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MIDDLE EAST TODAY

Leaving the Muslim

Brotherhood
Self, Society and the State

Mustafa Menshawy
 Middle East Today

Series Editors
Fawaz A. Gerges
Department of International Relations
London School of Economics
London, UK

Nader Hashemi
Center for Middle East Studies
Josef Korbel School of International Studies
University of Denver
Denver, CO, USA
The Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, and
the US invasion and occupation of Iraq have dramatically altered the
geopolitical landscape of the contemporary Middle East. The Arab
Spring uprisings have complicated this picture. This series puts forward
a critical body of first-rate scholarship that reflects the current political
and social realities of the region, focusing on original research about
contentious politics and social movements; political institutions; the role
played by non-governmental organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah,
and the Muslim Brotherhood; and the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Other
themes of interest include Iran and Turkey as emerging pre-eminent
powers in the region, the former an ‘Islamic Republic’ and the latter an
emerging democracy currently governed by a party with Islamic roots;
the Gulf monarchies, their petrol economies and regional ambitions;
potential problems of nuclear proliferation in the region; and the chal-
lenges confronting the United States, Europe, and the United Nations in
the greater Middle East. The focus of the series is on general topics such
as social turmoil, war and revolution, international relations, occupation,
radicalism, democracy, human rights, and Islam as a political force in the
context of the modern Middle East.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14803
 Mustafa Menshawy

Leaving the Muslim

Brotherhood
Self, Society and the State
Mustafa Menshawy
Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
Doha, Qatar

Middle East Today

ISBN 978-3-030-27859-5 ISBN 978-3-030-27860-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27860-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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 Acknowledgements

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank Professor Fawaz

Gerges, of the London School of Economics, who played a pivotal
role in helping me convert the idea for this book into reality. Professor
Gerges, one of the world’s leading authorities on the Middle East, was
incredibly generous with his time, providing input and asking ques-
tions that were vital. I am eternally grateful for him being an inspiration.
Dr. Khalil Al-Anani, the chair of Politics and International Relations
Program at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, helped in mak-
ing this book possible. He forced me to take into consideration certain
nuances I might have overlooked otherwise and provided critical com-
ments on various iterations of the draft manuscript.
After a long conversation with Professor Nathan Brown, at George
Washington University, I felt my ideas were massively refined. I bene-
fitted greatly from his comments and constructive criticism. The final
product was improved as I meticulously tried to grapple with suggestions
coming from Dr. Erika Biagini of the School of Law and Government
at the Dublin City University, Professor Lawrence Pintak who is the
founding dean of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication
at Washington State University (2009–2016), and Dr. Dalia Abdelhady
at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies in Lund University, Lund,
Sweden. I appreciate the support of Dr. Diala Hawi, the chair of
Psychology Program at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Dr.
Hawi suggested literature to read and gave her valuable comments on
Chapter 2 on the ‘affective disengagement’ stage of the exit process.

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Dr. Eid Mohamed of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and the
University of Guelph allowed me to present my rough thoughts in front
of scholars and students at one of the seminars which he kindly organ-
ized in 2017. My friend Hossam El-Sayyed was so generous to read all
of the draft manuscript tirelessly. I am the fortunate recipient of great
support from him as a mentor and I owe him a huge debt of gratitude as
a specialist on the Brotherhood. Thanks are extended to Dr. Mahmoud
El-Tahawy who also read different drafts of the manuscript and offered
his valuable thoughts. Professor Dibyesh Anand and Dr. Raouf Tajvidi
of the University of Westminster, London, believed in me and offered
motivation and immense knowledge. Professor Abdelwahab El-Effendi
and Dr. Mohamad Hamas Elmasry, Raed Habayeb, Eric Faust, and Amal
Khayat from the Doha Institute supported me and made available all
facilities that have made any delay in completing the manuscript simply
unjustifiable. I cannot forget the massive support of my friend Dr. Emad
Abdel-Latif, who moved from Lancaster University to Qatar University
without losing the passion of tracing the interplay between language and
politics in the Arab region. There are many other people whom I must
acknowledge for their support of this project, including Professor Nabil
Khattab at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. His input to develop
my career and life is invaluable, and his support constant.
I thank my assistants who helped me ensure the manuscript was up
to date and correctly referenced according to Palgrave’s designated
style: Jonathan Miseroy and Yasser Al-Wasabi were indispensable. The
list includes Rababe Kardellass, Yousra Sabri, Mohamed Al-Agha, Issa
Youssouf, Zainab Hajjar, Lahcen Sakour, Mohamed Meska, Oumnia
Rais, Joseph Devine and Noureddine Radouai. Mahmoud Sha’ban,
a prolific journalist and expert on the Brotherhood, was patient with
my repeated questions during my visits to Turkey on a regular basis.
Thanks extend to Ahmed Mohsen for networking and good manners
while introducing me to many Brotherhood exiters in Qatar and Turkey.
Ahmed Nazily played a major role in getting her, as he accepted to meet
every time I had questions without answers. Abdel-Rahman Youssef also
made it happen with all fruitful discussion with him in the initial stage of
the project. Thanks to everyone on the Palgrave team who helped me so
much. Special thanks to Alina Yurova, John Stegner, and Mary Fata for
being patient. Special thanks to the fully diligent and enthusiastic Mary
who was a key part of my getting there.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

I owe much to Zeynep for coping with working on weekends and

for understanding my whimsical shifts in mood correlating with shifts
at levels of producing this manuscript. In the long hours spent in the
office working on one single project, or one single thought, I missed the
cosy atmospherics of sharing simpler and more interesting thoughts with
Emir. As Bilal joined us at the end of this second book of mine, exactly
as Emir did at the end of my first book (a random coincidence!), I am
grateful to him as well. Finally, I express appreciation for any individual
who did not question the wisdom of my academic pursuits.
 A Note on Transliteration

The study follows a simplified form adopted by the International Journal

of the Middle East Studies (IJMES). The letter ayn is transliterated as
[’]. However, hamza, the Arabic alphabet letter representing the glot-
tal stop, is not transliterated but represented by an [a], for the sake of
convenience for non-specialists. The study uses [al] as a prefix in words
referring to non- humans and [el] to humans.

ix
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Affective Disengagement 27

3 Ideological Disengagement 79

4 Political Disengagement: Exiting the Brotherhood

in 2011 and Afterwards 121

5 Pre-2011 Disengagement: A Comparative Analysis

of Change and Continuity 167

6 Conclusion 189

Appendix 197

Index 201

xi
 List of Tables

Table A.1 Interviewees who are ex-members of the Brotherhood 197

Table A.2 The profession of interviewees conducted in Egypt,
Turkey, the UK, and Qatar 198
Table A.3 Duration of staying as a member inside the Muslim
Brotherhood 198
Table A.4 The time of joining the Muslim Brotherhood
(divided by decades) 198
Table A.5 Age groups at the time of joining the Muslim
Brotherhood (divided by ages and stages
of development from children to youth and beyond) 199
Table A.6 Location of the interviews (by country) 199
Table A.7 Interviewees who are ex-members of the Brotherhood
(departing from the group before 2011) 199

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

On 13 November 2014, Zainab El-Mahdy, a 22-year-old woman and

former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, committed suicide after a
series of difficulties she experienced following her disengagement from
the group. She had removed her headscarf, and adopted daring hair-
styles whose colors she would sometimes change. She also joined the
campaign team of a presidential candidate, former Brotherhood leader
’Abdel-Mon’im Aboul-Futouh, who faced the Brotherhood’s candidate,
Mohamed Morsi, in the 2012 elections. I was so struck by the tragic
loss of this lovely, active young girl, that I arranged to speak with her
friends who had first announced her suicide. One of them attributed
it to the ‘emotional pain’ and ‘psychological pressures’ that El-Mahdy
had endured since her disassociation from the group.1 This was my first
clue that there is something about the Brotherhood and the demands it
makes on members that can make the experience of disengagement per-
sonally very difficult.
I became further attracted to disengagement as a research topic
as I noticed a growing number of people departing from the group.
Through further preliminary research and initial interviews, I became
aware of how many people belonging to various levels of membership
had left the Brotherhood after 2011.2 There were a number of high-level

1 Nouh, A. (2014).
2 Sha’ban, M. (2017).

© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Menshawy, Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood, Middle East Today,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27860-1_1
2 M. MENSHAWY

officers among them, including Mohamed Habib, Ibrahim El-Za’frany,

Kamal El-Helbawy, and Aboul-Futouh, who were all members of the
organization’s Shura or Guidance Council (the group’s legislative and
executive bodies, respectively). The list of leavers also includes many who
are part of the middle and lower levels inside the group. The wave of
departures sounds as a general phenomenon. Most departures occurred
between 2011 and 2015, and those who left came from all over Egypt.
Beginning with the group’s foundation in 1928, there had been noted
cases of prominent leaders departing due to some disagreement.3 This
recent wave was different from all of these cases, as it involved persons of
disparate backgrounds from every level of the organization. What needs
to be explained is not an action, but a pattern.
Seeking to trace this pattern, it is hard to speak by numbers. While
it may seem that cases of disengagement before 2011 were few in
number, exact figures are unavailable, just as it is difficult to know the
precise number of persons who are, or were at any given time, mem-
bers of the Brotherhood.4 Adding to these uncertainties is the organi-
zation’s secrecy. In 2008, as I began studying the Brotherhood at the
University of London, I innocently asked a Brotherhood leader, Sa’d
El-Katatny, after a lecture he had given, how many members they had.
Laughing, he turned to those around him and remarked, ‘He is asking
me about figures that only God knows.’ El-Katatny had a reason to keep
this information secret. Officially banned yet sometimes tolerated, the
Brotherhood always feared that disclosing information could jeopardize

3 Disagreements have been mainly political or organizational since the group’s foun-

dation in 1928. Examples include Ahmed El-Sukkary, the deputy of the founder Hassan
El-Banna, who exited the group in 1947, after a scathing diatribe against El-Banna in what
can be considered a power struggle (see Lia, B. [2006]. The society of the Muslim Brothers
in Egypt: The rise of an Islamic mass movement 1928–1942. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press).
Another example is Ahmed Hassan El-Baquri, who resigned from the group in 1953 after
he took over the post of the Minister of Religious Endowments without the approval of the
Brotherhood’s leaders, who were engaged in a political contestation with the ruling Free
Officers including Gamal ’Abdel-Nasser, who appointed El-Baquri (see El-Baquri, A. H.
[1988]. Baqayya Zekrayat [Residues of memories]. Cairo: Al-Ahram Centre for Translation
and Publishing). In addition, these cases of disengagement were few in number and were
disparate and not frequent as they occurred in different periods of time and under different
circumstances.
4 See Trager, E. (2011). The unbreakable Muslim Brotherhood: Grim prospects for a lib-

eral Egypt. The Washington Institute. Available via: https://bit.ly/2FZzBR7. Accessed 18

September 2018.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

its security.5 Nevertheless, by 2011, this earlier caution had somewhat

dissipated, allowing for figures on disengagement to be estimated. The
reason was a new ‘documented’ publicity, which awaited deeper research
and more investigation.
This ‘documented’ publicity is evident in the cases of those who have
exited the Brotherhood. Beginning in 2011, disengagements from the
group began to be publicly announced on television or in resignation let-
ters sent to newspapers.6 Dozens of ex-members described their involve-
ment with, and departure from, the group in autobiographies or on
television, while sometimes analyzing the conduct of former comrades in
the process. In Egypt, much attention was given to the manner in which
ex-members explained their participation in the so-called ‘spectacle of
disclosure’ drawn on their departure from the group. Some autobiogra-
phies by those ex-members even topped the bestsellers list.7 The ‘spec-
tacle’ frequently involved former members deliberately revealing various
organizational secrets publicly, which was again a new phenomenon in
the organization’s history and its interaction with the outside world.
Still, what drove me more into deciding to research the topic was the
gaps in the literature on the Muslim Brotherhood, which was the found-
ing Islamist group from which other such groups have emerged in recent
decades. Many scholars drove their interest toward the Brotherhood as
a ‘social movement,’8 which means analysis gets further limited to its
‘collective actions’ and politicized ‘networks and resources’ made avail-
able to face its ‘political opponents.’9 Missing from these analyses is
the individual as a member of the group. As an exception, the mostly

5 York, E., Martini, J., & Kaye, D. (2012). The Muslim Brotherhood, its youth, and impli-

cations for U.S. engagement. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.

6 El-Helbawy, K. (2012). El-Helbawy announces his resignation on air. Available via:

https://bit.ly/2G0KYbE. Accessed 19 September 2018.

7 Samir, I. (2015). Asrar tard Hassan El-Banna wa Sayyed Qutb min al-maktabat [The

secrets of dismissing Hassan El-Banna and Sayyid Qutb from bookships], Al-Bawabh News.
www.albawabhnews.com/1056377. Accessed 10 March 2019.
8 Mellor, N. (2018). Voice of the Muslim Brotherhood: Da’wa, discourse, and political com-

munication (p. 2). London: Routledge; see also Tarrow, S. (2011). Power in movement:
Social movements and contentious politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
9 Mellor, N. (2018). Voice of the Muslim Brotherhood, p. 2. See Munson, Z. (2001).

Islamic mobilization: Social movement theory and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The
Sociological Quarterly, 42(4), 487–510; Wickham, C. R. (2013). The Muslim Brotherhood:
Evolution of an Islamist movement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
4 M. MENSHAWY

individual-based analyses gave researchers the opportunity to reveal some

of the ideological and internal workings of the group in terms of rela-
tionships between members and leaders. Nevertheless, such works still
restricted their enquiry to who and what is inside the Brotherhood.10
This literature, as informative and insightful as it is, ends up discriminat-
ing against dissenting voices inside the Brotherhood as it focuses on what
is ‘visible,’ ‘common,’ and ‘ordinary’ about the group.11 Strikingly, and
perhaps ironically, the Brotherhood itself reacted to the wave of dissent
through a ‘symbolic annihilation,’ which included condemning or triv-
ializing the dissidents, or even denying that they had been members of
the group in the first place. The focus of the scholarly literature on ‘what
and who is inside’ inadvertently supports the Brotherhood’s attempts of
‘omission.’
In light of these gaps in the literature and based on my interest drawn
on the growing number of disengagements at different levels, this study
seeks to understand:

• How do individuals leaving the Brotherhood describe and explain

their disengagement?

I consider disengagement to be a discourse, including narrative episodes

as tools of description, and comprised of ‘frames’ that determine the
meaning of the objects and events represented, and ‘macro frames’ that
broadly function to organize the whole experience and guide the action
of exiting the group.12 The study investigates reasons which former
Brotherhood members give for departing the group and discern recur-
ring patterns that appear in the explanations of those leavers.
As accounts are analyzed into patterns of frames and patterns mak-
ing up the ‘discourse of ex-hood,’ as to be detailed in the methodology

10 Zollner, B. (2009). The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al-Hudaybi and ideology. New

York: Routledge; Kandil, H. (2014). Inside the Brotherhood. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press;
Al-Anani, K. (2016). Inside the Muslim Brotherhood: Religion, identity, and politics (p. 4).
Oxford University Press.
11 Williams, R. (2016). Resources of hope: Culture, democracy, socialism (pp. 3–14).

London: Verso.
12 Snow, D. A., Rochford, Jr., E. B., Worden, S. K., & Benford, R. D. (1986). Frame

alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation. American

Sociological Review, 51(4), 464–481.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

section below, the book seeks to set another related goal: Understanding
disengagement as a process. Tracing this process while it unfolds through
interactions and interpretations manifesting in discourse is necessary
for three main reasons. First, I can avoid any claims of causality when
it comes to inferring from the data I am using and which are mainly
subjective and admittedly biased narratives of members who specifically
left the group within a specific 2011–2017 time frame. Second, there
can be no inference about a cause (e.g., ‘why’) as there’s no compari-
son of current Brotherhood members (i.e., those who remain). In other
words, and as it is important to be clear about the book’s claims, I am
not concerned why members exit the Brotherhood at a certain time
more than any other times, or why certain members exit it while others
do not (which could be legitimate goals in future research). Third, the
analysis stops short of throwing any of these claims of causality on the
case under analysis. I do not compare the Brotherhood with other move-
ments that witness similar, larger, or smaller waves of disengagement.
Rather, the research situates the Brotherhood itself equally as the phe-
nomenon of disengagement from it: Being a process. No time, effort, or
space wasted on validating or questioning descriptors for the movement
itself as other scholars have done, for example, as ‘terrorist,’ ‘radical,’
‘violent radical,’ ‘moderate’ or ‘extremist,’ ‘pro-democracy,’ or ‘anti-de-
mocracy.’13 All these classifications are problematic since they treat the
Brotherhood as unitary, which has not been the case since 2011, when
the group has been factionalized and its dominant discourse fragmented
and destabilized. Furthermore, this holistic approach also traces the
movability between states which the Brotherhood has gone through such
as ‘moderation’ and ‘radicalism’ within a linear causality and on the basis
of particular structural, social, and political criteria such as electoral par-
ticipation, and it thus ignores the individual inside or outside the group.
In the book, what does matter is the Brotherhood the process, that is,

13 See Ehud, S. (1991). The process of delegitimation: Towards a linkage the-

ory of political terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 3, 50–68. https://doi.

org/10.1080/09546559108427092; ’Abdelrahman, M. (2009). ‘With the Islamists?—
Sometimes. With the state?—Never!’ Cooperation between the left and Islamists in
Egypt. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 36(1), 37–54 (49–52). https://
doi.org/10.1080/13530190902749556; and Denoeux, G. (2002). The forgot-
ten swamp: Navigating political Islam. Middle East Policy, 9(2), 56–81. https://doi.
org/10.1111/1475-4967.00057.
6 M. MENSHAWY

interactions, dynamics, tactics, routes, relations, and rules affecting

engagement and disengagement from it.14
As part of discourse construction and process tracing drawn on it, dis-
engagement includes ‘stages’ analyzed as these three (methodologically
distinguishable) levels of micro-, meso-, and macro:

• The micro-level stage focusing on what I call ‘affective disengage-

ment’: the emotions, sentiments, and moods related to the disen-
gagement process and dis-identification from the tight social circles,
sometimes considered family, in which the engagement of individu-
als was embedded.
• The meso-level stage that I call the ‘ideological’ disengagement,
including changing understandings of pre- and post-disengagement
of the Brotherhood’s ideology, as set by the organization’s founder,
Hassan El-Banna, and subsequent and current leaders. Relevant
here are the ways the group’s organizational style affects an individ-
ual’s manner of engagement or disengagement.
• The macro-level stage linking what is individual and ideological/
organizational to the socio-political, and thus enables an under-
standing of the concerns of individuals and their consequences
within a context of broader developments such as the rise of the
Brotherhood to power and its meteoric fall not long after.

To reiterate, these stages are neither meant to identify nor test a theory
of the conditions under which individuals do disengage with organiza-
tions like the Brotherhood. Rather, they generate a very limited scope of
conditions related to the Brotherhood and to the post-2011 era in which
Egypt and the group has witnessed unprecedented transformations. The
scope is a very narrow one, that is, how disengagement unfolds as process
and discourse. Having said so, this limitation does not have to be defen-
sive. The approach of building theory via discourse analysis and process

14 McAdam, D., Sidney, T., & Charles, T. (1996). Towards an integrated perspec-

tive on social movements and revolution. Lazarsfeld Center at Columbia University; Tilly,
C. (2017). From mobilization to revolution. In E. Castañeda & C. L. Schneider (Eds.),
Collective violence, contentious politics, and social change (pp. 71–91). Routledge; Tarrow,
S. (1996). States and opportunities: The political structuring of social movements.
Comparative perspectives on social movements: Political opportunities, mobilizing structures,
and cultural framings (pp. 41–61).
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

tracing based on it proved an entirely valid and useful exercise. For exam-
ple, I found at the end of the project that disengagement is a point of
rupture or incongruence in discourse between the dominant frames
of the Brotherhood and the ‘resistant’ frames of individuals exiting it.
Former members of the Brotherhood can now articulate a consistent,
coherent, and resonant ‘alternative’ discourse that can effectively resist
and seriously challenge the dominance of the Brotherhood’s discourse
long established, fixated, and unquestionably sanctified. Another finding
that disengagement is processed as exiting members have been accumu-
lating at every ‘stage’ benefits from opportunities and as they maximize
their utility of resources in order to articulate as well as materialize their
discourse. It is within the struggles, workings, intricacies, transforma-
tions, and opportunities at those two levels of discourse and process that
engagement ends.
The time frame of this study, from 2011 to 2017, is significant in
order to understand and contextualize how disengagement is con-
structed as discourse and developed as process. For example, two sub-di-
visions are made within this period, marking the dramatic rise and
fall of the Brotherhood from power. The first is the moment in 2011
marked by the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and the rise of
the Brotherhood during the following year, leading to the election that
year of Mohamed Morsi. Among the questions that are asked in the
book: Did the replacement of Mubarak by the Brotherhood provide an
opportunity to facilitate individual disengagements from the group? Did
this make ‘ex-hood’ more acceptable by offering alternative ‘mediated
spaces’ and political opportunities to articulate and materialize it? The
second event was the end of the Brotherhood’s rule on June 30, 2013.
Among the questions that are asked in the book: Did the fall of the
Brotherhood serve as an additional background against which to view
the wave of disengagements expanding? The years 2011–2017 also wit-
nessed widening divisions inside the Brotherhood. This left the organiza-
tion with two advisory councils for the first time since its foundation in
1928. Members of the two councils engaged in several disputes by way
of media statements, with each claiming to be the legitimate represent-
atives of the organization.15 Did these disputes stand as an opportunity

15 Aziz, M. (2017). Divisions widen between Muslim Brotherhood factions after policy

reassessment initiative. Available via Ahramonline: https://bit.ly/2Uo27PI. Accessed 19

September 2018.
8 M. MENSHAWY

for exiting members feeling further disillusioned with the group and its
divided leadership? In this sense of tracing disengagement across some
of these specific time pointers, my interest is not time as a chronological
unit (i.e., what events happen before others or along with others). Away
from any ‘linear succession of instants,’16 time is about a relational con-
struction between some of these past events or pointers and present sit-
uation. It is about how members interact with and interpret these events
while narrating their disengagement. On some occasions, what also does
matter is how the past is re-ordered for the sake of highlighting or sup-
pressing certain events in order to validate the disengagement-related
accounts.

Disengagement: Language and Identity

The book seeks to give a central position to language ‘in use’ as the main
unit of analysis to analyze the discourse of disengagement. The language,
or so I argue in this study, is not treated as other scholars have done; that
is being a mere representational tool describing the process or events
that constitute it.17 Language plays a central role as an agent infusing
the stages of the process and these events with ‘meaning,’ and the con-
stitution of an image of disengagement as a ‘reality’ in consequence.18 As
such, language creates disengagement itself as well as being created by it.
As George Herbert Mead puts it, language ‘does not simply symbolize
a situation or object which is already there in advance; it makes possi-
ble the existence or the appearance of that situation or object, for it is
part of the mechanism whereby that situation or object is created.’19 As
next chapters indicate, disengagement is made in the functionality of this
language and its manifestations such as repeating linguistic formulations

16 Mishler, E. (2006). Narrative and identity: The double arrow of time. In A. De Fina,

D. Schiffrin, & M. Bamberg (Eds.), Discourse and identity (23rd ed.) (pp. 30–47 [32]).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
17 See Wickham, C. R. (2004). The path to moderation: Strategy and learning in the for-

mation of Egypt’s Wasat Party. Comparative Politics, 36(2), 205–228; Horgan, J. (2014).
The psychology of terrorism (p. 139). London and New York: Routledge.
18 Hodges, A. (2011). The ‘war on terror’ narrative: Discourse and intertextuality in the

construction and contestation of sociopolitical reality (p. 5). Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
19 Mead, G. H. (2015). Mind, self & society (p. 78). Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

such as metaphors of ‘slavery,’ ‘imprisonment,’ and emancipation as well

as the dichotomy between the pronouns of ‘I’ and ‘we.’ On some occa-
sions, disengagement appears as part of a ‘war of words’ between the
group imposing a dominant language to consolidate the full obedience
of its ranks and disgruntled members resisting or challenging this domi-
nance with their own ‘alternative language’ that have its rules, relations,
and uses. It is also through language that those members can also con-
struct and reconstruct as a totality of their experience. They found the
opportunity to use their own ‘language’ to narrate disengagement and
have this narrative published in different formats such as autobiographies
with no censorship or prior approval obtained from Brotherhood leaders
according to the group’s rules.
The book also gives a central position to identity as part of disen-
gagement. If, as Roberto Melucci contends, identity is ‘inherent in all
social movements’ framing activities’20 related to engaging members,
it holds true identity is also inherent in all framing activities related to
disengaging members. Furthermore, identity fits in with the process–
discourse understanding of disengagement as it emerges in both
individual and collective shapes while both actors, the movement, and
the individual members of it ‘assess their environment’ and ‘calculate
costs and benefits of their actions.’21 Out of assessment and calculation
done by both sides, identity appears contested, fragmented, and contra-
dictory. In this sense identity is a process of representation, that is, how
the group and its (exiting) members ‘see themselves and are seen by oth-
ers’22 (which fits in with the sampling style and method of analysis based
on personal testimonies as to be explained below). Analysis has found
that exiting members seek to replace a largely collective identity with a
more personal one. The Brotherhood tended, unsurprisingly, to work
in the opposite direction, to subsume personal identity within a largely
collective one. To this extent, disengagement operates in reverse of
that logic, effectuating an undoing. This movability between a member

20 Hunt, S. A., Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. (1994). Identity fields: Framing processes

and the social construction of movement identities. New social movements: From ideology to
identity (pp. 185–208).
21 Melucci, R. (1989). Nomads of the present: Social movements and individual needs in

contemporary society (p. 35). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

22 Polletta, F., & Jasper, J. M. (2001). Collective identity and social movements. Annual

Review of Sociology, 27(1), 283–305.

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 Again, it springs from a world philosophy, which, because of its
vivid vision of another world of eternal realities, undervalues and
reduces to nothingness this earthly life and all its relationships.
Still again, it may spring from the soil of a morally decadent
civilization, for, unless the sources of spiritual life have been wholly
destroyed, from a debasing sensuality and dissoluteness that rob life
of worth and dignity there is ever sure to come a reaction—a
reaction expressing itself in an extreme emphasis laid upon the
worth and meritoriousness of world renunciation.

Fostering Now in the case of Christianity there was, in the

causes of
Christian
early Christian centuries, an unusual concurrence of
asceticism: (a) causes and conditions conducive to the growth of
certain Christianasceticism. First, there were virile germs of asceticism
teachings
in the teachings of the new religion. It taught that the
things of the spirit are the only abiding realities. It caused this earthly
life to shrink into insignificance and to disappear as it opened to the
eyes of faith the infinite perspectives of another world. The Master
said: “He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life
eternal.... Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath,
he cannot be my disciple.” And to the young man who asked him
what he should do to inherit eternal life, he replied, “Sell all that thou
hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven: and come, follow me.” He seemed to set the relationships of
the spiritual life above the most intimate of earthly relationships when
he declared, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and
his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” He taught the
worthlessness of earthly riches compared with the treasures of the
spirit, and declared that the rich should hardly enter into the kingdom
of heaven.
The disciples and near followers of the Master spoke in like
manner. These teachings tended directly and powerfully to cause
men to regard this earthly life as fleeting and valueless, and to
esteem those as choosing the better and worthier part who, breaking
all earthly ties and suppressing all natural affections and desires,
sought in the solitude of the desert or the quiet of the cloister to win
the life eternal.

(b) The social These seeds of Asian asceticism fell into a soil well
and moral state
of the Greco-
fitted to nourish them into a vigorous growth. The
Roman world doctrine of world renunciation was one easy of
639
acceptance by the age in which Christianity arose,
for the world into which primitive Christianity entered was a senile,
disillusioned, morally corrupt, and life-weary world.
It was an aged and disillusioned world. The great races of the
East and the West, which had been the pioneers in human culture,
were now old. They had lost the youthful zest of life. It was the
disillusionment of age that predisposed the minds of men to an
acceptance of the doctrine of deliverance through self-denial and
renunciation of the world.
And this old world was morally corrupt. The vice of ancient
civilization in its senility was sensuality. Christian asceticism was in
part a recoil from this dissoluteness which denied the worth and
640
majesty of life.
And because it was a sensual world it was a life-weary world. The
prevailing mood of society of the Greco-Roman Empire at the time of
the great propaganda of Christianity was one of satiety and
weariness. It was a favorable moment to preach contempt of the
world and all earthly things.
Thus did the state of decrepitude and moral decadence into which
the cultured communities of the ancient world had fallen, help to
develop into a spirit of absolute world renunciation the spirit of
unworldliness which characterized primitive Christianity.

(c) The Platonic Still another influence which contributed to give

philosophy direction and force to the ethical movement of the age
was the Platonic philosophy. There is in this philosophy an ascetic
element. Plato taught that a life of contemplation aloof from society is
the highest and the truly blessed life. This teaching was one of the
formative forces in the creation of the monastic ideal.

II. The Ideal and its Chief Types

The two types of The moral ideal of Christian asceticism is, in its
the ascetic essential elements, the same as the ascetic ideal of
ideal: (a) the
anchoretic; (b)other religions. Its leading requirement, after that of
the monastic right belief, is, in comprehensive terms, world
renunciation. In the early Christian period with which
we have here to do, the ideal presented two types, the anchoretic
and the monastic. The anchoretic or eremite conception of the
perfect life was complete renunciation of the world with all its
domestic, social, business, and political ties, and a life in the desert,
apart from all human companionship, spent in ceaseless vigils,
prayer, and meditation. He who followed this mode of life with the
utmost rigor, who suppressed every natural desire,—desire of family
and wealth and reputation and pleasure,—and tamed his body by
fasting, scourging, and other austerities was looked upon as a saint
and was regarded with peculiar homage and veneration.
Throughout the third and much of the fourth century in all the
countries of the Orient where Christianity had spread, the anchoretic
ideal was regarded as the highest and most meritorious type of the
Christian life. But as the ascetic enthusiasm overspread the lands of
the West, various influences, such as climate and race
temperament, caused the ascetics in general to avoid the solitary
life, and, gathering in communities, to subject themselves to rules
and the oversight of superiors. After the legislation of St. Benedict
(480–543 a.d.) this quickly became the prevailing mode of life for
ascetics. Thus came into existence the monastic system with its
distinctive ideal of character, which added to the virtues of the
eremite ideal the virtue of obedience or humility and abated
somewhat its bodily austerities. This ideal was destined to exercise
for centuries a profound influence upon the religious ethical evolution
of the European peoples.
641
Both types are mirrored in The Lives of the Saints, the
characteristic literary product of the earlier medieval time. This
species of literature, a creation of the pious inventiveness of the
monks, was steeped in the spirit that pervaded hermitage and
cloister. The tales illustrate many sides of the life of the recluses, but
are chiefly valuable in showing what acts and practices were
regarded as constituting the most meritorious and morally excellent
life.

The moral The ascetic life was not binding upon all. It could
standard for the
ordinary life
not, of course, become the universal mode of life. It
was a sort of extra service, which secured extra merit
642
for him who rendered it. It is true that the ascetic ideal absorbed a
vast amount of the moral enthusiasm of the age, nevertheless it was
a standard of moral attainment for the lesser number; for the larger
body of Christians there was the less exacting ideal of excellence
which could be realized in the ordinary life in the world. He who
practiced the common domestic, social, and business virtues, who
accepted the creed of the Church, paid tithes to the priest, and was
faithful in the performance of all required religious duties, was
accounted a good man, and had the approval of his fellow men and
the approbation of his own conscience.

III. The Chief Moral Facts of the Period

Introductory In the present division of this chapter it will be our

aim merely to indicate the essential facts in the moral
history of the earlier medieval centuries. Some of these facts will
serve to show in how remarkable a manner the age was dominated
by the monastic conception of good life, while others will simply
reveal the historical outworkings, in its more general manifestations,
of the new conscience brought into the world by Christianity.

The ideal of the As a prelude to the brief review proposed we shall

saint and that of
the hero:
do well to consider for a moment the contrariety
“Dialogue between the new ideal of the Christian monk and the
between Oisin old ideal of the pagan hero as this oppositeness
and St. Patrick”
emerges in the so-called “Dialogue between Oisin and
643
St. Patrick.” This poem discloses most impressively the vast
revolution which the incoming of Christianity effected in the moral
feelings and judgments of men.
Oisin, “the blind Homer of Erin,” is represented as in his old age
entering into a controversy with the saint respecting the relative
merits of the monk’s and the hero’s conception of worthiness. The
dialogue runs as follows:

St. Patrick. Oisin, long is thy slumber, arise and listen to the
psalm; forsaken is thy activity, forsaken thy strength, yet wouldst
thou delight in battle and wild uproar.
Oisin. My swiftness and my strength have deserted me since
the Fenii, with Fionn their chief, are no longer alive; for clerks I
have no attachment, and their melodies are not sweet to me.

* * * * *
O Patrick, hard is thy service, and shameful is it for you to
reproach me for my appearance; if Fionn lived, and the Fenii, I
would forsake the clergy of the cross.

* * * * *
Patrick, pray thou to the God of heaven for Fionn of the Fenii
and for his children, making entreaty of the prince, whose equal I
have never heard of.
St. Patrick. O learned man, I desire not strife with thee, but I
will not make request to heaven for Fionn, for all the actions of
his life were to be in love and to urge the sounding chase.
Oisin. If you were to be in company with the Fenii, O clerk of
clergy and of bells, not for long wouldst thou be able to give
heed to the God of truth, and serve the clergy.
St. Patrick. ... Oisin, the remainder of your life is short, and
badly will you fare if you despise the clergy.
Oisin. Small is my esteem for thyself and clergy, O holy
Patrick of the crozier: I have greater regard for Fionn, the white-
handed king of the Fenii, but he is not near me now.
Mournful I am without his hounds bounding, and his dogs all
around me; if they and their agile hero were alive, Patrick, you
would have to fear rebuke from me.
St. Patrick. In that way did you and the Fenii of Erin forsake
heaven: you never submitted to religion, but ever put confidence
in strength of limbs, and in battles.
Oisin. Were Fionn alive, and the Fenii comely and warlike,
with their hounds running propitiously, they would seem to me
more majestic than those who dwell in heaven.
St. Patrick. Desolate are the Fenii, without slumber or liberty
in the house of torment, for never in any way did they render
service to the Holy Father.

* * * * *
Oisin. Fionn delighted in strokes upon shields, in conquering
heroes, and hunting on hills; the sound of his dogs in toil was
more melodious to me than the preaching of clerks in church of
bells.

* * * * *
St. Patrick. It is because his time and delight were taken up
by pleasures of the chase, and the array of warlike hosts; and
because he never thought about God, that Fionn of the Fenii is
in thralldom.
 He is now shut up in torment; all his generosity and wealth do
not avail him now, for lack of piety toward God, for this he is in
sorrow, in the mansion of pain.
Oisin. Little do I believe in thy speech, thou man from Rome
with white books, that Fionn the generous hero is now with
demons and devils.

* * * * *
O Patrick, doleful is the story: Fionn the hospitable to be
under locks! heart without malice and without aversion, heart
stern in defense of battle.
St. Patrick. However great the number of troops fighting for
Fionn, he did not act the will of God above: his crimes are above
him in pains of fire, forever in anguish.
Oisin. It is plain that your God does not delight in giving gold
and food to others: Fionn never refused strong or weak, and
shall he receive hell for his abode!!!
St. Patrick. However much he may have divided gold and
venison, hard are his bonds in the den of pains: no glimpse of
light for him, no sight of brightness such as he first received from
God.

* * * * *
Oisin. Patrick, inquire of God if He remembers the Fenii when
alive: ask if, east or west, He ever saw men better in conflict.
Or did He observe in His own country, although it is high
above us, for sense, for conflict, or for strength, any man good in
comparison with Fionn?

* * * * *
Patrick, I am wretched, a poor bard, ever changing residence,
without power, without activity, without force, journeying to mass
and altars.
 Without good food, without getting wealth and booty, without
play in athletic games; without going a-wooing and hunting, two
objects for which I always longed.
Without reciting deeds of champions, without bearing spear;
alas! I have lost Osgur and Fionn, and I am left standing like a
withered tree, out under injury.
St. Patrick. Cease, O Bard! Leave off thy folly; you have as
yet said but little in favour of yourself: think of the torments that
await you; the Fenii are departed, and ere long you will go
likewise.

* * * * *
Oisin. I will not obey you, O Patrick, though great your creed
and faith. I own without lie that firm is my belief that the devil will
be your portion.

* * * * *
I would rather return to the Fenii once more, O Patrick, if they
were alive, than go to the heaven of Jesus Christ, to be forever
under tribute to Him.
St. Patrick. O withered Bard, thou art foolish; thou wouldst
not pay tribute to any one if thou wast in the heaven of Jesus
Christ, nor wouldst thou witness battle and uproar.
Oisin. I would rather be in Fionn’s court harkening to the
voices of hounds every morning, and meditating on hard-fought
battles, than in the court of Jesus Christ; that is certain.

* * * * *
It was easier for me to obtain without fail both meat and drink
in Fionn’s court than in thy mansion, and in the dwelling of the
Son of God, O Patrick, not generous in dividing.

* * * * *
 St. Patrick. It is better for thee to be with me and the clergy,
as thou art, than to be with Fionn and the Fenii, for they are in
hell without order of release.
Oisin. By thy book and its meaning, by thy crozier and by thy
image, better were it for me to share their torments, rather than
be among the clergy continually talking.

* * * * *
Ah! Patrick, your religion may be great; but I have not, up to
this day, witnessed among ye dinner nor banquet like banquet of
the Fenii.
St. Patrick. Although Fionn spent generously all he obtained
by strength, fleetness, and plunder, he is now sorrowful in the
mansion of a lord who furnishes no dinner, and demons torment
him forever.
Oisin. It would be pitiful and mournful, if thy story were true,
ah Patrick! for all the saints who are in heaven, if they were to
strive with Fionn in contest of liberality, could not obtain the
victory over him.

* * * * *
Tell to me without controversy what is the reason of the
custom you have to be ever beating your breasts, and each
evening kneeling under gloom?
St. Patrick. I tell thee that it is not because we have scarcity
of food and of drink that we are under armour (watching), but
because we desire to be perpetually on our guard against
gluttony.
Oisin. It is not fear of gluttony, nor in dread of king of saints
that I receive for myself scarcity of bread, but because I am not
able to obtain it from the clergy.
Astonishment is upon me to witness the greatness of your
love for the man you call Christ, if hereafter he will perpetually
 upbraid you for the abundance of your portions and of your
drink!
Farewell to Fionn of the noble Fenii; with him was ample
banquet and division; he was not like the man who is called God;
and moreover he gave without waiting for remuneration.... Never
at any time did I witness him asking for kneeling and bitter
644
weeping.

But vain was the lament of the blind bard. The ideal of the pagan
hero, whose fame he vaunted, had lost its primal appeal. It was the
ideal of the cloister, incarnate in the “saint of many prayers and many
vigils,” that was now enthralling the affections and shaping the
consciences of men.

The monasteries In the course of a few generations the vast

as the cradle of
the modern
enthusiasm awakened for the ascetic life covered all
social Christian lands with convents and monasteries, which
conscience in their ethical influence constituted one of the most
important of the institutions of the Church. In truth, the monasteries
stand in closer and more vital relation than does any other
ecclesiastical institution to the ethical evolution of the Western world.
The service they rendered to civilization in preserving and
transmitting to the modern world various elements of the intellectual
and material cultures of antiquity has been fully recognized and
gratefully acknowledged; but not so full justice has been rendered
them for their contribution to the moral life of modern times. Yet it is
probably true that the most precious thing conserved by the
monasteries from the wreck of ancient civilization was that social
conscience which was generated in the heart of old Judaism and
bequeathed to Christianity. Professor Nash, in his work entitled The
Genesis of the New Social Conscience, maintains, and we think with
right, that the distinctive qualities of the modern conscience—
tenderness for the unfortunate, a lofty altruism, a noble capacity for
self-sacrifice—were qualities conserved and cradled in the medieval
monasteries.
 This view of the relation of the monasteries to the moral evolution
in Western civilization may be accepted by the student of morals as
a correct interpretation of medieval monastic history, while at the
same time he admits the truth of Lecky’s contention that there was a
self-regarding motive in Christian asceticism—it was personal
salvation, he says, that the monk was primarily seeking—which
made the morality of the Christian saints inferior to the morality of the
heroes of Greece and Rome. It is undoubtedly true that many
entered upon the monastic life from self-regarding motives; but it is
also true that constant meditation upon religious themes, and
especially the holding ever before the imagination the ideal of the
Master, who for love of man made the supreme self-sacrifice of the
Cross, had as a natural result the deepening of the altruistic feelings,
the sensitizing of the conscience, and the moving of the will to self-
denying service for others. As a consequence the spirit of true self-
renunciation was often exalted among the recluses of the cloister to
an unwonted degree, and thus it came about in the course of time
that many who out of solicitude for their own salvation had sought
the solitude of the cloister are later found in the outside world, going
about, in imitation of their Master, doing good, ministering in the spirit
of absolute self-forgetfulness to the needs, temporal as well as
spiritual, of the poor, the afflicted, the heavy-laden, and the life-
weary. A large part of the philanthropic work of the Church during the
Middle Ages was carried on by the monks.
This humanitarian spirit, this cloister conscience of monasticism,
was bequeathed to society at large. Thus may the direct line of
descent of the modern social conscience be traced through the
medieval monasteries.

The new One of the earliest and the most important of the
conscience
moral reforms effected by the new conscience in the
condemns and
finally institutions of pagan Rome was the suppression of the
gladiatorial games. For almost seven hundred years
suppresses the
gladiatorial
games preceding the triumph of Christianity in the Roman
world, these spectacles had formed the favorite
amusement of the Roman people without having awakened any
special moral protest. Some of the pagan philosophers and
moralists, particularly Seneca and Plutarch, had denounced them as
opposed to the sentiment of humanity, but their protest had found no
echo in the common conscience of the age. As a rule the pagan
moralists saw nothing in them to condemn.
It was reserved for the Christian moralists to awaken the
conscience to a recognition of the criminality of these cruel
spectacles. It was particularly the Christian teaching of the
sacredness of human life that contributed powerfully to create the
new ethical feeling as to the immoral character of these
amusements, and prepared the way for their final abolition (404 a.d.)
through the protest made by the monk Telemachus and sealed by
his martyr death.
Speaking of the significance of the abolition of the gladiatorial
games, Lecky declares that “there is scarcely any other reform so
645
important in the moral history of mankind.” One thing which
enhanced greatly the importance of the reform was its timeliness.
Just at the moment of the suppression of these spectacles the
Germanic tribes were passing the frontiers of the Empire and
adopting the customs and institutions of the Romans. Had not these
amusements been abolished or put under the ban of the moral
feelings before the final catastrophe to the Empire, the barbarian
tastes and fighting instincts of this new race would have led to the
eager introduction of these sports into all the northern countries, just
as certainly as the humane spirit of the Greeks prevented their
general introduction into Grecian lands. When we recall the
indurating and dehumanizing effects of these amusements upon the
Roman populace, we realize the importance and timeliness of the
reform which kept the barbarian nations free from their brutalizing
and deadening influence.

The new Equally emphatic was the condemnation which the

conscience
condemns
new conscience pronounced on infanticide and self-
infanticide and destruction. We have seen in our review of the
self-destruction morality of the classical peoples how almost universal
was the practice of the exposition of infants, and how slight was the
moral condemnation which the custom evoked even from
philosophers and moralists. When the practice was prohibited,
usually the prohibition sprang from considerations of a prudential or
economic character rather than from scruples of conscience.
But the Christian teachers, proclaiming the sacredness of human
life and the immortal destiny of every human soul, declared the
destruction of the infant as sinful as the taking of the life of the adult.
It is to this teaching doubtless that is, in large measure, due the
existence in Christian lands of a conscience which condemns the
destruction of the newborn babe as an act of deep moral turpitude.
It was the same Christian doctrine of the sacredness of human
life, along with the teaching of the duty of resignation, that created
also a new moral feeling in regard to suicide. We have seen how the
conscience of the classical peoples in general passed no
condemnation upon the act of self-destruction if life had in any way
become a burden; but the Church taught that suicide is the same as
murder, indeed a greater sin because it destroys not only the body
but also the soul. Some Christian moralists maintained that “Judas
committed a greater sin in killing himself than in betraying his master
646
Christ.”
Throughout the Middle Ages, under the influence of the Church,
the act of self-destruction was regarded with the greatest
647
abhorrence, and without that commingling of tenderness and pity
which with us has come to temper the feeling of condemnation.

The great But the new conscience found most characteristic

missionary
propaganda as
expression not in its restraints and prohibitions but in
its impulsions to altruistic activity and endeavor. In our
an expression of
Christian account of the primitive ethical ideals of Greece and
altruism
Rome we noticed how the virtue of altruism or self-
abnegation for the common good was hidden under the guise of
648
courage. It was therefore no new virtue which Christianity brought
into the world when it proclaimed the supreme moral excellence of
self-renunciation for others. What it did was to widen the circle of
those for whom the supreme sacrifice should be made, and to give
the virtue fuller and richer content. It thus imparted fresh impulse to
that altruistic movement which we have seen to characterize the last
centuries of the civilization of Greco-Roman antiquity. The deepened
ethical sentiment found various forms of expression, but the most
important of these was the great missionary propaganda which,
during the centuries from the sixth to the ninth, carried the new
gospel to the pagan German tribes of Europe. Lecky regards this as
the chief altruistic movement of the medieval period.
This conquest of the continent for Christianity was effected in
large part by men whose fervid zeal for social service had been
649
kindled in the quiet and holy atmosphere of the cloister. The
movement was inspired and maintained by that same spirit of self-
devotion which animated the missionaries of the apostolic age of
Christianity. The declaration of the first great apostle to the gentiles,
St. Paul, that he would himself willingly be a castaway if thereby he
might secure the salvation of others, could have been made by many
a self-devoted monk-apostle who won a like crown of martyrdom. In
the romance of Christian missions the monastic chronicles of Iona
and Lindisfarne and St. Gall, and the tales of the labors and
martyrdom of Saints Columba, Wilfrid, Boniface, and a great
company of others will never cease to enthrall the imagination so
long as the virtue of self-renunciation is esteemed and reverenced
among men.
This great missionary movement which brought within the pale of
the Church the northern peoples is of transcendent interest to the
student of the history of morals, not merely because it is such a
splendid exhibition of the altruistic spirit of Christianity, but also
because the success of these medieval missions meant, besides the
winning of the barbarians to a new religion, the winning of them to a
new moral life; for to give a people a new religion is to give them also
a new conscience.

Almsgiving and
the founding of
charitable The altruistic spirit of the new religion found a
institutions
second expression in charity, in the sense of
almsgiving to the poor and the wretched. This was not a new virtue
any more than that of general benevolence. It was never, it is true, a
prominent virtue with the Greeks and Romans, but it had always
been given a place among the cardinal virtues by all the great ethical
religions of the East. Judaism laid special stress upon the duty of
open-handedness to the poor, while Buddhism made it a rudimentary
650
virtue. Christianity inherited from Judaism this attractive virtue
and laid a fresh emphasis upon it. Since the incoming of Christianity
the poor and the afflicted have been cared for in a spirit of
compassion and tenderness never before known in the history of the
Western races. Asylums and hospitals and charitable institutions of
every kind have multiplied in number and have been increased in
effectiveness in relieving want and distress as the centuries have
passed, until these endowments and provisions have become a
distinctive feature of Christian civilization. In the period we are here
reviewing, and throughout the later medieval ages, gifts to the
monasteries were especially numerous and large, one reason for
this being that the monks were looked upon as the almoners of
society and “trustees for the poor.” The founding of hospitals and the
endowing of infirmaries afforded another outlet for the unbounded
charity of the age. The first Christian hospital was founded at Rome
in the fourth century by a Roman lady named Fabiola, a widow of the
ancient house of the Fabii, who also established a hospice for
651
pilgrims at the mouth of the Tiber.
The spirit of charity found further expression in the emancipation
of slaves, and in the ransoming of prisoners of war, especially, after
the rise of Islam, of Christian captives. Unfortunately the teaching of
the Church respecting the possibility of possession by demons
caused insanity to be regarded as obsession by an evil spirit, and for
more than a thousand years this belief not only put the unhappy
class of the insane outside the pale of Christian charity, but
subjected them to the most cruel treatment that fear and superstition
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could devise.
 A religion or a philosophy which has for aim the
Mitigations of reform and improvement of human society may act
slavery directly either upon the individual or upon institutions.
Thus modern socialism ignores the individual, maintaining that the
individual is the product of environment, and makes its direct
proximate end and aim the reform of social and economic
institutions. Through the improvement and perfection of these it
would bring about the improvement and perfection of the individual,
and thus usher in the era of equality, justice, and brotherhood among
men.
Now the method of Christianity is exactly the reverse of this. Its
appeal is made to the individual; it does not concern itself directly
with social and industrial systems, or with governmental institutions
and arrangements. It would reform society by reforming the
individual. When Christianity entered the world Cæsarism had just
established itself upon the ruins of republican and national freedom,
but the Christian preachers said nothing about political liberty; the
Master had said, “Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.”
The war system was in full vigor; after a period of Quakerism the
Church first condoned, then accepted, and finally consecrated this
heritage of barbarism as one of the necessary institutions of human
society. The gladiatorial games were the sole important institution of
antiquity which the Christian teachers absolutely condemned as an
institution, and the abolition of which they persistently demanded and
finally effected.
It was the same with slavery as with other social institutions. It
existed everywhere when Christianity appeared, but the Christian
teachers never preached abolition. The Christian emperors adopted,
and for two centuries maintained practically unchanged, the pagan
slave code. There were under these rulers, it is true, some
ameliorations in the laws, due to Christian influence; thus cruel forms
of punishment, as branding on the forehead or throwing from a
precipice, were prohibited. With the exception of these minor isolated
mitigations of the lot of the slave, slavery passed over into Christian
civilization as an unchanged heritage from the ancient world, and
continued to exist as a Christian institution until, through the action of
various agencies, political and economic as well as moral, it was
gradually transformed into serfdom. During the later centuries of its
prevalence, however, Christian teachings softened many of the
cruelties of the system, and caused, speaking generally, the
individual slave to be treated with greater consideration and
humanity.

The broadening Unfortunately there were large offsets to the moral

moral
movement in
gains of which we have been speaking. Christianity
progress in thehad entered a world in which the most important
ethical movement in progress was the broadening of
ancient world is
checked
the moral sympathies. The genius of the new religion,
a genius inherited from the great prophets of Judaism, was well
calculated to impart, as for a period it did, a fresh impulse to this
cosmopolitan movement, and to foster and strengthen this growing
sentiment of philanthropy and universal brotherhood. Its mission
seemed to be to consummate the work of Greek philosophy and of
Roman world conquest, to complete the obliteration of national
boundaries, to throw down the partition wall between Greek and
barbarian, Jew and gentile, patrician and plebeian, bond and free,
and to make each man’s neighbor to be every fellow being of
whatsoever race or class or creed.
But this spirit of genuine Christianity was soon obscured and the
world movement toward ethical universalism obstructed and checked
by the theological teaching which made moral merit and salvation
dependent upon the acceptance of a prescribed creed. In place of
the tribal and racial walls of division which had originally separated
the communities of men and which the progress of events had
thrown down, it raised a new partition wall which divided mankind
into two great ethically artificial classes, believers and unbelievers,
Christians and pagans. In place of the doctrine of race election it
substituted the doctrine of individual election. Throughout a large
part of the Christian period “infidels” and “heathen” have too often
been to Christians what “gentiles” were to the “chosen people,” and
“barbarians” to the intellectually elect Greeks.
 Thus was the broadening and leveling movement which marked
the later centuries of antiquity checked, while a new division as
inimical to universal charity as the old divisions of race and cult was
created.

St. Augustine as The representative and promoter of this retrograde

the
representative
movement in the moral domain was the African bishop
St. Augustine. His “City of God,” viewed from one
of the narrowing
movement side, is altogether like unto the old city of man. It is
simply the ancient classical city in its early period of aristocratic pride
and exclusiveness before it had felt the broadening influence of a
thousand years of varied experience and growing culture. Only a few
can acquire citizenship in the new city. Its privileges are only for “the
elect.” A great multitude, the nonelect, are left outside the city gates.
Thus, in the words of Wedgwood, “all the arrogance, all the
exclusiveness, all the love of privilege, for which the city of man no
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longer afforded any escape, found a refuge in the city of God.”
The narrowing and hampering influence upon the moral
development of the European peoples of this unethical system of
Augustinian theology and metaphysics it would be difficult to
exaggerate.

Loss of the The new division was even more of a hindrance in

virtue of
toleration
some respects than the old to the moral progress of
the world; for there was not merely created a tendency
to the limitation of Christian charity to the community of believers, but
there was fostered an intolerant and persecuting spirit. The world
into which Christianity entered was, speaking generally, a tolerant
world. There were, it is true, persecutions for opinion’s sake in the
pre-Christian age, but these were comparatively infrequent. In
general, persecution in classical antiquity sprang from some other
motive than dislike or fear of religious dissent, as we have seen to
have been the case in the persecution of the Christians by the pagan
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emperors of Rome.
 But after the promulgation of the moral code of the Church, which
made wrong belief or denial of the orthodox creed a fault of
unmeasured criminality, toleration ceased to be a virtue and became
a vice. Thus the virtue of toleration, which Lecky pronounces “the
supreme attainment of Roman civilization,” was lost. Intolerance
became a duty, and remained such for more than a thousand years,
making a tragedy of centuries of European history. Wars of
annihilation or subjection against pagans and infidels were waged,
and the persecution of heretics was carried on with a hatred and
ferocity in strange contrast to the unbounded charity and infinite
tenderness of the Founder of the religion in the name of which these
things were done.
This spirit of intolerance thus called into existence led, during the
period under review, to the suppression, first, in the fourth century by
the Christian emperors, of freedom of religious worship; and then
quickly to the suppression of liberty of thought throughout
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Christendom. By the opening of the sixth century no one in any
Christian land could freely think or freely express his thought, even
on philosophical themes. This retrograde movement in its ultimate
consequences was one of the most far-reaching revolutions in the
moral history of the Western world.

“Between Aside from the broad ethical movements traced

moralities”; the
new-forming
above, induced by the Christian conception of life and
ideal its new valuation of particular virtues and duties, there
was in this epoch a moral phenomenon of another sort
which we must now notice, namely, the moral anarchy which
characterized the later centuries of the period under review.
In an earlier chapter we spoke of the fusion of moral ideals which
ultimately takes place when two races meet and unite to form a new
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race and a new culture. But as Bagehot has pointed out, such a
commingling of races is always attended by a special danger. It is
likely for a time to produce “something not only between races, but
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between moralities.”
 In the fact here stated we must doubtless look for the explanation
in part of the turbulent, anarchical character, ethically viewed, of the
period which immediately followed the downfall of ancient civilization,
and which saw the creation, out of Roman and barbarian elements,
of the new Romano-German world. In the migrations and
settlements of the German conquerors in the Roman provinces, and
in the mixture of races which there took place, there resulted
necessarily, on the one side, a break-up of all the old tribal relations
which formed the basis of the morality of the barbarians, and, on the
other side, the destruction of all the restraints and conventions which
had formed the bulwark and stay of the more refined, if less simple
and pure, morality of the Romans. With the old moral codes
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discredited, with ancestral ethical ideals disintegrated, men stood,
to use Bagehot’s phrase, not between races only but also between
moralities, and the historical ethical evolution was broken by what
has been aptly called a moral interregnum. The epoch covering the
interval between the destruction of the Roman governmental system
in the West in the fifth century and the establishment of a semblance
of social order by Charlemagne toward the end of the eighth century,
presents, according to the concurrent view of all chroniclers and
historians of the period, one of the most appalling spectacles of
moral anarchy afforded by the records of human history.
In the midst of this moral chaos, however, a new moral world was
forming. Gradually, under various influences, racial, cultural, and
religious, there was taking shape and form, through a fusion of
different ethical elements, a new moral ideal, the ideal of knighthood,
which for an epoch—throughout the crusading centuries—was to
absorb a large part of the moral enthusiasm of Christendom, and to
determine in great measure the character of the enterprises of the
age.
Since one of the influences which produced this great
transformation in the Christian ideal was the creed and moral code of
Islam, we shall in our next chapter turn aside from following the
ethical evolution among the European peoples to watch for a space
the rise and progress of this new faith whose martial ethics was