. He forbade the study of the classics,
mutilated statues, and destroyed temples. He hated the very relics of
classical genius; pursued with vindictive fanaticism the writings of
Livy, against whom he was specially excited. It has truly been said that
"he was as inveterate an enemy to learning as ever lived;" that "no
lucid ray ever beamed on his superstitious soul." He boasted that his
own works were written without regard to the rules of grammar, and
censured the crime of a priest who had taught that subject. It was his
aim to substitute for the heathen writings others which he thought less
dangerous to orthodoxy; and so well did he succeed in rooting out of
Italy her illustrious pagan authors, that when one of his successors,
Paul I., sent to Pepin of France "what books he could find," they were
"an antiphonal, a grammar, and the works of Dionysius the Areopagite."
He was the very incarnation of the Byzantine principle of ignorance.

[Sidenote: Gradual preparation for the debasement of religion.]

[Sidenote: Corruption of Christianity.]

If thus the misfortunes that had fallen on Italy had given her a base
population, whose wants could only be met by a paganized religion, the
more fortunate classes all over the empire had long been tending in the
same direction. Whoever will examine the progress of Christian society
from the earlier ages, will find that there could be no other result
than a repudiation of solid learning and an alliance with art. We have
only to compare the poverty and plainness of the first disciples with
the extravagance reached in a few generations. Cyprian complains of the
covetousness, pride, luxury, and worldly-mindedness of Christians, even
of the clergy and confessors. Some made no scruple to contract matrimony
with heathens. Clement of Alexandria bitterly inveighs against "the
vices of an opulent and luxurious Christian community--splendid dresses,
gold and silver vessels, rich banquets, gilded litters and chariots, and
private baths. The ladies kept Indian birds, Median peacocks, monkeys,
and Maltese dogs, instead of maintaining widows and orphans; the men had
multitudes of slaves." The dipping three times at baptism, the tasting
of honey and milk, the oblations for the dead, the signing of the cross
on the forehead on putting on the clothes or the shoes, or lighting a
candle, which Tertullian imputes to tradition without the authority of
Scripture, foreshadowed a thousand pagan observances