The action of holiness in history (2)

By Dom Prosper Guéranger   |   9 October 2024

This article follows The action of holiness in history (1)

Christian history does not limit itself merely to pointing out miraculous facts as clues of humanity’s supernatural vocation; it is also important to study and point out the manifestations — more or less frequent, more or less rare — of sanctity throughout the centuries. God, in his counsels of justice and mercy, gives and takes away saints in different eras, so that, if we can speak thus, the thermometer of holiness is to be consulted if one wishes to take account of the more or less normal condition of a period of time or of a society. The saints are not only destined to feature on the calendar; they have an effect which is sometimes hidden, when it comes to intercession and expiation, but which is often apparent and efficacious long after their earthly life has ended. I am not speaking of the martyrs, to whom we owe the preservation of the faith, and one of the principal arguments on which our belief rests; the importance of their role in the history of the world is all too evident; but we cannot ignore the fact that at the end of the persecution of Diocletian, in the midst of the cataclysm of heresies which failed to submerge the barque of the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries, on the eve of the pagan-barbarian invasions, Christianity — and, by it, society — was saved by the saints. Bishops, doctors, monks, consecrated virgins; what a list this age, which was like the second battlefield of the Church, offers us! Can the historian be silent in the presence of this incomparable phenomenon?

Without any doubt, he cannot dispense himself from naming an Athanasius, a Basil, an Ambrose; because these figures have, as they say, a historic role; but, however great these may be, they are far from representing everything effective in the visible order of this world that holiness produced during that period. The role of Saint Augustine, for example, wasn’t very “historic”; yet what man has had a greater influence on his age and on all those which have followed it? It would take too long to recount in detail how indebted the rest of Christendom is to these friends of God: a Saint Gregory Nazianzen, a Saint Hilary, a Saint Martin, a Saint John Chrysostom, a Saint Jerome, a Saint Cyril of Alexandria, a Saint Leo. And let us not stop at seeing in them great geniuses and great men. Undoubtedly, great geniuses and great men of orthodoxy are a gift of God; Bossuet and Fenelon in the seventeenth century are a gift of God; but when holiness is joined to genius, the action is something else entirely. The man of genius charms us; the saint enthrals us; we admire the great man, but the names alone of the saints — indeed, their very footsteps — move us: their memory makes us beat our breast, even after they have departed from this world.

Let us not believe that we have found the secret of the influence of the saints in the fourth and fifth centuries in the more or less brilliant reputation that their knowledge and eloquence acquired for them, nor even in the rank which the majority of those whom I have mentioned occupied in the ecclesiastical order. The people revered a different grandeur in them: Valens trembled before Basil, and Theodosius before Saint Ambrose, for a reason completely other than their “personal merit”, to use today’s language. It is God — God Himself — Whom one feels in the saints; and this is why one is so powerless to resist them. Everyone knew that these men, who then formed the rampart of the Church, of which they were at the same time the light and glory, were of the same family as those heroes of the desert whose names and works were universally known; everyone knew that the majority of them had taken the habit before receiving the mitre. From West as from East, the faithful set out in droves to visit the deserts of Egypt and Syria, in order to contemplate and, if possible, to hear the Anthonies, the Pachomiuses, the Hilarions, the Macariuses; and, on returning to their villages, they rejoiced to find the sublime types of these men in the pastors charged with sanctifying them. No, this cult of holiness, justified by so many examples, cannot be passed over in silence in the accounts of the age which followed the peace of the Church; it attests too clearly to the presence and action of the saints during these centuries, and thereby to the kind of supernatural assistance which God allotted to Christian society at that time.

The barbarian invasion, with all the misfortunes that accompanied it, would provide the historian with the opportunity to point out another role of holiness in the midst of these unprecedented disasters. The tumultuous hordes, rushing against the empire, encountered saints everywhere, and the saints were, to them, like a dike repelling the flood; holy bishops who stopped fierce chieftains in their course, holy pastors who saved their flock by giving themselves up to the sword; holy monks whose majestic simplicity disarmed the proud conquerors who had at first thought only of immolating them; holy virgins who, like Saint Genevieve, heartened cities and turned back God’s scourges by their prayers. If one only studies the harsh period of the invasion in detail, one sees on all sides this astonishing phenomenon and becomes convinced that it is a point of historical truth to tell of these marvels and to admit that the only obstacle which drove back the barbarians — the only thing they respected — was holiness. Saint Augustine was lying on his deathbed in Hippo when the Vandals came to besiege the city: they held off making the assault until the admirable bishop had rendered his soul to God. It would be sad if the barbarians were shown to be superior to the Christians of our day in their appreciation of this heavenly element, which is never entirely lacking in the Church but which shows itself with more or less abundance, according to the needs of peoples and whether justice or mercy is prevailing in the counsels of God.

The Christian historian cannot forget either the works or the rule of the great Patriarch of western monasticism, to whom honour is given for having prepared the salvation of European Christianity; or that pleiad of holy bishops who shone in the sixth and seventh centuries, and who, by their councils and religious foundations, built, among other things, the kingdom of France “as bees make a hive”, after the expression of Edward Gibbon. Let the historian not forget to state that the components of our monarchies, by their hundreds, are on our altars.

Nor will he omit to highlight the holy Pontiffs of the Apostolic See, a Saint Gregory the Great, whose virtues ruled and governed both West and East with such meekness; a Saint Gregory II, the saviour of Italy; a Saint Zachary, the oracle of the Frankish nation; a Saint Nicholas I, doing so much, with such generosity, to snatch the eastern empire from its ruin, by keeping it in union with the true faith. The historian will pursue those heroic apostles, dispatched by western monasticism towards the northern regions — not one of whom was not a saint; not a single one whose fruitful apostolate did not succeed through holiness.

Note:

1. Recent historians, however, think that the Vandals did not make an assault, but discussed terms after a siege of fourteen months and that the inhabitants were saved (Gautier, Genséric, roi des Vandales).

This series continues next week with “The action of holiness in history (3)”

The Christian Sense of history is available to buy on the Voice of Family website.