISLATION. 107
§ 1 8. Influence of Christianity oil Ci/oil Legislation, The
Justinian Code.
Comp. on this subject particularly the works cited at § 13, sub ii, by Rhoeb, Metsbnbtieg, and Troplong ; also Gibbon, chap, xliv (an admirable summary of the Roman law), Milman: Lat. Christianity, vol. I. B. iii. chap. 5, and in part the works of Schmidt and Chastel on the influence of Christianity upon society in the Roman empire, quoted in vol. i. § 86.
While in this way the state secured to the church the welldeserved rights of a legal corporation, the church exerted in turn a most beneficent influence on the state, liberating it by degrees from the power of heathen laws and customs, from the spirit of egotism, revenge, and retaliation, and extending its care beyond mere material prosperity to the higher moral interests of society. In the previous period we observed the contrast between Cliristiaii morality and heathen corruption in the Roman empire.' We are now to see how the principles of Christian morality gained public recognition, and began at least in some degree to rule the civil and political life.
As early as the second century, under the better heathen emperors, and evidently under the indirect, struggling, yet irresistible influence of the Christian s}>irit, legislation took a reformatory, humane turn, which was carried by the Christian emperors as far as it could be carried on the basis of the ancient Grseco-Roman civilization. Now, above all, the principle oi justice and equity^ humanity and love., began to assert itself in the state. For Christianity, with its doctrines of man's likeness to God, of the infinite value of personality, of the original unity of the human race, and of the common redemption through Christ, first biought the universal rights of man to bear in opposition to tlui exclusive national spirit, the heartless selfishness, and the political absolutism of the old world, which harshly separated nations and classes, and re- Bpected man only as a citizen, while at the same time it denied the right of citizenship to the great mass of slaves, foreigners, and barbarians.'
1 Vol. ii. ^g 97-100. 2 Comp. Lactantius : Inst, divin. 1. v. c. 15.
108 THIED PEKIOD. A.D. ^1 1-590.
Christ himself began his reformation with the low *st ordert of the pco])lc, witli fishermen and taxgatherers, with t le poor the lame, the blind, with demoniacs and sufi'erers of every kind, and raised them first to the sense of their dignity and their high destiny. So now the church wrought in the state and through the state for the elevation of the oppressed and the needy, and of those classes which under the reign of heathenism were not reckoned at all in the body politic, but were heartlessly trodden under foot. The reformatory motion was thwarted., it is true, to a considerable extent, by popular custom, which is stronger than law, and by the structure of society in the Roman empire, which was still essentially heatlien and doomed to dissolution. But reform was at last set in motion, and could not be turned back even by the overthrow of the empire ; it propagated itself among the German tribes. And although even in Christian states the old social nmladies are ever breaking forth from corrupt human nature, sometimes with the violence of revolution, Christianity is ever coming in to restrain, to purify, to heal, and to console, curbing the wild passions of tyrants and of populace, vindicating the persecuted, mitigating the horrors of war, and repressing incalculable vice in public and in private life among Christian people. The most cursory comparison of Christendom with the most civilized heathen and Mohammedan countries afiords ample testimony of this.
Here again the .reign of Const antine is a turning point. Though an oriental despot, and but imperfectly possessed with the earnestness of Christian morality, he nevertheless enacted uiany laws, which distinctly breathe the spirit of Christian justice and humanity . the abolition of the punishujent of cmcifixion, the prohibition of gladiatorial games and cruel rites, the discouragement of infanticide, and the en(;ouragement of the emancipation of slaves. Eusebius says he improved most of the old laws or replaced them by new ones.' Ilenceforwai'd
' Vit. Const. 1. iv. c. 26, where tbe most important laws of ConsUmtinc are recapitulated. Even the heathen Libanius (Ba.sil. ii. p. 146) records that under Coik Btantine and his sons legislation was much more favorable to the lower clasees ; though he accounts for this onlv by the personal clemency of the emperors.