the stage, and
the spectators enjoyed seeing a man killed or cruelly lacerated. All the
earth was ransacked for beasts. All the senses were outraged by
indecencies. Nevertheless, on any day on which performances occurred the
churches were empty. The Christians, as we see, lived in the mores of
their age, and all these things had centuries of tradition behind them.
Salvianus and other ecclesiastics were not heeded because they derived
their standards from Christian dogmas, and those standards were far
removed from the current mores. The church was forced to compromise. It
allowed feasts, fairs, and games near the churches. It converted heathen
festivals, with processions, lights, and garlands, into Christian
festivals and usages. It borrowed the attractions of the worship of
Isis, Mithra, and Cybele, and adopted all the means of suggestion
employed in their rites. The great ecclesiastics were divided as to this
policy. Augustine put an end, so far as his jurisdiction went, to the
feasts in the churches in honor of martyrs, with singing, dancing, and
drinking, although they were very popular.[2061] He complained earnestly
of the indecency of the exhibitions of his time.[2062] "Especially at
the festivals in honor of the heathen gods, and in civil celebrations,
the ancient religious practices were renewed, not infrequently
degenerating into shameless immorality, yet protecting civil usages. The
patriot, the philosopher, the skeptic, and the pious man had to make a
capitulation with those ancient religious practices, for they were not,
in truth, emancipated from them at heart, and they did not know of
anything better to replace what those practices did for society."[2063]
So the philosopher, patriot, skeptic, and pious man always have to
compromise with the ancient and existing mores. Salvianus[2064] says
that poverty caused the great exhibitions to cease. It was advancing
poverty and misery which put an end to all the old forms of amusement.
It was not the church or Christianity. The Christian rites and
festivals alone remained. Modern Spanish bullfights appear to be a
survival of the old sports of the arena. Bullfights were introduced into
Italy in the fourteenth century. They were general in the fifteenth
century. The Aragonese brought them to Naples and the Borgias to
Rome.[2065] We hear of a kind of gladiatorial exhibition at some
festivals in India early in the nineteenth century.[2066] There were
gladiators also in Ja