Introduction
ON
CERTAIN ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES CONSULTED IN
THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME.
THE period covered
by the present volume is, after the three or four years of the public
life of Jesus, the most extraordinary in the entire development of
Christianity. Here, by a singular touch of the great unconscious Artist
who appears to rule in the seeming caprice of historic evolution, we
shall see Jesus and Nero - Christ and Antichrist - set, as it were, in
contrast, face to face, like heaven and hell. The Christian
consciousness is now full-grown. Hitherto it has known little else than
the law of love: Jewish intolerance, though harsh, could not fret away
the bond of grateful attachment cherished in the heart of the infant
Church for her mother the Synagogue, from whom she is still hardly
sundered. Now at length the Christian has before him an object of hate
and terror. Over against the memory of Jesus rises a monstrous form, the
ideal of evil, as He had been the ideal of holiness. Held in reserve,
-like Enoch or Elias, to play his part in the last great tragedy of the
world, Nero completes the cycle of Christian mythology: he inspires the
first sacred book of the new canon; by a frightful massacre he lays the
corner-stone of Romish primacy, and opens the way to that revolution
which is to make of Rome a second Jerusalem, a holy city. At the same
time, by a mysterious coincidence not infrequent in great crises of
human destiny, Jerusalem is overthrown; the Temple disappears;
Christianity, disburdened of a restraint already painful and advancing
to a broadening freedom, follows out its own destinies apart from
conquered Judaism.
The later epistles of Paul, the epistle to the
Hebrews, and those ascribed to Peter and James, with the Apocalypse, are
chief among the canonical documents of this period. Valuable testimony
comes to us, besides, from the first epistle of the Roman Clement, and
from the historians Tacitus and Josephus. At many a point, notably the
death of the Apostles and the relations of John with the churches in
Asia, our picture must lie in shadow; upon others we may gather rays of
real light. Almost all the material facts of the earliest Christian
history are obscure; what we can see clearly is the eager enthusiasm,
the superhuman boldness, the scorn of circumstance, which make this the
most powerful effort towards the ideal still treasured in human memory.
In the Introduction to "Saint
Paul" I have treated of the genuineness of the Letters ascribed to
that chief of the Apostles. The four referred to in this volume -
"Philippians," "Colossians," "Philemon,"
and "Ephesians" - offer some ground of doubt. The objections
brought against "Philippians" are of so small account that I
have scarcely urged them. As we shall see hereafter,
"Colossians" gives more ground for scruple, while
"Ephesians" stands quite by itself among the Pauline writings.
In spite of its grave difficulties, however, I still hold
"Colossians" to be genuine. The interpolations 'recently
alleged by able critics are not apparent. [1] On this point Holtzmann's
treatment is worthy of its learned author; but the way, too common in
Germany, of assuming an a priori type to serve as the absolute
criterion of a writer's genuineness is very hazardous. We cannot,
indeed, deny that interpolation and fabrication were common enough, in
the so-called apostolic writings, during the first two Christian
centuries ; but, in a matter like this, it is impossible to draw a sharp
line between true and false, genuine and spurious. We say confidently
that the epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians are genuine;
we say just as confidently that those to Timothy and Titus are
apocryphal. In the border ground between, we but grope our way. The
chief fault of the so-called Tubingen school, dating from F. C. Baur, has been to
conceive the Jews of the first century, in the mass as fed on logic and
rigid in their deductions. Peter, Paul, even Jesus, in the writings of
this school, argue like Protestant professors in a German university;
each has his own doctrine; each has but one, which be keeps always just
the same. The truth is, those noble men, the true heroes of this story,
often change their view and contradict themselves; in the course of
their life they, assume three or four varying theories ; at one time
they borrow views from their opponents, which at another time they
sharply contradict. Seen from our point of view, these men are open to
quick impressions, personal, irritable, changeful; what makes fixity in
opinion, science or pure reason, is wholly unknown to them. Like Jews of
every time, they have angry disputes among themselves, yet make together
a very compact body. To understand them, we must clear ourselves of the
pedantry inseparable from all academic methods; we must rather study the
petty groups and cliques of the religious world, the Congregations of
England and America, and in particular what goes on in the founding of
all religious Orders. In this regard the theological faculties in German
universities - the best in the world to supply the enormous toil needed
to bring into shape the chaos of documents bearing on these obscure
beginnings - are the worst in the world to undertake the task of a real
history. For history is the interpretation of an unfolding life, ail
expanding germ, while theology (so to speak) reads life backward.
Attending merely to what confirms or invalidates his doctrine, even the
most liberal of theologians is unconsciously an advocate: his aim is to
defend or else refute. The aim of the historian is simply to tell the
fact. He finds a value in what may be in substance false, in documents
even spurious; for they paint the soul, and are often truer than barren
fact. In his view it were the greatest of errors to regard as defenders
of abstract opinions those good and simpleminded dreamers, whose dreams
through all these ages have been a consolation and a joy.
What I have said of "Colossians,"
and especially of "Ephesians," must be said emphatically of
the first epistle ascribed to Peter, and of those of James and Jude- [2] The second of Peter (so
called) is certainly apocryphal. We see at a glance that it is an
artificial compound, an imitation made up of scraps of apostolic
writings, especially the epistle of Jude. [3] I do not urge this point,
as I do not suppose "Second Peter" has a single defender among
true critics. But its very falsity -- having as its main object to
inspire patience in the faithful weary with long waiting for the
reappearing of Christ -in a sense confirms the genuineness of
"First Peter." Though apocryphal it is still a very, ancient
writing, whose author fully believes in the other as really the work of
Peter, making his own a "second" to it (see ch. iii. 1) . [4] First Peter," on the other hand, is one
of the earliest and most frequently cited, as genuine, among all the New
Testament writings. [5] Only one serious objection has been made, - namely,
to passages taken (it is thought) from certain letters of Paul,
particularly the so-called "Ephesians." [6] But the copyist whom Peter
must have employed (if the letter is really his) may well have allowed
himself to borrow thus. In all times, preachers and journalists have
laid hands without scruple on phrases that have come to be part of the
common stock and are, as we say, "in the air." So Paul's
amanuensis, who wrote "Ephesians," copied freely from
"Colossians." Epistolary writing is very apt to show a good
deal that has been so taken from earlier like compositions. [7]
Suspicion has been raised by the passage 1 Pet. v.
1-4, ch recalls the pious but somewhat feeble admonitions, wholly
priestly in tone, of the spurious epistles to Timothy and Titus.
Besides, the insistence with which the writer depicts himself [in v. 1]
as "a witness of the sufferings of Christ" stirs doubts like
those raised by the persistent assertions of an eye-witness in the
writings falsely ascribed to John. Still, we should not stick at this.
There are many tokens of genuineness as well. For example, the advance
towards a hierarchy is hardly noticeable. Not only there is no hint of a
bishopric (for the phrase "bishop of your souls" in ii. 25
proves that the word has as yet no official meaning), but each church
has not even a Presbyter: it has "presbyters," or
"elders," with nothing to imply that they make a distinct
official body. [8] A point worth noting is that the writer, [9] when when laying stress on
the self-surrender of Jesus on the cross, omits the striking feature
given by Luke ["Father, forgive them," etc.], leading us to
think that when he wrote the legendary narrative was not yet full-grown.
The eclectic and reconciling tendencies observed in
the epistle of Peter bear against its genuineness only in the view of
those who, like Baur and his school, regard the difference of Peter and
Paul as flat hostility. If party bate in the primitive church was as
deep as this school thinks, reconciliation would never have come about.
Peter was not, like James, a stiff-necked Jew. In composing this history
we must not think merely of "Galatians" and the pseudo-Clementine
homilies ; we must remember, too, the "Acts of the Apostles."
An historian's skill should exhibit the event so as no way to belittle
party strifes, which were doubtless profounder than we could even think;
yet so as to let us see how such strifes were soothed and fused into a
noble harmony.
The epistle of James comes to the bar of criticism
under like conditions with that of Peter. The difficulties of detail
alleged against it are of little account. A more serious matter is the
broad charge that writings of fictitious authorship were easily produced
at a time when there was no sound test of genuineness, and no scruple at
pious frauds. For writers like Paul, who by common consent have left us
genuine writings, and whose biography is fairly well known, there are
two sure tests, - comparison of doubtful works with those universally
acknowledged genuine, and inquiry whether the document in dispute
answers to the biographical data in our possession. But if the case is
that of an author from whom we have only a few doubtful pages, and whose
life is little known, we must decide mostly on grounds of feeling, which
are not imperative. If we are of easy judgment, we may take much that is
false for true ; if too rigid, we may reject much that is true as false.
For such questions the theologian, who thinks to walk by certainties, is
(I say again) a bad judge. The critical historian has a quiet conscience
when be has done his best to mark the various steps of certain,
probable, plausible, possible. If at all capable, he may succeed in
being true in the general colour, while as to special statements he
makes free with his question-marks and his may-be's.
One thing I have found in favour of writings
too strictly thrown out by critics of a certain school, -such as the
first epistle of Peter, with those of James and Jude, -is the way they
fit in with a narrative organically knit together. While the second
ascribed to Peter, with those alleged to be from Paul to Timothy and
Titus, have no place in the pattern of a connected story, the three I
have mentioned fit themselves to it (as I may say) of their own accord.
The features of detail in them anticipate facts known through outside
testimony, and are embraced easily among them. "Peter" well
corresponds with what we know, chiefly from Tacitus, of the situation of
Christians at Rome about A. D. 63 or 64. "James," again, is a perfect
picture of the Ebionim at Jerusalem in the years just before the
great revolt, quite like the information given us by Josephus. [10] There is nothing to be
gained by a theory that it was written by another James, not "the
Lord's brother." True, this epistle was not admitted, in the early
centuries, so unanimously as that of Peter; [11] but the hesitation would
seem to have been rather on dogmatic grounds than on critical. The Greek
Fathers had little liking for the Jewish Christian writings: that is the
real reason.
It may be remarked, as to the evidence regarding
these minor apostolic writings, that they were composed before the fall
of Jerusalem. This event so altered the situation as between Jew and
Christian that we can easily distinguish between a document later than
the catastrophe of A. D. 70 and one belonging to the period while Herod's
temple was yet standing. Descriptions which clearly refer to
class-jealousies in Jerusalem society, such as we find in
"James" (v. 1- 6), would be unmeaning if made later than the
revolt of A. D.
66, which ended
the rule of the Sadducees.
From the fact that there were pseudo-apostolic
writings -- such as the letters to Timothy and Titus, "Second
Peter," and the epistle of Barnabas, whose practice is to imitate
or dilute older compositions - it follows that there were writings
genuinely apostolic held in reverence, which it was sought to multiply. [12] As every Arabic poet of the
classic period bad his Kasida, a complete expression of his personality,
so every apostle had his "epistle," more or less genuine,
which was supposed to preserve the fine flower of his thought.
I have elsewhere spoken of the epistle to the
Hebrews. [13] I have shown that this work is not by, Paul, as has
been held in some lines of Christian tradition; and that its probable
date may be fixed at about A. D. 66. 1 have now to consider whether we may be sure of
its real author, where it was written, and who were the
"Hebrews" to whom by title it is addressed.
Circumstantial points are these: The writer speaks to
the church addressed in the tone of a well-known master, - indeed,
almost in a tone of reproach. The church has long since accepted the
faith, but has fallen away in doctrine; so that it needs elementary
instruction, and cannot comprehend the higher theology. [14] Further, this church has
shown and still shows proofs of courage and devotion, especially in
service to the saints. ["Ye have ministered to the saints and do
minister."] It had endured cruel persecutions in the day when it
received the full light of faith, when it was "made a gazing
stock." [15] That was but a little while ago; for those now
members of the church had part in the merits of that persecution -
sympathising with the confessors, visiting those in prison, and, above
all, bearing bravely the loss of their goods. In that trial, however,
there were some deserters, and there was question whether such apostates
could rejoin the church. It would seem that some were even now in prison
(xiii.3). There have been noble leaders (hgoumenoi), preachers of the Word, whose end was glorious and
inspiring (xiii. 7). But still there are chiefs well known to the writer
(ver. 17, 24), who has himself had knowledge of the church, and seems to
have held a high post of service in it; he means to return to it, and
wishes his return to be as soon as possible (ver. 19). He and those to
whom be writes are acquainted with Timothy, who has been a prisoner in
some other place ; but is now at liberty; he hopes that Timothy may come
and join him, that they may visit this church of the "Hebrews"
together (ver. 23). The epistle ends with the words, "Those away
from (apo) Italy salute you,"
which must mean those who are just now absent from Italy. [16]
What chiefly distinguishes this writer is his
incessant use of the [Jewish] scriptures, with a subtile and allegorical
mode of exposition, and a Greek style more ample, more classic, less
dry, but also less natural than that in most apostolic writings. He has
slight acquaintance with the ritual of the temple at Jerusalem (ix.
1-5), which, however, strongly impresses him. He uses only the
Alexandrian version, and reasons from errors in the Greek copyists (x.
5, 37, 38). He is not a Jew of Jerusalem, but a Hellenist, related to
the school of Paul (iii. 23) ; and represents himself as having been a
bearer, not of Jesus, but of those who bad heard him, and as a witness
of the signs and wonders " manifested by the apostles by "the
gift of the Holy Spirit" (ii. 3, 4). Still, be has high rank in the
church: he speaks with authority (v. 11, 12 ; vi. 11, 12 ; x. 24, 25 ;
xiii. pass.) ; is held in great respect by those to whom he writes
(xiii. 19-24); and Timothy seems to be his inferior. The mere fact of
addressing an epistle to an important church shows him to be a man of
consequence, one of name and high standing among the apostles.
Still, all this is not enough to determine
the authorship. It has been variously ascribed to Barnabas, Luke, Silas,
Apollos, and Clement of Rome. The likeliest of all is Barnabas. This has
the authority of Tertullian, who speaks of it as a well-known fact; [17] and it is contradicted by
not a single feature offered by the epistle. Barnabas was a Hellenist of
Cyprus, at once linked with Paul and independent of him, known and
esteemed by all. This view, further, suggests a reason for ascribing the
composition to Paul: it was the destiny of Barnabas to be in a manner
lost in the halo of the great apostle; and, if he did leave any writing,
as seems not unlikely, we should naturally seek it among those of Paul.
The church to which this letter is addressed may be
fixed on with some likelihood. From what has been already said, our
choice lies, with little doubt, between Rome and Jerusalem. Alexandria
has been suggested, but oil slight grounds. First, there is no proof
that Alexandria had a church as early as A. D. 66. Even if it had, it could have no relation with
the school of Paul, or any knowledge of Timothy ; while such passages as
v. 12, x. 32-34, and others would be wholly inappropriate. The title,
"to the Hebrews," makes us think at once of Jerusalem. [18] But this is not enough.
Passages like v. 11-14, vi. 11, 12, and even vi. 10 ("minister to the
saints") [19] are nonsense if we suppose them addressed by a
follower of the apostles to the mother church of all, the source of all
instruction. What is said of Timothy in xiii. 23 is no more intelligible
; persons so committed as were the writer and Timothy to the party of
Paul could not have sent to that church a missive implying special
intimacy with their affairs. How, for instance, could the writer - with
his exegesis founded wholly on the Septuagint, his imperfect Jewish
knowledge, his slight acquaintance with the temple service -have dared
to lecture so loftily those past masters of the field, men who talked
Hebrew (very nearly), who lived every day close to the Temple, and who
knew much better than be all he could say to them ? How, indeed, could
he address them as catechumens, barely initiated, and incapable of deep
theology ? On the other hand, if we suppose those addressed to be the
faithful in Rome, all fits to a marvel.. Such passages as vi. 10, x.
32-34, xiii. 3, 7, allude to Nero's persecution; xiii. 7 refers to the
death of Peter and Paul ; the expression, "those away
from Italy," is fully justified, since it is natural that the
writer should send to those in Rome the salutations of the Italian
colony about him. Add that the first epistle of the Roman Clement
(certainly a Roman composition) borrows consecutively from
"Hebrews," and evidently models its exposition upon that. [20]
One difficulty remains: Why does the title say
"to the Hebrews"? Such titles, we know, are not always
apostolic: they were sometimes late additions, and even erroneous, as we
see in the case of "Ephesians." "Hebrews" was
written, under the stress of persecution, to the church that suffered
most. In several places (as in xiii. 23) the writer evidently expresses
himself guardedly. Perhaps the inscription "to the Hebrews"
was a password, to save the letter from being, put to all evil use.
Possibly the title came from the letter's being regarded in the second
century as a confutation of the Ebionites, who were called "Judaisers."
It is noteworthy that the church of Rome always had special light on
this epistle ; here it first appeared, and here it was first brought
into use. While Alexandria is ready to call it Paul's, the church at
Rome always maintains that it is not his, and that it is wrongly joined
to his genuine writings. [21]
From what place was "Hebrews" written ?
This is harder to answer. The expression "those away from
Italy" shows that the writer was not in that country. It is
certain, too, that he wrote from an important town where there was a
colony of Italian Christians closely allied with those of Rome, who had
probably escaped the persecution Of A. D. 64. We shall see that the stream of those who so
escaped flowed towards Ephesus, where the church bad had as its first
nucleus two Jews from Rome, Aquila and Priscilla, and had always
continued in direct relations with Rome. Thus we are led to think that
it was here the epistle was written. The words in xiii. 232 it is true,
are perplexing in that case: in what city, neither Rome nor Ephesus, yet
closely connected with both, bad Timothy been imprisoned ? Whatever we
may conjecture, this is a riddle hard to answer.
The most important document of this period is the
Apocalypse. An attentive reading of chaps. xv.-xvii. will show, I think,
that its date is fixed more positively than that of any other writing in
the canon. [22] It may even be determined within a few days. The
place where it was written may also be plausibly assigned. Who was its
author is far more uncertain. As to this, I think, we cannot speak with
confidence. The writer gives his name at the very beginning: "I, John, your brother and
companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of
Christ." [23] But here two questions occur: 1. Is the claim
genuine, or is it one of the pious frauds common to all apocalyptic
writers ? In other words, is it not an anonymous writing ascribed to
John the apostle, as a man of highest authority in the churches, whose
views are here communicated in visions ? 2. Granting the claim to be
sincere, is not the writer another John than the apostle ?
To begin with the second question, as the easier to
decide. The John who speaks or is thought to speak in the Apocalypse
expresses himself with such emphasis; he is so sure of being known and
of not being confounded with any other; he knows so well the secret
things of the churches, and meets them with so firm a bearing, - that we
can hardly fail to see in him an apostle, or else a dignitary of very
high rank in the Church. But in the second half of the first century
there was no other of that name who approached such dignity. John Mark
is here quite out of the question, whatever Hitzig may say. Mark never
had consecutive relations with the churches in Asia, such
as to embolden him to address them in this tone. There is, indeed, one "John the Elder,"
a dubious personage, a sort of double of the apostle, who haunts like a
spectre the record of the church at Ephesus, and gives much trouble to
the critics. [24] Though his very existence has been denied, and
though we cannot positively refute the theory of those who make him a
personified shadow of the apostle, I incline to think that he had an
identity apart; [25] but I absolutely deny that he wrote the Apocalypse
in A. D. 68 or 69, as maintained by
Ewald. Such a man would not have been known to us merely through an
obscure passage of Papias or an apologetic writing of Dionysius. We
should find his name in the Gospels, or Acts, or an Epistle. He would be
a man from Jerusalem. The writer of the Apocalypse is the best versed in
Scripture, most attached to the Temple, most Hebraic, of all the New
Testament writers. Such a man cannot have had his training out of
Palestine; he must have been a native of Judaea ; at the bottom of his
heart he clings to the Church of Israel. If there was any such person as
John the Elder, he was a disciple of John in his extreme old age.
Admitting that the passage in the "Apostolical Constitutions "
(vii. 46) refers to him, and that it has any value, he would be the
apostle's successor in the episcopate of Ephesus. Papias seems to have
been close beside him, at least his contemporary. [26] We may even admit that he
sometimes held the pen for his master, and that he may have been the
composer of the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle of John. The second
and third (so called), in which the writer calls himself "the
Elder, would seem to be his own work, acknowledged as such. [27] But surely, if we admit
that John the Elder counts for anything in the second class of Johannine
writings (the Gospel and Epistles), be has no part in the composition of
the Apocalypse. If anything is plain, it is that the two cannot have
come from the same hand. This was evident to Dionysius of Alexandria, in
the latter half of the third century, whose essay on the point is a
model of learned and critical dissertation. [28] Of all the New Testament
writings, the Apocalypse is the most Jewish, and the Fourth Gospel the
least so. Thus the word "Jew," which in that Gospel always
means "enemy of Jesus," is in the Apocalypse the highest title
of honour (ii. 9, iii. 9). Admitting that the Apostle John is the author
of any of the writings traditionally ascribed to him, it is certainly
the Apocalypse, not the Gospel. The former corresponds perfectly to the
settled opinion which he seems to have held in the dispute between Paul
and the Jewish Christians, while the latter does not. The efforts made
in the third century by some of the Greek Fathers to assign the
Apocalypse to "John the Elder" [29] result
from the aversion then felt for that book among the orthodox teachers. [30] They could not endure that
an apostle should be thought the writer of a book whose style they found
barbarous and its spirit stamped with Jewish bitterness. Their opinion
was an induction a priori, worthless in itself, expressing neither
tradition nor critical judgment.
If, then, the expression "I, John," in the
first chapter, is genuine, the Apocalypse is certainly from the hand of
the Apostle John. But it is of the essence of an apocalypse to be
pseudonymous. The writers of "Daniel," "Enoch,"
"Baruch," and "Esdras," all assume those names as
their own. The Church of the second century accepted an apocalypse of
Peter, certainly apocryphal, just as they did that of John. [31] If the writer gives his
true name in the Apocalypse of our canon, it is a surprising exception
to the rule. Let us grant the exception: in fact, this book differs
essentially from other similar writings that have come down to us. Most
of these are ascribed to writers who flourished (or were supposed to
flourish) five or six centuries, or even [as
Enoch, "the seventh
from Adam"] some thousands of years before. Those of the second
century were ascribed to men of the apostolic age. The
"Shepherd" and the pseudo-Clementines are some fifty or sixty
years after their assumed writers. So it was, probably, with the
apocalypse of Peter; at least nothing shows that it makes any exception
as to topic or author. On the other hand, the Apocalypse of the canon,
if it is pseudonymous, seems to have been ascribed to John in his
lifetime, or very soon after his death. Were it not for the first three
chapters, this would be strictly possible. But can we suppose that
whoever assumed the name had the boldness to address his apocryphal work
to the "seven churches" which stood in near relations with the
apostle ? Or if we deny these relations, as Scholten does, we fall into
a still greater difficulty; for then we must admit that the composer,
with unparalleled fatuity, in writing to churches that bad never known
the apostle, represents him as having been at Patmos, close by Ephesus,-
in fact, so near, and so dependent on its port, that if he did go there
it must have been by way of Ephesus, as acquainted with their nearest
secrets, and as holding full authority over them. Would these churches,
which (as Scholten holds) well knew that John had never been in or near
Asia, have let themselves be taken in by so crude a pretence ? One thing
stands out clear in any hypothesis, - that the Apostle John was for some
years the head of the churches in Asia. [32] This being granted, it is
hard not to admit that he was really the author of this book; for, since
its date is precisely fixed, we find no room for forgery. If the apostle
was living in Asia in January, A. D. 69, or had merely been there, the first four chapters
are unthinkable as the work of another hand. Supposing (as Scholten
does) that he died at the beginning of this year, which does not seem to
have been the fact, we do not escape the difficulty. The book is written
as if the revelator were still alive; it is to be circulated at once
among the Asiatic churches ; if the apostle were dead the fraud would be
too glaring. What would they have said at Ephesus in February, at
receiving such a book, claiming to be from an apostle whom they knew to
be no longer living, and whom (as Scholten thinks) they had never Been?
The book itself, on a closer view, rather confirms
than weakens this opinion. The Apostle John seems, next after James, to
have been the most ardent of the Judaising Christians, while the
Apocalypse breathes a bitter hatred against Paul and all who were lax in
keeping the Jewish Law. The book strikingly reflects the violent and
fanatical temper of this apostle (see below, chap. xv.). It is indeed
the work of that "son of thunder," that stormy Boanerges, who
would have forbidden the use of his Master's name to any outside the
narrow circle of the disciples; who, if he could, would have rained fire
and brimstone upon the inhospitable Samaritans. The description of the
celestial Court, with its material splendour of thrones and crowns, is
indeed that of one who, when young, bad aspired to sit with his brother
on thrones at the right and left of the Messiah-King. The writer of the
Apocalypse has his mind engrossed by the two objects, Rome (chaps.
xiii.-xviii.) and Jerusalem (chaps. xi-xii.). He appears to have seen
Rome, with its temples, statues, and lavish imperial idolatry; and we
may easily suppose that John journeyed thither in company with Peter.
What regards Jerusalem is yet more striking The writer constantly
returns upon "the beloved city," thinks only of her, is
familiar with the sufferings of the church there during the Jewish
revolt, as we see in the fine image of the woman and her flight into the
wilderness (xii. 13-17): we feel that he had been a pillar of this
church, an enthusiastic devotee of the Jewish party. The tradition of
Asia Minor seems, just so, to have kept the memory of John as that of a
rigid Judaiser. In the Paschal controversy, which so vexed the Church
during the latter half of the second century, the churches in Asia rely
chiefly on the authority of John in celebrating Easter on the fourteenth
of Nisan, according to the Jewish law. Polycarp in 160 and Polycrates in
190 appeal to the same authority to defend their antique custom against
the innovators who, relying on the Fourth Gospel, insisted that Jesus,
"the true passover," did not eat the paschal lamb with his
disciples the night before his death, and who transferred the feast to
the day of the resurrection. [33]
The language of the Apocalypse is a further reason
for ascribing the book to a member of the church at Jerusalem. It is
wholly different from that in the other New Testament books. It was
doubtless written in Greek, [34] but in Greek moulded upon Hebrew, - Hebrew
in its style of thought, hardly to be understood and felt by those
ignorant of Hebrew. Besides sacramental terms (ix. 11, xvi. 16) and
"the number of the beast," which are in Hebrew, like forms
appear in every line. [35] The writer is surprisingly saturated with
the prophetic writings and earlier apocalypses; clearly, he knows them
by heart. He is familiar with the Greek version of the [Jewish] sacred
books; but in his citations the Hebrew text comes into his mind. [36] How different from the
style of Paul, Luke, the writer of "Hebrews," or even the
Synoptics ! Only a man who bad passed years at Jerusalem, in the schools
about the Temple, could be so steeped in the Scripture, or share so
keenly the passions and hopes of that rebellious people, with its hatred
of Rome.
Another point not to be overlooked is that the
Apocalypse has some features kindred with those of the Fourth Gospel and
the Johannine epistles. Thus, the expression "the Word of God"
(xix. 13), so characteristic of the Fourth Gospel, is first found here.
The image of "living waters" is common to the two. [37] The expression "Lamb
of God" in the Fourth Gospel (i. 29, 36) recalls the frequent
designation of Christ as "Lamb " in the Apocalypse. Both apply
to the Messiah the words "me whom they have pierced" (Zech.
xii. 10), and translate it in the same way (i. 7; xix. 37),- a rendering
which differs from the Septuagint, but answers to the Hebrew. I by no
means infer that the two books are from the same hand ; but it is
significant that the Gospel (which surely has some connection with the
Apostle John) shows in its style and imagery something akin to a book
which there are strong grounds for attributing to that apostle.
Church tradition has hesitated upon this point. Even
in the middle of the second century the Apocalypse seems not to have had
the importance we might expect for a composition which had been given
out as a solemn manifesto from the pen of an apostle. It is doubtful
whether Papias accepted it as the writing of John. He, like the author
of the Apocalypse, was a millenarian ; but he seems to have held this
doctrine from "unwritten tradition." If be bad cited this book
in proof, Eusebius would have said so, eager as he was to gather every
evidence from that ancient writer as to the apostolic record. Nor is the
testimony of Andrew or of Aretas [38] clear upon this point. The
author of the "Shepherd of Hermas," it would seem (Vis. iv.,
Sim. ix.), knew and imitated the Apocalypse; but it does not follow that
he regarded it as a work of the apostle. Justin Martyr, about the middle
of the second century, first plainly asserts that authorship (Tryph. 81)
; but be came forth from none of the great churches, and is accordingly
of slight authority as to tradition. Melito, commented on certain
passages of the book, Theophilus of Antioch, and Apollonius, who used it
freely in their polemics, [39] seem to have had the same opinion of it
with Justin. The same may be said of the Canon of Muratori. [40] After A. D. 200 the general opinion is
that the "John" of the Apocalypse is really the apostle.
Irenaeus (Adv. Hoer., pass.), Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iii. 14, iv.. 5),
Clement of Alexandria (Strom. vi. 13; Poed. ii. 12), Origen (Hatt. xvi.
6; Joh. i. 141 ii. 4; cf. Euseb. vi. 25), Hippolytus (Philos. vii. 36)
have no hesitation. Still, the contrary opinion is constantly upheld. To
those who parted more and more widely from the early Judaic Christianity
and millenarianism, the Apocalypse was a dangerous book, impossible to
defend, unworthy of an apostle, containing prophecies that were never
fulfilled. Marcion, Cerdo, and the Gnostics rejected it wholly; [41] the "Apostolic
Constitutions" omit it in their canon (ii. 57, vii. 47) ; the old
Syriac version (Peshito) has it not. The opponents of the
Montanist reveries, such as the priest Caius (Euseb. iii. 28) [42] and the Alogi (Epiph. li.
3, 4, 32-35) claimed to find it the work of Cerinthus. Finally, in the
latter half of the third century, the Alexandrian school, in hostility
to the millenarianism revived by Valerian's persecution, criticised the
book with excessive rigour and undisguised dislike ; Dionysius, the
bishop, proved completely that it could not be by the author of the
Fourth Gospel, and brought into vogue the theory of John the Elder. [43] In the fourth century the
Church was divided in opinion (Euseb. iii. 24; Jer. Epist. 129).
Eusebius, though doubtful, is on the whole unfriendly to the theory that
it was written by the son of Zebedee. Gregory Nazianzen and almost all
the Christian scholars of his time refused to see an apostle's handiwork
in a book so sharply opposed to their taste, their notions of
apologetics, and their prejudice as scholars. We may say that, if this
party had had control, the Apocalypse would have been put in the same
rank with the " Shepherd" and the Antilegomena, of
which the Greek text is almost wholly lost. Happily, it was too late for
such exclusion to prevail. Thanks to able opposition, a book containing
bitter attacks on Paul was kept side by side with Paul's own writings,
making up a volume supposed to proceed from one and the same inspired
source.
Now, has this obstinate protest, making so marked a
feature in Church history, any great weight in the view of independent
criticism ? We cannot say. Certainly Dionysius was right in maintaining
that the same hand could not have written both the Fourth Gospel and the
Apocalypse. But, in face of that dilemma, the modern critic gives a
different answer from that of the third century. The genuineness of the
Apocalypse is far more probable than that of the Gospel ; and, if we
must assign any share to a supposed "John the Elder," that
share is far likelier to be the Gospel and epistles. What motive had the
opponents of Montanism in the third century, or those Christians of the
fourth, educated in the Greek schools of Alexandria, Caesarea, and
Antioch, to deny that the Apocalypse was really the work of the Apostle
John ? Was it a tradition or memory preserved in the churches ? Not at
all. Their reasons were purely those of a priori dogma. First, if the
Apocalypse should be ascribed to the apostle, it was almost impossible
for a man of sense and learning to admit the genuineness of the Fourth
Gospel, and to doubt this would be thought an attack upon Christianity
itself. Besides, the supposed visions of John seemed to be a source of
errors ever renewed, - of a perpetual recrudescence of Judaic
Christianity, wild prophecy, and rash millenarianism. What reply could
be made to the Montanists and similar mystics, who were consistent
believers in the Apocalypse ? or to those troops of enthusiasts who
rushed upon martyrdom, intoxicated by the wild poetry of that old book
of the year 69 ? The only reply could be that this book, the
fountain-head of all their delusions, was not the work of an apostle.
The reason that led Caius, Dionysius, and so many others to deny that
the Apocalypse was from John was precisely that which leads us to the
opposite conclusion. The book is Judeo-Christian, Ebionite; it is the
work of an enthusiast drunk with hate against the Roman empire and the
pagan world ; it forbids all reconciliation with that empire and that
world; its messianic doctrine is purely material ; it affirms the
thousand years' reign of saints and martyrs ; it asserts the end of the
world to be close at hand. These reasons -- in which reasonable
Christians, following the direction of Paul, and later of the
Alexandrian school, found unanswerable difficulties -- are for us the
marks of antiquity and of apostolic genuineness. We are not fightened at
Ebionism or Montanism; as simple historians, we assert that the
adherents of these sects, rejected by the 46 orthodoxy " of their time, were the true
successors of Jesus, of the Twelve, and of "the household of the Master." The rational
direction which Christianity has followed, through a moderated gnosis,
the belated victory of the Pauline school, and above all the ascendency
of such men as Clement of Alexandria and Origen, should not make us
forget the circumstances of its origin. The delusions, impossibilities,
materialising views, paradoxes, monstrosities, which shocked Eusebius
when he read the old Ebionite and millenarian writers like Papias, were
the real primitive Christianity. That the dreams of these lofty
enthusiasts might become a religion capable to live, men of good sense
and fine intelligence -such as the Greeks who became Christians in the
third century - must take in hand the task of those old visionaries, to
modify, chastise, and prune it of its overgrowth. In this task of
theirs, the most authentic monuments of the early childlike simplicity
became embarrassing testimony, which they tried to thrust back into
oblivion. That happened which always happens at the origin of a
religious movement, which we notice in particular during the first
century or two of the Franciscan Order: the founders were overmastered
by the new-comers; the true successors of the fathers soon came to be
"suspects" and heretics. Hence, as we often have occasion to
insist, the favourite scriptures of the Ebionite and millenarian
Judeo-Christianity - "Enoch", "Baruch,"
"Assumption of Moses," "Ascension of Isaiah," the
fourth Esdras, the "Shepherd of Hernias," the "Epistle of
Barnabas" - were better preserved in Latin or Oriental versions
than in the Greek text. Hence, too, the more or less complete loss of
the Greek text of Papias and Irenaeus. The "orthodox" Greek
Church has always shown itself extremely intolerant of such books, and
has systematically suppressed them.
Thus the reasons for ascribing the Apocalypse to the
Apostle John remain strong; and I think that those who shall read this
history will be struck at the way in which everything is made clear and
connected in this view. But, in a world where notions of literary
property were so different from ours, a work might belong to an author
in various degrees. Did the Apostle John himself write the manifesto of A. D. 69 ? This we may surely
doubt. It is enough for my theory if be knew it, approved it, and
allowed it to circulate in his name. Thus we should explain the first
three verses, which seem to be from another hand than the Seer's ; as
well as passages like xviii. 20 and xxi. 14, which lead us to think of a
different pen. So in Ephesians ii. 20 we feel sure that an amanuensis or
an imitator has come between us and Paul. We have to be on our guard
against the abuse made of apostolic names to give currency to apocryphal
compositions. [44] Many things in the Apocalypse are ill adapted to an
immediate disciple of Jesus. [45] We are surprised to find one who was of the
inner circle in which the gospel was wrought out exhibiting his former
friend as a glorified Messiah, sitting oil God's throne, ruling the
nations, -so wholly different from him of Galilee that the Seer trembles
at sight of him and "falls at his feet as dead" (i. 17). One
who had known the real Jesus would scarcely, even at the end of six and
thirty years, have undergone such a mental revolution. Mary of Magdala,
on beholding the risen Jesus, exclaims, "My Master!" while
John, on seeing the heavens opened, must find him whom he loved
transformed into the dread Messiah. It is no less surprising to see from
the pen of one of the chief figures in the gospel idyll a composition
purely artificial, a mere copy, showing in every line a cold imitation
of the ancient prophetic visions. The picture of the Galilaean fishermen
given us by the Synoptics by no means represents to us men of the study,
diligent readers of old books, pedantic rabbins. Is the picture by the
Synoptics, then, the false one ? and was the company that gathered about
Jesus a good deal more pedantic, more scholastic, more like the Scribes
and Pharisees, than one could possibly gather from Matthew, Mark, and
Luke ?
If we admit the view I have suggested, - that John
rather adopted the Apocalypse than wrote it with his own band, we have
the further advantage of accounting for the limited reception of the
book during three quarters of the century following its composition.
Very likely the author himself, after the year 70, - seeing Jerusalem
taken, the Flavian emperors firm on their throne, the Empire
reconstructed, and the world persisting to exist in spite of the
three-and-a-half years' term he had allowed it, - checked the
circulation of his work. The Apocalypse, in fact, did not reach its
highest importance till near the middle of the second century, when
millenarianism. became a point of dispute in the church when,
especially, persecutions again gave to outcries against the Beast "
their meaning and their fitness, -as we see in the letter of the
churches of Lyons and Vienne in Eusebius (v. 1, 10, 58). The fortune of
the Apocalypse was thus bound up with the alternations of peace and
conflict in the Church. Each persecution gave it new currency ; when the
persecution was stayed, its true day of peril came, and it had nearly
been banished from the canon as a misleading and seditious pamphlet.
Two traditions which I have accepted as plausible in
this volume - the coming of Peter to Rome, and the residence of John at
Ephesus - have been the subject of much controversy, and are discussed
in an appendix. I have there considered Scholten's recent treatise on
the apostle's abode in Asia, with the attention due to all the writings
of this eminent Dutch critic. The conclusions to which I have come
(which, however, I hold as merely probable) will, no doubt, -like the
use I have made of the Fourth Gospel in writing the "Life of
Jesus," -move the scorn of a young, self-confident school, in whose
eyes every point is proved so that it be negative ; a school that
peremptorily taxes with ignorance those who do not accept its
exaggerations on sight. I beg the thoughtful, serious reader to believe
that I have enough respect for him to neglect nothing that may serve in
the search for truth in the line of study I undertake. But it is my
maxim that history is one thing and disquisition is another. History
cannot be well taken in hand until erudition has heaped up whole
libraries of memoirs and critical essays. But, when history comes to
be disengaged from this scaffolding, all it owes the reader is to point
out the original source on which each statement rests. In these volumes
devoted to the beginnings of Christian history, the notes fill a third
of the page; but if I had been obliged to add the bibliography,
citations from modern authors, and detailed discussions of the views
held, they would have covered at least three-quarters. True, the method
I have followed assumes the reader to be familiar with the results of
critical study in the Old and New Testaments, a claim which few of my
countrymen can make. But how many works of value could there be, if a
writer must first be sure of a public to understand him fully'? I say,
too, that even one with no knowledge of German, if he is acquainted with
what has been written in our language upon the subject, can perfectly
well follow my argument. The excellent collection of essays in the Revue
de theologie (published till recently at Strasburg), is an
encyclopedia of modern exegesis, not relieving us, it is true, from the
duty of exploring the German and Dutch scholars, but for half a century
reporting all great discussions of theological erudition. [46] I have always insisted that
Germany has earned lasting glory by founding the science of biblical
criticism, with the researches appertaining thereto ; and this, with
sufficient emphasis to be above the charge of ignoring the obligations I
have a hundred times acknowledged. German exegesis has its faults, which
ever so liberal a theologian cannot avoid; but the patience,
persistency, and good faith it has displayed are worthy of all praise.
Many a noble building- stone has Germany added in the intellectual
structure of mankind ; but, among them all, biblical science is,
perhaps, that which has been chiseled with the greatest care, and which
bears most completely the stamp of the workman's hand.
I would here record my special gratitude to those
accomplished Italian scholars, who were my inestimable guides throughout
a recent journey in Italy. It will appear in the following pages at how
many points this journey touched the topics it treats. Though no
stranger to Italy, I was athirst to greet once more that land so full of
memories, the richly endowed mother of every new intellectual birth.
According to Rabbinical tradition, there was at Rome, during the long
eclipse of beauty which we call the Middle Age, an ancient image, kept
in a secret spot, so beautiful that the Romans would come by night to
kiss it stealthily. Of such embraces, 'twas said, Antichrist was born. [47] This child of the marble
image was verily a son of Italy. All the great protests of man's
conscience against the extravagances of Christendom came of old from the
bosom of this land; and from this they will come again in future time.
I will confess that my delight in history, the
singular joy in beholding the spectacle displayed on the theatre of the
world, has especially entranced me in this volume. I have had such joy
in writing it that I ask no other reward than I have found in the task
itself. Often have I reproached myself for taking so much pleasure in my
study, while my unhappy country was wasting in long agony; but my
conscience is clear of blame. When in the elections of 1869 1 solicited
the votes of my fellowcitizens, all my placards bore conspicuously this
inscription: "No Revolution! no War! War would be as fatal as
Revolution." In September, 1870, 1 implored the enlightened minds
of Germany and Europe to reflect on the frightful peril that menaced
civilisation. During the siege of Paris, in November, I risked great
unpopularity by advocating an Assembly, with powers to treat for peace.
In the elections of 1871, I replied to the overtures made me, "Such
a charge can be neither sought nor refused." When order was
restored, I bestowed all my attention upon the reforms which I
considered most urgent for the salvation of the State. I have done what
I could. We owe it to our country to be frank with her; we need employ
no flatteries or tricks to win her to accept our service or accord with
our views.
Moreover, while this volume is primarily addressed to
inquirers and men of taste, it will, perhaps, teach more than one
lesson. Here we shall see crime carried to its height, and protest
lifted against it in accents saintly and sublime. Such a sight will have
its religious use. I believe as fully as ever that religion is not a
mere illusion of our nature; that it answers to something objectively
real; that he who follows its inspirations is the truly inspired man. To
simplify religion is not to undermine it, but often, rather, to make it
strong. The little Protestant sects of our day, like Christianity at its
birth, are here to prove it. The great error of Romanism is to think
that we can contend against the advance of materialism with an intricate
dogmatic system, burdening ourselves more heavily each day with some
fresh marvel.
The people will henceforth endure only a religion
without miracle; but such a religion might yet be a living one if those
who have the care of souls would accept the degree of positivism that
has gained a hold on the mental temper of the working class; and if,
reducing dogma to its lowest terms, they would make worship a means of
moral training and helpful co-operation. Above the Family, beyond the
State, mankind needs the Church. The stability of the American Union,
with its amazing democracy, is found only in its innumerable sects. If
(as we may suppose) Ultramontane Catholicism can no longer win back to
its temples the population of great cities, personal effort must create
those little centres where the poor an weak may find instruction, moral
help, friendly guidance, sometimes material aid. Civil society - call it
village, district, province, state, or fatherland owes something to the
betterment of the individual ; but it acts only within strict limits.
The family owes more; but it is often weak, sometimes wholly helpless.
Associations formed upon a moral foundation can alone bestow on every
man that comes into the world a living bond uniting him with the Past,
duties toward the Future, examples to be followed, a heritage of Virtue
to be received and handed down, a tradition of Self-sacrifice which he
has to carry on.
1. H. J. Holtzmann, Kritik der Epheser- und
Kolosserbriefe, Leipzig, 1872.
2.
Of the latter, see "Saint Paul," chap. x.,
near the end.
3.
Compare especially 2 Pet. ii. with Jude. Such passages as i. 14, 16, 18;
and iii. 1, 2, 5-7, 15, 16, also clearly prove it spurious. Its style,
further, - as Jerome has remarked in Epist. ad Hedib. 11 ; cf. De
viris illustr. 1, -is no way like that of 1 Peter. Fi Dally, it is
not cited before the third century. Irenaeus (Adv. H(er. iv. 9,
2) and Origen (in Euseb. Hist. Eccl. vi. 25; cf. iii. 25) ignore
or exclude it.
4.
Supposed imitations of 1 Peter, found in "Timothy " and "Titus," touching the
duties of women and of elders, are not so clear. But Compare 1 Tim. ii.
9-15, iii. 11, with I Pet. iii. 1-4, v. 1-4; Tit. i. 5-9.
5
Papias in Euseb. H. E. iii. 39, Polycarp, Epist. I (cf. 1 Pet.
i. 8; Euseb. iv. 14); Irenpeus, Adv. Hcer. iv. 9,2; 16, 5 (cf. Euseb. v.
8); Clem. Alex. Strom. iii. 18, iv. 7; Tertall. Scorp. 12; Origen
in Euseb. vi. 25; Euseb. iii. 25.
6
See below, pp. 108, 109.
7
Besides the canonical epistles, see those of Clem. Rom.,
Ignatius, and Polycarp.
8. PresButerouj en umin (Vat. and Sin. MSS.); the
common reading is
tous en umin..
9 1
Peter ii. 23; cf. Luke xxiii. 34.
10.
See below, pp. 52-53.
11.
Clem. Rom. 1 Cor. x., xi. (cf. Jas. H. 21, 23, 25); Hermas," Mand.
xii. 5 (cf. Jas. iv. 7); Iren. Adv. Rcer. iv. 16, 2 (cf. Jas. ii.
23); these writers seem to have known the epistle. Origen (In Joh.
xix. 6), Eusebins (H. E. H. 23), and Jerome (De vhis illustr.
2) express doubts.
12.
See 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16, where the Pauline epistles are expressly
named as sacred writings.
13.
Saint Paul, Introd., pp. 62-61.
14.
See v. 11-14; vi. 11, 12; x. 24, 25; xiii., throughout.
15. Qeatrijomenoi ("exhibited on the
stage"), x. 33-34; xii. 4-8, 23.
16.
Compare oi, e.n th/
Asi,a, 2 Tim. i.
15; h, e.n aBulwni
ounelektni.
Pet. v. 13. (But see Acts xvii. 13.)
17.
De Pudic. 20: Exstat enim et Barnabm titulus ad Hebrceos. These
words show that the manuscript in the hands of Tertullian was inscribed
with the name of Barnabas. (Cf. Jerome, De viris illustr. 5.)
Tertullian's assertion has been wrongly regarded as a mere conjecture,
put forth to give authority to a writing that favoured his Montanist
notions. On the argument from the stichometry of the Codex
claromontanus, see Introd. to "Saint Paul," note on
pp. 53-4. The "epistle of Barnabas," commonly so called, is
apocryphal, written about A. D. 110.
18.
Compare Acts vi. I ; Iren. Adv. Hmr. III. i. 1; Euseb. H. E. iii. 24,25.
19.
Compare Rom. xv. 25. This signifies the service due from all other
churches to that at Jerusalem, but would hardly befit this latter.
20.
Compare chap. 17 with xi. 37; chap. 36 with i. 3, 5, 7, 13; chap. 9 with
xi. 5, 7; chap. 12 with xi. 31.
21.
See " Saint Paul," p. ivii.
22.
The theory of Vischer, accepted by Harnack and others (see "Life of
Jesus," note on page 477), is that the body of the Apocalypse - iv.
1xxii. 5 - is a Jewish composition, adopted and probably translated from
a Hebrew original by some Christian writer near the end of the first
century, who prefixed the first three chapters and interpolated numerous
brief passages to adapt it to Christian uses. A valuable criticism of
this view, defending the general unity of the composition, but excepting
from this unity a series of visions beginning with chapter xi. was
contributed by M. Louis Auguste Sabatier to the Revue de Thdologie et
de Philosophie: Paris, Librairie Fischbacher, 1888, pp. 37.
-ED.
23.
Rev. i. 9; see also 1, 2, 4; xxii. 8.
24.
See "Life of Jesus," p. 58, note.
25.
See Papias (Euseb. iii. 39) and Dionysius of Alexandria (id. vii. 25).
These two passages are not proof. The latter, in fact, deduces his
opinion a priori from the difference [in style] between the
Apocalypse and the 'Fourth Gospel, finding confirmation in two tombs
which "are said to have existed at Ephesus, each bearing the name
of John." The passage of Papias is vague; at all events it needs
correction. That in the Apostolical Constitutions is of weak authority.
Eusebius (iii. 39) simply brings together the statements of Papias and
Dionysius, not confirming the existence of the two tombs. Jerome (De
viris illustr. 9, 18) says there were two there, bat that
many regarded them as being two memorials of the apostle.
26.
Euseb. iii. 39. We should, as it appears, read in this passage "the
disciples of the Lord's disciples say; " since Aristion and John the
Elder are represented as living in the time of Papias, and do not stand
in the same class with the apostles ("disciples of the Lord") - In any case, Eusebius
goes beyond the mark in inferring that Papias himself was a listener to
Aristion and "John the Elder."
27.
All these points will be further considered in the succeeding volume.
28.
Eusebius, vii. 25.
29.
Dion-Alex. in Euseb. vii. 25 (cf. iii. 39); Jerome, De viris illustr.
9.
30.
See Life of Jesus," p. 290, note 3; also below, p. 355.
31.
See Canon of Muratori, lines 70-72, and stichometry of the Codex
claromontanus in Credner, Gesch. der neutest. Kanon, p. 177.
32.
See Appendix at the end of this volume.
33.
See Euseb. v. 24.
34.
Thus, "I am the Alpha and the Omega." The weights and measures
are Greek.
35.
Note especially i. 4, where the Greek translation of Jehovah is
undeclined [o hn: like "I Am hath sent
me."].
36.
He adopts several expressions of the LXX., even when inaccurate: as
tabernacle of witness" for assembly ; Almighty (i.8 : pantokratwr) for Jehovah of
hosts." The phrase, "He shall rule them (pomanei) with a rod of iron "
(Ps. ii. 9), several times quoted, is taken from the LXX. rather than
the Hebrew ["break them "], doubtless because it was so
employed in the Christian Messianic exegesis.
37.
xxi. 6, xxii. 1, 17; John iv. and x.
38.
Bishops of Caesarea in Cappadocia, of the fifth and sixth centuries.
39.
See Euseb. iv. 24, 26; v. 18; Jerome, De viris illustr. 24;
Melito, De var. (sub fine). It may be asked if the name "
John " in Eusebius is not an explanation added by the historian.
But, as he puts in relief the passages which throw doubt on the
genuineness of the Apocalypse, we may infer that he did not add the name
without the authority of the writers mentioned.
40.
Lines 47, 48, 70-72 ; the latter passage, however, seems to show a
tendency to regard it as apocryphal.
41.
Tert. Adv. Marc. iv. 5; flar. 6.
42.
Doubts as to this passage are removed by the fragment of Dionysius
Alex.'in Euseb.,vii. 25, and by what Epiphanius says of the Alogi. The
rendering "as if be were a great
apostle " is inadmissible (Comp. Theodoret, Hmnfab. ii. 3).
43.
Euseb. vii. 25. The question had probably been discussed by Hippolytus.
See list in Corp. inscr. Gr. 8613, A. 3.
44. Compare the evidences from
Caius and Dionysius of Alexandria in Euseb. iii. 28.
45. Compare i. 12 with ver. 9,
19, 20; vi. 9; xx. 4; xxii. 8.
46. This and the succeeding
paragraph contain the author's personal acknowledgments to between
thirty and forty eminent scholars, and critics of the modern schools. As
these lists, however, were written nearly twenty years ago, they would
be an insufficient guide for more recent explorers in a field whose
bounds are so rapidly extending, and hence they are omitted here. -ED.
47. Blixtorf, Lexicon Chald.,
etc., p. 222,
Chapter I
PAUL
IN PRISON. -- A.D. 61.
IT was a
strange time; never, perhaps, had mankind passed through a more
extraordinary crisis. Nero was just entering on his twenty-fourth year.
The head of this wretched youth, whose mother's crime had put him on the
throne of the world at seventeen, was growing completely crazed. Many
symptoms had long caused anxiety in those who knew him. His was a mind
prodigiously given to display; an evil nature full of hypocrisy, levity,
and vanity; an incredible compound of distorted intelligence, profound
malice, and self-love both cruel and suspicious, and a refinement of
craft ,without parallel. Such he was by nature. Still, it needed special
circumstances to make of him that monster who has no second in history,
and who finds his like only in the reports of criminal pathology. [1] The school of crime in which
he bad grown up -- the necessity which that wicked woman almost laid
upon him, to enter on the scene by an act of parricide -- made 'him
early conceive the world as a shocking comedy in which he was the chief
actor. At the present moment be has completely forsaken his masters, the
philosophers; he has slain almost all his kindred; he has brought the
most shameful extravagances into fashion; Roman society, in great part,
following his example, has gone down to the last depth of depravity.
Antique hardness of heart was coming to its height- a truer popular
instinct was beginning to react against it. About the time when Paul
entered Rome, this was the chronicle of the day: -
Pedanius Secundus, prefect of Rome, a man of consular rank, had
been assassinated by one of his slaves, who might well plead extenuating
circumstances in his favour. By the law, every slave who had been under
the same roof with him when the crime was committed must be put to
death. Of these wretches there were near four hundred. When it was
learned that this atrocious butchery was really to take place, the
slumbering sense of justice in the vilest of the people was shocked.
There was a riot; but the Senate and the Emperor decreed that the law
must take its course. [2]
Among these four hundred innocents slaughtered in the name of a
hateful law, there may have been more than one Christian. The bottom of
the pit of iniquity was now reached ; to go on must be to go upward.
Certain moral indications of a strange sort had appeared in the higher
ranks of Roman society. [3] Four years before, there had been -much talk
of a high-born lady, Pomponia Groecina, wife of Aulus Plautius, the
first conqueror of Britain. [4] She was charged with outlandish superstition."
She always dressed in black, and never relaxed in her austerity of
manner. This melancholy was ascribed to shocking memories, especially
the death of her near friend, Julia, daughter of Drusus, who perished at
the hand of Messalina. One of her sons seems also to have been the
victim of one of Nero's most enormous crimes; [5] but Pomponia evidently bore
in her heart a profounder grief, and, it may be, a mysterious hope.
According to old custom, she was referred to the tribunal of her
husband, who assembled their kindred, investigated the charge as a
family matter, and pronounced her innocent. This noble lady lived long
after, safe in her husband's protection, always sad, always held in
honour. She seems never to have told her secret. [6] Who knows whether what
superficial observers took for melancholy was not a deep peace of soul,
calm meditation, a resigned looking forward to death, scorn of a society
at once silly and malevolent, the unspoken joy of a heart that renounces
pleasure? Who knows whether Pomponia Graecina was not the first saint in
the world of rank, the elder sister of Melania, Eustochia, and Paula? [7]
This strange condition of things, while it exposed the church at
Rome to political storms, gave to it, although small in numbers, an
importance among the first. Rome, under Nero, was not in the least like
a provincial city. Every one who looked for a great career must go to
it. In coming thither Paul himself had been guided by a clear intuition.
His arrival there was an event in his life second only to his
conversion. He felt that he had reached the zenith of his apostolic
career, and doubtless recalled the dream in which, after one of his days
of conflict, Christ appeared to him, saying, "Be of good cheer,
Paul; for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear
witness also at Rome." [8]
As soon as they came near the walls of the eternal city, the
centurion Julius conducted his prisoners to the praetorian barracks,
built by Sejanus near the via Nomentana, and put them in charge
of the "captain of the guard" (praefectus prcelorianus). [9] Those who appealed to the
emperor, on entering Rome, were held as the emperor's prisoners, and as
such confided to the imperial guard. [10] There were usually two
praetorian prefects; at this time there was but one. [11] Since A.D. 51, this high charge had
been in the hands of the noble Afranius Burrhus, [12] who a year later atoned by
a grievous death for the crime of seeking to do good by a compact with
evil. With him Paul doubtless had direct communication ; though it may
be that the humane treatment given to the apostle was due to the
influence which that upright and good man shed about him. Paul was put
in military guard; that is, in keeping of an officer of the military
stores (frumentarius), [13] to whom he was chained, but not
painfully or constantly. He was allowed to live in quarters hired at his
own charge, probably near the barracks, where any might come freely to
see him, [14] and here he waited for two years the hearing of his
appeal. Burrhus died in March, A. D. 62, and was succeeded by Fenius Rufus and the
infamous Tigellinus, the partner of Nero's debauchery, and the agent of
his crimes. Seneca, from this time on, kept aloof from public affairs,
and Nero had no other counsellors than the Furies.
The relations of Paul with the faithful in Rome had begun, as we
have seen, during his abode at Corinth. Three days after his arrival he
wished, according to his custom, to come in contact with the chief hakamim
(wise men). The Christian body in Rome had not been formed in the
Jewish synagogue, but of believers from abroad, who bad landed at Ostia
or Puteoli, and gathered in a church which had little to do with the
various synagogues of Rome. Owing to the vastness of the city, and the
multitude of strangers who met in it, [15] there was little common
acquaintance, and quite opposite ways of thinking might prevail there
without ever coming into touch. Paul, then, followed the same course
here as in his first and second missions in the towns where he planted
the faith. He sent to invite several chiefs Of the synagogue to visit
him. To these he set forth the situation in the most favourable light,
assuring them that he neither had done nor wished to do anything against
his people; that he strove for the "hope of Israel;" that is,
faith in the resurrection. The Jews replied that they bad never heard of
him, or received any message from Judaea that spoke of him, and invited
him to explain his views; "for," said they, "we hear that
the sect you tell us of is everywhere spoken against." A time was
set for the discussion, and a large number of Jews gathered in the
little room which made his dwelling to hear him. The discussion lasted
almost a whole day, Paul setting forth the texts of Moses and the Prophets
which, as he thought, proved Jesus to be the Messiah. A few assented,
the larger number remained incredulous. The Jews of Rome prided
themselves on their exact observance of the Law: [16] here was not the place for
him to succeed. The meeting broke up in loud dispute; in anger he quoted
a passage of Isaiah (vi. 9, 10), very familiar to Christian preachers, [17] on the wilful blindness of
those hardened men who shut their eyes and stop their ears so as neither
to see - nor hear the truth. He ended, says the account, with the usual
threat of offering the kingdom of God, rejected by the Jews, to Gentiles
who would more readily accept it.
His mission among the pagans was, in truth, far more successful.
His prison-cell became the centre of an ardent apostolate. During the
two years of his captivity he was never once molested in his work. [18] Some of his disciples
continued with him, among them Timothy and Aristarchus; [19] Luke must have left him, as
Paul does not send his greeting to the Philippians. His friends seem, by
turns, to have shared his imprisonment. [20] The progress of conversion
was remarkable. [21] The apostle wrought miracles, it was said,
controlling spirits and the heavenly powers, [22] which accounts we may
compare with the legend of Simon Magus. Paul in prison was thus more
effective than when in free activity. His chains, which he dragged to
the praetor's court, and displayed with a sort of pride, [23] were eloquent in
themselves. At his example, inspired by his courage in captivity, his
disciples and other Roman Christians grew bold in speech.
At first they found no obstacle. [24] Even Campania and the
cities near Vesuvius received (perhaps from the church at Puteoli) the
germs of Christian faith, which here found the ordinary condition of its
growth, a soil of Judaism to receive it. [25] Strange conquests were
brought about. The pure life- of the faithful was a powerful charm,
which won many a Roman dame: [26] the better families, indeed, still retained
an unbroken tradition of modesty and nobility of character in their
ladies. The new sect bad disciples even in Nero's household, [27] and perhaps among the Jews
also, who were numerous in the lower ranks of service, [28] -for example, the Jewess
Acme, waiting-maid of Livia; the Samaritan Thallus, freedman of Tiberius
[29]
-and among the
slaves and freedmen enrolled in societies or clubs (collegia), whose
condition touched the meanest and the highest, the most brilliant and
most squalid.[30] Vague hints would lead us to suppose that Paul had
relations with members or freedmen of the Annaean house [31] It is clear, in any case,
that the distinction between Jew and Christian was well understood in
Rome at this time by people of intelligence. Christianity seemed to them
a separate "superstition," an outgrowth from Judaism, hating
it and hated by it. [32] Nero, in particular, knew well enough what was going
on, and regarded it with a certain curiosity. Already, perhaps, some of
the Jewish intriguers about him stirred his imagination with the affairs
of the East, and had promised him that kingdom of Jerusalem which was
the dream of his last hours, his latest hallucination. [33]
We do not know with certainty the name of any member of the church
in Rome at this time. A document of dubious value reckons, as friends of
Paul and Timothy, the names of Eubulus, Pudens, Claudia, and that Linus
whom later ecclesiastical tradition recorded as Peter's successor in the
Roman bishopric. [34] Nor have we any means of estimating, even
approximately, the number of the disciples. They made, no doubt, but a
small fraction of the Jewish population. [35]
All seemed to be going well; but the fiercely bitter party that
had taken it in hand to fight Paul to the ends of the earth did not
sleep. We have seen the emissaries of those eager conservatives hunting
him, as it were, by scent on his trail, while in his travels by sea he
left a long wake of hatred behind him. Shown under the baleful features
of a man who teaches the eating of flesh sacrificed to idols, and the
sharing of gentile works of uncleanness, he is pointed out to all men in
advance, and marked as the object of vengeance. This is bard for us at
this day to believe, but we cannot well doubt it, since Paul himself has
told it. [36] Even at this solemn and critical moment, he finds
himself confronted by the basest passions. Adversaries -members of that
Judaeo-Christian sect, which now for ten years he bad found everywhere
in his path - mocked him with a sort of counterfeit preaching of the
gospel. Envious, disputatious, hateful, they watched the occasion to
oppose him, to embitter the griefs of his imprisonment, to stir up the
Jews against him, to belittle the merit of his endurance. The good will,
love, and honour exhibited toward him by others, their eagerly declared
conviction that his chains were the glory and best vindication of the
Gospel, sweetened to him all that bitter draught. In his own words,
written at this time,
What then ? If only Christ be preached, whether in pretence or in
truth, I rejoice in it and will rejoice. For I know that this will prove my salvation
through your prayer and the aid of the spirit of Christ. This is my
Ernest expectation and my hope, that Christ shall be glorified whether
by my life or death. For my life is Christ, and to me death is gain; so
that if I live I have the harvest of my work, and which I would
choose I do not know. Thus I am in doubt between the two: for my desire
is to depart and be with Christ, which -for me is far more to be
desired; yet to remain among, you Is to render the better service. [37]
This greatness of soul gave him marvellous assurance, cheer, and
strength. To one of the churches he writes, "If my blood must be
sprinkled as a libation upon the sacrifice of your faith, I am glad and
with you all; so do you rejoice and be glad with me." [38] Still he was more glad to
believe in his own speedy acquittal; for be saw in it the triumph of the
gospel and the opening to new labours. His thought, it is true, seems to
turn no longer to the West; rather be would withdraw to Philippi or
Colossae to wait the Lord's appearing. Perhaps he had come to a better
knowledge of the Latin world, and that outside of Rome and Campania,
regions rich immigration from the Levant had made much like Greece and
Asia Minor, he would find extreme difficulty, if only in the language.
As we may infer from a hint of Dion Cassius (Ix. 17), he perhaps knew a
little Latin, but not enough for effective speech. Jewish and Christian
proselyting in the first century made little advance in really Latin
towns; it was restricted to such cities as Rome and Puteoli, where Greek
was widely diffused by constant arrivals from the East. Paul's purpose
had been sufficiently carried out: the gospel had been preached in both
the Grecian and the Roman world; [39] in the noble hyperbole of
prophetic speech, it bad reached "the uttermost parts of the
earth," [40] and been "fully preached " to all nations
under heaven. [41] What he had now in mind was to declare the word
freely in Rome, [42] then return to the churches in Macedonia and Asia, [43] and wait patiently with
them, in prayer and ecstasy, for the coming of Christ.
Few years in the apostle's life were happier than these. [44] Great comfort came to him
from time to time, while be had nothing now to fear from the malevolence
of the Jews. His poor prison cell was the centre of a surprising
activity. The insane profanities of Rome - its spectacles, debaucheries,
and crimes, -- the infamies of Tigellinus, the intrepidity of Thraseas,
the shocking fate of the innocent Octavia, the death of Pallas such
tragedies touched not these pious enthusiasts. The fashion of this world
is passing by," said they. The grand vision of a divine future made
them blind to the bloody filth through which they walked. In truth, the
prophetic word of Jesus was coming to fulfilment. Amid the outer
darkness where Satan reigns as king, amid its weeping and gnashing of
teeth, is set the little paradise of the elect, where they dwell in
their secluded realm, radiant with light and azure, the kingdom of God
their Father. But what a hell without! How dreadful is the abode in the
kingdom of the Beast, "where their worm dieth not and the fire is
not quenched" !
One of the great joys of Paul at this time, apparently not long
after his arrival at Rome, [45] was the coining of a message from his
beloved church at Philippi, the first he had established in Europe, the
home of so much devoted affection. The wealthy Lydia, whom Paul calls
his "true yokefellow " (iv. 3),[46] would surely not forget him.
Epaphroditus, the church's messenger, brought a sum of money (ii. 25), a
relief which Paul greatly needed, considering the costs of his present
situation. He had always excepted that church from his usual rule of
taking no gift from his converts, and received this bounty gladly. The
tidings it sent were cheering, tidings of entire harmony, troubled only
by some small difference between two deaconesses, Euodia and Syntyche,
whom he seeks to conciliate (i. 27; iv. 2). Vexations from certain
"adversaries," which bad brought about a few arrests, served
only to show the constancy of the true believers (i. 28-30; cf. Acts
xvi. 23). That heresy of the Judaeo-Christians, the assumed need of
circumcision, had assailed without dividing them (iii. 2, 3). Some ill
examples of worldly and self-indulgent Christians, of whom he writes
with tears (iii. 18, 19), appear not to have discredited the church.
Epaphroditus stayed some time with Paul, and fell into a sickness due to
his devotion, of which he nearly died; and an eager desire now came upon
him to revisit Philippi, to calm his friends' anxiety. Paul accordingly
bade him good speed (ii. 25, 26), giving him a letter for the faithful
at Philippi, full of tenderness, written by the hand of Timothy. [47] He had never expressed in
so loving phrases his heartfelt affection for those churches of his
founding, So wholly good and pure.
He congratulates them, not only on their belief in Christ, but on
having suffered for his sake. Those of them who are in prison should be
proud to endure the same treatment that they have seen inflicted on
their apostle, and that he now endures. They are like a little group of
God's children in a corrupt and perverse generation, like lights in a
world of darkness (i. 29, 30; ii. 14-16). He warns them against the
example of others less perfect, that is, those not yet free from Jewish
prejudice (iii. 15- 19). The teachers of "circumcision" are
spoken of with great disdain:
Have an eye to the dogs, the evil-doers, and those who mutilate
themselves. We are the real "circumcised," we, who worship God
in the spirit, who put our glory and trust in Christ, not in the flesh.
If I chose to make boast in differences of the flesh, I could do it with
better right than any other, - of pure Israelite blood, circumcised when
a week old, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a strict
legal Pharisee, in zeal a persecutor of saints, without blame in
whatever concerns the keeping of the Law. But all this I hold as nothing
and as filth, since I have found the transcendent knowledge of Christ.
To gain this I have lost all else. I have exchanged all merit of my own,
from keeping of the Law, for that which alone God regards, the life of
faith in Him, - that which comes from faith in Christ, the power of his
resurrection, the sharing of his sufferings, and taking upon myself the
image of his death, if in any manner I may share also his rising from
the dead. Not that I have yet attained this, or am already perfect; but
I press on. Forgetting what is behind and reaching forth to what is
before me, I strive toward the goal for the prize of victory
in the race. This is the mind that should be in those who are full-grown
men. Our citizenship is in heaven, whence we expect our Saviour Christ,
who will transfigure our wretched body to the likeness of his glorious
body, by virtue of that Divine decree which has put all things under his
control. Therefore, brothers beloved and longed for, my joy and crown,
so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved. [48]
Above all, he urges them to harmony and obedience. The way of life
he has shown them, the example he has given of Christianity in practice,
is the true one; yet each believer has his own revelation, his special
inspira tion, which also is from God (iii. 15). He prays his "true
yokefellow" to reconcile Euodia and Syntyche, and aid them in their
service of charity to the poor (iv. 2, 3). He bids them to rejoice,
"for the Lord is at hand" (iv. 4, 5). His thanks for the gift
sent him from the rich ladies of Philippi are a, model of right feeling
and genuine piety:
I have had great joy in the Lord at this late blossoming out of
your care for me: you had thought of it before, but had no opportunity.
It is not that I am in need; for I have learned to be content with what
I have. I know how to live in penury or in abundance; I have learned,
wherever I am, and in whatever condition, to be full or famished, to
abound or to suffer want. I can do anything in Him who strengthens me.
But it was well done of you to share in my distress. It is not the gift
I think of, but the rich gain that may come to you. I have all I need,
and more, since I have received from Epaphroditus the gift you sent,
fragrant as incense, a sacrifice of sweet odour, dear and acceptable to
God. [49]
He urges humility, which makes each of us hold the rest in honour;
charity, which makes us, like Christ, think more of others than of
ourselves. Jesus had in himself the possibilities of complete divinity;
he might, if he would, have shown himself in heavenly splendour during
his earthly life: but then the method of his salvation would have been
reversed. Therefore he laid aside his native glory, to appear in
"the form of a servant." Thus, to the world's eye, seen
outwardly, he appeared only a man. "He humbled himself, making
himself subject to death, even the death of the cross; and this is why
God has exalted him, and given him a name above every other name, since
it is His will that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in
heaven, on earth, or in the world below, and every tongue confess him
Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (ii. 1-11).
Jesus, as we see, was in Paul's thought increasing in dignity from
day to day. Paul does not as yet make him the equal of God; he believes
rather in his divine nature, and regards his earthly life as the
carrying-out of a divine plan which is effected by his coming "in
the flesh." Imprisonment had on Paul the effect which it commonly
has on strong souls, exalting them to a lofty pitch, and effecting in
them profound revolutions of thought. He hopes soon to send Timothy to
the Philippians with fresh instructions (ii. 19-23), though it is
doubtful if this purpose was ever carried out. At all events Timothy
must have speedily returned to him, as he was at hand when the epistles
to the Colossians and Philemon were written. Luke seems also to have
been for a short time absent, since his name does not appear in
"Philippians," as it does in the two later epistles.
1. See the reflection in Pausanias, vii. 17: 3.
2.
Tac. Ann. xiv. 42.
3.
Tertull. Apol. 1.
4.
See Borghesi, Works, i. 17-27; Ovid, Pontica, i. 6, ii. 6, iv.
9; Tac. A qric. 4.
5.
Sueton. Nero, 35.
6
Tac. Ann. xiii. 32.
7.
The Gens Pomponia Grcecina is thought by some to have held for
several centuries high rank in the Church at Rome. The name seems to
have been found in the cemetery of St. Calixtus (inscription of the
third or fourth century doubtfully restored: Rossi, Roma sotteran. i.
306; ii. 360; inser. tav. 40, 50, No. 27). The identifying of
Pomponia Graecina with the Lucina whose memory clings to the
oldest Christian burial-places seems more than doubtful. There was only
one Lucina, of the third century.
8.
Acts xxiii. 11 ; comp. xix. 24 ; xxvii. 24.
9
.Acts xxviii. 16; Phil. i. 13; Suet. Tiberius, 37.
10.
Pliny, Epist. x. 65; Josephus, Antiq. xviii. 6: 6, 7;
Philostratus, Sophistm, ii. 32.
11.
Tillemont, Hist. des empereurs, L 702.
12.
See Josephus, Antiq. xx. 8: 9.
13.Acts
xxviii. 16,20; comp. "Saint Paul," p. 156; Jos. Ant. xviii.
6: 7; Seneca, De tranq. anim(e, 10. Frutnentarii were attached,
apparently, to every corps (Renier).
14.
Acts xxxiii. 16, 17, 20, 23, 30. Phil. i. 7, 13, 14, 17, 30. Col. iv. 3,
4, 18. Eph. ii. 1; iii. 1; vi. 19, 20.
15. The Jewish population may have been some
twenty or thirty thousand, counting women and children (Jos. Ant.
xvii. 11: 1; xviii. 3: 5. Tac. Ann. ii. 85). The well-known
passage in Cicero (pro Flacco, 28) implies about that number.
16.
(Qigentogni (lovers of the
commandments). See -Saint Paul," pp. 104- 107.
17.
Matt. xiii. 14; Mark xiv. 12; Luke viii. 10; John xii. 40 ; Rom. xi. 8
18.
Acts xxv ii. 30, 31 ; Phil. 7.
19.
Phil. i. 1; ii. 19; Col. iv. 10; Philem. 24.
20.
Col. iv. 10 ; Philem. 13, 23.
21.
Phil. i. 12.
22.
Rom. xv. 18, 19.
23.
Phil. i. 13.
24.
Phil. i. 14.
25.
Garrucci, Bull. archeol. napol., new series, arm. 2, p. 8; Rossi, Bull.
di archeol. crist. 1864, p. 69, 92; Zangemeister, Inscr. pariet. No.
679. For the Jews at Puteoli, see Minervini, Bull arch. napol. new ser.
ann. 3, p. 105; at Pompeii, Garrucci, as above, pp. 8, 68. On the
various eastern or southern populations at Puteoli, see "Saint Paul," p. 114;
Mommsen, Inscr. napol. No. 2462 ; Morelli, Inscr. Lat. (museum of
Naples), Nos. 691, 692,693; Minervini, Jfon. ant. ined. i. (Naples,
1852), 40-43, App. vii-ix; Zeitschr. der d. n?. G. 1869, 150 et seq. ;
Journ. asiat. Apr. 1873. Comp. ,Gervasio (Hent. d. Accad. Ercolan. vol.
ix.; Scherillo, La venuta di S. Pietro in Napoli (Naples, 1859), pp. 97-
149.See Tertull. Apol. 40.
26.
As we see in the Acts of Peter reported by the pseudo-Linus.
27.
Phil. iv. 22. Cf. Philosoph. ix. 12; Gruter, 642, 8; Cardinali,
Dipl. p. 221, No. 410. According to Cbrysostom (i. 48, ii. 168, ix. 349,
xi. 673, 722, ed. Montfaucon), Astorius [an Arian of Cappadocia, in the
fourth century], p. 168 (ed. Combefis); Theophylact (in 2 Tim. iv. 16),
Glycas (Ann. p. 236, Paris ed.), communications of Paul with one
of the women, and with a favourite servant of Nero's court, are to be
traced in the Acts of Peter and Paul. Comp. the apocryphal "Passions " of these
apostles, ascribed to St. Linus, in Bibl. patrum maxima, H. 67 et
seq. ; the Acts of St. Tropez in A eta SS. Naii. p. 6 (note
the expression magnus in officio Caesaris Neronis, and comp.
Gruter, 599, 6; Rhein Mus. new ser. vi. 16); Acta Petri et
Pauli (Tisch. Acta apost. apoer.) §§ 31, 80, 84, Paris MSS.
There is no ground for identifying the legendary woman of the court with
Acte, though the inscription 735 of Orelli is no objection, not being
the epitaph of Acte, as supposed (Greppo, Trois memoires, Paris,
1810, m6m. 1, and additions).
28.
See below, p. 141, 142.
29.
JOS. Anfiq. xvii. 5: 7; 18, v. 4; Wars, i. 33: 6, 7
30.
Tac. Hist. ii. 92
31.
The following inscription, seemingly of the third century, was
discovered a few years ago at Ostia:
D
- M -
M - ANNEO -
PAVLO - PETRO
M - ANNEVS - PAVLUS
FILIO - CARISSIMO
(Rossi, Bull. 1867,
6 et seq. Cf. Dion. Alex. in Euseb. vii. 25: 14). There were many
Peters in the third century (of Lampsacus, of Alexandria, etc.), and
still more Pauls (of Samosata, etc.). In the fourth, the belief
prevailed of relations of St. Paul with Seneca, suggesting an apocryphal
correspondence (Jerome, De vir. illustr. 12; Aug. Epist. 153,
to Macedonius, 14; pseudo-Linus, pp. 70, 71). The belief originated from
a certain supposed likeness in doctrine (Tertull. De anima, 20).
Paul, indeed, bad relations with Gallio, Seneca's brother; but the
slight interest felt by these enlightened men in popular superstitions
(Acts xviii. 12- 17) does not lead us to suppose that Seneca's curiosity
was moved in the least regarding Paul. The law that Seneca, as consul in
the latter half Of A. D. 57 (Rossi, Bull. 1866, 60, 62), bad to
pronounce on Paul's appeal, rests on an erroneous chronology. In a lost
book, Contra Superstitiones, Seneca spoke of Jews, not Christians
(Aug. De civ. Dei, vi. 11). This prejudice against Jews would
have ill disposed him towards Paul and the Christians if he bad ever met
them. Such a man could not have been Paul's disciple.
32.
A passage of Tacitus, preserved by Sulpicius Severus (Bernays, Ueber
die Kronik des Sulp. Sev., Berlin, 1861, 57), speaks of "these superstitions, though
mutually hostile, yet proceeding from a common origin. Christians came
from Jews." (Comp. Tac. Ann. xv. 44.)
33.
Suet. Nero, 40.
34.
2 Tim. iv. 21. This verse served later as the ground of legends
regarding the senator Pudens and his family. On the Dame Linus, see Le
Bas (Inscr. iii. No. 1081). Greek names at Rome usually indicate
slaves or freedmen (Suet. Claud. 25; Galba, 14; Tac. Hist. i. 13). The cognomen
gentilitium alone of freedmen might be Latin. For Claudia, comp.
Claudia Aster (below, p. 141, 142), Klavsia pioth (inscr. at Rome, Orelli, i. 367). A Claudia is named
among the freed people of Acte (Orelli, 735; Fabretti, Inscr. 124-126).
On the names registered in Romans xvi. see "Saint Paul,"
Introd. lxv-lxx. .
35.
See note 3, p. 35.
36.
Phil. i. 15-17; H. 20, 21.
37.
Phil. i. 18-21.
38.
Phil. ii. 17,18.
39.Acts
xxiii. 11; Col. i. 23.
40.
Acts i. 18.
41.
Rom. xv. 19. .
42.
Col. iv. 3.
43.
Phil. i. 26; ii. 24.
44. Phil. i. 7. .
45. Phil. i. 13; ii. 23.
46. This interpretation of the
word oujugos, which Renan supposes to
mean "wife," seems to be set aside by the masculine gender of
the adjective. Comp. "Saint Paul," 148, 149,
where it appears that one tradition bolds that Paul was married. - ED.
47.
This epistle, in its present form, has been supposed to be made up of
two, the former ending with the words, "rejoice in the Lord"
(iii. 1), which in the preamble to the second is omitted. The words
"to write the same things " seem to refer to an earlier
letter; and Polycarp (Ad Phil. 3) speaks of several written by Paul to
the Philippians.
48.
Chap. iii.
2-iv. 1.
49.
Chap. iv.
10-18.
Chapter II
PAUL'S imprisonment and entrance into Rome, -
a triumph in the view of the disciples, -- with the opportunity given by
his residence in the capital of the world, left no peace to the
Judaising party. To them Paul was a sort of stimulant, an active rival,
whom they were ever complaining of, yet eager to imitate. Peter, in
particular, always divided between admiration of his bold associate and
the tasks imposed on him by his personal followers, spent his life --
which also bad its own many trials, as Clement of Rome tells us [1] -- in copying Paul's
career, in following him at a distance, in holding after him the strong
positions which might insure success to their common work. About A.
D. 54, probably by Paul's example, he established himself at
Antioch. The report of Paul's arrival in Rome, which reached Syria and
Judaea in the course of the year 61, might well suggest to him also the
thought of a journey to the West.
He seems to have
come with quite an apostolic company. First, his interpreter, John Mark,
whom he called his son, was his usual companion. [2] The Apostle John, as I have
more than once observed, seems also to have commonly been with him; [3] and we have reason to think
that Barnabas may have shared the journey: he was probably the writer of
Hebrews, who evidently had been in Rome. [4] Finally, it is quite
possible that Simon Magus went on his own account to the capital of the
world, drawn by the attraction it had for all chiefs of sects, -- as the
Gnostics of the second century, -charlatans, magicians, and wonder-
workers. [5] To the Jews the journey to Italy was easy and
common. The historian Josephus [6] was at Rome, in A.D. 62 or 63, to obtain the liberation - of
certain Jewish priests - very holy persons, who would eat nothing
"Unclean," and so lived on nuts and figs when away from home
-whom Felix had sent to answer to the emperor for some unknown charge.
Who were these priests? Had their business nothing to do with that of
Peter and Paul? In lack of evidence, we are free to think as we will on
all these matters. The fact itself, on which modern Catholics rest the
very base of the structure of their faith, is far from being certain. [7] Still, as I think, the
"Acts of Peter," told by the Ebionites, were fabulous only in
details. The main idea in these "Acts " -that Peter goes
through the world following Simon Magus to refute him, carrying the true
gospel which is to confound the doctrine of the impostor, [8] "following him as
light the darkness, as knowledge ignorance, as healing sickness" --
is a true one; though we must substitute Paul for Simon, and, instead of
the bitter hate expressed by the Ebionites for the preacher to the
gentiles, imagine mere difference of opinion between the two apostles,
excluding neither sympathy nor fellowship in the essential thing, the
love of Jesus. In this journey, undertaken by the old Galilaean disciple
in Paul's footsteps, we may well admit that Peter, following closely,
touched at Corinth, where he already had a considerable party, [9] and greatly confirmed the
Jewish Christians. Thus the Church there could afterwards claim to have
been founded by both the apostles, and, by a trifling error of dates,
maintain that they bad been there together, and went thence in company
to meet their death in Rome. [10]
What were the
relations of the two apostles while in Rome? Certain testimonies would
lead us to think that these were quite friendly. [11] We shall soon find Mark,
Peter's amanuensis, on the way to Asia, with a kind word from Paul; [12] and besides, the Epistle of
Peter (so-called, and quite probably genuine) is largely indebted to
those of Paul. Two well-established points are to be kept in view
throughout this history: first, that a deep line of division- deeper
than has ever since marked off any schism in the Church - separated the
founders of Christianity, while the dispute between them, after the
fashion of the time, was extremely bitter; [13] and, the second, that even
in their lifetime a loftier thought united these hostile brethren, in
anticipation of that grand union which it was the Church's office to
bring about after their death. This twofold aspect is often to be found
in religious movements. To understand these divisions we must also take
into account the hot and sensitive temper of the Jews, apt to sudden
violence of speech. In these little pious groups there are continual
quarrels and reconciliations; there are sharp words with no sundering of
good-will. One is for Peter, one for Paul; but these divisions are of
not more account than those within our own scientific schools. Paul has
in this regard an excellent maxim, [14] which we may render,
"Let each abide in the form of instruction he has received,"-
an admirable rule, which the Roman Church in later time has not always
kept. Faithfulness to Jesus was enough; "confessional"
divisions were, so to speak, a simple question of antecedents,
independent of the personal qualities of the believer.
It is, however, a matter
of importance-one which would lead us to think that a good understanding
never came about between the two apostles -- that, in the memory of
the generation following, Peter and Paul are beads of two opposing
parties in the Church; and that the writer of the Apocalypse, almost
immediately after their death (at least that of Peter), is, of all the
Judaeo-Christians, the most bitter against Paul, even excluding him from
the number of the apostles (xxi.14). [15] Paul regarded himself as
the leader of the converted pagans, wherever they might be. This was his
understanding of the arrangement made at Antioch; but the Judaeo-Christians
evidently took it otherwise. This party, which had always been strong at
Rome, no doubt was much reinforced by the coming of Peter, who be. came
its head, and head of the church there, -- a rank to which the unique
dignity of this city gave singular importance. As we see throughout the
Apocalypse, the part played by Rome had in it something providential.
Owing to a certain reaction against Paul, Peter, as leader of the
opposition, came to be more and more regarded as chief of the
apostles. [16] Chief of the apostles in the capital of the world!
" the combination struck the fancy of the more impressible. What
could be more telling? Thus was already formed that wide association of
ideas which for a thousand years and more was to control the destinies
of humanity. The names Peter and Rome became inseparable: Rome is the
predestined capital of Latin Christianity ; the legend of Peter, the
first Pope, is already sketched, though it will need four or five
centuries for its full development. Rome, at least, had no longer any
doubt, from the day when Peter set his foot there, that this
day fixed its destiny, and that the poor Syrian who then entered its
gates established a possession to last for ages.
The moral, social,
and political situation was becoming more strained from day to day.
Everywhere were heard tales of prodigies and disasters. [17] The Christians, as we see
in the Apocalypse, were more affected by these than any others: the idea
that Satan is the god of this world struck deeper root among them. [18] The public spectacles
seemed to them devilish, --not that they ever attended them, but heard
of them in common talk. An Icarus, who in the great wooden amphitheatre
pretended to float in the air, but fell to the ground close to Nero's
seat, spattering him with blood, [19] struck their fancy greatly,
and gave the main incident in their legend of Simon Magus. Crime at Rome
touched the last limits of the infernal sublime; and, whether from love
of mystery or for precaution against the police, it became customary to
speak of the city under the name of Babylon. [20]
This ill-dissembled
antipathy for a world they did not know became a characteristic mark of
Christians. "Hatred to mankind " (odium hwnani generis) was
the popular summary of their doctrine. [21] Their apparent melancholy
was an insult to "the felicity of the age;" their belief in
the approaching end of the world was a denial of the official optimism,
which declared that all things were becoming new. The marks of
abhorrence with which they passed the temple-fronts seemed to hint that
they had it in mind to destroy them by fire. [22] These old sanctuaries of
the Roman religion were very dear to those of patriotic feeling; to
insult them was to insult Evander, Numa, the ancestors of the Roman
people, and the trophies of its victories. [23] The Christians were charged
with all misdeeds; their worship was regarded as a superstition, sombre,
baleful to the empire; many a horrid or shameful tale went about
regarding them; the most enlightened believed in these tales, and
regarded those whom they accused as capable of every crime.
Those of the new
religion gained few adherents except in the lower classes. Well-bred
people avoided speaking of them by -name, or did so with an apology:
"whom the vulgar called Christians," says Tacitus. But their
progress among the people was astonishing: you might call it an
inundation, when the water, long dammed up, burst its dikes, to use the
historian's phrase. The church at Rome was an entire population (multitudo
ingens). Court and town began to talk of it as a serious thing; its
advance made for a time the news of the day. Conservatives thought with
a kind of terror of the cesspool of filth which they imagined in the low
grounds of the city; they spoke with rage of evil weeds that could not
be rooted out, which sprang up as fast as they could be torn away.
"A
race of men of a new and wicked superstition," says Suetonius.
"This sort of people," says Tacitus, "will always be
outlawed, and will always stay among us; "often checked, but most
abundant in growth," adds Dion Cassius. [24]
Popular malice
invented impossible crimes to be charged against the Christians. They
were made responsible for every public disaster; they were accused of
preaching revolt against the emperor, and inciting an insurrection of
slaves. [25] In common opinion the Christian came to be what the
Jew was at times in the Middle Age, - the scapegoat of every calamity, a
man who thinks only of mischief, a poisoner of springs, an eater of
children's flesh, a kindler of conflagration [26] At every fresh crime, the
slightest hint would cause a Christian to be arrested, or even put to
torture. The mere name was often enough to lead to his arrest. If he was
seen to bold aloof from pagan sacrifices, he was insulted. [27] The age of persecution was
already begun, to last, with brief intervals, till the time of
Constantine. In the thirty years since the religion was first preached,
only Jews had been its persecutors; against them it had been. defended
by the Romans, who were now its persecutors in their turn. The terror
and the bate spread from the capital to the provinces, and evoked the
wildest outrage. [28] With this were mingled atrocious jestings:
the walls of the places where the Christians met were covered with
insulting or filthy inscriptions against the brethren and sisters [29] The fashion of representing
Jesus as a man with an ass's head was perhaps already adopted. [30]
No one doubts now
that these charges of crime and infamy were calumnies. We have numerous
reasons to believe that the Christian leaders gave not the least ground
for the ill-will which was presently to bring upon them such brutal
atrocities. All the party leaders in -the Christian community were
agreed as to the attitude to be held towards the Roman authorities. In
theory, these magistrates might be regarded as ministers of Satan, since
they were protectors of idolatry and the props of a world given over to
Satan; [31] but in practice they were treated with entire
respect. The Ebionite faction alone shared the exalted temper of the
Zealots -and other Jewish fanatics. Towards the State the apostles
appear to have been conservative and legitimist. Far from urging the
slave to revolt, they insist on his submission to his master, however
stern and harsh, as if he were serving Christ in person; and this not
under compulsion, to escape chastisement, but by conscience, because God
so wills. God himself stands behind the master. Slavery was so far from
seeming to them against nature that Christians held slaves, even
Christian slaves. [32] We have seen Paul restrain the impulse towards a
political rising, in A. D. 57, urging upon the faithful in Rome, and doubtless
many other churches, submission to "the powers that be,"
whatever their source, and laying down the maxim that he who bears the
sword [the military police] is a servant of God, to be dreaded only by
the wrong-doer. Peter, on his part, was the most placid of men; we shall
soon find the rule of submission to the powers taught in
his
name, almost in the very words of Paul. [33] The school that later
gathered about John held the same view as to the divine origin of
sovereignty. [34] The leaders dreaded nothing more than to see their
followers mixed up in illegal acts, whose odium would fall back upon the
entire body. [35] The language of the apostles at this supreme moment
was the language of supreme prudence. A few wretches put to torture, a
few slaves under the lash, would seem to have broken out in insults,
calling their masters idolaters, and threatening them with the wrath of
God. [36] Others, zealous to excess, declaimed aloud against
the pagans, reproaching them with their vices; but their more sensible
brethren wittily called them "bishops (overseers) of the
outsiders" (aggotrioepiokopoi) . Cruel mishaps befell some of
these intermeddlers; but the sober directors of the body, far from
applauding them, would tell them, plainly enough, that they had got only
what they deserved. [37]
The condition of
the Christians was rendered harder by all sorts of perplexities which
there is not evidence enough to enable us to disentangle. The Jews were
very influential with the emperor and Poppaea. [38] The diviners (mathematici),among
the rest one Balbillus of Ephesus, thronged about the emperor, and gave
him atrocious counsels, under pretence of exercising that part of their
skill which consisted in turning aside strokes of ill-fortune and evil
presages. [39] The legend of Simon Magus brings his name into this
circle of sorcerers, and may possibly have some foundation in fact,
though very doubtful. [40] The writer of the Apocalypse says much of a
"false prophet," who is represented as an ally of Nero, a
wonder-worker who makes fire fall from the sky, who makes graven images
live and speak, and marks men with "the mark of the Beast." [41] It may be that Balbillus is
here meant; still, it is noticeable that the prodigies of the false
prophet in the Apocalypse are much like the jugglery ascribed to Simon
in the legend. of a monster that spoke like a dragon and had "two
horns like [42] The emblem a lamb," designating the false
prophet (xiii. 11), is far better suited to a false Messiah like Simon
of Gitton than to a mere conjurer. And besides, the tale of Simon cast
down from the air is not unlike an accident which happened in the Circus
under Nero to an acrobat who played the part of Icarus.constant practice
of the Apocalypse to speak in enigmas makes [43] The such a reference very
obscure; but we shall not err if we look sharply behind every line of
this strange book for allusions to the pettiest incidents or anecdotes
of Nero's reign.
Further,
the heart of the Christian body was never more burdened, more
palpitating, than now. The disciples believed themselves to be in a
transitory state, of very brief duration. Each day they looked for the
appearing of their Lord in judgment. He is coming! Yet one hour! He is
close at band! Such was the common speech among them. [44] The martyr- spirit the
thought that a martyr glorifies Christ by his death, and that this death
is a victory -- was already diffused everywhere.[45] To a pagan, on the other
band, the, flesh of Christians seemed the natural prey of the tormentor.
A very popular play of this time, called "Laureolus,"
exhibited the chief actor (a sort of hypocritical knave) as crucified
upon the stage amid the plaudits of the spectators, and devoured by a
bear. This was before Christianity was brought to Rome ; it was
exhibited [under Caligula] in A. D. 41 ; but it seems to have been applied to the
Christian martyrs, and the diminutive Laureolus, answering to Stephanos
["wreath"], might invite such comparisons. [46]
1. 1 Ad Cor ch. v.
2.
Col. iv. 10; Philem. 24; 1 Pet. v. 13. Comp. Euseb. ii. 15; iii. 39;
iii. 1: 1; Tertull. Adv. Marc. iv. 5; Clem. Alex. in Euseb. vi.
14; Origen, id. vi. 25; Epiph. li. 6; Jerome, Epist. 150,
11. One Mark Peter, probably a
Christian, appears at Bostra, A. D. 278 (Waddington, Inser. 1909).
3.
Acts i. 13; iii. 1, etc.; iv. 13, 19; viii. 14; John xxi.; Gal. ii. 9.
The horror felt at the massacres Of A. D. 64 in Rome is so vivid in the Apocalypse that the
writer may well have witnessed them, or at least have been in Rome (ebs.
xiii., xvii.). Patmos may have been chosen for the scene of these
visions, as the last port of landing on the way from Rome to Ephesus, as
will appear when I come to speak of the Apocalypse. I will speak later
of the tradition concerning John at the Latin gate. The Fourth Gospel,
it is true, was not written by John; yet we may note the passage in ch.
xxi. 15-23 (see "The Apostles," chap.
ii.), which was doubtless written by some one intimate with Peter, and a
witness of his death.
4.
See Introd. P. 11.
5.
Justin, Apol. i. 26, 56; Iren. i. 23: 1; Hippol. Phil. vi. 20; Constit.
Apost. vi. 9; Euseb. ii. 13, 14. (Justin and Irenaeus, it is true,
often rest on strangely mistaken evidence.) The presence of Simon at
Rome is the base of the apocryphal Acts of Peter (Tisch, Acta apost.
apoer., p. 13; comp. Recogn. ii. 9; iii. 63, 64), which was
at first an Ebionite scripture. Eusebius (ii. 14) admits the main fact,
to which Trenaeus seems to refer. The way in which the writer of
"Acts " (viii. 24) speaks of Simon, leaving a possibility of
his conversion, seems to suppose him to be yet living. The passage in
Tacitus (Ann. xii. 52) does not contradiet the presence of Simon
in Rome (comp. id. xiv. 9; Hist. L 22). The injurious use of Simon's
name in the second century, as an alias for Paul, does not
disprove either his existence or his having gone to Rome. It may be
noted that the mathematici (astrologers), the Chaldaei, arid
the gohtej (magicians of every sort),
were never so abundant at Rome as now: Tac. Ann. xii. 52; Hist.
i. 22; fi. 62; Dion Cass. 1xv. 1; Ixvi. 9; Suet. Tib. 36; Vitell.
14; Juv. vi. 542; Euseb. Chron. (Domitian, Ann. 9); Zonaras,
Ann. vi. 5.
6 Life,
3.
7.
It is quite sure that Peter was riot at Rome when Paul wrote Romans
" (comp. Dion. of Cor. in Euseb. ii. 25). Paul never
interfered with churches of the "circumcision " (Gal. ii. 7, 8; 2 Cor. x.
16; Rom. xv. 18-20), and there were none in Rome when he went
there, as is shown by Acts xxviii. 17-20. The reckoning of
Eusebius (ii. 14; Chron. Claud. 2) and Jerome (De vir. illustr.
1) as to Peter's arrival in Rome is thus errone. ous. But nothing
disproves his coming later, and certain hints make this likely: - 1. A
tradition of the second century (Euseb. ii. 15, 25; iii. 1 ; vi. 14; Tgnat.
Ad Rom. 4; Iren. iii. 1: 1; 3: 3; Tert. Scorp. 15;
Praeser. 36; Khrugma
Paylov, in
sequel to Cyprian's Works, p. 139, ed. Rigault), not wholly
without weight, though confused with manifest errors, and evidently
implying an a priori intention to make the "prince of the apostles
" founder of the church at the world's capital, as was also falsely
claimed for that of Corinth ; 2. The undoubted fact that Peter
died in a form of martyrdom hardly likely except at Rome (see chap.
viii., below); 3. The epistle 1 Peter, dated at Rome ("Babylon "), which is
strong evidence, even if written by some other hand, which would have
employed that date to give it further credit; 4. The legend which
prevailed at Rome, sound in substance, that Peter followed everywhere in
the footsteps of Simon 'Magus (i. e., Paul), and came to Rome to strive
against him: Perisoi and Khrugma Petrou, also H. Kai II. khruma, cited by Heracleon and Clem. Alex.; Lipsius, Rbmische
Petrussage, 13; Hilgenfeld, N. T. extra Can. rec. iv. 52; Euseb.
ii. 14; Hippol. Phil. vii. 20; Const. Apost. vi. 9; comp.
Syriac Kjpvypa: Cureton, Anc. Syr. doc. 35-41. -As to localities
in Rome attached to this legerld (the house of PudeDs, etc ), they are
worthless, though the via nornentana, mentioned as the place of
his baptising, is a very ancient Christian centre. (See Bosio, Roma
Sott. (1650), 400-402; Rossi, id. i. 189; Bull. 1867, 37, 48, 49;
Acta SS. 31'aii, iv. 299: Pud. and Prax.; Acta SS. Jan. ii. 7: Marcell.)
The inscription in Journ. de Naples, Mar. 17, 1870, Il trionfo
della Chiesa cattolica, is a gross fraud. (See Appendix.)
8.
Hom. Clem. ii. 17; iii. 59.
9 .1
Cor. i. 12; iii. 22 -, ix. 5. .
10.
See Dionysius of Corinth in Euseb. ii. 25. (The text is uncertain
and obscure.) Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Jerome speak of Peter's
preaching in Asia Minor, on the very insufficient evidence of 1 Pet. i.
1.
11.
Comp. Khrugma
Paugov, in De
non iterum bapt., 1.c.
12.
Col. iv. 10.
13.
See in Jude and in the Apocalypse (chaps. ii. and iii.) the fanatical
traits ascribed to John. Also 2 John 9, 10; Iren. iii. 3, 4; and the
bitter phrases to be found on every page of Paul's writings.
14.
Rom. vi. 17.
15. Compare " Saint Paul," chap. xiii.
near the end.
16.
See the letter of Clement to James in the Clementine Homilies, 1.
17.
See Tac. Ann. xiv. 12, 22; xv. 22. Suet. Nero, 36, 39; Dion
Cass. . Philost. Apoll. iv. 43; Seneca, Qwest. nat. vi. 1; Euseb.
Chron. lxi. 16, 18, Nero, ann. 7, 9, 10.
18.
See 2 Cor. iv. 4. Eph. vi. 12. John xii. 31; xiv. 30.
19.
Suet. Nero, 12. See below, p. 59.
20.
See 1 Pet. v. 13; Apoc. chs. xiv.-xviii.; Carm. Sibyll. v. 142, 158. The
Jews were accustomed to apply to modern things symbolic names taken from
their sacred books: thus "Edom " signified both Rome and the empire (Buxtorf,
Lex. Chald., etc., s. v).; and
the name "Cuthite" was applied
both to Samaritans and to pagans.
21.
Tac. Ann. xv. 44 (cf. Hist. v. 5); Suet. Nero, 16.
22.
1 Pet. iv. 4; Tac. Hist. v. 5: pessimus quisque, spretis religionibus
patriis.
23.
Tac. Ann. xv. 41, 44; Hist. v. 5. .
24.
See Suet. Nero, 16. Tac. Hist. i. 22; Ann. xii. 52. Dion Cass. xxxvii.
17.
25.
Rom. xiii. 1-5; 1 Pet. ii. 13-18.
26.
Tac. Ann. xv. 44; Suet. Nero, 16; Seneca, in St. Au.-Ustine's Civ. Dei,
vi. 11; 1 Pet. ii. 12, 15; iii. 16. 2 Pet. ii. 12.
27.
1 Pet. iv. 4.
28.
1 Pet. i. 6 ; ii. 19, 20; iii. 14; iv. 12-14; v. 8-10. Jas. iL 6.
Tertull. Ad nationes, i. 7.
29.
Rossi, Bull. di arch. crist., 1864, 69, 70.
30.
M. Rossi (id. p. 72) thinks he has read on the walls of a building in
Pompeii which seems to have served for Christian gatherings: Mulus hic
muscellas docuit (see Zangemeister, Inscr. pariet. 2016). Comp. the
graven stone published by Stefanone (Gemm&-, Venice, 1646, tab. 30),
representing an ass posing as school-teacher before a group of children
b6nt in obeisance (republished by Fr. Minter, Primordia eccles. Afric.,
'Hafn. 1829, p. 218; and by F. X. Kraus, Das Spott-crucifix vom Palatin,
'Vienna, 1869, transl. by Ch. de LiDas, Arras, 1870). The museum of
Luynes (Bibl. nat. cab. des antiques, terra cotta, 779) has a tablet
from Syria representing Jesus caxicatured as a little man in a long
gown, holding a book, with a big ass's-head, long ears, and eyes to
which it is sought to give a leering and mystical expression. Comp. also
the [wellknown] grotesque crucifix of the Palatine (Garrucci, Il croci
fisso graffito, - Bome, 1857; Kraus-Linaa, as above; Comptes rendus de
I'Acad. des inscr., 1870, 32-36). See Tertull. Apol. 16; Minut. Felix,
9, 28; Celsus in Origen, Contra Celsum, vi. 31.
31.
Luke iv. 6 ; John xii. 31; Eph. vi. 12.
32.
1 Pet. ii. 18. Col. iii. 22, 25; iv. 1. Eph. vi. 5-9, with the episode
of Onesimus.
33. 1 Pet. ii. 13, 14.
34. John xix. 11.
35. 1 Pet. ii. 11, 12; iv. 15. .
36. 1 Pet. ii. 23.
37. 1 Pet. iv. 15.
38. See below, pp. 141, 142.
39.Suet. Nero, 34, 36, 40; Tac. Hist. i.
22.
40. See the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, ii. 34;
Recogn. i. 74; iii. 47, 57, 63, 64; " Acts of Peter "
(spurious), Tisch. 3931 ; II Linus " in Bibl. max. patrum, ii. 67;
"Marcellus" in Fabricius, Cod. apoer. N. T., iii. 635 et
seq. ; "Abdias," i. 16, 17; Const. apostol. vi. 9;
Iren. i. 23: 1; Euseb. ii. 14; "Hegesippus," De excid.
Hieros. iii. 2; Epiphan. xxi. 5; Arnobius, Adv. gentes, ii. 13;
Philastr. Mer. 29; Sulp. Sev. ii. 28, etc. Comp. Rossi, Buit.
1867, 70, 71.
41. Apoc. xiii. 14-17; xvi. 13;
xix. 20.
42. Recogn. ii. 9; Philos. vi. 20; Const. Apost.
vi. 9.
43. Suet. Nero, 12; Dion Chrys. Or. xxi. 9;
Juv. iii. 78-80. Comp. Recogn. ii. 9. Juvenal speaks of the false
Icarus as a Greek. (See p. 54.)
44. Phil. iv. 5; Jas. v. 8; 1 Pet.
iv. 7; Heb. x. 37; 1 John ii. 18.
45. Phil. i. 20; John xxi. 19.
Comp. the expression of Caius, "trophies " of the apostles [referring to
the martyrdom of Peter and Paul] in Euseb. ii. 25.
46. Suet. Caius, 57; Juvenal, viii.
186, 187; Martial, Spectacula, 7.
CHAPTER III.
STATE OF THE CHURCHES IN JUDEA.—DEATH OF
JAMES.
The ill-will of which the Christian Church
was the object at Rome, perhaps even in Asia Minor and Greece, made
itself felt even in Judea; but the persecution there had other causes.
There were rich Sadducees, the aristocracy of the Temple, who showed
themselves enraged against the honest poor and blasphemed the name of
“Christian.” About the time we have reached there was circulated a
letter of James, “servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,”
addressed to “the twelve tribes of the Dispersion.” It is one of the
finest pieces of early Christian literature, recalling sometimes the
Gospel, and at other times the sweet and restful wisdom of Ecclesiastes.
The authenticity of such writings, seeing the number of false apostolic
letters which circulated, is always doubtful. Perhaps the
Judeo-Christian party, accustomed to use to its own taste the authority
of James, attributed to him this manifesto in which the desire to oppose
the innovators made itself felt. Certainly, if James had some share in
it, he was not its editor. It is doubtful if James knew Greek; his
language was Syriac; now the epistle of James is much the best written
work in the New Testament, its Greek is pure and almost classical. As to
this, the writing agrees perfectly with the character of James. The
author is a Jewish Rabbi, he holds strongly by the Law; to express the
meeting of the faithful, he makes use of the word “synagogue”; he is
Paul’s adversary; the tone of his epistle resembles the synoptical
gospel which we shall see later on came from the Christian family of
which James was the head. Nevertheless, the 23name
of Jesus is only mentioned there two or three times, with the simple
qualification of Messiah, and without any of the ambitious hyperboles
which the ardent imagination of Paul had accumulated.
James, or the Jewish moralist who desired to
cover himself with his authority, introduces us all at once into a
little conventicle of the persecuted. Trials are a good thing, for in
putting faith through the crucible, they produce patience; now patience
is the perfection of virtue; the man who is tempted receives the crown
of life. But what preoccupies our doctor especially is the difference
between the rich and the poor. He must have produced in the community
some rivalry between the favoured brothers of fortune and those who were
not. Those complain of the harshness of the rich and their pride, while
they groaned under them:
Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that
he is exalted; but the rich, in that he is made low, because as the
flower of the grass he shall pass away. . . . My brethren, have not the
faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, with respect of
persons. For if there come into your assembly a man with a gold ring, in
goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment, and
ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him,
Sit thou here in a good place, and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or
sit here under my footstool. Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and
are become judges of evil thoughts? Hearken, my beloved brethren, hath
not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the
Kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him? But ye have
despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the
judgment seats? Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye
are called?
Pride, corruption, brutality, and the luxury
of the rich Sadducees had indeed arrived at their height. The women
bought the high priesthood from Agrippa II. with gold. Martha, daughter
of Boethus, one of those Simonists, who went to see her husband
officiate, made them stretch carpets from the gate of her house to the
Sanctuary. The high-priesthood was thus fearfully 24debased.
These worldly priests blushed for the most holy part of their functions.
The offering of sacrifice had become repulsive to refined people, whom
their duty condemned to the trade of butcher and knacker! Many of them
did this in silk gloves not to soil the skin of their hands by contact
with the victim. The whole tradition, agreeing on this point with the
Gospels and the Epistle of James, represents to us the priests of the
last year before the destruction of the Temple as gourmands, given up to
luxury, and hard to the poor people. The Talmud contains the fabulous
list of what was needed for the table of a high priest; it surpasses all
likelihood, but indicates the dominant opinion. “Four cries come from
the vestibule of the Temple,” says one tradition; the first, “Come
forth, ye descendants of Eli, you stain the Temple of the Eternal”; the
second, “Come forth, Issachar of Kaphar-Barkai, who only dost respect
thyself, and who profanest the victims consecrated to Heaven”—(it was he
who wrapped his hands in silk while doing his service); the third,
“Open, ye gates, let in Ishmael, the son of Phabi, the disciple of
Phinehas, that he may fulfil the functions of the high-priesthood”; the
fourth, “Open, ye gates, and let John, son of Nebedeus, the disciple of
gourmands, enter in, that he may gorge himself with victims.” A sort of
song, or rather malediction, against the sacerdotal families, which ran
its course in the streets of Jerusalem at the same period, has been
preserved to us.
”
Plague take the house of Boëthus!</l> Plague take them because of their
cudgels! </l> Plague
take the house of Hanan!</l>
Plague take them because of their conspiracies!</l>
Plague take the house of
Cantheras!</l> Plague
take them became of their Kalams!</l>
Plague take the family of
Ishmael, son of Phabi!</l> Plague take them because of their fists!</l>
They are high-priests, their sons
are treasurers, their sons-in-law are customs officers, and their
servants beat us with their cudgels.”</l>
</verse> 25
There was open war between these opulent
priests, friends of the Romans, taking these lucrative appointments to
themselves and their families, and the poor priests maintained by the
people. Every day there were bloody brawls. The impudence and audacity
of the high-priestly families went so far as to send their servants to
the threshing-floors to collect the tithes which belonged to the high
clergy, and they beat those who refused; the poor priests were in a
wretched state. Fancy the feelings of the pious man, the democratic Jew,
rich in the promises of all the prophets, maltreated in the Temple (his
own house) by the insolent lackeys of unbelieving and epicurean priests.
The Christians grouped around James made common cause with those
oppressed ones who probably were like themselves, holy people (hasidim)
favourites with the public. Mendicity appears to have become a virtue
and the mark of patriotism. The rich classes were friends of the Romans,
and could scarcely become that except by a sort of apostacy and treason.
To hate the rich was thus a mark of piety. Obliged, so as not to die of
hunger, to work in those constructions of the Herodians, in which they
saw nothing but an ostentatious vanity, the hasidim looked on
themselves as victims of the unbelieving. “Poor” passed as the synonym
of “Saint.”
“Now weep, ye rich, howl for your miseries
that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments
are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them
shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as if it were
fire. Ye have heaped treasures together for the last days. Behold the
hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you
kept back by fraud crieth, and the cries of them which have reaped are
entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure
on the earth and been wanton. Ye have nourished your hearts as in a day
of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not
resist you.”
We feel in these pages that there is already
fermenting the spirit of those social revolutions which some
26years later filled Jerusalem with blood.
Nothing expresses with so much force the sentiment of aversion to the
world which was the soul of Primitive Christianity. “To keep oneself
unspotted from the world” is the supreme command. “He who would be the
friend of the world is constituted the enemy of God.” All desire is
vanity—illusion. The end is so near? why complain of one another? why
engage in litigation? the true judge is coming: He is at the door!
“And now you others who say: To-day or
to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and
buy and sell and get gain. Whereas ye know not what shall be on the
morrow. For what is your life. It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a
little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, if the
Lord will we shall live, and do this or that.”
When he speaks of humility, patience, mercy,
the exaltation of the humble, and of the joy which is below tears, James
seems to have kept in memory the very words of Jesus. We feel,
nevertheless, that he holds much by the law. Quite a paragraph of his
Epistle is dedicated to warn the faithful against Paul’s doctrine on the
uselessness of works and salvation by faith. A phrase of James (ii.,
24) is the direct denial of a phrase in the Epistle to the
Romans (iii.,
28). In opposition to the Apostle of the Gentiles (Rom.
iv., 1 and ff.) the Apostle of Jerusalem maintains (ii.,
21 and ff.) that Abraham was saved by works, and that faith
without works is a dead faith. The devils have faith and apparently are
not saved. Departing here from his usual moderation, James calls his
opponent a “vain man.” In one or two other passages, we can see an
allusion to the debates which already divided the Church, and which
shall fill up the history of Christian theology some centuries later.
A spirit of lofty piety and touching
charity animated this Church of the Saints. “Pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in
their affliction,” said James.
27
The power of curing diseases, especially by
anointing with oil, was considered as of common right among believers:
indeed the unbelievers saw in this healing a gift peculiar to the
Christians. The elders were reputed to enjoy it in a high degree, and
became thus a band of spiritual physicians. James attaches to those
practices of supernatural medicine the greatest importance. The germ of
nearly all the Catholic Sacraments was laid here. Confession of sins,
for a long time practised by the Jews, was looked on as an excellent
means of pardon and healing, two ideas inseparable in the beliefs of the
age.
“Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray.
Is any merry? Let him sing. Is any sick among you? Let him call for the
elders of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil
in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick,
and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he have committed sins they
shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another and pray one
for another that ye may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is
strong when it is made with a fixed object.”
The apocryphal apocalypses where the
religious passions of the people expressed themselves with so much fire,
were greedily collected in this little group of enthusiastic Jews, or
rather were born alongside of it, almost in its bosom, so much so that
the tissue of these singular writings and that of the writings of the
New Testament are often hard to disentangle from each other. They really
took these pamphlets, born of yesterday, for the words of Enoch, Baruch
and Moses. The strangest beliefs as to hell, the rebel angels, the
wicked giants who brought on the flood, were spread about, and had as
their principal source the books of Enoch. There were in all these
fables some lively allusions to contemporaneous events. That foreseeing
Noah, that pious Enoch, who did not cease to predict the Deluge to those
heedless ones who, during this whole period, ate, drank, married, and
enriched 28themselves, who are they if they be
not the seers of these last days, vainly warning a frivolous generation,
which is unwilling to admit that the world is nearly at an end? An
entire branch, a sort of period of subterranean life is added to the
legend of Jesus. It was asked what he did during the three days he
passed in the grave. They would have it that during this time he had
gone down, by giving battle to death, into the infernal prisons where
were confined the rebellious or unbelieving spirits; that there he had
preached to the shades and devils and prepared for their deliverance.
That conception was necessary that Jesus might be, in the strongest
sense of the term, the universal Saviour; as St. Paul presents the idea
also in his last writings. Yet the fictions we speak of did not find a
place within the limits of the Synoptical Gospels, doubtless because
these limits had been already fixed when they were created. They
remained floating outside the Gospel and did not find body until later
in the apocryphal writing called the “Gospel of Nicodemus.”
The work par excellence of the
Christian conscience was, nevertheless, accomplished in silence in Judea
or the adjacent countries. The Synoptical Gospels were created part by
part, as a living organism is completed little by little, and attained,
under the action of a deep mysterious reason, to perfect unity. At the
date we have reached, was there already some text written on the acts
and words of Jesus? Has the Apostle Matthew, if it is he who is in
question, written in Hebrew the discourses of the Lord? Has Mark, or he
who takes his name, entrusted to paper his notes on the life of Jesus?
We may doubt it. Paul, in particular had certainly in his hands no
writing as to the words of Jesus. Did he at least possess an oral
tradition, mnemonic in some degree, of these words? We observe such a
tradition for the account of the Supper, perhaps for that of the
Passion, and up to a certain point for that of the Resurrection, but not
for the 29parables and discourses. Jesus is in
his eyes as expiatory victim, a superhuman being, a risen one, not a
moralist. His quotation of the words of Jesus are undecided and are not
related to the discourses which the Synoptical Gospels put into Jesus’
mouth. The apostolical epistles which we possess, other than those of
Paul, do not lead us to suppose any production of this kind.
What seems to result from this is that
certain accounts, such as that of the Supper, of the Passion, and the
Resurrection, were known by heart, in terms which admitted of little
variety. The plan of the Synoptical Gospels was already probably agreed
on: but while the Apostles lived, books which would have pretended to
fix the tradition of which they believed themselves the sole
depositories would not have had any chance of being accepted. Why,
besides, write the life of Jesus? He is coming back. A world on the eve
of closing has no need of new books. It is when the witnesses shall be
dead that it will be important to render durable by the Scripture a
representation which is effacing itself every day. In this point of view
the Churches of Judea and the neighbouring countries had a great
superiority. The knowledge of the discourses of Jesus was much more
exact and extended than elsewhere. We remark under this connection a
certain difference between the Epistle of James and the Epistle of Paul.
The little writing of James is quite impregnated by a sort of
evangelical perfume. We hear these sometimes like an echo of the word of
Jesus; the sentiment of the life of Galilee is found there still with
vivid power.
We know nothing historical as to the
missions sent directly by the Church of Jerusalem. That Church,
according to its own principles, ought scarcely to be looked on as a
propaganda. In general there were few Ebionite and Judeo-Christian
Missions. The strict spirit of the Ebionim only admitted of
circumcised missionaries. According to the picture which is traced
30to us by some writings of the second century,
suspected of exaggeration, but faithful to the Jerusalem spirit, the
Judeo-Christianity preacher was held in a sort of suspicion; they made
sure about him, they imposed on him some proofs, a noviciate of six
years; he must have regular papers, a sort of labelled confession of
faith, conformable to that of the Apostles of Jerusalem. Such
impediments were a decided obstacle to a fruitful Apostleship: under
such conditions Christianity would never have been preached. Thus the
messengers of James appeared much more occupied in overturning Paul’s
foundations than in building on their own account, The Churches of
Bithynia, Pontus and Cappadocia which appeared about this time alongside
of the Churches of Asia and Galatia, did not proceed it is true, from
Paul, but it is not likely that they were the work of James or Peter:
they owed their foundation no doubt to that anonymous preaching of the
faithful which was the most efficacious of all. We suppose, on the
contrary, that Batania, the Hauran, Decapolis, and in general all the
region to the east of the Jordan which were soon to be the centre of the
fortress of Judeo-Christianity, were evangelized by some adherents of
the Church of Jerusalem. They found the Roman limit very near on that
side. Now the Arabian countries inclined in no way to the new preaching,
and the countries subject to the Arsacides were little open to efforts
coming from Roman lands. In the geography of the Apostles the earth was
very little. The first Christians never thought of the barbarian or
Persian world; the Arabian
world itself scarcely existed for them. The missions of St. Thomas among
the Parthians, of St. Andrew among the Scythians, and of Bartholomew in
India are only legendary. The Christian imagination of the first ages
turned little towards the East: the goal of Apostolic Pilgrimages was
the extremity of the West; as to the East, they spoke as if the
missionaries regarded the boundary as already reached.
31
Had Edessa heard of the name of Jesus in
the first century? Was there at that time beside Osrhoene a Syriac-speaking
Christianity? The fables by which the Church has surrounded its cradle
do not permit us to express ourselves with certainty on that point. Yet
it is very probable that the strong relations which Judaism had on this
side were used for the propagation of Christianity. Samosata and
Comagena had at an early period educated persons forming part of the
Church or at least very favourable to Jesus. It was from Antioch in any
case that this region of the Euphrates received the seed of the faith.
The clouds which were gathering over the
East disturbed these pacific preachings. The good administration of
Festus could do nothing against the evils which Judea carried in her
bosom. Brigands, zealots, assassins, and impostors of all kinds overran
the country. A magician presented himself, among twenty others,
promising the people salvation and the end of evil, if they would
accompany him to the desert. Those who followed him were massacred by
the Roman soldiers; but no one was undeceived as to the false prophets.
Festus died in Judea about the beginning of the year 62. Nero appointed
Albinus as his successor. About the same time, Herod Agrippa II. took
the high priesthood from Joseph Cabi to give it to Hanan, son of the
celebrated Hanan or Annas, who had contributed more than anyone to the
death of Jesus. He was the fifth of Annas’ eons who occupied that
dignity.
Hanan the younger was a haughty, harsh and
audacious man. He was the flower of Sadduceeism, the complete expression
of that cruel and inhuman sect, always ready to render the exercise of
authority odious and insupportable. James, the brother of the Lord, was
known in all Jerusalem as a bitter defender of the poor, as a prophet in
the old style, inveighing against the rich and powerful. Hanan resolved
on his death, and taking advantage of the absence of Agrippa, and of the
32fact that Albinus had not yet arrived in
Judea, he assembled the judicial Sanhedrin and caused James and several
other saints to appear before him. They accused them of breaking the
law; they were condemned to be stoned. The authority of Agrippa was
necessary to assemble the Sanhedrim, and that of Albinus would have been
needed to proceed to punishment; but the violent Hanan went beyond all
rules. James was, in fact, stoned near the temple. As they had a
difficulty in accomplishing it, a fuller broke his head with his cudgel
which was used to measure stuffs. He was, it is said, forty-six years
old.
The death of this saintly personage had the
worst effect on the city. The Pharisee devotees and the strict observers
of the law were very discontented. James was universally esteemed; he
was considered one of those men whose prayers were most efficacious. It
is asserted that a Rechabite (probably an Essene), or according to
others, Simeon son of Clopas, nephew of Jesus, cried while they stoned
him, “Stop, what are you doing? What! you kill the just who prays for
you?” They applied to him the passage in
Isaiah, iii., 10, which they had heard from him, “Let us
suppress they say, the righteous, because he is vexatious to us: this is
why the fruit of their works is devoured.” Some Hebrew Elegies were
written on his death, full of allusion to Biblical passages and to his
name of Obliam. Nearly everybody at last was found in sympathy asking
Herod Agrippa II. to set bounds to the audacity of the high-priest.
Albinus was informed of the actions of Hanan, when he had left
Alexandria for Judea. He wrote Hanan a threatening letter, then he
unseated him. Hanan thus only occupied the high-priesthood three months.
The misfortunes which soon fell on the nation were looked on by many
people as the consequence of James’ murder. As to the Christians, they
saw in this death a sign of the times, a proof that the final
catastrophes were approaching.
33
The enthusiasm, indeed, assumed at
Jerusalem great proportions. Anarchy was at its height. The zealots
although decimated by punishment, were masters of everything. Albinus in
no way resembled Festus; he only thought of making money by connivance
with the brigands. On all sides, one saw prognostications of some
unheard-of event. It was at the end of the year 62 that one named Jesus,
son of Hanan, a sort of risen Jeremiah, began to run night and day
through the streets of Jerusalem, crying, “A voice from the East! a
voice from the West! a voice from the four winds a voice against
Jerusalem and the temple! a voice against the bridegrooms and the
brides! a voice against all the people!” They scourged him; but he
repeated the same cry. They beat him with rods till his bones were seen;
at each blow he repeated in a lamentable voice, “Woe to Jerusalem! woe
to Jerusalem!” He was never seen to speak to anyone. He went along
repeating, “Woe! woe to Jerusalem!” without reproaching those who beat
him, and thanking those who gave him alms. He went on thus until the
siege, his voice never appearing to grow weaker.
If this Jesus, son of Hanan, was not a
disciple of Jesus, his weird cry was at least the true expression of
what was at the core of the Christian conscience. Jerusalem had filled
up its measure. That city which slew the prophets and stoned those who
were sent to it, beating some, crucifying others, was henceforth the
city of anathemas. About the time at which we have arrived were formed
those little apocalypses which some attributed to Enoch, others to
Jesus, and which offered the greatest analogies to the exclamations of
Jesus, son of Hanan. These writings extend later into the framework of
the synoptical gospels; they were represented as discourses, which Jesus
had given in his last days. Perhaps already the
mot d’ordre
was given to leave Judea and flee to the mountains. The synoptical
gospels always bear deeply the mark of these sorrows; they keep it
34like a birth-mark—an indelible impression.
With the peaceful axioms of Jesus mingled the colours of a gloomy
apocalypse, the presentiments of a disgusted and troubled imagination.
But the gentleness of the Christians put them in the shadow compared
with the madnesses which agitated the other parties in the nation,
possessed like them by Messianic ideas. To them the Messiah had come; he
had been in the desert, he had ascended to heaven after thirty years;
the impostors or enthusiasts who sought to carry the people away after
them were false Christs and false prophets. The death of James and
perhaps of some other brethren, led them, besides, to separate their
cause more and more from Judaism. A butt to the hatred of all, they
comforted themselves by thinking of the precepts of Jesus. According to
many, Jesus had predicted that, in the midst of all these trials, not a
hair of their heads should perish.
The situation was so precarious, and they
felt so plainly that they were on the eve of a catastrophe that an
immediate successor was given to James in the presiding of the Church of
Jerusalem. The other “brethren of the Lord,” such as Jude, Simon, son of
Clopas, continued to be the principal authorities in the community.
After the war, we shall see them serving as a rallying point to all the
faithful of Judea. Jerusalem had no more than eight years to live, and
indeed, even before the fatal hour, the eruption of the volcano, will
thrust to a distance the little group of pious Jews who are bound to one
another by the memory of Jesus.
CHAPTER IV.
FINAL ACTIVITY OF PAUL.
Paul, nevertheless, was subjected in prison
to the gentleness of an administration half distracted by the
extravagance of the sovereign and his evil surroundings. Timothy, Luke,
Aristarchus, and according to certain traditions, Titus, were with him.
A certain Jesus, surnamed Justus, who was circumcised, one Demetrius, or
Demas, an uncircumcised proselyte, who was, it appears, from
Thessalonica, a doubtful personage of the name of Crescens, still were
seen around him and served him as coadjutors. Mark, who according to our
hypothesis had come to Rome in company with Peter, was reconciled, it
appears, with him with whom he had shared the first apostolical
activity, and from whom he had rudely separated: he served probably as
an intermediary between Peter and the apostle of the Gentiles. In any
case Paul, about this time, was very discontented with the Christians of
the circumcision: he considered them as not very favourable to him, and
declared that he did not find good fellow-workers among them.
Some important modifications, introduced
probably by the new relations which he had in the capital of the empire,
the centre and confluence of all ideas, were carried out about the time
we are speaking of now in Paul’s mind, and made the writings of that
period of his life sensibly different from those he composed during his
second and third mission. The informal development of the Christian
doctrine worked rapidly. In some months of these fertile years, theology
marched much faster than it did afterwards in some centuries. The new
dogma sought its equilibrium and created props 36on
all sides to support its feeble portions. They might have called it an
animal in its genetic crisis, putting forth a limb, transforming an
organ, cutting off a tail, to arrive at the harmony of life, that is to
say, at the condition where everything in the living being answers,
supports, and holds itself together.
The fire of a devouring activity had never
till now allowed Paul leisure to measure the time, nor to consider that
Jesus delayed his reappearance very long: but these long months of
prison forced him to consider. Old age, besides, began to tell upon him;
a sort of gloomy maturity succeeded to the ardour of his passion;
reflection brought light, and obliged him to fill up his ideas, to
reduce them to theory. He became mystical, theological, speculative,
from being practical as he was. The impetuosity of a blind conviction,
absolutely incapable of going backward, could not prevent him from being
sometimes astonished that heaven did not open more quickly, and that the
final trumpet did not sound sooner. The faith of Paul was not shaken,
but it sought other points of support. His idea of Christ became
modified. His dream henceforth is less the Son of Man appearing in the
clouds, and presiding at the general resurrection, as a Christ
established as divinity, incorporated with it, acting in it and with it.
The resurrection for him is not in the future: it seems to have already
taken place—When we change once, we change always; we may be at the same
time the most impassioned and yet mobile of men. That which is certain
is that the grand pictures of the final apocalypse and of the
resurrection which were formerly so familiar to Paul, which present
themselves in some way at every page of the letters of the second and
third mission, and even in the Epistle to the Philippians, have a
secondary place in the last writings of his captivity. They are then
replaced by a theory of Christ, conceived like a sort of divine person,
a theory very analogous to that of the Logos which, later on,
37shall find its definitive form in the writings
attributed to John.
The same change is remarkable in his style.
The language of the epistles of the captivity has more fulness: but it
has lost a little of its force. The thought is advanced with less
vigour. The dictionary differs very much from the first vocabulary of
Paul. The favourite terms of the Johannine school, “light,” “darkness,”
“life,” “love,” &c., become dominant. The syncretic philosophy of
Gnosticism made itself already felt. The question of justification by
Jesus is no longer so lively; the war between faith and works seems
appeased in the bosom of the unity of the Christian life, made up of
knowledge and grace. Christ, become the central being of the universe,
conciliates in his person (thus become divine) the antinomianism of the
two Christianities. Certainly it is not without reason that the
authenticity of such writings has been suspected: there are for them,
however, such strong proofs that we like better to attribute the
differences of style and thought of which we speak to a natural progress
in Paul’s method. The earlier and undoubtedly authentic writings of Paul
contain the germ of this new language. “Christ” and “God” are
interchanged almost like synonyms; Christ exercises there divine
functions; they invoke him as God, he is the necessary mediator with
God. The ardour with which these were connected with Jesus made them
connect with him all the theories which had been in vogue in some part
or other of the Jewish world. Let us suppose that a man replying to
aspirations so different from the democracy should arise in our days.
His partisans would say to some, “You are for the organisation of work,”
it is he who is the organisation of the work; to others, “You are for
independent morality,” he is the independent morality; to others again,
“You are for co-operation,” it is he who is the co-operation; and yet
others, “You are for solidarity,” it is he who is the solidarity.
38
The new theory of Paul can be summed up
nearly as follows:—
This kingdom is the reign of darkness, that
is to say of Satan and his infernal hierarchy who fill the world. The
reign of the Saints on the contrary shall be the reign of light. Now the
saints are what they are not by their own merit (before Christ all are
enemies of God), but by the application which God makes to them of the
merits of Jesus Christ the son of his love. It is the blood of this son,
shed upon the cross, which blots out sins and reconciles every creature
to God, making peace to reign in Heaven and earth. The Son is the image
of the invisible God, the first-born of creatures; all has been created
in him, by him and for him, things celestial and terrestrial, visible,
and invisible, thrones, powers, and dominions. He was before all things
and by him all things consist. The church and he form only one body, of
which he is the head. As in everything he has always held the first
rank, he shall also hold it in the resurrection. His resurrection is the
commencement of the universal resurrection. The fulness of the Godhead
dwells in him bodily. Jesus is thus the God of man, a sort of prime
minister of the creation, placed between God and man. Everything that
monotheism says of the relations between man and God may according to
the then present theory of Paul, be said of the relations between man
and Jesus. The veneration for Jesus, which with James does not exceed
the cult of doulia or hyperdoulia, attains with Paul to
the proportions of a true worship a latria such as no Jew had
over yet vowed to a son of woman.
This mystery which God prepared from all
eternity, the fulness of the times being come, he has revealed to his
saints in these last days. The moment has come when each must complete
for his part the work of Christ. Now the work of Christ is completed by
suffering; suffering is therefore a good thing in which we should
39rejoice and glory. The Christian, by
participating with Jesus, is filled like him with the fulness of the
Godhead. Jesus by rising again has quickened all with himself. The wall
of separation which the law created between the people of God and the
Gentiles Christ has broken down; the two portions of reconciled humanity
he has made a new humanity; all the old enmities he has slain upon the
cross. The text of the law was like a bill of debt which humanity could
not wipe off: Jesus has destroyed the value of that bill, nailing it to
his cross. The world created by Jesus is therefore an entirely new
world. Jesus is the corner stone of the Temple which God has built. The
Christian is dead to the world, buried with Christ in the tomb; his life
is hid with Christ in God. While waiting till Christ appears and
associates him with his glory he mortifies his body, extinguishing all
his natural passions, taking up in everything the opposition to nature,
putting off “the old man” and clothing himself with “the new,” renovated
according to the image of his creator. From this point of view there is
no more Jew nor Greek, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian,
Scythian, slave nor free man. Christ is all, Christ is in all. The
saints are those to whom God by gratuitous gift has made application of
the merits of Christ, and whom he has predestinated to the divine
adoption before even the world began. The Church is one as God himself
is one; his work is the edification of the body of Christ; the final
goal of all this is the realization of perfect man, the complete union
of Christ with all his members, a state in which Christ shall truly be
the head of a humanity regenerated according to his own model, a
humanity receiving from him movement and life by a series of members
bound to each other and subordinated the one to the other. The dark
powers of the air fight to prevent this consummation; a terrible
struggle shall take place between them and the saints. It shall be an
evil day, but, armed by the gifts of Christ, the saints will triumph.
40
Such doctrines were not entirely original.
They were in part those of the Jewish school in Egypt and notably those
of Philo. This Christ became a divine hypostasis, is the Logos of
the Jewish Alexandrian philosophy, the Memera of the Chaldean
paraphrases, prototype of everything, by which everything has been
created. These powers of the air to which the empire of the world has
been given, these bizarre hierarchies, celestial and infernal,
are those of the Jewish cabbala and of Gnosticism. This
mysterious pleroma, the final goal of the work of Christ, much
resembles the divine pleroma which the gnosis places at
the summit of the universal ladder, the Gnostic and cabbalistic
theosophy which may be regarded as the mythology of monotheism, and
which we believe we have seen weighing with Simon of Gitton, is
represented from the first century with its principal features. To
reject systematically in the second century all the documents in which
are found traces of such a spirit is very rash. That spirit was in germ,
in Philo, and in primitive Christianity. The theosophic conception of
Christ would arise necessarily from the Messianic conception of the Son
of Man, when it would be distinctly proved after a long waiting that the
Son of Man had not come. In the most incontestably authentic epistles of
Paul there are certain features which remain a little in advance of the
exaggerations which are presented by the epistles written in prison. The
epistle to the Hebrews dating before the year 70, shows the same
tendency to place Jesus in the world of metaphysical abstractions. All
this will become in the highest degree plain when we speak of the
Johannine writings. According to Paul, who had not known Jesus, this
metamorphosis in the idea of Christ was in some sort inevitable. While
the school which possessed the living tradition of the master created
the Jesus of the synoptical gospels, the enthusiastic man, who had only
seen Jesus in his dreams, transformed him more and more into a
superhuman 41being, into a sort of metaphysical
archon whom they would say had never lived.
This transformation besides did not operate
only on the ideas of Paul. The Churches raised by him advanced in the
same views. Those of Asia Minor especially were impelled by a sort of a
secret work to the most exaggerated ideas as to the divinity of Jesus.
This might be imagined. To the fraction of Christianity which had sprung
from the familiar conversations by the lake of Tiberias Jesus must
always remain the beloved Son of God, who had been seen moving among men
with that charming manner and that gentle smile; but when they preached
Jesus to the people of some province hidden away in Phrygia, when the
preacher declared that he had never seen him, and affected to know
scarcely anything of His earthly life, what could these good and artless
hearers think of him who was preached to them? How would they picture
him to themselves? As a sage? As a master full of charm? It is not thus
that Paul presents the rôle of Jesus. Paul was ignorant of, or
pretended to be ignorant of, the historic Jesus. As the Messiah, as the
Son of Man coming to appear in the clouds in the great day of the Lord?
These ideas were strange to the Gentiles and supposed a knowledge of the
Jewish books. Evidently the picture which would most often he presented
to these good country people would be that of an incarnation, of a God
clothed with a human form and walking upon the earth. This idea was very
familiar in Asia Minor; Apollonius of Tyana was soon to ventilate it for
his own prophet. To reconcile such a style of view with worn theism only
one thing remained, to conceive Jesus as a divine hypostasis become
incarnate, as a sort of reduplication of the one God, having taken the
human form for the accomplishment of a divine plan. It must be
remembered that we are no longer in Syria. Christianity has passed from
the Semitic world into the hands of races intoxicated with imagination
42and mythology. The prophet Mahomet, whose
legend is so purely human among the Arabs, has become the same among the
Schiites of Persia and India, a being completely supernatural, a sort of
Vishnu or Buddha. Some relations which the apostle had with his Churches
of Asia Minor exactly about this time furnished him with the occasion of
expounding the new form which he was accustomed to give to his ideas.
The pious Epaphroditus, or Epaphras, the teacher and founder of the
Church of Colosse and leader of the Churches on the shores of the Lycus,
came to him with a mission from the said Churches. Paul had never been
in that valley, but they admitted his authority there; They recognised
him even as the apostle of the country and each one regarded himself as
like him before conversion. When his captivity took place the churches
of the Colossians, Laodicea upon the Lycus, and Hierapolis deputed
Epaphras to share his chain, to console him, to assure him of the
friendship of the faithful and probably to offer him the aid of money,
of which he had need. What Epaphras reported of the zeal of the new
converts filled Paul with satisfaction; faith, charity and hospitality
were admirable, but Christianity took in these Churches of Phrygia a
singular direction. Away from contact with the great Apostles, free
entirely from Jewish influence, composed nearly entirely of heathens,
these churches inclined to a sort of mixture of Christianity, Greek
philosophy and the local cults. In this quiet little town of Colosse,
with the sound of waterfalls, in the midst of wreaths of foam, facing
Hierapolis with its frowning mountain, there increased every day the
belief in the full divinity of Jesus Christ. Let us remember that
Phrygia was one of those countries which had the most religious
originality. Its mysteries included or claimed to include an exalted
symbolism. Many of the rights which were practised there were not
without analogy to those of the new cult. For Christians without an
earlier tradition, not having gone 43through the
same apprenticeship of monotheism as the Jews, the temptation became
very strong to associate the Christian dogma with the old symbols which
presented themselves here as the legacy of the most respectable
antiquity. These Christians had been devoted Pagans before adopting the
ideas which had come from Syria. Perhaps in adopting them they had not
believed that they were breaking formally with their past. And besides,
where is the truly religious man who repudiates completely the
traditional teaching in the shadow of which he felt first his ideal, who
does not seek some reconciliations, often impossible, between his old
faith and that to which he has come by the advancement of his thought?
In the second century this need of
syncretism shall take an extreme importance and shall complete the full
development of the Gnostic sects. We shall see at the end of the first
century some analogous tendencies filling the Church of Ephesus with
troubles and agitation. Corinth and the author of the fourth gospel
shared at bottom this identical principle from the idea that the
conscience of Jesus was a heavenly being distinct from his terrestrial
appearance. In the year 60 Colosse was already touched by the same
disease—a theosophy made up of indigenous beliefs, Ebionitism, Judaism,
philosophy and material borrowed from the new preaching found there
already some skilful interpreters. A worship of uncreated æons, a
largely developed theory of angels and devils, Gnosticism in short with
its arbitrary practices, its realized abstractions, commenced to be
produced, and by its sweet deceit threatened the Christian faith in its
most lively and essential parts. There mingled here some renunciations
against nature, a false taste for humiliation, a pretended austerity
refusing to the flesh its rights, in a word all the aberrations of moral
sense which would produce the Phyrigian heresies of the second century
(Montanists Pepuzians, and Cata-Phrygians) which connected
44themselves with the old mystical leaven of
Galli and Corybantes, and whose latest survivals are the dervishes of
our days. The difference between the Christians of Pagan origin and
those of Jewish origin are thus marked from day to day. Christian
mythology and metaphysics were born in Paul’s Churches. Springing from
Polytheistic races the converted Pagans found quite simple the idea of a
God-made man, while the incarnation of the divinity was for the Jews a
thing blasphemous and revolting.
Paul wishing to keep Epaphras near him
(whose activity he thought of utilizing) resolved to reply from the
deputation to the Colossians by sending to them Tychicus of Ephesus,
whom he charged at the same time with commissions for the churches of
Asia. Tychicus was to make a journey into the valley of the Meander to
visit the communities, to give them some news of Paul, to transmit to
them with a living voice a knowledge as to the condition of the Apostle
in regard to the Roman authorities—some details which he did not think
it prudent to entrust to paper, in short to convey to each of the
churches separate letters which Paul had addressed to them. He also
recommended those churches who were nearest each other to communicate
their letters reciprocally and to read them in turn in their meetings.
Tychicus might besides be the bearer of a kind of Encyclical, traced
upon the plan of the epistle to the Colossians and reserved for the
churches to which Paul had nothing special to say. The apostle appeared
to have left to his disciples or secretaries the care of editing this
circular upon the plan which he gave them or after the system which he
showed them. The epistle addressed in these circumstances to the
Colossians has not been preserved to us. Paul dictated it to Timothy,
signed it, and added in his own writing, remember my chains. As
to the circular epistle which Tychicus took on his way to the churches
which were not named by letter, it would appear that we have it in
45the Epistle called 'to the Ephesians.’
Certainly this epistle was not destined for the Ephesians, since the
apostle addresses himself exclusively to converted Pagans, to a Church
which he had never seen and to which he had no special counsel to give.
The ancient manuscripts of the epistle called to the Ephesians bore in
blank in the superscription the designation of the Church to which it
was destined, the Vatican manuscript and the codex Sinaïticus
present an analagous peculiarity. It is supposed that this pretended
letter to the Ephesians is in reality the letter to the Laodiceans,
which was written at the same time as that to the Colossians. We have
elsewhere given the reasons which prevent us from admitting this
opinion, and which lead us rather to see in this writing what concerns a
doctrinal letter which St. Paul desired to have reproduced in many
copies and circulated in Asia. Tychicus, in passing to Asia, his own
country, was able to show one of these copies to the elders; they could
keep it as an edifying
morceau,
and it is perfectly admissible that it might be this copy which had
remained, when the letters of Paul were collected; thence would come the
title which the epistle in question bears to-day. What is certain is
that the epistle called “to the Ephesians” is scarcely anything but a
paraphrased imitation of the epistle to the Colossians, with some
additions drawn from other epistles of Paul and perhaps lost epistles.
This epistle called ‘to the Ephesians,’
forms, along with the epistle to the Colossians, the best statement of
Paul’s theories about the close of his career. The epistles to the
Colossians and the Ephesians have, for the last period in the life of
the apostle, the same value as the epistle to the Romans has to the
period of his great apostleship. The idea of the founder of Christian
theology here reached the highest degree of clearness. We feel this last
work of spiritualization to which great souls about to depart subject
their thought, and after which there is nothing but death.
46
Certainly Paul was right when fighting
this dangerous disease of Gnosticism, which was soon to threaten human
reason, this chimerical religion of angels, to which he opposes his
Christ as superior to all that is not God. We know there is still to
come the last assault which he delivers against circumcision, vain works
and Jewish prejudices. The morality which he draws from his transcendent
conception of Christ is admirable from many points of view. But how much
excess, great God! How does this disdain of all reason, this brilliant
eulogy of madness, this burst of paradox, prepare us on the other hand
for the perfect wisdom which shuns all extremes! That “old man,” whom
Paul attacks so harshly, is again brought forward. He will show that it
does not deserve so many anathemas. All that past, condemned by an
unjust sentence, will rediscover a principle of “new birth” for the
world, carried by Christianity to the most exhaustive point. Paul shall
be in that sense one of the most dangerous enemies of civilization. The
recrudescences of Paul’s mind shall be so many defeats for the human
mind. Paul will die when the human mind shall triumph. What shall be the
triumph of Jesus will be the death of Paul.
The apostle closes his epistle to the
Colossians by sending to them compliments and good wishes of their holy
and devoted catechist Epaphras. He begs them at the same time to make an
exchange of letters with the Church at Laodicea. To Tychicus, who
carries the correspondence, he joins as messenger a certain Onesimus,
whom he calls “a faithful dear brother.” Nothing is more touching than
the history of this Onesimus. He had been the slave of Philemon, one of
the heads of the Colossian Church; he fled from his master and sought to
hide himself at Rome. There he entered into relations, with Paul,
perhaps through the medium of Epaphras his compatriot. Paul converted
him and persuaded him to return to his master, making
47him leave for Asia in the company of Tychicus. Finally, to calm
the apprehensions of poor Onesimus, Paul dictated to Timothy a letter
for Philemon, a perfect little
chef d’œuvre
of the epistolary art, and placed it in the hands of the delinquent.
“Paul, the
prisoner of Jesus Christ, and brother Timothy, and Philemon, our
well beloved and our fellow-worker, and sister Appia, our companion in
works, and to the Church which is in thy house. Grace to you and peace
from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, I thank my God, making
mention of thee always in my prayers; hearing of thy love and faith
which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints. May the
communication of thy own faith become effectual by the acknowledging of
every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. For we have great joy
and consolation in thy love because the bowels of the saints are
refreshed by thee, brother. Wherefore, though I might be much bold in
Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient; yet for love’s sake I
rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a
prisoner of Jesus Christ—I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have
begotten in my bonds, which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but
now profitable to thee and to me, whom I have sent again, thou therefore
receive him that is mine own bowels; whom I would have retained with me
that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the
gospel. But without thy mind would I do nothing, that thy benefit should
be as it were of necessity, but willingly. For perhaps he therefore
departed for a season that thou shouldest receive him for ever. Not now
as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me,
but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord. If thou
count me therefore a partner receive him as myself. If he hath wronged
thee, or oweth thee ought put that on mine account.”
48
Paul then took his pen, and to give his
letter the value of a true credibility he added these words:
“I Paul, I have written it with mine
own hand, I will repay it, albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest
unto me, even thine own self besides. Yea, brother, let me have joy of
thee in the Lord, refresh my bowels in the Lord.”
Then he resumed his dictation:
“Trusting in thy obedience, I have written
to thee, knowing that thou wilt do more than I say, prepare thyself also
to receive me for I hope that, because of your prayers I shall be given
back to you. Epaphras, my prison companion in Jesus Christ, Marcus,
Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow labourers, salute thee. The grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit!”
We have seen that Paul had some singular
illusions. He believed himself on the eve of deliverance, he formed new
plans of travel, and saw himself in the centre of Asia Minor, in the
midst of the Churches which revered him as their apostle without ever
having met with him. John Mark likewise was preparing to visit Asia, no
doubt in Peter’s name. Already the Churches of Asia had been informed of
the approaching arrival of this brother. In the letter to the Colossians
Paul inserted a new recommendation to his subject. The tone of this
recommendation is cold enough. Paul feared that the disagreement he had
had with John Mark and more still the sympathy of Mark with the
Jerusalem party would place his friends in Asia in embarrassment, and
that they would hesitate to receive a man whom they had up till then
only known to be opposed. Paul was beforehand with these Churches and
enjoined them to communicate with Mark, when he should pass through
their country. Mark was cousin to Barnabas, whose name, dear to the
Galatians, would not be unknown to the people of Phrygia. We do not know
the result of the incidents. A frightful earthquake shook the whole
valley of the Lycus. Opulent Laodicea was rebuilt by its own resources:
but Colosse could not recover itself 49it almost
disappeared from the number of the Churches, the Apocalypse in 69 does
not mention it. Laodicea and Hierapolis invented all its importance in
the history of Christianity.
Paul was comforted by his apostolic
activity for the sad news which came from all parts. He said that be
suffered for his dear Churches; he pictured himself as the victim who
was opening to the Gentiles the gates of the family of Israel. About the
last months of his imprisonment, he yet knew discouragement and
desertion. Already writing to the Philippians he says, when opposing the
conduct of his dear and faithful Timothy to that of others:
“Every one seeks his own interest, not
that of Jesus Christ.” Timothy alone appears never to have excited any
complaint in this matter, severe, gruff,—difficult to please. It is not
admissible to say that Aristarchus, Epaphras, Jesus called Justus had
deserted him, but many among them were found absent occasionally. Titus
was on a mission; others who owed everything to him, among whom may be
quoted Phygellus and Hermogenes, ceased to visit him. He, once so
surrounded, saw himself isolated. The Christians of the circumcision
shunned him. Luke, at certain periods, was alone with him. His
character, which had always been a little morose, exasperated him;
people could scarcely live in his company. Paul had from that time a
cruel feeling of the ingratitude of men. Every word which one reads of
his about this time is full of discontent and bitterness. The Church of
Rome, closely affiliated to that of Jerusalem, was for the most part
Judeo-Christian. Orthodox Judaism, very strong at Rome, had fought
roughly with him. The old Apostle; with a broken heart, called for
death.
If the matter had concerned one of another
nature and another race we might try to picture Paul, in these last
days, arriving at the conviction that he had used his life in a dream,
repudiating all the sacred prophets 50for a
writing which he had scarcely read till then Ecclesiastes (a
charming book, the only loveable book ever composed by a Jew), and
proclaiming that man happy who, after having let his life flow on in joy
even to old age with the wife of his youth, dies without losing a son. A
feature which characterises great European men is, at certain times,
that they admit the wisdom of Epicurus, by being taken with disgust
while working with ardour, and after having succeeded, by doubting if
the cause they have served was worth so many sacrifices. Many dare to
say, in the heat of action, that the day on which they begin to be wise
is that on which, freed from all care, they contemplate nature and enjoy
it. Very few at least escape tardy regrets. There is scarcely any
devoted person, priest or ‘religious’ who, at fifty years of age, does
not deplore his vow, and nevertheless perseveres. We do not understand
the gallant man without a little scepticism; we love to hear the
virtuous man sometimes say, “Virtue, thou art but a word!” for he who is
too sure that virtue will be rewarded has not much merit; his good
actions do not appear more than an advantageous investment. Jesus was no
stranger to this exquisite sentiment; more than once his divine rôle
appears to have weighed him down. Certainly it was not thus with St.
Paul; he has not his Gethsemane of agony, and that is one of the reasons
which make him less loveable. While Jesus possessed in the highest
degree what we regard as the essential quality of a distinguished
person, I mean by that the gift of smiling in his work, of being its
superior, of not allowing it to master him, Paul was not free from the
defect which shocks us in sectaries; he believed clumsily. We could wish
that sometimes, like ourselves, he had been seated fatigued on the
roadside, and had perceived the vanity of absolute opinions. Marcus
Aurelius, representing the most glorious of our race, yields to no one
in virtue, and yet he does not know what fanaticisim is. That is never
seen in the East; 51our race alone is capable of
realizing virtue without faith, of uniting doubt with hope. Freed from
the terrible impetuosity of their temperament, exempted from the refined
vices of Greek and Roman civilization, these strong Jewish minds were
like powerful fountains which never run dry. Up to the end doubtless
Paul saw before him the imperishable crown which was prepared for him,
and like a runner redoubled his efforts the nearer he approached the
goal. He had, moreover, moments of comfort. Onesiphorus of Ephesus,
having come to Rome, sought him, and without being ashamed of his
chains, served him and refreshed his heart. Demas, on the contrary, was
disgusted by the absolute doctrines of the apostle and left him. Paul
appears always to have treated him with a certain coldness.
Did Paul appear before Nero, or, to put it
better, before the council to which his appeal would be laid? That is
almost certain. Some indications, of doubtful value it is true, tell us
of a “first defence,” where no one assisted him, and in which, thanks to
the grace which sustained him, he acquitted himself to his own
advantage, so much so that he compares himself to a man who has been
saved from the teeth of a lion. It is very probable that his affair
terminated at the close of two years of prison at Rome (beginning of the
year 63) by an acquittal. We do not see what interest the Roman
authority would have had in condemning him for a sect-quarrel, which
concerned it little. Some substantial indications, moreover, prove that
Paul, before his death, carried out a series of apostolic travels and
preachings, but not in the countries of Greece or Asia, which he had
evangelized already.
Five years before, a month previous to his
arrest, Paul writing from Corinth to the faithful at Rome, announced to
them his intention to visit Spain. He did not wish, he said, to exercise
his ministry among them; it was only in passing that he reckoned on
seeing them 52and enjoying some time with them;
then they would bring him forward and facilitate his journey to the
countries situated beyond them. The sojourn of the apostle at Rome was
thus subordinated to a distant apostleship, which appeared to be his
principal goal. During his imprisonment at Rome Paul appears sometimes
to have changed his intention relative to his Western travels. He
expresses to the Philippians and to the Colossian Philemon the hope of
going to see them; but he certainly did not carry out that plan. When he
left prison, what did he do? It is natural to suppose that he followed
his first plan, and journeyed about where he could. Some grave reasons
lead us to be believe that he realized his project of visiting Spain.
That journey had in his mind a lofty dogmatic meaning; he held to it
much. It was important that he should be able to say that the good news
had touched the extremity of the West, to prove that the gospel was
accomplished since it had been heard at the end of the world. This
fashion of exaggerating slightly the extent of his travels was familiar
to Paul.
The general idea of the faithful was that
before the appearing of Christ, the kingdom of God should have been
preached everywhere. According to the apostles’ manner of speech it was
enough that it had been preached in a city for it to have been preached
in a country; and it was sufficient that it had been preached to a dozen
people, for everyone in the city to have heard it.
If Paul made this journey, he no doubt
made it by sea. It is not absolutely impossible that some port in the
south of France received the imprint of the apostle’s foot. In any case,
there remained of this problematical visit to the West no appreciable
result.
CHAPTER V.
THE APPROACH OF THE CRISIS.
At the close of Paul’s captivity, the Acts
of the Apostles and the Epistles fail us. We fall into a profound night,
which contrasts singularly with the historical clearness of the
preceding ten years. No doubt not to be obliged to recount facts in
which the Roman authority played an odious part, the author of the
Acts, always respectful to that authority, and desirous of showing
that it has been sometimes favourable to the Christians, stops all at
once. That fatal silence casts a great uncertainty over the events which
we should like so much to know. Fortunately Tacitus and the Apocalypse
introduce a ray of living light into this deep night. The moment has
come when Christianity, up till now held in secret by insignificant
people to whom it was a joy, was about to break into history with a
thunderclap, whose reverberation should be long.
We have seen that the Apostles did not
neglect any effort to recall to moderation their brethren exasperated by
the iniquities of which they were the victims. They did not always
succeed in that. Different condemnations had been pronounced against
some Christians, and people had been able to represent these sentences
as the repression of crimes or evils. With an admirable correctness of
meaning the Apostles drew out the code of martyrdom. Was one condemned
for the name of “Christian,” he must rejoice. We see it recalled that
Jesus had said: “Ye shall be hated by all because of My name.” But, to
have the right to be proud of that hatred, one must be irreproachable.
It was partly to calm some inopportune effervescences, to prevent acts
54of insubordination against the public
authority, and also to establish his right to speak in all the Churches,
that Peter, about this time, thought of imitating Paul and writing to
the Churches of Asia Minor, without making any distinction between Jews
and converted heathens, a circular letter or catechetic. Epistles were
in fashion; from simple correspondence the Epistle had become a kind of
literature, a fictional form serving as a framework for little treatises
on religion. We have seen St. Paul at the end of his life adopting this
custom. Each of the Apostles, following his example, wished to have his
Epistle, as a specimen of his method of instruction, containing his
favourite maxims, and when one of them had none, they made one for him.
These new Epistles which were at a later date called “catholic,” do not
suggest that they have anything to order of some one; they are the
personal work of the Apostle, his sermon, his dominant thought, his
little theology in eight or ten pages. There was mixed up in it some
scraps of phrases drawn from the common treasure of homiletics and
which, by dint of being quoted, have lost all signature, and no longer
belong to anyone.
Mark had returned from his journey in Asia
Minor, which he had undertaken at Peter’s order, and with
recommendations from Paul, a journey which probably was the sign of the
reconciliation of the two Apostles. This journey had put Peter in
relations with the Churches of Asia and authorised him to address to
them a doctrinal instruction. Mark, according to his habit, served as
secretary and interpreter to Peter for the editing of the Epistle. It is
doubtful if Peter could speak Greek or Latin: his language was Syriac.
Mark was at the same time in relations with Peter and Paul, and perhaps
it is that which explains a singular fact which the Epistle of Peter
presents, I mean some borrowings which the author of that Epistle makes
from the writings of St. Paul. It is 55certain
that Peter or his secretary (or the forger who has usurped his name),
had under his eyes the Epistle to the Romans and the Epistle called “to
the Ephesians,” really the two “Catholic” Epistles of Paul, those which
have some true general features, and which were universally circulated.
The Church of Rome could have a copy of the Epistle called to the
Ephesians, recently written, a sort of general formula of the latter
faith of Paul, addressed in the style of a circular to many Churches.
With much stronger reason it would possess the Epistle to the Romans.
Paul’s other writings, which indeed have more the character of special
letters, would not be found at Rome. Some less characteristic passages
of the Epistle of Peter appear to have been borrowed from James. Did
Peter, whom we have seen always holding a floating position in the
apostolic controversies, while he made, if we can express it so, James
and Paul speak by the same mouth, wish to show that the contradiction
between these two Apostles were only apparent? As a pledge of agreement,
did he wish to become the demonstrator of Pauline conceptions, softened,
it is true, and deprived of their necessary crowning—justification by
faith? It is more probable that Peter, little accustomed to write and
not concealing his literary barrenness, did not hesitate to appropriate
some pious phrases which were continually repeated around him, and
which, although parts of different systems, did not contradict each
other in a formal way. Peter appears, fortunately for him, to have
remained all his life a very mediocre theologian; the rigour of a
consequent system ought not to be sought for in his writing.
The difference of the points of view in
which Peter and Paul habitually placed themselves betrays itself,
besides, from the first line of that writing: “Peter, an apostle of
Jesus Christ, to the elect banished by the dispersion through Pontus,
Galatia, &c.” Such expressions are thoroughly final. The family of
Israel, 56according to Palestinian ideas, was
composed of two fractions—on the one hand, those who inhabited the Holy
Land; on the other hand, those who did not inhabit it, comprehended
under the general name of “the dispersion.” Now, for Peter and James,
the Christians, even heathens by origin, are so much a portion of the
people of Israel that the whole Christian Church, outside of Jerusalem,
enters in their views into the category of the expatriated. Jerusalem is
still the only point in the world where, according to them, the
Christian is not exiled.
The Epistle of Peter, in spite of its bad
style, although more analagous to that of Paul than to that of James or
Jude, is an affecting
morceau
where the state of the Christian conscience about the end of Nero’s
reign is reflected. A sweet sadness, a resigned confidence, fills it.
The last times were at hand. These must be preceded by trials, from
which the elect would come forth purified as by fire. Jesus, whom the
faithful love without having seen him, in whom they believe without
seeing him, will soon reappear, to their joy. Foreseen by God from all
eternity, the mystery of the redemption is accomplished by the death and
resurrection of Jesus. The elect, called to be born again in the blood
of Jesus, are a people of saints, a spiritual temple, a royal
priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices.
“My dearly beloved, I pray you to comfort
yourselves among the Gentiles who seek to represent you as evil-doers,
as strangers and expatriated, so that they may by your good works, which
they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. Submit
yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether it be
to the king as supreme, or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by
him for the punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of them that do
well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to
silence the ignorance of foolish men. As free and not using your liberty
for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all
men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.
57Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to
the good and gentle, but also to the forward. For this is thankworthy,
if a man for conscience towards God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.
For what glory is it, if when ye be buffeted for your faults ye shall
take it patiently, but if when ye do well and suffer for it ye take it
patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye
called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that
ye should follow in his steps. Who did no sin, neither was guile found
in his mouth. Who when he was reviled, reviled not again, when he
suffered he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judgeth
righteously.”
The ideal of the Passion, that touching
picture of Jesus suffering without a word, exercised already, we have
seen, a decisive influence on the Christian conscience. We may doubt if
the account of it was yet written; that account was increased every day
by new circumstances; but the essential features, fixed in the memory of
the faithful, were to them perpetual exhortations to patience. One of
the principal Christian positions was that “the Messiah ought to
suffer.” Jesus and the true Christian are more and more represented to
the imagination under the form of a silent lamb in the hands of the
butcher. They embraced Him in Spirit, this gentle lamb slain young by
sinners; they dwelt lovingly on the features of affectionate pity and
amorous tenderness of a Magdalen at the tomb. This innocent victim, with
the knife plunged in his side, drew tears from all those who had known
him. The expression “Lamb of God,” to describe Jesus, was already
coined; there mingled with it the idea of the paschal lamb; one of the
most essential symbols of Christian art was in germ in these figures.
Such an imagination, which struck Francis d’Assisi so greatly and made
him weep, came from that beautiful passage where the second Isaiah,
describing the ideal of the prophet of Israel (the man of sorrows) shows
Him as a sheep which is led to death, and which does not open its mouth
before its shearer.
58
This model of submission and humility
Peter made the law of all classes of Christian society. The elders ought
to rule their flock with deference, avoiding the appearance of
commanding—the young ought to submit to the elder; the women,
especially, without being preachers, ought to be, by the discreet charm
of their piety, the great missionaries of the faith.
“And you, wives, likewise be in subjection
to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also may
without the word be won by the conversation of the wives, while they
behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it
not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of
gold, or of putting on of apparel. But let it be the hidden man of the
heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and
quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after
this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God,
adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands. Even as
Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. Likewise, ye husbands, dwell
with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife as unto
the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life.
Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another. Love
as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous, not rendering evil for evil or
railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing. And who is he that will
harm you if ye be followers of that which is good? And if ye suffer
anything for righteousness, happy are ye! “
The hope of the kingdom of trod held by
the Christians gave room for some misunderstandings. The heathens
imagined they spoke of a political revolution on the point of being
carried out.
“Have a reason always ready for those who
ask explanations from you as to your hopes, but make that answer with
gentleness and meekness, strong in your own good conscience, so that
those who caluminate the honest life in Christ you lead may be ashamed
of their injuries; for it is better to suffer for doing good (if such is
the will of God) than for doing evil. You have long enough done the will
of the heathen, living in lust, evil desires, drunkenness, revelries,
feastings, and the most abominable idolatrous worship. They are
astonished now at your keeping from throwing yourselves with them into
this excess of crime, and they 59insult you.
They shall give an answer to him who shall soon judge the living and the
dead. The end of all things is at hand. My dearly beloved, be not
astonished at the fire which is lit to prove you, as if it were some
strange thing; but rejoice in having part in the sufferings of Christ,
so that you may triumph at the revelation of his glory. If you are
insulted for the name of Christ happy are ye. Let none of you be
punished as a murderer, a thief, or malefactor, as a judge of the
affairs of those who are without but if anyone suffers as a ‘Christian’
let him not be ashamed; on the contrary, let him glorify God in that
name; for the time is come when judgment must begin at the house of God.
If it begin with us, what shall the end be of those that obey not the
Gospel of God? The righteous shall scarcely be saved. What then shall
become of the impious and the sinner? Let those therefore who suffer
according to the will of God: commit to the faithful Creator their souls
in all purity. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God that he may
exalt you in due time. Be sober and watch your adversary the devil, like
a roaring lion, prowleth seeking for prey. Resist him, firm in the
faith, knowing that the same trials which prove you, your brethren
spread over the whole world endure also. The God of all grace, after you
have suffered awhile will heal you, confirm and strengthen you. To Him
be all power through all the ages.” Amen.
If this epistle, as we readily believe,
is truly Peter’s, it does much credit to his good sense, to his right
feeling, and his simplicity. He does not arrogate any authority to
himself. Speaking to the elders, ho represents himself as one among
themselves; he does not boast because he has been a witness of the
sufferings of Christ, and hopes to be a participator in the glory that
is so soon to be revealed. The letter was conveyed to Asia by a certain
Silvanus, who could not have been distinct from the Silvanus, or Silas,
who was Paul’s companion. Peter would thus have chosen him as known to
the faithful of Asia Minor, through the visit he had made to them with
Paul. Peter sends the salutations of Mark to these distant churches in a
way which supposes, moreover, that he was, likewise, not unknown to
them. The letter is closed by the usual greetings. The Church of Rome is
there described in 60these words: “The elect
which is at Babylon.” The sect was closely watched; a letter too clear,
intercepted, might have led to frightful evils Thus to dis. arm the
suspicions of the police, Peter terms Rome by the name of the ancient
capital of Asiatic impiety, a name whose symbolic signification would
not escape anyone, and which would soon furnish the material for a
complete poem.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BURNING OF ROME.
The furious madness of Nero had arrived
at its paroxysm. It was the most horrible adventure the world had ever
passed through. The absolute necessity of the times had delivered up
everything to one alone, to the inheritor of the great legendary name of
Cæsar: another Government was impossible and the provinces usually found
it well enough; but it concealed a terrible danger. When the Cæsar lost
his mind, when all the arteries of his poor head, disturbed by an
unheard of power shivered at the same moment, then there were madnesses
without name! People were delivered up to a monster with no means of
ridding themselves of him; his guard, made up of Germans who had
everything to lose if he fell, were desperate around his person; the
beast driven to bay acted like a wild boar and defended itself with
fury. As for Nero, there was at the same time something frightful and
grotesque, grand and absurd, about him. As Cæsar was well educated, his
madness was chiefly literary. The dreams of all the ages, all the poems,
all the legends, Bacchus and Sardanapalus, Ninus and Priam, Troy and
Babylon, Homer, and the insipid poetry of the time, shook about in the
poor brain of a mediocre, but very satisfied, artist to whom chance had
entrusted the power of realising all his chimeras. We figure to
ourselves a 61man very nearly as rational as the
heroes of M. Victor Hugo, a Shrove-Tuesday character, a mixture of fool,
cotquean and actor, clothed in all power and charged with the government
of the world He had not the dark wickedness of Domitian, the love of
evil for the sake of evil; he was not an extravagant like Caligula; he
was a conscientious romancer, an emperor of the opera, a music-madman
trembling before the pit and making it tremble, just like a citizen of
our days whose good sense might be perverted by the reading of modern
poems and who believed himself obliged to imitate Han of Islande and the
Burgraves in his conduct. Government being the practical thing par
excellence, romanticism is altogether out of place. Romance is with
him in the domain of art; but action is the inverse of art. In what
concerns the education of a prince especially, romance is fatal. Seneca,
on this point, certainly did more harm to his pupil, by his bad literary
taste, than good by his fine philosophy. He had a great mind, a talent
above the average, and was a man at bottom respectable, in spite of more
than one blemish, but quite spoiled by declamation and literary vanity,
incapable of feeling or reasoning without phrases. By dint of exercising
his pupil to express things he did not think, by composing in advance
sublime sentences, he made a jealous comedian of him, a mendacious
rhetorician, saying some words of humaneness when he was sure people
were listening to him. The old pedagogue saw deeply into the evil of his
time, that of his pupil and his own when he wrote in his moments of
sincerity:
Literarum intemperantia laboramus.
These ridiculous things appeared at first
very offensive to Nero; the ape sometimes was circumspect and watched
the position that had been taken towards him. Cruelty did not show
itself till after Agrippina’s death; soon it took complete possession of
him. Every year, henceforth, is marked by his crimes; Burrhus is no
62more, and everybody believes that Nero killed
him; Octavia has left the world filled with shame; Seneca is in
retirement, expecting his arrest every hour, dreaming of nothing but
tortures, strengthening his thoughts by meditation on punishment, trying
to prove to himself that death is deliverance. Tigellinus being master
of everything the saturnalia was complete. Nero proclaims daily
that art alone should be held as a serious matter, that all virtue is a
lie, that the brave man is he who is frank and avows his complete
immodesty, and that the great man is he who can abuse, lose, and waste
everything. A virtuous man is to him a hypocrite, a seditious person, a
dangerous personage, and, above all, a rival; when he discovers some
horrible baseness which gives proof to his theories, he shows great
delight. The political dangers of bombast and that false spirit of
emulation, which was from the first the consuming worm of the Latin
culture, unveiled themselves. The player had succeeded in obtaining the
power of life and death over his auditory; the dilettante
threatened the people with the torture if they did not admire his
verses. A monomaniac drunk with literary glory, who, turning the fine
maxims which they have taught him into pleasantries of a cannibal, a
ferocious gamin looking for the applauses of the street
roughs—that is the master to which the empire is subjected. Nothing
equal in extravagance has ever been seen. The Eastern despots, terrible
and grave, had nothing of these mad jests, these debauches of a
perverted æsthetic. Caligula’s madness had been short; it was a fit, and
he was, above all, a buffoon, although he certainly possessed some wit;
on the contrary, the folly of this man, commonly nasty, was sometimes
shockingly tragical. It was one of the most horrible things to see him,
by way of declamation, playing with his remorse, making this the
material for his verse. With that melodramatic air which belonged to
himself, he spoke of himself as being tormented by the furies, and
quoted Greek verses on 63the parricides. A
jocular God appeared to have created him to present him as the horrible
charivari
of a human nature, all whose springs grated on each other, the obscene
spectacle of an epileptic world, such as might a Saraband of Congo apes,
or a bloody orgy of a king of Dahomey.
By his example all the world seemed
struck with vertigo. He had formed a company of odious fellows who were
called “the chevaliers of
Augustus,” having as their occupation to applaud the follies of the
Cæsar, and to invent for him some amusements as prowlers in the night.
We shall soon see an emperor coming forth from that school. A flood of
fancies, bad tastes, platitudes, expressions claiming to be comic, a
nauseous slang, analogous to the wit of the smallest journals, entered
Rome and became the fashion. Caligula had already created this sort of
wretched imperial actorship. Nero took him for his perfect model. It was
not enough for him to drive chariots in the circus, to wrestle in
public, or to make singing excursions in the country; people saw him
fishing with golden nets which he drew with purple cords, arranging his
claqueurs
himself, and obtaining false triumphs, decreeing to himself all the
crowns of ancient Greece, organising unheard-of
fêtes,
and playing at the theatres in nameless parts.
The cause of these aberrations was the
bad taste of the century, and the misplaced importance they yielded to a
declamatory art, looking at the enormous, dreaming only of
monstrosities. In fact, what ruled him was the want of sincerity, an
insipid taste like that of the tragedies of Seneca, a skill in painting
unfelt sentiments, the art of speaking like a virtuous man without being
one. The gigantic passed for great; the æsthetic was nowhere seen; it
was the day of colossal statues, of that material theatrical and falsely
pathetic art whose chef d’œuvre is
the Laocoon, certainly an admirable statue, but the pose being that of a
first 64tenor singing his
canticum,
and where all the emotion is drawn from the pain of the body. They did
not content themselves longer with the entirely moral pain of the
Niobes, shining forth in beauty; they wished the likeness of physical
torture. They would have delighted as the seventeenth century did in a
marble by Puget. The senses were served; some grosser resources which
the Greeks scarcely permitted in their most popular representations,
became the essential element of art. The people were, thus literally,
fascinated by shows, not serious spectacles, instructive tragedies, but
scenes for effect, phantasmagoria. An ignoble taste for “tableaux
vivants” had widely spread. People were no longer content to
enjoy in imagination the exquisite stories of the poets; they wished to
see the myths represented in the flesh, in whatever was most cruel or
obscene; they went into ecstacies before the groupings and the attitudes
of the actors; they sought there the effects of statuary. The applauses
of 50,000 people, gathered together in an immense building, exciting one
another, were such an intoxicating thing, that the sovereign himself
came to envy the charioteer, the singer and the actor; the glory of the
theatre passed as the first of everything. Not one of the emperors whose
head had a weak spot was able to resist the temptations to gather crowns
from these wretched plays. Caligula had left there the little reason he
had; he passed his days in the theatre amusing himself with the idlers;
and later, Commodus and Caracalla disputed with Nero for the palm of
madness.
It became necessary to pass laws to
prevent senators and knights from descending into the arena, from
fighting the gladiators, or pitting themselves against the beasts. The
circus had become the centre of life; the rest of the world seemed only
made for the pleasures of Rome. There were unceasingly new inventions,
each stranger than the other, conceived and ordered by the choragic
sovereign. The people went from fête to fête, 65speaking
only of the last day, waiting for the one that was promised them, and
ended by becoming much attached to the prince who made such an endless
bacchanalia of his life. The popularity Nero obtained by these shameful
means cannot be doubted; it is sufficient that after his death Otho
could obtain the government by reviving his memory, by imitating him,
and by recalling the fact that he had himself been one of the minions of
his coterie.
One cannot exactly say that this wretched
man was wanting in heart, or all sentiment of the good and beautiful.
Far from being incapable of friendship, he often showed himself to be a
good companion, and it was that very fact which made him cruel; he
wished to be loved and admired for himself, and was irritated against
all who had not those feelings towards him. His nature was jealous and
susceptible, and petty treasons put him beside himself. Nearly all his
revenges were exercised on persons whom he had admitted to his intimate
circle (Lucain, Vestinus), but who abused the familiarity he encouraged
to wound him with their jests; for he felt his weaknesses and feared
their being detected. The chief cause of his hatred to Thraseas was that
he despaired of obtaining his affection. The absurd quotation of the bad
hemistitch,
Sub terris tonuisse putes, destroyed Lucain. Without putting
aside the services of a Galvia Crispinilla, he really loved some women;
and these women, Poppea and Actea, loved him. After the death of Poppea,
accomplished by his brutality, he had a sort of repentance of feeling,
which was almost touching; he was for a long time possessed by a tender
sentiment, sought out everyone who resembled her, and pursued after the
most absurd substitutions; Poppea on her side had for him feelings which
a woman so distinguished would not have confessed for a common man. A
courtesan of the great world, clever in increasing, by the charms of
pretended modesty, the attractions of a 66rare
beauty of the highest elegance, Poppea preserved in her heart, in spite
of her crimes, an instinctive religion which inclined to Judaism. Nero
seems to have been very sensible of that charm in women, which results
from a certain piety associated with coquetry. These alternations of
abandon and boldness, this woman who never went out but with her face
partly veiled, this admirable conversation, and above all this touching
worship of her own beauty which acted so that, her mirror having shown
her some blemishes in it, she had a fit of perfectly womanlike despair,
and wished to die; all this seized in a lively manner the imagination of
a young debauches, on whom the semblances of modesty exercised an
all-powerful illusion. We shall soon see Nero, in his rôle as the
Antichrist, creating in a sense the new æsthetic, and being the first to
feast his eyes on the spectacle of unveiled Christian modesty.
The devout and voluptuous Poppea retained
him by analogous feelings. The conjugal reconciliation which led to her
death supposes that in her most intimate relations with Nero she had
never abandoned that hauteur which
she affected at the outset of their connection. As to Actea, if she was
not a Christian, as it has been thought she was, she could not have so
much of this. She was a slave originally from Asia, that is to say, from
a country with which the Christians of Rome had daily correspondence. We
have often remarked. that the beautiful freed women who had the most
adorers were much given to the oriental religions. Actea always kept her
simple tastes, and never completely separated herself from her little
society of slaves. She belonged first to the family of Annæa,
about whom we have seen the Christians moving and grouping themselves;
it was asserted by Seneca that she played in the most monstrous and
tragical circumstances, a part which, seeing her servile condition,
cannot perhaps be described as honourable This poor girl, humble,
gentle, and whom many occasions show 67surrounded
by a family of people bearing names almost Christian, Claudia,
Felicula, Stephanus, Crescens, Phœbe Onesimus, Thallus, Artemas, Helpis,
was the first love of Nero as a youth. She was faithful to him even to
death; we find her at the villa of Phaon, rendering the last offices to
the corpse from which every one drew aside in horror.
And we must say that singular as this
should appear, we can quite imagine that in spite of everything, women
loved him. He was a monster, an absurd creature, badly formed, an
incongruous product of nature; but he was not a common monster. It has
been said that fate, by a strange caprice, wished to realize in him the
hircocerf of logicians, a hybrid bizarre, and incoherent being,
most frequently detestable, but whom yet at times people could not
refrain from pitying. The feeling of women resting more upon sympathy
and personal taste than the vigorous appreciation of ethics, a little
beauty or moral kindness, even terribly warped, is sufficient for their
indignation to melt into pity. They are especially indulgent to the
artist, misguided by the intoxication of his art, for a Byron, the
victim of his chimera, and pushing artlessness so far as to translate
his inoffensive poetry into acts. The day on which Actea laid the
bleeding corpse of Nero in the sepulchre of Domitius she no doubt wept
over the profanation of natural gifts known to her alone; that same day,
we can believe more than one Christian woman prayed for him
Although of mediocre talent, he had some
parts of an artist’s soul; he painted and sculptured well, his verses
were good, notwithstanding a certain scholarly pomposity, and, in spite
of all that can be said, he made them himself; Suetonius saw his
autograph drafts covered with erasures. He was the first to appreciate
the admirable landscape of Subiaco, and made a delicious summer
residence there. His mind, in the observation of natural things, was
just and curious: he 68had a taste for
experiments, new inventions, and in curious things he wanted to know the
causes, and separated charlatanism clearly from pretended magical
sciences, as well as the nothingness of the religions of his age. The
biography we are now quoting from preserves to us the account of the
manner in which the vocation of singer awoke in him. He owed his
initiation to the most renowned harpist of the century, Terpnos. We see
him pass entire nights seated by the side of the musician, studying his
play, lost in what he heard, in suspense, panting, intoxicated,
breathing with avidity the air of another world which opened before him
through contact with a great artist. There was there also the origin of
his disgust for the Romans, generally weak connaisseurs, and his
preference for the Greeks, according to him, alone capable of
appreciating him, and for the Orientals, who applauded him to
distraction. Thenceforth he admitted no other glory than that of art: a
new life revealed itself to him; the emperor was forgotten; to deny his
talent was the. State-crime par excellence; the enemies of Rome
were those who did not admire him.
His desire in everything to be the head
of fashion was certainly absurd. Yet it must be said that there was more
policy in that than one would think. The first duty of the Cæsar (seeing
the baseness of the times) was to occupy the people. The sovereign was
above all a grand organizer of fêtes; the amuser-in-chief must be made
to expose his own person to danger. Many of the enormities with which
they reproached Nero had their gravity only from the point of view of
Roman manners, and the severe attitude to which people had been
accustomed till then. This manly society was revolted by seeing the
emperor give an audience to the senate in an embroidered dressing gown,
and conducting his reviews in an intolerable
négligé, without a belt, with a
sort of scarf round his neck to preserve his voice. The true Romans were
rightly indignant at the introduction 69of those
Eastern customs. But it was inevitable that the most ancient and most
worn-out civilization should dominate the younger by its corruption.
Already Cleopatra and Antony had dreamed of an oriental empire There was
suggested to Nero a royalty of the same kind; reduced to despair, he
will think of asking the prefecture of Egypt. From Augustus to
Constantine every year represents progress in the conquest of the
portion of the empire which speaks Greek over the portion which speaks
Latin.
It must be recollected, moreover, that
madness was in the air. If we except the excellent nucleus of
aristocratic society which shall arrive at power with Nerva and Trajan,
a general want of the serious made the most considerable men play in
some sort with life. The personage who represented and summed up the
time, “the honest man” of this reign of transcendent immorality, was,
Petronius. He gave the day to sleep, the night to business and
amusements. He was not one of those dissipated men who ruin themselves
by grosser debaucheries, he was a voluptuary, profoundly versed in the
science of pleasure. The natural ease and
abandon
of his speech and actions gave him an air of simplicity which charmed.
While he was pro-consul in Bithynia and later on consul, he shewed
himself capable of great management. Coming back to vice or the boasting
of vice, he was admitted into the inner court of Nero, and become the
judge of good taste in everything; nothing was gallant or delightful
Petronius did not approve. The horrible Tigellinus, who ruled by his
baseness and wickedness, feared a rival whom he saw surpassing him in
the science of pleasures; he determined to destroy him. Petronius
respected himself too much to fight with this miserable man. He did not
wish however to quit life rudely. After having opened his veins he
closed them again, then he opened them anew, conversing on trifles with
his friends, hearing them talk, not upon the immortality of the soul and
the opinions of 70philosophers, but of songs and
light poems. He chose this moment to reward some of his slaves and to
have others chastised. He set himself down to table and fell asleep.
This sceptical Merimée, with a cold and exquisite tone, has left us a
romance of an accomplished and verve polish, at the same time of refined
corruption, which is the perfect mirror of the time of Nero. After all,
it is not the king of fashion who orders things. The elegance of life
has its freedom outside of science and morality. The joy of the universe
would want something if the world was only peopled by iconoclastic
fanatics and virtuous blockheads.
It cannot be denied that the taste for
art was not lively and sincere among the men of that age. They could
scarcely produce any beautiful things, but they sought greedily for the
beautiful things of the past ages This same Petronius an hour before his
death made them break his myrrh vase so that Nero should not have it.
Objects of art rose to a fabulous price. Nero was passionately fond of
them. Fascinated by the idea of the great, but joining to that as little
good sense as was possible, he dreamed fantastical palaces, of towns
like Babylon, Thebes, and Memphis. The imperial dwelling on the Palatine
(the ancient house of Tiberius), had been modest enough and of a
thoroughly private character until Caligula’s reign. This emperor, whom
we must consider in everything as the creator of the school of
government, in which it can be readily believed that Nero was not the
master, considerably enlarged the house of Tiberius. Nero affected to
find himself straitened there, and had not jests enough for his
predecessors, who were content with so little. He made the first draught
in provisional materials of a residence which equalled the palaces of
China and Assyria. This house which he called “transitory,” and which he
meditated soon making real, was quite a world. With its porticos three
miles long, its parks where great flocks fed, its interior solitudes,
its lakes surrounded 71by perspectives of
fantastic towns, its vines, its forests, it covered a space larger than
the Louvre, the Tuileries and the Champs-Elysées put together; it
stretched from the Palatine to the gardens of Mecœnus, situated upon the
heights of the Esquiline. It was a perfect fairy land; the engineers
Severus and Celer were surpassed there. Nero wished to have it executed
in such a way that it could be called the “Golden House.” People charmed
him by speaking of foolish enterprises, which might make his memory
eternal. Rome especially preoccupied his mind. He wished to rebuild it
from top to bottom, and to have it called Neropolis.
Rome for a century back had been the
wonder of the world; she equalled in grandeur the ancient capitals of
Asia. Her buildings were beautiful, strong, and solid, but the streets
appeared mean to the people of fashion, who every day went more and more
in the direction of vulgar and decorative constructions; they aspired to
those effects of harmony which make the delight of cockneys; they sought
for frivolities unknown to the ancient Greeks. Nero was the head of the
movement. The Rome which he imagined would have been something like the
Paris of our day, or one of those artificial cities built by superior
order on the plan which one has especially seen win the admiration of
country people and foreigners. The irrational youth was intoxicated by
these unwholesome plans. He desired also to see something strange, some
grandiose spectacle worthy of an artist; he wished for an event which
should mark a date in his reign. “Until me,” said he “people did not
know the extent that was permitted to a prince.” All these inner
suggestions of a disordered fancy appeared to take shape in a
bizarre
event which had for the subject which occupies us the most important
consequences.
The incendiary mania being contagious
and often complicated by hallucination, it is very dangerous to awake it
in weak heads where it sleeps. One of the 72features
of Nero’s character was his inability to resist the fixed idea of a
crime. The burning of Troy which he had played since his infancy, took
possession of him in a terrible manner. One of the pieces which he had
represented in one of his fêtes was the Incendium of Afranius,
where a conflagration was seen upon the stage. In one of his fits of
egotistical rage against fate, he cried: “Happy Priam, who could see
with his own eyes his empire and his country perish at the same time!”
On another occasion, having quoted a Greek verse from the Bellerophon of
Euripedes, which signifies:—
When I am dead, the earth and the fire
can mingle together;
“Oh, no,” said he, “But while I am
living!” The tradition according to which Nero burned Rome, only to have
a repetition of the burning of Troy, is certainly exaggerated, since, as
we shall show, Nero was absent from the city when the fire shewed
itself. Yet this story is not destitute of all truth. The demon of
perverse dramas who had taken possession of him was, as among wicked
people of another age, one of the essential actors in the horrible
crime.
On the 19th of July, 64, Rome took fire
with a fear-fill violence. The conflagration began near the Capena gate,
in the portion of the Grand Circus contiguous to the Palatine hill and
Mons Cœlius. That quarter contained many shops, full of inflammable
material, where the fire spread with a prodigious rapidity. From that
point it made the tour of the Palatine, ravaged the Velabra, the Forum,
the Cannes, and mounted the hills, greatly damaged the Palatine, went
down again to the valleys, consuming during six days and nights some
districts which were compact and full of tortuous streets. An enormous
abatis
of houses which had been built at the foot of the Esquiline arrested it
for some time; then it flamed up again and lasted three days more. The
number of deaths was considerable. Of fourteen 73districts
of which the city was composed, three were entirely destroyed, while
other seven were reduced to blackened walls. Rome was a prodigious city
closely built, with a very dense population. The disaster was frightful
and such as has never been seen equalled.
Nero was at Antium when the fire broke
out. He only entered the city at the moment the flames approached his
“transitory” house. It was impossible for anything to resist the flames.
The imperial mansions of the Palatine, the “transitory” house itself,
with its dependencies, and the whole surrounding quarter, were
destroyed. Nero evidently did not care much whether his residence could
be saved or not. The sublime horror of the spectacle fascinated him. It
was afterwards said that, mounted on a tower, he had contemplated the
fire, and that there, in a theatrical dress, with a lyre in his hand, he
had sung, to the touching rhythm of the ancient elegy, the ruin of Troy.
There was here a legend, a fruit of the
age and of successive exaggerations; but one point upon which universal
opinion pronounced itself was this, that the fire was ordered by Nero,
or at least revived by him when it was about to go out. It was believed
that members of his household were recognized setting fire to it at
different points. In certain directions, the fire was kindled, it was
said, by men feigning drunkenness. The conflagration had the appearance
of having been raised simultaneously at many points at the same time. It
is said that, during the fire, there had been seen the soldiers and the
watchmen charged with extinguishing it, stirring it up, and hindering
the efforts which were made to circumscribe it, and that with an air of
threatening and in the style of people who executed official orders.
Some large constructions of stone, in the neighbourhood of the imperial
residence, and whose site he coveted, were turned over as in a siege.
When the fire began again, it commenced in some buildings which belonged
to Tigellinus. What confirmed these suspicions 74is
that after the fire Nero, under pretext of cleaning the ruins at his
expense to leave a free place to the owners took charge of removing the
ruins, so much that he did not permit any person to approach them. It
was much worse, when they saw him collect a good part of the ruins of
the country, when they saw the new palace of Nero, that “House of Gold”
which for a long time had been the plaything of his delirious
imagination, rising upon the site of the old temporary residence,
increased by the space which the fire had cleared. It was thought he had
wished to prepare the grounds of this new palace, to justify the
reconstruction which he had projected for a long time, to procure
himself money by appropriating to himself the debris of the fire, in
short, to satisfy his mad vanity, which made him desire to have Rome
rebuilt, that it might date from him and that he might give it his name.
Everything leads us to believe that
there was no calumny in that. The truth, so far as it concerns Nero, can
scarcely be probable. It may be said that with his power he had more
simple means than fire to procure the lands he desired. The power of the
emperor, without bounds in one sense, soon found on another side its
limit in the customs and prejudices of a people conservative in the
highest degree of its religious monuments. Rome was full of temples, of
holy places, of
areæ,
of buildings which no law of expropriation could cause to disappear.
Cæsar and many other emperors had seen their designs of public utility,
especially in what concerns the rectification of the course of the
Tiber, met by this obstacle. To execute his irrational plans, Nero had
but really one means—fire. The situation resembled that of
Constantinople and in the great Mussulman cities, whose renovation is
prevented by the mosques and the ouakouf. In the East, fire is
only a weak expedient; for, after the fire, the ground, considered as a
sort of inalienable patrimony of the faithful, remains sacred. At Rome,
where 75religlon is attached more to the edifice
than to the site, the measure was efficacious. A new Rome, with large
and stretched out streets, was reconstructed quickly enough according to
the plans of the emperor and on the premiums which he offered.
All honest men who were in the city were
enraged. The most precious antiquities of Rome, the houses of the
ancient leaders decorated yet with triumphal spoils, the most sacred
objects, the trophies, the
ex-voto
antiques, the most esteemed temples—all the material of the old worship
of the Romans had disappeared. It was like the funeral of the
reminiscences and legends of the fatherland. Nero had in vain taken on
himself the expense of assuaging the misery he had caused; it was stated
in vain that everything was limited in the last analysis to an operation
of clearing up and rendering wholesome; that the new city would be very
superior to the old; no true Roman would believe it; all those for whom
a city is anything more than a mass of stones were wounded to the heart;
the conscience of the country was hurt. This temple built by Evander,
that other erected by Servius Tullius, of the sacred
enceinte
of Jupiter Stator, the palace of Numa, those
penates
of the Roman people, those monuments of so many victories, those
triumphs of Grecian art, how could the loss be repaired? What value
compared with that was there is sumptuousness of parades, vast
monumental perspective, and endless straight lines? They conducted
expiatory ceremonies, they consulted the Sibyl’s books, and the ladies
especially celebrated divers
piacula.
But there remained the secret feeling of a crime, an infamy; Nero began
to feel that he had gone a little too far.
CHAPTER VII.
MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS—THE ÆSTHETICS OF NERO.
An infernal idea then came into his
mind. He asked himself if there were not in the world some wretches
still more detested than he by the Roman citizens, on whom he had
brought down the odium of the fire. He thought of the Christians. The
honor which those last showed for the temples and the buildings most
venerated by the Romans rendered acceptable enough the idea that they
were the authors of a fire, the effect of which had been to destroy
those sanctuaries. Their gloomy air before the monuments appeared an
insult to the country. Rome was a very religious city, and one person
protesting against the national cults was very quickly observed. It must
be remembered that certain rigorous Jews went even so far as not to
touch a coin bearing an effigy, and saw as great a crime in the fact of
looking at or carrying about an image, as in that of carving it. Others
refused to pass through a gate of the city surmounted by a statue. All
this provoked the jests and the bad will of the people. Perhaps the talk
of the Christians upon the grand final conflagration, their sinister
prophecies, their affectation in repeating that the world was soon to
finish, and to finish by fire, contributed to make them be taken for
incendiaries. It is not even inadmissable that many believers had
committed imprudences and that men had had some pretexts to accuse them
for having wished, by preluding the heavenly flames, to justify their
oracles at any price. What
piaculum,
in any case, could be more efficacious than the punishment of those
enemies of the 77gods. In seeing them
atrociously tortured the people would say: “Ah! no doubt, these are the
culprits!” It must be recollected that public opinion regarded as
established facts the most odious crimes laid to the charge of the
Christians.
Let us put far from us the idea that the
pious disciples of Jesus had been culpable to any degree of the crime of
which they were accused: let us only say that many indications might
mislead opinion. This fire it may be they had not lit, but surely they
rejoiced at it. The Christians desired the end of society and predicted
it. In the Apocalypse, it is the secret prayers of the saints which burn
the earth and make it tremble. During the disaster, the attitude of the
faithful would appear equivocal: some no doubt were wanting in showing
respect and regret before the consumed temples, or even did not conceal
a certain satisfaction. One could imagine such a conventicle at the base
of the Transtevere, where it might be said: “is this not what we
foretold?” Often it is dangerous to show oneself too prophetic. “If we
wished to revenge ourselves,” said Tertullian, “a single night and some
torches would be sufficient” The accusation of incendiarism was very
common against the Jews, because of their separate life. This very crime
was one of these
flagitia
cohærentia nomini which made up the definition of a Christian.
Without having at all contributed to the
catastrophe of the 19th July, the Christians could therefore be held, if
one could so express it, incendiaries at heart. In four years and a half
the Apocalypse will present a song on the burning of Rome, to which the
event of 64 probably furnished more than one feature. The destruction of
Rome by flames was indeed a Jewish and Christian dream; but it was
nothing but a dream the pious secretaries were certainly contented to
see in spirit the saints and angels applauding from high heaven what
they regarded as a just expiation.
78
One can scarcely believe that the idea
of accusing the Christians of the fire of the month of July should come
of itself to Nero. Certainly, if Cæsar had known the good brothers
closely, he would have strangely hated them. The Christians naturally
could not comprehend the merit which lay in posing as an actor on the
stage of the society of his age: now what exasperated Nero was when
people misunderstood his talent as an artist and head of entertainments.
Yet Nero could not but hear them speak of the Christians; he never found
himself in personal relations with them. By whom was the atrocious
expedient on which he acted suggested? It is probable besides that on
many sides in the city some suspicions were entertained. The sect, at
that time, was well known in the official world. We have seen that Paul
had certain relations with some person attached to the service of the
imperial palace. One thing very extraordinary is that among the promises
which certain people had made to Nero, in case he should come to be
deprived of the empire, was that of the government of the east and
particularly of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The Messianic ideas among the
Jews at Rome often took the form of vague hopes of a Roman oriental
empire; Vespasian profited at a later date by those fancies. From the
accession of Caligula up till the death of Nero, the Jewish cabals at
Rome did not cease. The Jews had contributed greatly to the accession
and to the support of the family of Germanicus. Whether through the
Herods or other intriguers, they besieged the palace, too often to have
their enemies destroyed. Agrippa II. had been very powerful under
Caligula and Claudius; when he resided at Rome he played the part of an
influential person. Tiberius Alexander on the other hand, occupied the
loftiest functions. Josephus indeed shows himself to be very favourable
to Nero; he says they have caluminated him, and lays all his crimes upon
his evil surroundings. As to Poppea, he makes her out to be a
79pious person because she was favourable to the
Jews, because she seconded the solicitations of the zealots, and also
perhaps because she adopted a portion of their rites. He knew her in the
year 62 or 63, obtained through her pardon for the arrested Jewish
priests, and cherished the most grateful remembrance of her. We have the
touching epitaph of a Jewess named Esther born at Jerusalem and freed by
Claudius or Nero, who charges her companion Arescusus to keep watch that
they put nothing on her tomb contrary to the Law, as for example, the
letters D.M. Rome possessed some
actors and actresses of Jewish origin: under Nero, there was in that a
natural way of finding access to the emperor. There is named in
particular a certain Alityrus, a Jewish player, much liked by Nero and
Poppea; it was by him that Josephus was introduced to the empress. Nero,
full of hatred for everything that was Roman, loved to turn to the east,
to surround himself with orientals, and to concoct some intrigues in the
east.
Is all this enough on which to found a
plausible hypothesis? Is it allowable to attribute to the hatred of the
Jews against the Christians the cruel caprice which exposed the most
inoffensive of men to the most monstrous punishments? It was surely a
pity that the Jews had this secret interview with Nero and Poppea at the
moment when the emperor conceived such a hateful thought against the
disciples of Jesus. Tiberius Alexander especially was then in his full
favour, and such a man would detest the saints. The Romans usually
confounded the Jews and the Christians. Why was the distinction so
clearly made on this occasion? Why were the Jews, against whom the
Romans had the same moral antipathy and the same religious grievances as
against the Christians, not meddled with at this time? The sufferings of
some Jews would have been a
piacalum
quite as effectual. Clemens Romanus, or the author (certainly a Roman)
of the 80epistle which is attributed to him, in
the passage where he makes allusion to the massacres of the Christians
ordered by Nero, explains them in a manner very obscure to us, but very
characteristic. All these misfortunes are “the result of jealousy,” and
this word “jealousy” evidently signifies here some internal divisions,
some animosities among the members of the same confraternity. From that
was born a suspicion, corroborated by this incontestable fact that the
Jews, before the destruction of Jerusalem, were the real persecutors of
the Christians, and neglected nothing which would make them disappear. A
widespread tradition of the fourth century asserts that the death of
Paul and even that of Peter, which they did not separate from the
persecution of the year 64, had as its cause the conversion of the
mistresses and one of the favourites of Nero. Another tradition sees in
this a result of the defeat of Simon the magician. With a personage so
fanciful as Nero every conjecture is hazarded. Perhaps the choice of the
Christians for the frightful massacre was only a whim of the emperor or
Tigellinus. Nero had no need of anyone to conceive for him a design
capable of baffling, by its monstrosity, all the ordinary rules of
historical induction.
At first a certain number of persons
suspected of forming part of the new sect were arrested, and they were
put together in a prison, which was already a punishment in itself. They
confessed their faith, which was considered an avowal of the crime which
was judged inseparable from it. These first arrests led to a great
number of others. The larger portion of the accused appear to have been
proselytes, observing the precepts and the rules of the pact of
Jerusalem. It is not to be admitted that any true Christians had
denounced their brethren; but some papers might be seized; some
neophytes scarcely initiated might yield to the torture. People were
surprised at the multitudes of adherents who had accepted these gloomy
doctrines; they 81did not speak of them without
fear. All sensible men considered the accusation of having caused the
fire extremely weak. “Their true crime,” it was said, “is hatred to the
human race.” Although persuaded that the fire was Nero’s crime, many of
the thoughtful Romans saw in this cast of the police net a way of
delivering the city from a most fatal plague. Tacitus, in spite of some
pity, is of that opinion. As to Suetonius, he ranks among Nero’s
praiseworthy measures the punishments to which he subjected the
partisans of the new and malevolent superstition
These punishments were something
frightful. Such refinements of cruelty had never been seen. Nearly all
the Christians arrested were of the
humiliores,
people of no position. The punishment of those unfortunates, when it was
a matter of lese-majesty or sacrilege, consisted in being
delivered to the beasts or burned alive in the amphitheatre, with
accompaniments of cruel scourgings. One of the most hideous features of
Roman manners was to have made of punishment a fête, and the witnessing
of slaughter a public game. Persia, in its moments of fanaticism and
terror had known frightful exhibitions of torture; more than once it has
tasted there a sort of gloomy pleasure; but never before the Roman
domination had there been this looking at these horrors as a public
diversion, a subject for laughter and applause. The amphitheatres had
become the places of execution; the tribunals furnished the arena. The
condemned of the whole world were led to Rome for the supply of the
circus and the amusement of the people. Let us join to that an atrocious
exaggeration in the penalty which caused simple offences to be punished
by death; let us add numerous judicial blunders, resulting from a
defective criminal procedure, and we shall conceive that all the ideas
were perverted. The punished were considered very soon to be as much
unfortunate as criminal; as a whole, they were looked on as nearly
innocent,
innoxia corpora.
82
To the barbarity of the punishments,
this time they added insult. The victims were kept for a fête, to which
no doubt an expiratory character was given. Rome reckoned few days so
extraordinary. The
ludus
matutinus, dedicated to the fights with animals, made an
extraordinary exhibition. The condemned, covered with the skins of wild
beasts, were thrust into the arena, where they were torn by the dogs;
others were crucified, others again, clothed in tunics steeped in oil,
pitch, or resin, were fastened to stakes and kept to light up the fête
at night. As the dusk came on they lit those living
flambeaux. Nero gave for the
spectacle the magnificent gardens he possessed across the Tiber, and
which occupied the present site of the Borgo and the piazza and church
of St. Peter. He had found there a circus, commenced by Caligula,
continued by Claudius, and of which an obelisk brought from Hierapolis
(that which at the present day marks the centre of the piazza of St.
Peter) was the boundary. This place had already seen massacres by
torchlight. Caligula caused to be beheaded there by the light of
flambeaux a certain number of
consular personages, senators, and Roman ladies. The idea of replacing
those lights by human bodies impregnated by inflammable substances may
appear ingenious. This punishment, this fashion of burning alive was not
new; it was the ordinary penalty for incendiaries, what was termed the
tunica
molesta; but a system of illumination had never been made out of
it. By the light of these hideous torches Nero, who had put evening
races in fashion, showed himself in the arena, sometimes mingling with
the people in the dress of a jockey, sometimes driving his chariot and
seeking for their applause. But yet there were some signs of compassion.
Even those who believed the Christians culpable and who confessed that
they had deserved the last punishment, were horrified by these cruel
pleasures. Wise men wished that they would do only what public
83utility demanded, that the city should be
cleared of dangerous men, but that there should not be the appearance of
sacrificing criminals to the cruelty of a single person.
Some women, some maidens, were mixed up
with these horrible games. A fête was made out of the nameless
indignities they suffered. The custom was established under Nero of
making the condemned in the amphitheatre play certain mythological
parts, involving the death of the actor. Those hideous operas, where the
science of machinery attained prodigious results, were a new thing;
Greece would have been surprised if they had suggested to it a similar
attempt to apply ferocity to æsthetics, to produce art by torture. The
unfortunate was introduced into the arena richly dressed as a god or a
hero doomed to death, then represented by his punishment some tragic
scene of fables consecrated by sculptors and poets. Sometimes it was the
furious Hercules, burned upon mount Œta, drawing over his skin the lit
tunic of pitch; sometimes it was Orpheus torn in pieces by a bear;
Dedalus thrown from the sky and devoured by beasts; Pasipháe submitting
to the embrace of the bull, or Attys murdered; at other times, there
were horrible masquerades, where the men were dressed as priests of
Saturn, with a red mantle on their backs; the women as priestesses of
Ceres, with fillets on their foreheads; and lastly some dramatic pieces,
in the course of which the hero was really put to death, like Laureolus,
or representations of tragical acts like that of Mucius Scævola. At the
close, Mercury, with a rod of red hot iron, touched every corpse to see
if it moved; some masked servants, representing Pluto or the Orcus,
drew away the dead by the feet, killing with mallets all who still
breathed.
The most respectable Christian ladies
bore their part in these monstrosities. Some played the part of the
Danaïdes, others those of Dircé. It is difficult to say
84why the fable of the Danaïdes could furnish a bloody tableau.
The punishment which all mythological tradition attributes to these
guilty women, and in which they are represented, was not cruel enough to
minister to the pleasure of Nero and the
habitués
of his amphitheatre. Probably they marched bearing urns, and received
the fatal blow from an actor representing Lynceus; or Anonyms, one of
the Danaïds, was seen pursued by a Satyr and outraged by Neptune.
Perhaps, in short, these unfortunates passed through the punishment of
Tartarus one after the other, and died after hours of torment.
Representations of hell were in fashion. Some years before (41) certain
Egyptians and Nubians came to Rome, and had a great success by giving
exhibitions at night, where they showed the horrors of the lower world,
according to the paintings on the Syringe of Thebes, especially those on
the tomb of Sethos I.
As to the sufferings of the Dircés there
can be no doubt, We know the colossal group known by the name of the
Farnese Bull, now in the museum at Naples. Amphion and Zethus fasten
Dirce to the horns of an untamed bull which would draw her across the
rocks and precipices of Cithero. This mediocre Rhodian marble, brought
to Rome in the time of Augustus, was the object of universal admiration.
What finer subject for this hideous art which the cruelty of the age had
put in vogue and which consisted in making
tableaux
vivants of famous statues? A text and a fresco from Pompeii
appear to prove that this temple scene was often represented in the
arena, when the person to be punished was a woman. Bound naked by the
hair to the horns of a furious bull, the unfortunates satiated the
lustful glances of the cruel people. Some of the Christian women thus
sacrificed were weak in body; their courage was superhuman: but the
infamous crowd had no eyes save for their opened entrails and their torn
bosoms.
85
Nero was doubtless present at these
spectacles. As he was short-sighted he had the habit of wearing in his
eye, when he followed the gladiatorial fights, a concave emerald which
he used as a
lorgnon. He loved to parade his knowledge of sculpture; it is
asserted that he made odious remarks over the corpse of his mother,
praising this and disparaging that. Flesh palpitating under the teeth of
the beasts, a poor timid girl veiling her nudity by a modest gesture,
then tossed by a bull, and torn in pieces on the pebbles of the arena,
would present some plastic forms and colours worthy of a connaisseur
like him. He was there in the first rank upon the
podium,
mingling with the vestals and the curule magistrates, with his bad
figure, his mean face, his blue eyes, his chestnut hair twisted in rows
of curls, his cruel lips, his wicked and beastly air; at once the figure
of a big ugly baby, happy, puffed up with vanity, while a brassy music
vibrated in the air, waving through a stream of blood. He doubtless
dwelt like an artist upon the modest attitude of these new Dirces, and
found, I imagine, that a certain air of resignation gave to these poor
women about to be torn in pieces a charm which he had never known till
then.
For a long time that hideous scene was
remembered, and even under Domitian when an actor was put to death in
his part, especially one Loreolius, who really died upon the cross, they
thought of the piacula of the
year 64 and imagined him to represent an incendiary of the city of Rome.
The names of
sarmentitii or
sarmentarii
(people preparing the fagots)
semaxii
(the stakes) the popular cry of “The Christians to the lions” appeared
also to date from that time. Nero, with a sort of clever art, had struck
budding Christianity with an indelible impress; the bloody
nœvus
inscribed on the forehead of the martyr church shall never be effaced.
Those of the brethren who were not
tortured had in some sort their part in the sufferings of the others by
86the sympathy which they shewed them and the
care which they took to visit them in prison. They bought often this
dangerous favour at the price of all their goods; the survivors of the
crisis were utterly ruined. They scarcely thought of that, however, they
saw nothing but the enduring reward of heaven and said continually: “Yet
a little while, and he that shall come will come.”
Thus opened this strange poem of
martyrdom, this
epopee
of the amphitheatre, which was to last for 250 years, and from which
would come forth the ennoblement of women, the rehabitation of the
slaves by such episodes as these: Blandina on the cross turning her eyes
upon her companions, who saw in the gentle and pale slave the image of
Jesus crucified: Potanugina protected from outrage by the young officer
who was leading her to punishment. The crowd was seized with horror when
it perceived the humid breasts of Felicita; Perpetua in the arena
pinning up her hair trampled by the beasts not to appear disconsolate.
Legend tells that one of these saints proceeding to punishment met a
young man who, touched by her beauty, gave her a look of pity. Wishing
to leave him a souvenir she took the kerchief which covered her bosom
and gave it to him; intoxicated by this gage of love the young man ran a
moment later to martyrdom. Such was in fact the dangerous charm of those
bloody dramas of Rome, Lyons, and Carthage. The joy of the sufferers in
the amphitheatre became contagious as under the Terror the resignation
of the “Victims.” The Christians presented themselves above all to the
imagination of the times as a race determined to suffer. The desire for
death was henceforward their mark. To arrest the too deep desire for
martyrdom the most terrible threatenings became necessary—the stamp of
heresy, expulsion from the church.
The fault which the educated classes of
the empire committed in provoking this feverish enthusiasm cannot be
blamed enough. To suffer for his belief is a thing so sweet to man that
this attraction is alone sufficient to 87make
him believe. More than one unbeliever was converted without any other
reason than that; in the east, one even sees impostors lying only for
the sake of lying and being victims of their own lies. There was no
sceptic who did not regard the martyr with a jealous eye, and did not
envy him that supreme happiness of affirming something. A secret
instinct leads us besides to favour those who are persecuted. Whoever
imagines that a religious or social movement can be arrested by coercive
measures gives therefore a proof of his complete ignorance of the human
heart, and shews that he does not know the true means of political
action.
What happened once may happen again.
Tacitus would have turned away with indignation if he had been shewn the
future of those Christians whom he treated as wretches. The honest
people of Rome would have cried out if any observer endowed with a
prophetic spirit had dared to say to them: “These incendiaries will be
the salvation of the world.” Hence an eternal objection against the
dogmatism of conservative parties, an irremediable warping of
conscience, and a secret perversion of judgment. Some wretches despised
by all fashionable people have become saints. It would not be good if
madnesses of this kind were frequent. The safety of society demands that
its sentences shall not be too frequently reformed. Since the
condemnation of Jesus, since the martyrs have been found to have had
success for their cause in their revolt against the law, there had
always been in the matter of social crimes as a secret appeal from the
thing judged. Not one of the condemned but could say: “Jesus was smitten
thus. The martyrs were held to be dangerous men of whom society must be
purged, and yet the following centuries have shewn that this was right.”
A heavy blow this to those clumsy assertions by which a society seeks to
represent to itself that its enemies are wanting in all reason and
morality.
88
After the day when Jesus expired on
Golgotha, the day of the festivals of the gardens of Nero (one can fix
it about the 1st of August in the year 64) was the most solemn in the
history of Christianity. The solidity of a construction is in proportion
to the sum of virtues, sacrifices and devotion which are laid as its
foundations. Fanatics alone found anything. Judaism endures still by
reason of the intense frenzy of its prophets and zealots; Christianity,
because of the courage of its first witnesses. The orgy of Nero was the
grand baptism of blood, which marked out Rome as the city of the martyrs
to play a part in the history of Christianity, and to be the second holy
city. It was the taking possession of the Vatican hill by these
conquerors of a kind unknown till then.
The odious madcap who governed the world
did not perceive that he was the founder of a new order, and that he
signed for the future a character written with cinnebar, whose
effects would be reclaimed at the end of eighteen hundred years. Rome,
made responsible for all the bloodshed, became, like Babylon, a sort of
sacramental and symbolic city. Nero took in any case that day a place of
the first order in the history of Christianity. This miracle of horror,
this prodigy of perversity, was an evident sign to all. A hundred and
fifty years after Tertullian writes: “Yes, we are proud that our
position outside of the law has been inaugurated by such a man. When one
has come to know him he understands that he who was condemned by Nero
could not but be great and good.” Already the idea had spread that the
coining of the true Christ would be preceded by the coming of a sort of
an infernal Christ who should be in everything the contrary of Jesus.
That could not longer be doubted; the Antichrist, the Christ of evil,
existed. The Antichrist was this monster with a human face made up of
ferocity, hypocrisy, immodesty, pride, who paraded before the world as
an absurd hero, celebrated his triumph as a chariot driver with torches
of human flesh, 89intoxicated himself with the
blood of the saints, and perhaps did worse than that. One is tempted to
believe in fact that it is to the Christians that a passage in Suetonius
refers as to a monstrous game which Nero had invented. Some youths, men,
women and young girls were fastened to stakes in the arena. A beast came
forth from the caves glutting itself upon these bodies. The freed man
Doryphorus made as if he were fighting the beast. Now if the beast was
Nero clothed in the skin of a wild beast, Doryphorus was a wretch to
whom Nero had been married sending forth cries like a virgin when she is
violated . . . The name of Nero has been discovered; it shall be
THE BEAST. Caligula had been the
Anti-God. Nero shall be the Anti-Christ, the Apocalypse. The
Christian virgin who, attached to a stake, was subjected to the hideous
embraces of the beast, will carry that fearful image with her into
eternity!
That day was likewise the one upon which
was created by a strange autithesis, the charming ambiguity on which
humanity has lived for centuries and partly lives still. This was an
hour reckoned in Heaven as that in which Christian chastity, until then
so carefully concealed, should appear in the full light before fifty
thousand spectators, and placed, as in the studio of a sculptor, in the
attitude of a virgin about to die. Revelations of a secret which
antiquity does not know! Brilliant proclamation of this principle that
modesty is a joy and a beauty itself alone! Already we have seen the
great magician who is called fancy, and who modifies from century to
century the ideal of woman, working incessantly to place above the
perfection of the form the attraction of modesty (Poppea only ruled by
putting that on) and of a resigned humility (in that was the triumph of
the good Actea). Accustomed to march always at the head of his age in
the paths of the unknown, Nero was, it appears, the introducer of this
sentiment, and discovered in his artistic 90debauches
the philtre of love in the Christian female esthetic. His passion for
Actea and Poppea proves that he was capable of delicate feelings, and as
the monstrous mingled with everything he touched, he wished to realise
for himself the spectacle of his dreams. The image of the grandmother of
Cymodocea refracted itself like the heroine of an antique cameo in the
focus of his emerald. By obtaining the applause of a connaisseur, so
exquisite, a friend of Petronius, who perhaps saluted the Moritura
by some of those quotations from the classical poets whom he loved, the
timid nudity of the young martyr became the rival of the nudity,
confident in itself, of a Greek Venus. When the brutal hand of this worn
out world which sought its festival in the torments of a young girl had
drawn aside the veil from Christian modesty, that might have said, “And
I also am beautiful.” It was the beginning of a new art. Hatched under
the eyes of Nero, the aesthetic of the disciples of Jesus, which did not
know itself till then, owes the revelation of its magic to the crime
which tearing aside its robe despoiled it of its virginity.
CHAPTER VIII
DEATH OF ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL.
We do not know with certainty the names of
any of the Christians who perished at Rome, in the horrible events of
August, 64. The arrested persons had been lately converted and their
names were scarcely known. Those holy women who had astonished the
church by their constancy were not known by names. They had been styled
in Roman history as “The Danaïdes and the Dirces.” Yet the images of the
places remained lively and deep. The circus or naumachy, the two
boundaries, the obelisk, and a turpentine tree which served as a
rallying point for the reminiscences of the first Christian generations,
became the fundamental elements of a whole ecclesiastical topography
whose result was the consecration of the Vatican and the pointing out of
that hill for a religious destiny of the first order. Although the
affair had been special to the city of Rome and as it was necessary to
appease the public opinion of the Romans, irritated by the fire, the
atrocity ordered by Nero must have had some counterpart in the provinces
and excited there a renewal of persecution. The churches of Asia Minor
were heavily tried; the heathen population of these countries were
prompt to fanaticism. There had been some imprisonments at Syrmna.
Pergamos had a martyr who is known to us by the name of Antipas, who
appears to have suffered near the temple of Esculapius, probably in a
wooden theatre not far from the temple in connection with some festival.
Pergamos was, with Cyzicus, the only town of Asia Minor which had a
regular organization for gladiatorial shows. We know 92now
that these plays were placed at Pergamos under the authority of the
priests. Although there had been no formal edict forbidding the
profession of Christianity, that profession was in reality against the
law; hostis, hostis patriæ, hostis publicus, humani generis inimicus,
hostis deorum atque hominum, such were the appellations written in
the laws to designate those who put society in danger and against whom
every man according to the expression of Tertullian became a soldier.
The name alone of Christian was consequently a crime. As the most
complete judgment was left to the judges for the estimation of such
crimes, the life of every believer from that day was in the hands of
magistrates of a horrible harshness and filled with cruel prejudices
against them.
It is allowable without unlikelihood to
connect with the event of which we have given an account the deaths of
the apostles Peter and Paul. A fate truly strange has decreed that the
disappearance of these two extraordinary men should be enveloped in
mystery. A certain thing is, that Peter died a martyr. Now it can
scarcely be conceived that he had been a martyr elsewhere than at Rome,
and at Rome the only historical incident known by which one could
explain his death is the episode recorded by Tacitus. As to Paul, some
solid reasons lead us also to believe that he died a martyr and died at
Rome. It is therefore natural to connect his death likewise with the
episode of July-August, 64. Thus was cemented by suffering the
reconciliation of those two souls, the one so strong, the other so good;
thus was established by legendary authority (that is to say, divine)
this touching brotherhood of two men whose parties opposed each other,
but who, we may believe, were superior to parties and always loved each
other. The great legend of Peter and Paul parallel to that of Romulus
and Remus founding by a sort of collaboration the grandeur of Rome—a
legend which in a sense 93has had in the history
of humanity nearly as much importance as that of Jesus—dates from the
day which, according to tradition, saw them die together. Nero, without
knowing it, was again in this the most efficacious agent in the creation
of Christianity, he who placed the corner stone in the city of the
Saints.
As to the nature of the death of the two
Apostles, we know with certainty that Peter was crucified. According to
ancient texts his wife was executed with him, and he saw her led to
punishment. A story, accepted since the third century, says that, too
humble to suffer like Jesus, he asked to be crucified with his head
downwards. The characteristic feature of the butchery of 64 having been
the search for odious rarities in the way of tortures, it is possible
that Peter in fact had been offered to the crowd in this hideous
attitude. Seneca mentions some cases where tyrants have been known to
cause the heads of the crucified to be turned to the earth. Their
Christian piety would have seen a mystic refinement in what was only a
bazarre
caprice of the executioners. Perhaps the passage in the fourth gospel:
‘Thou shalt stretch forth thine hands and another shall gird thee, and
shall lead thee whither thou would’st not,” includes some allusion to a
speciality in Peter’s suffering. Paul in his capacity as
honestior
had his head cut off. It is probable besides that there had been in
regard to him a regular decision, and that he was not included in the
summary condemnation of the victims of Nero’s fêtes. Timothy was,
according to certain appearances, arrested with his master and kept in
prison.
At the beginning of the 3rd century two
monuments were already seen at Rome connected with the names of the
Apostles Peter and Paul. One was situated at the foot of the Vatican
hill: it was that of St. Peter; the other on the way to Ostia: it was
that of St. Paul. They were called in oratorical style, “the trophies”
of the Apostles. These were probably some
cellæ or
some 94memoriæ
consecrated to the saints. Some such monuments existed before
Constantine; we are entitled besides to suppose that these trophies were
only known to the faithful; perhaps even they were nothing else than
that Terebinth of the Vatican, with which the memory of Peter has been
associated for ages, that Pine of the Salvian Waters, which was,
according to certain traditions, the centre of the souvenirs relating to
Paul. Much later these trophies became the tombs of the Apostles Peter
and Paul. About the middle of the 3rd century, in fact, there appeared
two bodies which universal veneration held to be those of the Apostles,
and which appeared to have come from the the catacombs of the Appian
Way, where there had really been many Jewish Cemeteries. In the fourth
century these corpses reposed in the neighbourhood of the “two
trophies.” Above these “trophies” were then raised two basilicas of
which one had become the present basilica of St. Peter and of which the
other, St. Paul-beyond-the-Walls, have kept their essential forms until
our day.
Did the “trophies” which the Christians
venerated about the year 200 really mark the places where the two
Apostles suffered? That may be. It is not unlikely that Paul at the end
of his life resided in the outskirts which stretch beyond the Lavernal
gate upon the way from Ostia. The shadow of Peter, upon the other hand
always wanders in the Christian legend towards the foot of the Vatican,
the gardens and the circus of Nero especially about the obelisk. This
arises, it will be seen, from the fact that the circus spoken of
preserved the souvenir of the martyrs of 64, with whom, failing precise
indications, Christian tradition would connect Peter; we like better to
believe, notwithstanding, that there was mixed with that some
indication, and that the old place of the obelisk of the sacristy of St.
Peter, marked at the present day by an inscription, points out somewhat
nearly the spot where Peter on the cross satiated by his
95frightful agony the eyes of a populace greedy
to behold him suffer. Were the bodies which since the third century had
been surrounded by an uninterrupted tradition of respect, the very
bodies of the two Apostles? We scarcely believe it. It is certain that
attention in keeping up the memory of the tombs of the martyrs was very
ancient in the church; but Rome was about 100 and 120 the theatre of an
immense legendary work relating especially to the two Apostles, Peter
and Paul; a work in which pious claims had a large part. It is scarcely
believable that in the days which followed the horrible carnage in
August, 64. they could have reclaimed the corpses of the sufferers. In
the hideous mass of human flesh stoned, roasted, and trampled, which was
that day drawn by hooks into the spoliarium,
then thrown into the
puticuli,
it would have perhaps been difficult to recognize the identity of any of
the martyrs. Often doubtless an authorization was obtained to withdraw
from the hands of the executioners the remains of the condemned; but
while supposing (which is very admissible) that some brethren had braved
death to go and demand the precious relics, it is probable that instead
of these being given to them they would have been themselves sent to add
to the heap of corpses. During some days the mere name of Christian was
a sentence of death. It is besides a secondary question. If the Vatican
basilica does not really cover the tomb of the apostle Peter, it does
not the less mark out for our remembrance one of the most really holy
places of Christianity. The spot where the bad taste of the seventeenth
century constructed a circus of theatrical architecture was a second
Calvary, and even supposing that Peter had not been crucified there,
there at least no doubt suffered the Danaïdes and the Dirces.
If, as we may be allowed to believe, John
accompanied Peter to Rome, we can find a plausible foundation for the
old tradition according to which John would have been plunged in the
boiling oil, in the 96place where stood much
later the Latin Gate. John appears to have suffered for the name of
Jesus. We are led to believe that he was the witness, and up to a
certain point the victim, of the bloody episode to which the Apocalypse
owes its origin. The Apocalypse is to us the cry of horror from a
witness who lived at Babylon, who had known the Beast, who had seen the
bleeding bodies of his brother martyrs, who himself had felt the embrace
of death. The unfortunate condemned who were used as living torches
would be previously dipped in oil, or in an inflammable substance (not
boiling, it is true). John was perhaps devoted to the same suffering as
his brethren, and intended to illuminate the evening of the
fête of
the Faubourg of the Latin Way, a chance, a caprice had saved him. The
Latin Way is indeed situated in the quarter in which the incidents of
those terrible days passed. The southern part of Rome (the Capena gate,
the Ostia road, the Appian Way, the Latin Way), forms the region around
which appears to concentrate, in the time of Nero, the history of the
budding church.
A jealous fate has willed that on so many
points which greatly excite our curiosity, we should never escape from
the penumbra where legend dwells. Let us repeat it once more; the
questions relating to the death of the Apostles Peter and Paul present
nothing but likely hypotheses. The death of Paul especially is wrapped
in deep mystery. Certain expressions in the Apocalypse, composed at the
end of 68 or the beginning of 69, would incline us to think that the
author of this book believed Paul to be alive when he wrote. It is in no
way impossible that the end of the great Apostle had been altogether
unknown. In the career that certain texts attributed to him from the
Western side, a shipwreck, a sickness, or some accident might carry him
off. As he had not at that moment his brilliant crown of disciples
around him the details of his death would remain 97unknown;
later on, the legend would be filled up by taking account, on the one
hand, the position of Roman citizenship which the Acts gives him,
and on the other hand, the desire which the Christian conscience had to
carry out a reconciliation between him and Peter. Certainly, an obscure
death for the ardent Apostle has something in it which pleases us. We
like to dream of Paul sceptical, shipwrecked, abandoned, betrayed by his
friends, struck by the disenchantment of old age; it pleases us that the
scales should fall a second time from his eyes, and our gentle
incredulity would have its little revenge if the most dogmatic of men
had died sad, despairing (let us rather say, tranquil) on some Spanish
road or shore, saying thus to himself,
Ego errovi!
But this would be to give too much to conjecture. It is certain that the
two apostles were dead in 70; they did not see the ruins of Jerusalem,
which would have made such a deep impression on Paul. We admit,
therefore, as probable in all that follows of this history, that the two
champions of the Christian conception disappeared at Rome during the
terrible storm of the year 64. James was dead a little more than two
years before. Of “apostle-pillars” there remained, therefore, only John.
Some other friends of Jesus, no doubt, lived still in Jerusalem, but
forgotten, as if lost in the gloomy whirlwind in which Judea was to be
plunged for many years.
We shall show in the following book how the
church consummated a reconciliation between Peter and Paul which,
perhaps, death had sketched. Success was the reward. Apparently
inalienable, the Judeo-Christianity of Peter and the Hellenism of Paul
were equally necessary to the success of the future work.
Judeo-Christianity represented the conservative spirit, without which it
possessed nothing substantial; Hellenism, advance and progress, without
which nothing really exists. Life is the result of a conflict between
opposing forces. People die as well from the absence of all
revolutionary feeling as from excess of revolution.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DAY AFTER THE CRISIS.
The conscience of a society of men is like
that of an individual. Every impression going beyond a certain degree of
violence leaves in the
sensorium
of the patient a trace which is equivalent to a lesion, and puts it for
a long time, if not for ever, under the power of hallucination, or a
fixed idea. The bloody episode of August, 64, had equalled in horror the
most hideous dreams which a sick brain could conceive. For many years to
come the Christian consciousness shall be as if possessed. It is a prey
to a sort of vertigo; monstrous thoughts torment. A cruel death appears
to be the lot reserved for all believers in Jesus. But is not itself the
most certain sign of the nearness of the Great day?
. . . The souls of the victims of the Beast
were conceived if as waiting the sacred hour under the divine altar and
crying for vengeance. The angel of God calms them, tells them to keep
themselves in peace, and wait yet a little while; the moment is not far
off when their brethren, destined for immolation, shall be killed in
their turn. Nero shall charge himself with that. Nero is this infernal
personage to whom God will abandon for a little his power on the eve of
the catastrophe; it is this hellish monster who should appear like a
frightful meteor in the horizon of the evening of the last days.
The air was everywhere as if impregnated
with the spirit of martyrdom. The surroundings of Nero appeared animated
against morality by a sort of disinterested hatred; there was from one
end to the other of the Mediterranean, a struggle to the death between
good and evil. That harsh Roman society had declared war against piety
in all its forms; piety saw itself driven, 99forced
to leave a world delivered up to perfidy, to cruelty, and to debauchery;
there were no honest people who would run such dangers. The jealousy of
Nero against virtue had risen to its height, philosophy was only
occupied in preparing its disciples for the tortures; Seneca, Thraseas,
Barea, Soranus, Musonius, and Cornutus had submitted, or were about to
submit, to the consequences of their noble protest. Punishment appeared
the natural lot of virtue. Even the sceptical Petronius, because he was
of polished manners, could not live in a world where Tigellinus ruled. A
touching echo from the martyrs of this Terror has come to us through the
inscriptions of the island of religious banishments, where one would not
have expected it. In a sepulchral grotto near Cagliari a family of
exiles, perhaps devoted to the worship of Isis, has left us its touching
complaint, almost Christian. When the unfortunates arrived in Sardinia,
the husband fell ill in consequence of the frightful insalubrity of the
island; his wife, Benedicta, made a vow beseeching the gods to take her
in place of her husband; she was heard.
The uselessness of the massacres was seen,
besides, clearly in this circumstance. An aristocratic movement,
peculiar to a small number of people, is stopped by a few executions;
but it is not the same with a popular movement, for such a movement has
neither need of leaders nor of learned teachers. A garden where the
flowers have no root can exist no longer: a park mowed becomes better
than before. Thus Christianity, far from being arrested by the
lugubrious caprice of Nero, multiplied more vigorously than ever; an
increase of anger took possession of the survivors’ hearts; it would
become more than a dream, they would become masters of the heathen
ruling them, as they deserved, with a rod of iron. An incendiary,
although another than he whom they accused of having lit this fire,
shall devour this impious city, become the temple of Satan. The doctrine
of the final conflagration 100of the world takes
each day deeper roots. Fire only shall be capable of purging the earth
from the infamies which soil it; fire appears the only righteous and
worthy end to such a mass of horrors.
The greater part of the Christians at Rome
who escaped the ferocity of Nero, doubtless quitted the city. During six
or twelve years, the Roman Church found itself in extreme disorder, a
large door was opened to legend. Yet there was not a complete
interruption in the existence of the community. The Seer of the
Apocalypse in December, 68, or January, 69, gives orders to his people
to quit Rome. Even by making that passage a prophetic fiction, it is
difficult not to conclude that the Church of Rome quickly resumed its
importance. The chiefs alone definitively abandoned a city where their
Apostolate for the moment could not bear fruit. The point in the Roman
world where life was most supportable for the Jews was at that time the
province of Asia. There was between the Jewish community at Rome, and
that at Ephesus, increasing communication. It was to that side that the
fugitives directed themselves. Ephesus was the point where resentment
for the events of the year 64 shall be most lively. All the hatreds of
Rome were concentrated there; thence shall come forth in four years a
furious invective, by which the Christian conscience shall reply to the
atrocities of Nero.
There is no unlikelihood in placing among
the Christian notables who came from Rome, the Apostle whom we have seen
follow in everything Peter’s fortunes. If the accounts relative to the
incident, which was placed later on at the Latin Gate, have any truth,
we may be permitted to suppose that the Apostle John, escaping
punishment as by miracle, should have quitted the city without delay,
and afterwards it was natural that he should take refuge in Asia. Like
nearly all the data relating to the life of the Apostles, the traditions
as to the residence of John at Ephesus are 101subject
to doubt; they have yet also their plausible side, and we are inclined
rather to admit them than reject them.
The Church at Ephesus was mixed; one party
owned Paul’s faith, another was Judeo-Christian. This latter fraction
would preponderate through the arrival of the Roman colony, especially
if that colony brought with it a companion of Jesus, a Jerusalem doctor,
one of those illustrious masters before even whom Paul himself bowed.
John was, after the death of Peter and James, the only apostle of the
first order who still lived; he had become the chief of all the
Judeo-Christian Churches; an extreme respect attached to him; we are led
to believe (and no doubt the apostle himself says it), that Jesus had
for him a special affection. A thousand stories were founded already
upon these data. Ephesus became for a time the centre of Christianity,
Rome and Jerusalem being, in consequence of the violence of the times,
residences nearly forbidden to the new religion.
The struggle was soon lively between the
Judeo-Christian community, headed by the intimate friend of Jesus and
the families of the proselytes made by Paul. This struggle reached to
all the churches of Asia. There were nothing but bitter declamations
against this Balaam, who had sown scandal among the sons of Israel, who
had taught them that they could without sin intermarry with heathens.
John, on the contrary, was more and more considered like a Jewish high
priest. Like James, he bore the
petalon,
that is to say, the plate of gold upon his forehead. He was the doctor
par excellence; they were even accustomed, perhaps because of the
incident of the boiling oil, to give him the title of martyr.
It appears that among the number of
fugitives who came from Rome to Ephesus was Barnabas. Timothy was
imprisoned about the same time; we do not know in what place, perhaps in
Corinth. At the end of some 102months he was set
free. Barnabas, when he heard this good news, seeing the situation
quieter, formed the project of visiting Rome with Timothy, whom he had
known and loved as the companion of Paul. The apostolic phalanx
dispersed by the storm of 64, sought to reform itself. Paul’s school was
the least consistent; it sought, deprived of its head, to support itself
by one of the more solid portions of the Church. Timothy, accustomed to
be led, would be little if anything after Paul’s death. Barnabas, on the
contrary, who had always kept in a middle path between the two parties,
and who had not once sinned against charity, became the bond of the
scattered debris after the great shipwreck. That excellent man was thus
once more the saviour of the work of Jesus, the good genius of concord
and peace.
It is the circumstances concerning him
that, according to our view, connect the work which bears the title
difficult to understand of the epistle to the Hebrews. This writing
would appear to have been composed at Ephesus by Barnabas, and addressed
to the Church of Rome in the name of the little community of Italian
Christians who had taken refuge in the capital of Asia. By his position,
in some degree intermediate at the point of meeting of many ideas
hitherto never associated, the epistle to the Hebrews comes by right to
the conciliatory man, who so many times prevented the different
tendencies in the bosom of the young community from reaching an open
rupture. The opposition of the Jewish Churches to the Gentile Churches
appears, when one reads this little treatise, a question settled, or
rather lost in an overflowing flood of transcendental metaphysics and
peaceful charity. As we have said, the taste for the midraschim
or little treatises of religious exegesis under an epistolary form had
made great progress. Paul was set forth quite fully as to his doctrine
in his Epistle to the Romans; later on, the Epistle to the Ephesians had
been his most 103advanced formula; the Epistle
to the Hebrews would appear to be a manifesto of the same order. No
Christian book so much resembles the work of the Alexandrian Schools,
especially the tractates of Philo. Appollos had already entered on that
path. Paul, the prisoner, was singularly pleased with him. An element
foreign to Jesus, Alexandrianism, infused itself more and more into the
heart of Christianity. In the Johannine writings we see this influence
exercising itself in a sovereign manner. In the Epistle to the Hebrews,
the Christian theology is shown to be strongly analagous to that which
we have found in the Epistles in Paul’s last style. The theory of the
Word developed rapidly. Jesus became more and more “the second God,” the
metratone, the assessor of the divinity, the firstborn by right
of God, inferior to God alone. As to the circumstances of the time in
which it was written, the author explains these only by a few covert
words; we feel that he fears to compromise the bearer of this letter,
and those to whom it is addressed. A grievous weight appears to oppress
him; his secret anguish escapes in brief but deep features.
God, after having formally communicated His
will by the ministry of the prophets, has used in these last days the
instrumentality of the Son by whom He had created the world, and who
maintains everything by his power. This Son, the reflex of the Father’s
glory and the imprint of his essence, whom the Father has been pleased
to appoint heir of the universe, has expiated sin by his appearance in
this world; then he has gone to sit down in the celestial regions at the
right hand of the majesty, with a title superior to that of the angels.
The Mosaic law had been announced by the angels; it contains only the
shadow of the good things to come; ours has been announced first by the
Lord, then it has been transmitted to us in a sure manner by those who
heard it from him, God bearing them witness by signs, prodigies, and all
sorts of 104miracles, as well as by the gifts of
the Holy Spirit; thanks to Jesus all men have been made sons of God,
Moses has been a servant, Jesus has been the Son; Jesus has especially
been par excellence the high priest after the order of
Melchisedic.
This order is much superior to the
Levitical priesthood, and has totally abrogated it; Jesus is priest
throughout eternity.
“For such an high priest became us who is
holy, harmless, and separate from sinners, and raised higher than the
heavens, who does not need each day like the other priests to offer
sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for those of the people. The
old law made high priests of men who were liable to fall: the new law
has constituted the Son to all eternity. We have such a high priest, who
is seated on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty, as the
minister of the true sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord
hath built. Christ is the high priest of good things to come. For if the
blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkle those who
are unclean, gives carnal purity: how much more shall the blood of
Christ, who has offered himself to God, a spotless victim, purify our
conscience from dead works? It is thus He is the Mediator of the New
Testament; for to have a testament it is necessary that the death of the
testator should be proved, as a testament has no effect while the
testator lives. The first covenant, also, was inaugurated with blood. It
is by means of blood that everything is legally purged, and without
shedding of blood there is no pardon.”
We are, therefore, sanctified once for all
by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, who shall appear a second
time to those who wait for him. The old sacrifices never attained their
end since they were renewed unceasingly. If the expiatory sacrifice
recurred every year on a fixed day, is that not a proof that the blood
of the victims was powerless? In place of those perpetual holocausts
Jesus has offered his single sacrifice, which renders the other useless.
Consequently there is no longer need of a sacrifice for sin.
The feeling of the dangers which surrounded
the Church fills the author’s mind. He has before his eyes
105only a perspective of sufferings. He thinks
of the tortures which the prophets and the martyrs of Antiochus have
endured; the faith of many succumbed. The author is very severe on these
falls.
” For it is impossible for those who were
once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made
partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God and
the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them
again into repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God
afresh and put him to an open shame. For the earth, which drinketh in
the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them
by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God. But that which
beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose
end is to be burned. But beloved, we are persuaded better things of you,
and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak. For God is
not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have
showed towards His name in that ye have ministered to the saints and do
minister. And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence
to the full assurance of hope unto the end. That ye be not slothful, but
followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”
Some believers already had shown themselves
neglectful of attendance upon the gatherings in the church. The apostle
declares that these gatherings are the essence of Christianity, that it
is there we exhort, animate, and watch each other, and that it is
necessary to be all the more assiduous in that as the great day of final
appearance approaches.
For if we sin wilfully after that we have
received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for
sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery
indignation which shall devour the adversaries. . . . . . . . It is a
fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But call to
remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye
endured a great fight of afflictions. Partly while ye were made a
gazing-stock, both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly whilst ye
became companions of them that were so used. For ye had compassion of me
in my bonds, and 106took joyfully spoiling of
your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in Heaven a better and an
enduring substance. Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath
great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience that, after ye
have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a
little while he that shall come will come.
Faith sums up the attitude of the
Christian. Faith is the steady waiting for that which is promised, the
certainty of what is not yet seen. It is faith which made the great men
of the ancient law, who died without having obtained the things
promised, having only seen them and hailed them from afar, confessing
themselves strangers and pilgrims upon this earth, always searching for
a better country which they have not found, the heavenly. The author
quotes on this subject the examples of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham,
Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Rahab the harlot.
What more shall I say, for the time would
fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jepthah,
of David also, and Samuel and of the prophets. Who through faith subdued
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths
of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword,
out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to
flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to
life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that
they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trials of cruel
mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They
were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the
sword, they wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins, being
destitute, afflicted, tormented. Of whom the world was not worthy. They
wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens, and in caves of the
earth. And these, all having obtained a good report through faith,
received not the promise. God having provided some better thing for us,
that they without us should not be made perfect. Wherefore, seeing we
also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay
aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily
107beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set
before us; looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who
for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the
shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For
consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself,
lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted
unto blood striving against sin.
The author then explains to the confessors
that the sufferings which they endure are no punishments, but that they
ought to be taken as paternal corrections such as a father administers
to his son, and which are a pledge of his tenderness. He invitee them to
hold themselves in readiness against light minds which, after the manner
of Esau, give their spiritual patrimony in exchange for a worldly and
momentary advantage. For the third time the author turns back upon his
favourite thought that after a fall which has put one outside of
Christianity, there is no return. Esau also sought to regain the
paternal benediction, but his tears and regrets were useless. We know
that there had been, in the persecution of 64, some renegades through
weakness, who, after their apostacy, desired to re-enter the Church. Our
doctor demands that they should be repulsed. What blindness, indeed,
equals that of the Christian who hesitates or denies “after having come
to the holy mountain of Sion, and the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem and myriads of angels in their choir, the Church of
the firstborn written in heaven, and of God the universal Judge, of the
spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus the Mediator of the new
covenant, after having been purified by the blood of propitiation which
speaks better things than that of Abel . . .?”
The apostle closes by recalling to his
readers the members of the Church who were still in the dungeons of the
Roman authorities, and especially the memory of their spiritual leaders
who were no more—those 108great initiators who
had preached the word of God to them, and whose death had been a triumph
for the faith. Let them consider the close of these holy lives and they
will be strengthened. Let them beware of false doctrines, especially
those which make holiness consist in useless ritual practices, such as
distinction in meats. The disciple or friend of St. Paul is met here
again. The fact is, the entire epistle is like the epistles of Paul, a
long demonstration of the complete abrogation of the law of Moses by
Jesus; to bear the shame of Jesus, to go forth from the world, “for we
have no permanent city—we seek one which is to come; “to obey the chief
ecclesiastics, to be very respectful to them, to render their task easy
and agreeable, “since they watch over souls and must render an account
of them,” that is the duty before them. No writing shows, perhaps,
better than this the mystic rôle of Jesus increasing and closing
by filling up completely the Christian conscience. Not only is Jesus the
Logos who has created the world, but his blood is the universal
propitiation, the seal of a new alliance. The author is so preoccupied
with Jesus that he makes some errors in reading that he may find him
everywhere. In his Greek manuscript of the Psalms, the two letters
ΤΙof the word
ΩΤΙΑ, in
Ps. xl. (xxxix.) v. 6, were a little doubtful; he has seen a
Μ, and as the
preceding word ends with an Σ,
he reads σῶμα which
presents a fine Messianic meaning: “Thou hast desired sacrifice no
longer, but thou hast given me a body: then I said, ‘Lo I come!’”
A singular thing! the death of Jesus in
Paul’s school takes a larger importance than his life. The precepts of
the Lake of Gennesareth little interested this school, and appear to
have been scarcely known to them; what they saw as the first plan was
the sacrifice of the Son of God giving himself up for the expiation of
the sins of the world. Absurd ideas which, restated later on by
Calvinism, caused the Christian theology 109to
deviate widely from the primitive ideal. The synoptical Gospels which
are the really divine part of Christianity, are not the work of Paul’s
school. We shall soon see them coming forth from little quiet family
which still preserved in Judea the true traditions of the life and
person of Jesus.
But what was wonderful in the beginnings of
Christianity was that those who draw the car in the contrary way most
obstinately were those who worked best to make it advance. The Epistles
to the Hebrews, marked definitively in the history of the religious
evolution of humanity, the disappearance of sacrifice, that is to say of
what up till then had constituted the essence of religion. To primitive
man God is an all-powerful Being who must be appeased or bribed.
Sacrifice comes either from fear or interest. To gain God’s favour we
offer him a present capable of touching him, a fine piece of meat of the
fattest kind, a cup of cocoa or wine. Plagues and diseases were
considered as the blows of an offended God; and it was thought that by
substituting another person for the persons threatened, the anger of the
Supreme Being could be averted; perhaps indeed, it was said, God will be
pleased with an animal, if the beast be good, useful, or innocent. God
was thus judged after the pattern of men, and in fact in our day in
certain parts of the East and of Africa, the aborigenes hope to gain a
stranger’s favour by killing at his feet a sheep, whose blood runs over
his boots, and whose flesh will serve him for food; in the same way they
imagine that the Supernatural Being will be sensible of the offering of
an object, especially if by that offering he who presents the sacrifice
deprives himself of something. Up till the great transformation of
prophecy in the eighth century,
B.C., the idea of
sacrifice was not much more elevated among the Israelites than among
other nations. A new era commences with Isaiah, crying in the name of
Jehovah: “Your sacrifices disgust me, what are your 110goats
or bullocks to me?” The day on which he wrote that wonderful page (about
740 B.C.) Isaiah
was the real founder of Christianity. It was decided on that very day,
that of two supernatural functions as to which the respect of the old
tribes was divided, the hereditary sacrifices of the sorcerer, or
inspired book which they believed to be the depository of the divine
secrets, it was the second that should determine the future of religion.
The sorcerer of the Semitic tribes, the nabi became “the
prophet,” or sacred tribune, consecrated to the progress of social
equity, and while the sacrificer (the priest) continued to boast the
efficacy of the slaughters by which he profited, the prophet dared to
proclaim that the true God cares much more for justice and mercy than
for all the bullocks in the world. Ordained, however, by ancient rituals
from which it was not easy to escape, and maintained by the interests of
the priests, the sacrifices remained a law of ancient Israel. About the
time of which we write, and even before the destruction of the third
temple, the importance of these rites grew less. The dispersion of the
Jews led to something secondary being seen in the functions which could
not be accomplished at Jerusalem. Philo proclaimed that worship
consisted especially in pious hymns, which must be sung by the heart as
well as the mouth; he ventured to say that such prayers were worth more
than offerings. The Essenes professed the same doctrine. St. Paul, in
the epistle to the Romans, declares that religion is a worship of pure
reason. The epistle to the Hebrews, in developing this theory that Jesus
is the true High Priest, and that his death was a sacrifice abrogating
all the others, struck a last blow at the bloody immolations. The
Christians, even those of Jewish origin, ceased more and more to believe
in the legal sacrifice, which they only countenanced by sufferance. The
generating idea of the mass, the belief that the sacrifice of Jesus is
renewed by the eucharistic act, appeared already, but in the still
obscure distance.
CHAPTER X.
THE REVOLUTION IN JUDEA
The state of enthusiasm which held
possession of the Christian imagination was soon complicated by the
events which passed in Judea. These events appeared to give reason to
the visions of the most frenzied brains. A fit of fever which cannot be
compared with anything but that which seized France during the
revolution, and Paris in 1871, took hold of the entire Jewish nation.
Those “divine diseases” before which the ancient medical skill declared
itself powerless, appeared to have become the ordinary temperament of
the Jewish people. We should have that, determined in extremes it would
have gone on to the end of humanity. For four years the strange race,
which appears created alike to defy him who blesses it and him who
curses it, was in a convulsion, before which the historian, divided
between wonder and horror, must halt with respect, as before all that is
mysterious.
The causes of this crisis were old, and the
crisis itself was inevitable. The Mosaic law, the work of enthusiastic
Utopians, possessed by a powerful Socialistic idea, the least political
of men, was, like Islam, exclusive of a civil, parallel to the
religious, society. That law which appears to have arrived at a
condition of being re-edited when we read of it in the twelfth century
B.C. would have
even independently of the Assyrian conquest, made the little kingdom of
the descendants of David fly to pieces. Since the preponderance created
by the prophetic element the kingdom of Judah, at enmity with all its
neighbours, moved by a continuous rage against 112Tyre,
a hatred against Edom, Moab and Ammon, could not live. A nation which
devotes itself to religious and social problems is lost as to politics.
The day when Israel became a flock of God, a kingdom of priests, a holy
nation, it was written that it should not be a people like any other.
Men do not accumulate contradictory destinies; they always expiate an
excellence by some humiliation.
The Achemenidian empire put Israel a little
at rest. That grand feudality, tolerant to all provincial diversities,
was analogous to the caliphate of Bagdad, and the Ottoman empire, was
the condition in which the Jews found themselves most pleasantly
situated. The Ptolemaic domination in the third century
B.C., appears
likewise to have been sympathetic enough with them. It was the same with
the Seleucidæ. Antioch had became a centre of active Hellenistic
propaganda; Antiochus Epiphanes believed himself obliged to install
everywhere, as a mark of his power, the image of Jupiter Olimpus. Then
burst forth the first great Jewish revolt against profane civilization.
Israel had borne patiently the disappearance of its political existence
since Nebuchadnezzar; it could not keep any longer within bounds when it
realized a danger for its religious institutions. A race, in general
little military, was seized with a fit of heroism; without a regular
army, without generals, without tactics, it conquered the Seleucidæ,
maintained its revealed right, and created for itself a second period of
autonomy. The Asmonean royalty nevertheless was always pervaded by deep
interior vices; it did not last more than a century. The destiny of the
Jewish people was not to be constituted a separate nationality; this
people dreamed always of something international, its ideal was not the
city, it was the synagogues; it is the free congregation. It is the same
with Islam, which has created an immense empire, but which has destroyed
all nationality among the peoples it has subjected, and has left them no
other fatherland than the mosque and 113the
zaouia. There is often applied to such a social condition the name
of theocracy, and that is correct, if it is intended to say by that that
the profound idea of the Semitic religious empires which have gone forth
from it is the kingdom of God, conceived of as the sole master of the
world and universal suzerain; but theocracy among these peoples is not
synonymous with the domination of priests. The priest, properly
speaking, plays a weak part in the history of Judaism and Islamism. The
power belongs to the representative of God, to him whom God inspires, to
the prophet and the holy man, to him who has received a mission from
Heaven, and who proves his mission by miracle or success. Failing a
prophet, the power rests in the maker of Apocalypses or Apocryphal books
attributed to ancient prophets, or rather to the doctor who interprets
the divine law, to the chief of the synagogue and, later still, to the
head of the family, who keeps the deposit of the law and transmits it to
his children. A civil power, a royalty, has nothing much to do with such
a social organization. This organization is never better carried out
than in the case where the individuals who are the subjects of it are
widely spread, in the condition of foreigners tolerated in a great
empire where no uniformity reigns. It is the nature of Judaism to be
subordinated, since it is incapable of drawing forth from its own bosom
a principle of military power. The same fact is noticeable in the Greeks
of our day; the Greek communities of Trieste, Syrmna and Constantinople
are indeed much more flourishing than the little kingdom of Greece,
because these communities are free from political agitation, in which a
free race put prematurely in possession of liberty finds its certain
ruin. The Roman domination established in Judea in the year 63
B.C., by the arms
of Pompey, appeared at first to realize some of the conditions of Jewish
life. Rome at that time did not as a rule assimilate the countries which
she one 114after another annexed to her vast
empire. She gave them the right of peace and war, and scarcely claimed
anything but arbitration in great political questions. Under the
degenerate remnants of the Asmonean dynasty and under the Herods, the
Jewish nation preserved that semi-independence which sufficed for it
since its religious condition was respected. But the internal crisis of
the people was too strong. Beyond a certain degree of religious
fanaticism man is ungovernable. It must be said also that Rome tended
unceasingly to render her power in the East more effective. The little
vassal kingdoms which she had at first conserved disappeared day by day,
and the provinces returned to the empire pure and simple. After the year
6 after Christ, Judea was governed by procurators subordinated to the
imperial legates of Syria and having beside them the parallel power of
the Herods. The impossibility of such a
régime revealed itself day by day. The Herods were little thought
of in the East as either truly patriotic or religious men. The
administrative customs of the Romans, even in their most reasonable
aspects, were odious to the Jews. In general, the Romans shewed the
greatest condescendence with respect to the fastidious scruples of the
nation, but that was not sufficient; things had come to a point where
nothing more could be done without affecting a canonical question. Those
fixed religions, like Islamism and Judaism, endure no sharing of power.
If they do not rule they call themselves persecuted. If they feel
themselves protected they become exacting, and seek to render life
impossible to all other religions except their own. That is well seen in
Algiers, where the Israelites, knowing themselves to be maintained
against the Mussulmans, have become insupportable to them, and occupy
without ceasing the attention of the authorities by their
recriminations.
Certainly we would not believe, in this
experience of an age which made the Romans and Jews live together, and
which resulted in such a terrible disruption, 115that
the faults were reciprocal. Many procurators were dishonourable men,
others could be rough, harsh, and allow themselves to be led into
impatience against a religion which annoyed them, and whose features
they could not understand. It would have required one to be a perfect
being not to be irritated by that narrow end haughty spirit, an enemy to
Greek and Roman civilization, malevolent towards the rest of the human
race, which superficial observers held to constitute the essence of a
Jew. How could an administrator think otherwise of those always occupied
in accusing him before the emperor, and forming cabals against him even
when he was perfectly right? In that great hatred which for more than
two thousand years existed between the Jewish race and the rest of the
world, who had the first blame? Such a question ought not to be put. In
such a matter all is action and reaction, cause and effect. These
exclusions, these padlocks of the Ghetto, these separate
costumes, are unjust things, but who first wished for them? Those who
believed themselves soiled by contact with the heathen, those who sought
for separation from them, a society apart. Fanaticism has created the
chains, and the chains have redoubled the fanaticism. Hatred begets
hatred, and there is only one means of escaping from this fatal circle:
it is to suppress the cause of the hatred, those injurious separations
which, at first desired and sought for by the sects, became afterwards
their shame. In regard to Judaism modern France has solved the problem.
By casting down all the legal barriers which surrounded the Israelite,
she has removed what was narrow and exclusive in Judaism, I mean to say
its practices and its isolated life, so much so that a Jewish family
brought to Paris ceases almost altogether to lead the Jewish life in the
course of one or two generations.
It would be unjust to reproach the Romans
in the first century, for not having acted in this manner.
116There was a fixed opposition between the
Roman empire and orthodox Judaism. It was Jews who were often the most
insolent, tormenting and aggressive. The idea of a common law which the
Romans brought in germ with them was in antipathy to the strict
observers of the Thora. These had moral needs in total
contradiction to a purely human society, without any mixture of
theocracy, as Roman society was. Rome founded the State, Judaism founded
the church. Rome created profane and rational government; the Jews
inaugurated the kingdom of God. Between this strict but fertile
theocracy and the most absolute proclamation of the laic state which had
ever existed, a struggle was inevitable. The Jews had their faith
founded upon quite other bases than the Roman law, and at bottom quite
irreconcilable with that law. Before having been cruelly harassed they
could not content themselves, with a simple tolerance, those who
believed that they had the words of eternity, the secret of the
constitution of a righteous city. They were like the Mussulmans of
Algeria. Our society, although infinitely superior, inspires in these
only repugnance; their revealed law, at once civil and religious, fills
them with pride and renders them incapable of giving themselves to a
philosophical legislation, founded upon the simple idea of the relations
of men to each other. Add to that a profound ignorance which hinders
fanatic sects from taking account of the forces of the civilized world,
and blinds them to the issue of the war in which they engage with
light-heartedness.
One circumstance contributed much to
maintain Judea in a condition of permanent hostility against the empire:
it was that the Jews took no part in military service. Everywhere else
the legions were formed from the people of the country, and it was thus
with armies numerically feeble, the Romans held immense regions. The
soldiers of the Romans and the inhabitants of the country were
compatriots. It was not so in 117Judea. The
legions which occupied the country were recruited for the most part at
Cesarea and Sebaste, towns opposed to Judaism. Hence the impossibility
of any cordial relation between the army and the people. The Roman force
was in Jerusalem confined to its trenches as if in a condition of
permanent siege.
It was certain, moreover, that the
sentiments of the different fractions of the Jewish world should be the
same in regard to the Romans. If we except some worldlings like Tiberias
Alexander, become indifferent to their old faith and regarded by their
co-religionists as renegades, everyone bore ill-will to the foreign
rulers, but still were far from inciting to rebellion. We can
distinguish four or five parties in Jerusalem:
1st. The Sadducean and Herodian party, the
remainder of the house of Herod and his clientele, the great families of
Hanan and of Boëthus in possession of the priesthood. A society of
Epicureans and voluptuous unbelievers, hated by the people because of
its pride, for its little devotion and for its riches; this party,
essentially conservative, found a guarantee for its privileges in the
Roman occupation, and, without loving the Romans, were strongly opposed
to all revolution.
2nd. The party of Pharisean middle-class,
an honest party composed of people sensible, settled, quiet, steady,
loving their religion, observing it punctiliously, devoted, but without
imagination; well educated, knowing the foreign world, and clearly
seeing that a revolt could not end in anything but the destruction of
the nation and the temple; Josephus is the type of that class of persons
whose fate was that which appears always reserved to moderate parties in
times of revolution, powerlessness, versatility, and the supreme
disagreeableness of passing for traitors in the eyes of most people.
3rd. The enthusiasts of every kind,
zealots, robbers, assassins, a strange mass of fanatical beggars reduced
to the last wretchedness by the injustice and the violence
118of the Sadducees, who looked upon themselves
as the sole inheritors of the promises of Israel, of that poor “beloved”
of God, nourishing themselves upon prophetic books such as those of
Enoch, violent Apocalypses, believing the kingdom of God about to be
revealed, arrived at last at the most intense degree of enthusiasm of
which history has kept records.
4th. Brigands, people without vagrants,
adventurers, dangerous scoundrels, the result of the complete social
disorganization of the country; these people for the most part of
Idmuean or Nabatean were little concerned about the question of
religion; but they were creators of disorder, and they had a quite
natural alliance with the enthusiastic party.
5th. Pious dreamers, Essenes, Christians,
Ebionim, waiting peacefully for the kingdom of God, devoted
persons grouped around the temple praying and weeping. The disciples of
Jesus were of that number; they were still so small a body in the eyes
of the public that Josephus does not reckon them among the elements of
the struggle. We see all at once that in the day of danger these holy
people knew only how to escape.
The mind of Jesus, full of a divine
efficacy for drawing man away from the world, and consoling him, could
not inspire the strict patriotism which created assassins and heroes.
The arbiters of the situation would
naturally be the enthusiasts. The democratic and revolutionary side of
Judaism showed itself in them in a terrible manner. They were persuaded,
with Judas the Gaulonite, that all power came from the evil one, that
royalty is a work of Satan (a theory which some sovereigns, such as
Caligula and Nero, true demons incarnate, only justified too much) and
they suffered themselves to be cut in pieces sooner than give to another
than God the name of master; imitators of Matthias, the first of the
zealots who, seeing a Jew sacrificing to idols, killed him; they avenged
God by blows of the dagger. The mere fact of 119nearing
an “uncircumcised” speak of God or of the law was enough to make them
seek to surprise him alone; then they gave him the choice of
circumcision or death. Executioners of those mysterious sentences which
were left to “the hand of heaven,” and believing themselves charged with
rendering effectual that fearful penalty of excommunication, which is
equivalent to placing beyond the law and giving up to death, they formed
an army of terrorists in full revolutionary ebullition. It could be
foreseen that these troubled consciences, incapable of distinguishing
their gross appetite from passions which their frenzy represented to
them as holy, went to the most extreme excess and stopped before no
degree of folly.
Minds were under the influence of a
permanent hallucination; some terrifying reports came from all
directions. People only dreamed of omens; the apocalyptic colour of the
Jewish imagination tinged everything with an aureole of blood. Comets,
swords in heaven, battles in the clouds, a spontaneous light shining at
night at the foundation of the temple, victims giving birth to unnatural
productions at the moment of sacrifice, were what were spoken of in
terror. One day, it was the enormous brazen gates of the temple which
opened of themselves and refused to allow themselves to be shut. At the
Passover of 65, about three hours after midnight the temple was for
half-an-hour perfectly light as in the full day; it was believed that it
was consuming inside. Another time, on the day of Pentecost, the priests
heard the sound of many people making preparations in the interior of
the sanctuary as if for removal, and saying to one another, “Let us go
out from here! let us go out from here!” All this came only too late;
but the deep trouble of souls was the best sign that something
extraordinary was preparing.
It was the Messianic prophecies especially
which excited in the people an unconquerable need of agitation. People
would not resign themselves to a mediocre destiny 120when
they claimed the kingdom of the future. The Messianic theories were
summed up for the crowd in an oracle which was said to be drawn from
Scripture, and according to which “there was to go forth at this time a
prince who should be master of the universe.” It is useless to reason
against obstinate hope; evidence has no power to fight the chimera which
a people has embraced with all the power of its heart.
Gersius Florus, of Clazomenes, had
succeeded Albinus as procurator of Judea about the end of 64, or the
beginning of 65. He was, as it would appear, a very bad man; he owed the
position he occupied to the influence of his wife, Cleopatra, who was
the friend of Poppea. The hatred between him and the Jews now grew to
the last degree of exasperation. The Jews had become unbearable by their
susceptibility, their habit of complaining about trifles, and the little
respect they showed to the civil and military authorities; but it would
appear that, on his side, he took a pleasure in defying them and making
a parade of it. On the 16th and 17th May, of the year 66, a collision
took place between his troops and the Jerusalemites on some absurd
grounds. Florus retired to Cesarea, only leaving a cohort in the
Antonian tower. There was here a very blameable act. An armed power owes
it to a city it occupies, when a popular revolt shows itself, not to
abandon it to its own passions until it has exhausted all its means of
resistance. If Florus had remained in the city, it is not probable that
the Jerusalemites would have forced it, and all the misfortunes which
followed would have been avoided. Florus once gone, it was written that
the Roman army should not re-enter Jerusalem except through fire and
death.
The retreat of Florus was, nevertheless,
far from creating an open rupture between the city and the Roman
authority. Agrippa II. and Berenice were at this moment in Jerusalem.
Agrippa made some conscientious 121efforts to
calm the peoples’ minds; all moderate persons joined with him, they used
even the popularity of Berenice, in whom the imagination of the people
believed they saw living again her great-grandmother Mariamne, the
Asmonean. While Agrippa harangued the crowd in the Xystos the
princess showed herself upon the terrace of the palace of the Asmonean,
which overlooked the Xystos. All was useless. Sensible men represented
that war would be the certain ruin of the nation; they were treated as
people of little faith. Agrippa, discouraged or frightened, quitted the
city and retired to his estates in Batanea. One band of the most ardent
kind departed at once and occupied by surprise the fortress of Massada,
situated on the shores of the Dead Sea, two days’ journey from
Jerusalem, and nearly impregnable.
There was here an act of definite
hostility. In Jerusalem the fight became daily more vigorous between the
party of peace and that of war. The first of those two parties was
composed of the rich, who had everything to lose in a revolution. The
second, besides the sincere enthusiasts, comprehended that mass of the
populace to whom a state of national crisis, fully putting to an end the
ordinary conditions of life, derives most benefit. The moderate people
depended upon the little Roman garrison lodged in the Antonian town. The
high priest was an obscure man, Matthias, son of Theophilus. Since the
deprivation of Hanan the Young, who caused the death of St. James, it
seems there was a system of no longer taking the high priest from the
powerful sacerdotal families, the Hanans, the Cantheras, and the
Boëthuses. But the true head of the sacerdotal party was the old high
priest Ananias, son of Nabedeus, a rich and energetic man, little
popular because of the pitiless vigour with which he enforced his
rights, hated especially for the impertinence and rapacity of his
servants. By a peculiarity which is not rare in times of revolution, the
chief of the party of action was at this 122time
Eleazar, son of this some Ananias; he held the important position of
Captain of the Temple. His religious enthusiasm appears to have been
sincere. Pushing to the extreme the principle that the sacrifices could
not be offered but by Jews and for Jews, he caused to be suppressed the
prayers that were offered for the Emperor and the prosperity of Rome.
All the younger portion of the people were full of ardour. It is one of
the characteristics of the fanaticism which the Semetic religions
inspire that it shows itself with the utmost vivacity among the young.
The members of the ancient sacerdotal families, the Pharisees, the
reasonable and settled men, saw the danger. They put forward some
authorized doctors, they had consultations of the rabbis, memorials from
canonical laws, although quite in vain; for it was plain that the town
clergy made common cause with the enthusiasts and Eleazar. The higher
clergy and the aristocracy, despairing of gaining anything over the
popular crowd, delivered up to the most superficial suggestions, sent to
beg Florus and Agrippa to come and quickly put down the revolt, making
them note that soon it would not be time to do so. Florus, according to
Josephus, wished a war of extermination, which should cause the entire
Jewish race to disappear from the world, and he evaded a reply. Agrippa
sent to the party of order a body of three thousand Arab horsemen. The
party of order with these horsemen occupied the upper city (the present
Armenian and Jewish quarters). The party of action occupied the lower
city and the temple (the present Mussulman, Mogharibi and Haram
quarters). A real war was waged between the two quarters. On the 14th of
August the rebels, commanded by Eleazar, Menahem, son of that Judas the
Gaulonite, who first, sixty years previously, had raised the Jews by
preaching to them that the true adorer of God ought not to recognise any
man as his superior, stormed the higher town and burned the house of
Ananias, and the palaces of 123Agrippa and
Berenice. The horsemen of Agrippa, Ananias his brother, and all the
notables who could join them, took refuge in highest parts of the palace
of the Asmoneans.
The morning after this success the
insurgents attacked the Antonian tower; they took it in two days, and
set it on fire. They beseiged then the upper palace and took it (6th
September). Agrippa’s horsemen were allowed to go out. As to the Romans,
they shut themselves up in the three towers named after Hippicus,
Phasaël, and Mariamne. Ananias and his brother were killed. According to
the rule in popular movements discord soon broke out among the leaders
of the popular party. Menahem made himself intolerable by his pride as a
democratic parvenu. Eleazar, son of Ananias, irritated beyond
doubt by the murder of his father, pursued him and killed him. The
remnant of Menahem’s party retired to Massada, which was to be until the
end of the war the bulwark of the most enthusiastic party of the
zealots.
The Romans defended themselves a long time
in the towers: reduced to extremity, they only asked that their lives
should be spared. This was promised them, but when they had surrendered
their arms, Eleazar put them all to death, with the exception of
Metilius,
primipilus of the cohort, who promised that he would be
circumcised. Thus Jerusalem was lost by the Romans about the end of
September A.D. 66, a little more
than a hundred years after its capture by Pompey. The Roman garrison of
the castle of Machero, fearing to be seen retreating, surrendered. The
castle of Kypros, which overlooks Jericho, fell also into the hands of
the insurgents. It is probable that Herodium was occupied by the rebels
about the same time. The weakness which the Romans shewed in all these
mutinies is something singular, and gives a certain likelihood to the
opinion of Josephus, according to which the plan of Floras would have
been to push everything to the extremes. It is true that the
124first revolutionary outbursts have something
fascinating which makes it very difficult to stop them and causes wise
minds to resolve to allow them to wear themselves out by their own
excesses.
In five months the insurrection had
succeeded in establishing itself in a formidable manner. Not only was it
mistress of the city of Jerusalem, but by the desert of Judea it
obtained communication with the region of the Dead Sea, all of whose
fortresses it held; from thence it came in contact with the Arabs, the
Nabateans, more or less the enemies of Rome. Judea Ideamea, Perea, and
Galilee were with rebels. At Rome during this time a hateful sovereign
had handed over the functions of the empire to the most ignoble and
incapable. If the Jews had been able to group around them all the
malcontents of the East there would have been an end of Roman rule in
these quarters. Unhappily for them, the effect was quite the opposite;
the revolt inspired in the populations of Syria a redoubled fidelity to
the empire. The hatred which they had inspired in their neighbours
sufficed during the kind of torpor of the Roman power to excite against
them some enemies not less dangerous than the legions.
CHAPTER XI.
MASSACRES IN SYRIA AND EGYPT.
A sort of general
mot d’ordre
in fact appeared at this time to have run through the East, inciting
everywhere to great massacres of the Jews. The incompatibility of the
Jewish life with the Greco-Roman life became more and more apparent.
Each of the two races wishing to exterminate the other, it was evident
that there would be no mercy between them. To conceive of these
struggles it is necessary to understand to what extent Judaism had
penetrated all the Oriental portion of the Roman empire. “They have
spread over all the cities,” says Strabo, “and it is not easy to mention
a place in the world which has not received this people, or rather which
has not been occupied by them. Egypt and Cyrenia have adopted their
manners, observing scrupulously their precepts and deriving great profit
from the adoption which they have made of their national laws. In Egypt
they are admitted to dwell legally, and a great part of the city of
Alexandria is assigned to them; they have their Ethnarc, who administers
their affairs, exercises justice and watches over the execution of
contracts and wills, as if he were the president of an independent
state”. This contact of two elements as opposed to one another as water
and fire, could not fail to produce the most terrible outbursts. It is
not necessary to suspect the Roman government of being implicated in
this. The same massacres had taken place among the Parthians, whose
situation and interest were quite otherwise than those of the West. It
is one of the glories of Rome to have founded its empire upon peace; on
126the extinction of local wars, and by never
having practised that detestable means of government, become one of the
political secrets of the Turkish empire, which consists in exciting
against each other the different populations of mixed countries; as to a
massacre for religious motives, no idea was farther from the Roman mind.
A stranger to all theology, the Roman did not understand the sect, and
did not grant that persons ought to be divided for such a small matter
as a speculative proposition. The antipathy against the Jews was
moreover in the ancient world a sentiment so general that it had no need
to be forced then. That antipathy marks one of the deep lines of
separation which have over been found in the human race. It concerns
something more than race, it is the hatred of the different functions of
humanity, the hatred on the part of the man of peace content with his
internal joys against the man of war, the man of the shop and counter
against the peasant and the noble. It is probably not without reason
that this poor Israel has passed its life as a people in being
massacred. Since all nations and all ages have persecuted them, there
must have been some motive. The Jew up to our time insinuates himself
everywhere, claiming common rights but in reality the Jew was not within
the common law. He kept his own special code; he wished to have
guarantees from all, and once above the market, made his exceptions and
his laws for himself. He wished the advantages of the nations without
being a nation, without participating in the expenditure of nations. No
people has ever been able to tolerate that. The nations are military
creations founded and maintained by the sword. They are the work of
peasants and soldiers; the Jews have not contributed in any degree to
their establishment. That is the great misunderstanding involved in the
Israelite pretensions. The stranger is tolerated because he is useful in
a country, but on condition that the country does not allow itself to be
taken 127possession of by him. It is unjust to
claim the rights of a member of a family in a house which one has not
built, as those birds do who install themselves in a nest which is not
their own, or like those crustaceans who take the shell of another
species.
The Jew has rendered to the world so many
good and so many bad services, that people can never be just to him. We
owe him too much, and at the same time we see too well his defects not
to be impatient at the sight of him. That eternal Jeremiah, “that man of
sorrows,” is always complaining, presenting his back to blows with a
patience which annoys us. This creature, foreign to all our instincts of
religion and honour, boldness, glory and refinement of art; this person
so little a soldier, so little chivalrous, who loves neither Greece nor
Rome nor Germany, and to whom nevertheless we owe our religion, so much
so that the Jew has a right to say to the Christian, “Thou art a Jew
with a little alloy,” this being has been set as the object of
contradiction and antipathy; a fertile antipathy which has been one of
the conditions of the progress of humanity!
In the first century of our era it appears
that the world had a dim consciousness of what had passed, it saw its
master in this strange, awkward, susceptible, timid stranger without any
exterior nobility; but honest, moral, industrious; just in his business,
endowed with modest virtues; not military, but a good trader a cheerful
and steady worker. This Jewish family illumined by hope, this
synagogue—the life commonly was full of charm—created envy. Too much
humility, such a calm acceptance of persecution and insult and outrage;
such a resigned manner of consoling himself for not being of the great
world because he has a compensation in his family and his church, a
gentle gaiety like that which in our days distinguishes the rayah
in the east and makes him find his good fortune in his inferiority
itself. In that little world where he has 128as
much happiness as outside he suffers persecution and ignominy,—all this
inspires with aristocratic antiquity his fits of deep bad temper, which
sometimes lead him to the commission of odious brutalities.
The storm commenced to growl at Cesarea
nearly at the same moment as when the revolution had succeeded in making
itself mistress of Jerusalem. Cesarea was the city where the situation
with the Jews and non-Jews (those were comprised under the general name
of Syrians) presented the greatest difficulties. The Jews composed in
the mixed villages of Syria the rich portion of the population; but this
wealth, as we have said, came partly through injustice, and from
exemption from military service. The Greeks and the Syrians, from among
whom the legions were recruited, were hurt by seeing themselves
oppressed by people exempt from the dues of the state, and who took
advantage of the tolerance which they had for them. There were perpetual
riots, and endless claims presented to the Roman magistrates. Orientals
usually make religion a pretext for rascalities; Use less religious of
men become singularly so when it becomes a question of annoying one’s
neighbour; in our days the Turkish functionaries are tormented by
grievances of this kind. From about the year 60 the battle was without
truce between the two halves of the population of Cesarea. Nero solved
the questions pending against the Jews; hatred had only envenomed them;
some miserable follies, or perhaps inadvertances on the part of the
Syrians became crimes and injuries on the side of the Jews. The young
people threatened and struck each other, grave men complained to the
Roman authority, who usually caused the bastinado to be administered to
both parties. Gessius Floras used more humanity. He began by making them
pay on both sides, then mocked those who claimed. A synagogue, which had
a partition wall, a pitcher and some slain poultry which were found at
the door of the synagogue, and which the Jews wished to pass off as the
129remains of a heathen sacrifice, were the
great matters at Cesarea, at the moment Florus re-entered it, furious at
the insult which had been given him by the people of Jerusalem. When it
was known some months after that these people had succeeded in driving
the Romans completely from their walls, there was much excitement. There
was open war between the Jews and the Romans; the Syrians concluded that
they could massacre the Jews with impunity. In one hour there were
20,000 throats cut. There did not remain a single Jew in Cesarea; in
fact Florus ordered to the galleys all those who had escaped by flight.
This crime provoked frightful reprisals. The Jews formed themselves into
bands and betook themselves on their side to massacre the Syrians in the
cities of Philadelphia and Hesbon, Gerasa, Pela and Scythopolis; they
ravaged the Decapolis and Gaulonitis; set fire to Sebaste and Askelon,
ruined Anthedon and Gaza. They burned the villages, and killed anyone
who was not a Jew. The Syrians on their side killed all the Jews they
met. Southern Syria was a field of carnage; every town was divided into
two armies, who waged a merciless war. The nights were passed in terror.
There were some atrocious episodes. At Scythopolis the Jews fought with
the heathen inhabitants against their co-religionist invaders, which did
not hinder them from being massacred by the Scythopolitans. The
butcheries of Jews recurred with increased violence at Askelon, Acre,
Tyre, Hippos, and Gadara. They imprisoned those whom they did not kill.
The scenes of fury which occurred at Jerusalem made people see in every
Jew a sort of dangerous mad-man whose acts of fury it is necessary to
prevent. The epidemic of massacres extended as far as Egypt. The hatred
of the Jews and the Greeks was at its height. Alexandria was half a
Jewish town, the Jews formed there a true autonomous republic. Egypt had
only some months previously as prefect a Jew, Tiberius Alexander, but a
Jewish apostate little disposed to be 130indulgent
to the fanaticism of his co-religionists. Sedition broke out in
connection with an assembly at the amphitheatre. The first insults came,
it would appear, from the Greeks. The Jews replied to that in a cruel
manner. Arming themselves with torches they threatened to burn within
the amphitheatre the Greeks to the last man. Tiberius Alexander tried in
vain to calm them. It was necessary to send for the legions, the Jews
resisted; the carnage was frightful. The Jewish quarter of Alexandria
called the Delta was literally crowded with corpses; the dead were
computed as amounting to 50,000.
These horrors lasted for a month. In the
north, they were stopped at Tyre; for beyond that the Jews were not
considerable enough to give umbrage to the indigenous populations. The
cause of the evil indeed was more social than religious. In every city
where Judaism came to dominate, life became impossible for pagans. It is
understood that the success obtained by the Jewish revolution during the
summer of 66, had caused a moment of fear to all the mixed towns which
bordered on Palestine and Galilee. We have insisted often on this
singular character which makes the simple Jewish people include in their
own bosom the extremes, and if we may say so, the fight between good and
evil. Nothing in fact in wickedness equals Jewish wickedness; and yet we
have drawn from her bosom the ideal of goodness, sacrifice, and love.
The best of men have been Jews; the most malicious of men have also been
Jews. A strange race—truly marked by the seal of God, who has produced
in a parallel manner and like two buds on the same branch the nascent
church and the fierce fanaticism of the Jerusalem revolutionaries, Jesus
and John of Gischala, the apostles and the assassin zealots, the Gospel
and the Talmud; ought one to be astonished if this mysterious birth was
accompanied by mysteries, delirium, and a fever such as never had been
seen before?
131
The Christians were no doubt implicated in
more than one direction in the massacres of September, 66. It is
nevertheless probable that the gentleness of these worthy sectaries and
their inoffensive character often preserved them. The larger number of
the Christians of the Syrian towns were what were called “Judaizers,”
that is to say, people of converted countries, not Jews by race. They
were looked on with hatred; but people did not dare to kill them; they
were considered a species of mongrels—strangers from their own country.
As to them, while passing through that terrible month, they had their
eyes on heaven, believing that they saw in every episode of the
frightful storm the signs of the time fixed for the catastrophe: “Take
the comparison of the fig-tree; when its branches become tender and its
leaves bud, ye conclude that summer is nigh: likewise, when ye see those
things come to pass, know that He is near, that He is even at the door?”
The Roman authority was prepared meanwhile
to re-enter by force the city it had so imprudently abandoned. The
imperial legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, marched from Antioch towards
the south with a considerable army. Agrippa joined him as guide to the
expedition; the towns furnished him with auxiliary troops, in whom an
inveterate hatred of the Jews supplied what was wanting in the matter of
military education. Cestius reduced Galilee and the coast without much
difficulty; and on the 24th of October he arrived at Gabaon, ten miles
from Jerusalem. With astonishing boldness, the insurgents went out to
attack him in that position, and caused him to suffer a check. Such a
fact would be inconceivable if the Jerusalem army should be represented
as a mass of devotees; fanatical beggars and brigands. It possessed
certain elements more solid and really military, the two princes of the
royal family of Adiabenes, Monobazus and Cenedeus; one Silas from
Babylon, a lieutenant of Agrippa II., who was among the national party;
Niger 132of Perea, a trained soldier; Simon, son
of Gioras, who began thenceforth his career of violence and heroism.
Agrippa believed the occasion favourable for making terms. Two of his
emissaries came to offer the Jerusalemites a full pardon if they would
submit. A large portion of the population wished that this should be
agreed to; but the enthusiastics killed the envoys. Some people who
showed anger at such a shameful act were maltreated. This division gave
Cestius a moment’s advantage. He left Gabaon and pitched his camp in the
district named Sapha or Scopus, an important position
situated to the north of Jerusalem, scarcely an hour’s distance from it,
and from which the city and the temple could be seen. He remained there
three days, waiting for the result of having some spies in the place. On
the fourth day (30th October), he marshalled his army and marched
forward. The party of resistance abandoned all the new town, and retired
into the inner town (high and low) and into the temple. Cestius entered
without opposition, and occupied the new town, the quarter of Bezetha,
the wood market, to which he set fire, and approached the high town,
disposing his lines in front of the palace of the Asmoneans.
Josephus declares that if Cestius Gallus
had been willing to make the assault at this moment, the war would have
been ended. The Jewish historian explains the inaction of the Roman
general by intrigues in which the principal material was the money of
Florus. It appears that they had seen on the wall some members of the
aristocratic party, led by one of the Hanans, who called to Cestius,
offering to open the gates to him. No doubt the legate feared some
ambush. For five days he vainly tried to break through the wall. On the
sixth day (5th November) he at length attacked the enceinte of the
temple from the north. The fight was fearful under the porticoes;
discouragement took hold of the rebels; the party of peace were making
ready to admit Cestius, when he suddenly caused the retreat to be
133sounded. If Josephus’ story is true, the
conduct of Cestius is inexplicable. Perhaps Josephus, to support his
argument, exaggerates the advantages Cestius had at first over the Jews,
and lessens the real force of the resistance. What is certain is that Cestius regained his camp at Scopus and left the next day for Gabaon,
harassed by the Jews. Two days after (8th November) he raised his camp,
but was pursued as far as the descent from Bethoron, leaving all his
baggage, and retreated not without difficulty to Antipatris.
The incapacity which Cestius showed in
this campaign is truly surprising. The bad government of Nero must have
indeed debased all the services of the state for such events to have
been possible. Cestius only survived his defeat a short time; many
attributed his death to chagrin. It is not known what became of Florus.
CHAPTER XII.
VESPASIAN IN GALILEE—THE TERROR AT JERUSALEM—FLIGHT
OF THE CHRISTIANS.
While the Roman empire in the East was
suffering this most terrible insult, Nero, passing from crime to crime,
from one madness to another, was completely taken up by his chimeras as
a pretentious artist. Every-thing which could be called taste, tact or
politeness, bad disappeared around hint with Petronius. A colossal
self-love gave him an ardent thirst to absorb the glory of the whole
world; his enmity was fierce against those who occupied public
attention; for a man to succeed in anything was a state crime. It is
said that he wished to stop the sale of Lucan’s works. He aspired to
unheard-of fame; he turned in his brain some magnificent projects, such
as piercing the isthmus of Corinth, a canal from Baia to Ostia, and the
discovery of the sources of the Nile. A voyage to Greece had been his
dream for a long time, not for any desire he had to see the
chefs-d’-œuvre
of an incomparable art, but through the grotesque ambition he had to
present himself in the courses founded in the different towns, and take
the prize. These courses were literally innumerable: the founding of
such games had been one of the forms of Greek liberality. Every citizen
at all rich considered these, as in the foundation of our academical
prizes, a sure method of transmitting his name to the future. The noble
exercises which contributed so powerfully to the strength and beauty of
the ancient race, and was the school of Greek art, had
135become like the tourneys of a later age, profitable to people
who made it a trade, who made it their profession to run in the
agones, and to gain crowns there. Instead of good and worthy
citizens, there were seen there none except hateful and useless rascals,
or people who created a lucrative specialty out of it. These prizes,
which the victors showed as a species of decoration, kept the vain Cæsar
from sleep. He saw himself already entering Rome in triumph, with the
extremely rare title of periodonice or victor in the complete
cycle of the solemn games.
His mania as a singer reached its height
of folly. One of the reasons of Thrasea’s death was that he never
sacrificed to the “heavenly voice” of the emperor. Before the King of
the Parthians, his guest, he wished only to show his talent in the
chariot races. There were some lyrical dramas put on the stage where he
had the principal part, and where the gods and goddesses, the heroes and
heroines were masqued and draped like him, or like the woman he loved.
He thus played Œdipus, Thyeste, Hercules, Alcmeon, Orestes, and Canace;
he was seen on the stage chained (with chains of gold) led like one
blind, imitating a madman, feigning the appearance of a woman who is
being confined. One of his last projects was to appear in the theatre,
naked, as Hercules, crushing a lion in his arms, or killing it with a
blow of his club. The lion was, it was said, already chosen and prepared
when the emperor died. To quit one’s place while he sang was so great a
crime that the most ridiculous precautions were taken to do so unseen.
In the competitions he disparaged his rivals, and sought to
discountenance them; so much so that the unfortunates sang false in
order to escape the danger of being compared to him. The judges
encouraged him, and praised his bashfulness. If this grotesque spectacle
made shame mount to anyone’s forehead or gloom to his face he said that
the impartiality of some people was suspected 136by
him. Besides, he obeyed the rules as to the reward, and trembled before
the agonothetes and the mastigophores, and prayed that they should not
chastise him when he had deceived himself. If he had committed some
blunder which would have excluded him he would grow pale; it was
necessary to say to him quite low that this had not been remarked in the
midst of the applauses and enthusiasm of the people. They overthrew the
statues of the former laureates not to excite him to a mad jealousy. In
the races they rode to let him come in first, even when he fell from his
chariot. Sometimes, however, he allowed himself to be beaten, so that it
might be believed that he played a fair game. In Italy, as we have said
already, he was humiliated by having to owe his success only to a bland
of claquers,
knowingly organised and dearly paid, who followed him everywhere. The
Romans became insupportable to him; he treated them as rustics, and said
that an artist who respected himself could only be so among the Greeks.
The much desired departure took place in
November 66. Nero had been some days in Achaia when the news of the
defeat of Cestius was brought to him. He felt that this war required a
leader of experience and courage; but he wished above all some one whom
he did not fear. These conditions seemed to meet in Titus Flavius
Vespasianus, a solid military man, aged sixty, who had always had much
good fortune and whose obscure birth had only inspired him with great
designs. Vespasian was at this time in disgrace with Nero, because he
did not show sufficient admiration for his fine voice, when messengers
came to announce to him that he was to have the command of the
expedition to Palestine, he believed they had come with his death
warrant. His son Titus soon joined him. About the same time Mucianus
succeeded Cestius in the office of imperial legate of Syria. The three
men who, in two years, will 137be the masters of
the empire’s fate were thus found gathered together in the East.
The complete victory which the rebels had
gained over a Roman army, commanded by an imperial legate, raised their
audacity to the highest point. The most intelligent and educated people
in Jerusalem were sad; they saw with clearness that the advantage in the
end could only be with the Romans; the ruin of the temple and nation
appeared to them inevitable; and emigration began. All the Herodians,
all the people attached to Agrippa’s service, retired to the Romans. A
great number of Pharisees, on the other hand, entirely pre-occupied by
the observance of the law and the peaceful future they predicted for
Israel, were of opinion that they ought to submit to the Romans, as they
had submitted to the kings of Persia and the Ptolemies. They cared
little for national independence: Rabbi Johanan ben Zaka, the most
celebrated Pharisee of the time, lived quite apart from politics. Many
doctors retired probably from that time to Jamnia, and there founded
those Talmudic schools which soon obtained a great celebrity.
The massacres, moreover, began again and
extended to some parts of Syria which up till now had been safe from the
bloody epidemic. At Damas all the Jews were killed. The greater number
of the women in Damas professed the Jewish religion, and there would
certainly be some Christians among the number; precautions were taken
that the massacre should be a surprise and quite unknown to them.
The party of resistance showed a
wonderful activity. Even the slow were carried away. A council was held
in the temple to form a national government, composed of the elite of
the nation. The moderate group at this period were far from having
abdicated. Whether they hoped to direct the movement, or that they had
some secret hope against all the suggestions of reason by which one is
lulled asleep easily in hours of 138crisis, it
was left to them to conduct nearly everything. Some very considerable
personages, many members of the Sadducean or sacerdotal families, the
principal of the Pharisees, that is to say, the higher middle class,
having at its head the wise and honest Simeon, Ben Gamaliel (son of the
Gamaliel of the Acts, and the great-grandson of Hillel) adhered to the
revolution. They acted constitutionally; they recognised the sovereignty
of the Sanhedrim. The town and the temple remained in the hands of the
established authorities, Hanan (son of the Hanan [Annas] who condemned
Jesus) the oldest of the high priests, Joshua, Ben Gamala, Simeon, Ben
Gamaliel, Joseph, Ben Gorion. Joseph, Ben Gorion and Hanan were named
commissiaries of Jerusalem. Eleazar, son of Simeon a demagogue without
conviction, whose personal ambition was rendered dangerous by the
treasures he possessed, was kept out designedly. At the same time
commissiaries were chosen for the provinces; all were moderate with the
exception of one only, Eleazar, son of Ananias, who was sent to Idumea.
Josephus, who has since created for himself such a brilliant renown as a
historian, was prefect of Galilee. There were in this selection many
grave men who were willing, to a large extent, to try to maintain order,
with the hopes of ruling the anarchical elements which threatened to
destroy everything.
The ardour at Jerusalem was extreme. The
town was like a camp, a manufactory of arms; on all sides were heard the
cries of the young people exercising. The Jews in places remote from the
East, especially in the Parthian kingdom, hastened thither, persuaded
that the Roman Empire had had its day. They felt that Nero was
approaching his end, and were convinced that the empire would disappear
with him. This last representative of the title of Cæsar, lowering
himself in shame and disgrace, appeared to be a
pius omen. By placing
themselves at this point of view 139they would
consider the insurrection much less mad than it seems to be to us—to us
who know that the empire had still within it the force necessary for
many future
rennaissances. They could really believe that the work of
Augustus was broken up; they imagined any moment to see the Parthians
rush into the Roman territories; and this would indeed have happened if
through different causes the Arsacide policy had not been very weak at
the time. One of the finest images of Enoch is that where the prophet
sees the sword given to the sheep, and the sheep thus armed pursuing in
their turn the savage beasts, whom they cause to flee before them. Such
were the feelings of the Jews. Their want of military education did not
allow them to understand how deceptive was their success over Florus and
Cestius. Coins were struck copied from the type of those of the
Macabees, bearing the effigies of the temple or some Jewish emblem, with
the legends in archaic Hebrew characters. Dated by the years “of
deliverance” or “of the freedom of Sion” these pieces were at first
anonymous or sent forth in the name of Jerusalem; later on, they bore
the names of the party leaders who exercised supreme authority by the
will of some portion probably, indeed, in the first months of the
revolt, Eleazar, son of Simon, who was in possession of an enormous
quantity of silver, had dared to coin money while giving himself the
title of “high priest.” The monetary issues lasted, in any case, for a
considerable time; they were called “the money of Jerusalem” or “the
money of danger.”
Hanan became more and more the chief of
the moderate party. He hoped still to lead the mass of the people to
peace; he sought under hand to stay the manufacture of arms, to paralyse
resistance by giving himself the appearance of organising it. This is
the most formidable game in a time of revolution: Hanan was called a
traitor by the revolutionaries. He had in the eyes of the enthusiasts
the fault of seeing clearly; 140in the eyes of
the historian, he cannot be absolved from having taken the falsest of
positions, that which consists in making war without believing in it,
only because he was impelled by ignorant fanatics. The commotion in the
provinces was frightful. The complete Arab regions to the East and South
of the Dead Sea threw into Judea masses of bandits, living by pillage
and massacres. Order in such circumstances was impossible, for to
establish order, it is necessary to expel the two elements which make up
a revolution’s strength—fanaticism and brigandage. Terrible positions
those which give no alternative but that between appeal to the foreigner
and anarchy! In Acrabatena, a young and brave partisan Simon, son of
Gioras, pillaged and tortured all the rich people. In Galilee, Josephus
tried in vain to maintain some discipline: a certain John of Gischala, a
knavish and audacious agitator combining an implacable personality with
an ardent enthusiasm, succeeded in carrying all before him. Josephus was
reduced, according to the eternal custom of the East, to enrol the
brigands and pay them regular wages as the ransom of the country.
Vespasian prepared himself for the
difficult campaign which had been entrusted to him. His plan was to
attack the insurrection from the north, to crush it first in Galilee,
then in Judea, to throw himself in some sort upon Jerusalem; and when he
should have moved everything towards this central point, where fatigue,
famine and factions, could not fail to produce fearful scenes; to wait,
or if that were not enough, to strike a heavy blow. He went first to
Antioch where Agrippa came to join him with all his forces. Antioch had
not till now had its massacre of Jews, doubtless because it had in its
midst a large number of Greeks who had embraced the Jewish religion
(most frequently under the Christian form) which moderated their hatred.
Even at this moment the storm broke; the absurd accusation of having
fired the city led to butcheries, 141followed by
a very severe persecution, in which doubtless many disciples of Jesus
suffered, being confounded with the adherents of a religion which was
only the half of theirs.
The expedition set off in March, 67,
and. following the ordinary route along the sea-shore, established its
head-quarters at Ptolemais (Acre). The first shock fell on Galilee. The
population was heroic. The little town of Jondifat, or Jotapata,
recently fortified, made a tremendous resistance; not one of its
defenders would survive; shut up in a position without issue, they
killed each other. “Gallilean” became from that time the synonym for
fanatic sectaries, seeking death as their part, taking it with a sort of
stubbornness. Tiberias, Taricheus, and Gamala were not taken until after
perfect butcheries; there have been in history few examples of an entire
race thus broken. The waves of the quiet lake where Jesus had dreamed of
the kingdom of Heaven were actually tinged with blood. The river was
covered with putrefied corpses, the air was pestiferous, crowds of Jews
took refuge on the coasts. Vespasian caused them to be killed or
drowned. The rest of the population was sold. Six thousand captives were
sent to Nero, in Achaia, to execute the most difficult work of piercing
the Isthmus of Corinth; the old men were slaughtered. There was nothing
but desertion. Josephus, whose nature had little depth, and who,
besides, was always in doubt of the issue of this war, surrendered to
the Romans, and was soon in the good graces of Vespasian and Titus. All
his cleverness in writing had not succeeded in washing such a conduct
from a certain varnish of cowardice.
The main part of the year 67 was
employed in this war of extermination. Galilee had never recovered; the
Christians who were found there took refuge beyond the lake. Henceforth
there shall be nothing spoken of the country of Jesus in the history of
Christianity. Gischala, which was taken last, fell in November
142or December. John of Gischala, who had
defended it with fury, retreated, and sought to gain Judea. Vespasian
and Titus made their winter quarters at Ceserea, preparing in the
following year to lay siege to Jerusalem.
The great weakness of provisional
governments organised for national defence is not being able to support
defeat. In all cases, undermined by advanced parties, they fall on the
day when they do not give to the superficial crowd what they have
proclaimed—victory. John of Gischala and the fugitives from Galilee
arriving each day at Jerusalem with rage in their hearts, still raised
the diapason of fury in which the revolutionary party lived. Their
breathing was hot and quick—“We are not conquered,” they said, “but we
seek better posts; why exhaust oneself is Gischala and these hovels when
we have the mother city to defend?” “I have seen,” said John of
Gischala, “the machines of the Romans flying in pieces against the walls
of the Gallilean villages; and, as they have not wings, they cannot
break the ramparts of Jerusalem.”
All the young people were for open war.
Some troops of volunteers turned readily to pillage; bands of fanatics,
either religious or political, always resemble brigands. It is necessary
to live, and freebooters cannot live without vexing the people. That is
why brigand and hero in times of national crisis are merely synonymous.
A war party is always tyrannical; moderation has never saved a country,
for the first principle of moderation is to yield to circumstances, and
heroism consists generally in not listening to reason. Josephus, the man
of order par excellence, is probably in the right when he
represents the resolution not to retire as having been the deed of a
small number of energetic people, drawing by force after them some
tranquil citizens who would have asked nothing better than to submit. It
is more often thus; people obtain a great sacrifice from a nation
without a 143dynasty which terrorises it. The
mass is essentially timid, but the timid count for nothing in times of
revolution. The enthusiasts are always small in number, but they impose
themselves upon others by cutting the road to reconciliation. The law of
such situations is that power falls necessarily into the hands of the
most ardent, and that politicians are fatally powerless.
Before this intense fever, increasing
every day, the position of the moderate party was not tenable. The bands
of pillagers, after having ravaged the country, fell back upon
Jerusalem, those who fled from the Roman armies came in their turn to
huddle up in the town and to starve. There was no effective authority;
the zealots ruled; all those who were even suspected of “moderantism”
were massacred without mercy. Up to the present the war and its excesses
were arrested by the barriers at the temple. Now the zealots and
brigands dwelt pell-mell in the holy house; all the rules of legal
purity were forgotten, the precincts were soiled with blood, men walked
with their feet wet with it. In the eyes of the priest this was no doubt
a most horrible state of affairs; to many devotees the “abomination”
foretold by Daniel as installing himself in the holy place just before
the last days. The zealots, like all military fanatics, made little of
rights and subordinated them to the sacred work par excellence—the
fight. They committed a fault not less grave in changing the order of
the high priesthood. Without having regard to the privilege of the
families from whom it had been the custom to take the high priests, they
chose a branch little considered in the sacerdotal race, and they had
recourse to the entirely democratic plan of the lot. The lot naturally
gave absurd results. It fell upon a rustic whom it was necessary to
bring to Jerusalem and clothe in spite of himself with the sacred
garments, the high priesthood saw itself profaned by scenes of carnival.
All the staid people, Pharisees, Sadducees, the Simeons,
144Ben Gamaliels, the Josephs, Ben Gorions were
wounded in what was dearest to them.
So much excess at last decided the
aristocratic Sadducean party to attempt a reaction. With much skill and
courage Hanan sought to reunite the honest middle-class and all those
who were reasonable, to over-turn this monstrous alliance between
fanaticism and impiety. The zealots were arranged near, and obliged to
shut themselves in the temple, which had become an ambulance for the
wounded. To save the revolution they had recourse to a supreme effort;
it was to call into the city the Idumeans—that is to say, troops of
bandits accustomed to all manner of violence which raged around
Jerusalem. The entrance of the Idumeans was marked by a massacre. All
the members of the sacerdotal caste whom they could find were killed.
Hanan and Jesus, son of Gamala, suffered fearful insults. Their bodies
were deprived of sepulture, an outrage unheard-of among the Jews.
Thus perished the son of the principal
author of the death of Jesus. The Beni-Hanan remained faithful up to the
end of their part, and, if I might say so, to their duty. Like the
larger number of those who seek to put a stop to the extravagances of
sects and fanaticism, they were hot-headed, but they perished nobly. The
last Hanan appears to have been a man of great capacity; he struggled
nearly two years against anarchy. He was a true aristocrat, hard
sometimes, but grave, and penetrated by a real feeling on public
subjects, highly respected, liberal in the sense that he wished the
government of the nation to be by its nobility, and not by violent
factions. Josephus did not doubt that if he had lived he would have
succeeded in making an honourable arrangement between the Romans and the
Jews, and he regarded the day of his death as the moment when the city
of Jerusalem and the republic of the Jews were definitely lost. It was
at least the end of the Sadducean party, a party often
145haughty, egotistical and cruel, but which represented
according to him the opinion which alone was rational and capable of
saving the country. By Hanan’s death, people would be tempted to say,
according to common language, that Jesus was revenged. It was the
Beni-Hanan who, in presence of Jesus, had made this reflection: “The
consequence of all this is that the Romans will come and destroy the
temple and nation;” and who had added: “Better that one man should die
than a whole people be lost!” Let us observe an expression so artlessly
impious. There is no more vengeance in history than in nature;
revolutions are no more just than the volcano which bursts or the
avalanche that rolls. The year 1793 did not punish Richelieu, Louis
XIV., nor the founders of French unity; but it proved that they were men
of narrow views, if they did not feel the emptiness of what they had
done, the frivolity of their Machiavellianism, the uselessness of their
deep policy, the foolish cruelty of their reasons of State. Ecclesiastes
alone was a sage, the day when he cried out, disabused: “All is vanity
under the sun.”
With Hanan (in the first days of 68)
perished the old Jewish priesthood, entailed in the great Sadducean
families who had made such a strong opposition to budding Christianity.
Deep was the impression, people, those highly respected aristocrats,
whom they had so lately seen clothed in superb priestly robes, presiding
over pompous ceremonies, and regarded with veneration by the numerous
pilgrims who came to Jerusalem from the whole world, thrown naked
outside of the city, given up to the dogs and jackals, It was a world
which disappeared. The democratic high-priesthood which was inaugurated
by the revolution was ephemeral. The Christians at first believed to
raise two or three personages by ornamenting their foreheads with the
priestly petalon. All this had no result. The priesthood, no more than
the temple on which it depended, was not destined to be the principal
146thing in Judaism. The principal thing was the
enthusiast, the prophet, the zealot, the messenger from God. The prophet
had killed royalty, the enthusiast, the ardent sectary, had killed the
priesthood. The priesthood and the kingdom once killed, the fanatic
remained, and he during two and a half years yet fought against fate.
When the fanatic shall have been crushed in his turn, there will remain
the doctor, the rabbi, the interpreter of the Thora. The priest
and the king will never rise again.
Nor the temple neither. Those zealots
who, to the great scandal of the priests who were friends of the Romans,
made the holy place a fortress and a hospital, were not so far as would
appear at first sight from the sentiment of Jesus. What mattered those
stones? The mind is the only thing which is reckoned, and that which
defends the mind of Israel, the revolution, has a right to defile the
stones. Since the day when Isaiah said: “What are your sacrifices tome?
they disgust me; it is the righteousness of the heart I wish,” material
worship was an old-fashioned routine which must disappear.
The opposition between the priesthood
and the national party, at bottom democratic, which admitted no other
nobility than piety and observance of the law, is felt from the time of
Nehemiah, who was already a Pharisee. The true Aaron, in the mind of
wise men, is the good man. The Asmoneans, at once priests and kings,
only inspired aversion among pious men. Sadduceeism, each day more
unpopular and ravenous, was only saved by the distinction which people
made between religion and its ministers. No kings—no priests—such was at
bottom the Pharisaic ideal. Incapable of forming a State of its own,
Judaism must have arrived at the point at which we see it through
eighteen centuries, that is to say, to live like a parasite in the
republics of others. It was likewise destined to become a religion
without a temple and without a priest. The 147priest
rendered the temple necessary: its destruction shall be a kind of
riddance. The zealots who, in the year 68, killed the high priest and
polluted the temple to defend God’s cause, were therefore not outside
the real tradition of Israel.
But it was clear that, deprived of all
conservative ballast, delivered to a frantic management, the vessel
would go to frightful perdition. After the massacre of the Sadducees
terror reigned in Jerusalem without any restraining counterpois. The
oppression was so great that no one dared openly to weep nor inter their
dead. Compassion became a crime. The number of suspects of distinguished
condition who perished through the cruelty of these madmen was about
12,000. Doubtless it is necessary here to consider the statements of
Josephus. The history of that historian as to the domination of the
zealots has something absurd in it; some impious and wretched people
would not have had to be killed as they were. As well might one one seek
to explain the French Revolution by the going out from the prison of
some thousands of galley slaves. Pure wickedness has never done anything
in the world; the truth is that these popular movements being the work
of an obscure conscience and not of reason, are compromised by their
very victory. According to the rule of all movements of the same kind
the revolution of Jerusalem was only occupied in decapitating itself.
The best patriots, those who had most contributed to the success of the
year 66, Guion, Niger, the Perea, were put to death. All the people in
comfortable circumstances perished. We are specially struck by the death
of a certain Zacharias, son of Barak, the most honest man of Jerusalem
and greatly beloved by all good people. They introduced him before a
traditional jury who acquitted him unanimously. The zealots murdered him
in the middle of the temple. Thus Zacharias, the son of Barak, would be
a friend of the Christians, for we believe that we can trace an allusion
to him in the prophetic 148words which the
evangelists attribute to Jeans as to the terrors of the last days.
The extraordinary events of which
Jerusalem was the theatre struck indeed the Christians in the highest
degree. The peaceable disciples of Jesus, deprived of their leader,
James the brother of the Lord continued at first to lead in the holy
city their ascetic life, and waited about the temple to see the great
reappearance. They had with them the other survivors of the family of
Jesus, the sons of Clopas, regarded with the greatest veneration even by
the Jews. All that occurred would appear to them an evident confirmation
of the words of Jesus. What could these convulsions be if not the
beginning of what was called the sufferings of Messiah, the preludes of
the Messianic Incarnation? They were persuaded that the triumphant
arrival of Christ would be preceded by the entry upon the scene of a
great number of false prophets. In the eyes of the presidents of the
Christian community, these false prophets were the leaders of the
zealots. People applied to the present time the terrible phrases which
Jesus had often in his mouth to express the plagues which should
announce judgments. Perhaps there were seen rising in the bosom of the
Church some enlightened persons pretending to speak in the name of
Jesus. The elders made a most lively opposition to them; they were
assured that Jesus had announced the coming of such seducers and warned
them concerning them. That was sufficient; the hierarchy, already strong
in the Church, the spirit of docility, the inheritance of Jesus arrested
all the impostures; Christianity benefited by the great skill with which
it knew how to create an authority in the very heart of a popular
movement The budding episcopacy (or to express it better, the
presbytery) prevented those aberrations from which the conscience of
crowds never escapes when it is not directed. We feel from this point
that the spirit of the Church in human things shall be a sort of good
average sense, a 149conservative and practical
instinct, and practice a defiance of democratic chimeras contrasting
strangely with the enthusiasm of its supernatural principles.
This political wisdom of the
representatives of the Church of Jerusalem was not without merit. The
zealots and the Christians had the same enemies, namely, the Sadducees,
the Beni-Hanan. The ardent faith of the zealots could not fail to
exercise a great seduction on the soul, not less enthusiastic, of the
Judeo Christians. Those enthusiasts who carried away the crowds to the
deserts to reveal to them the Kingdom of God resembled much John the
Baptist and Jesus a little. Some believers to whom Jesus appeared joined
the party and allowed themselves to be carried away. Everywhere the
peaceful spirit inherent in Christianity carried it with it. The heads
of the Church fought with those dangerous tendencies by the discourses
which they maintained they had received from Jesus. “Take heed that they
do not seduce you,” for many shall come in my name saying: “The Messiah
is here, or he is there.” Do not believe them. For there shall arise
false Messiahs, and false prophets, and they shall do great miracles,
so, as if it were possible, to seduce the very elect. Recollect what I
have told you before. If then some come saying to you, “Come, see, he is
in the desert” do not go forth; “Come, see, he is in a hiding-place” do
not believe them. There were doubtless some apostacies and treasons of
brethren by brethren. Political divisions led to a coldness of
affection, but the majority, while feeling in the deepest manner the
crisis of Israel, gave no countenance to anarchy even when coloured by a
patriotic pretext. The Christian manifesto of that solemn hour was a
discourse attributed to Jesus, a kind of apocalypse, connected perhaps
with some words pronounced by the Master, and which explained the
connection of the final catastrophe, thenceforth held to be very near,
with the political situation through which they were passing, It was not
much 150later after the siege that the niece was
written entirely; but certain words they have placed in Jesus’ mouth are
connected with the moment we have arrived at. “When ye shall see the
abomination of desolation of which the prophet Daniel speaks, set up in
the holy place (let the reader here understand), then let those who are
in Judea flee to the mountains; let him who is on the roof not come down
to his house to remove anything; let him who is in the fields not return
to seek his cloak! Unfortunate shall be they who either nurse children
or bear them in these days. And pray that your flight should not take
place in the winter or the Sabbath day; for there shall be a tribulation
such as has never been since the beginning of the world and never shall
be again.”
Other apocalypses of the same kind,
circulated it appears, under Enoch’s name, and presented with the
discourses, attributed to Jesus some singular conflicting thoughts. In
one of them the Divine Wisdom, introduced as a prophetic personage,
reproaches the people with their crimes, the murder of prophets,
hardness of heart. Some fragments which may be supposed to be preserved
appear to allude to the murder of Zacharias, the son of Barak. There was
here also a matter as to the “height of offence,” what would be the
highest degree of honour to which human malice could rise, and which
appears to be the profanation of the temple by the zealots. Such
monstrosities prove that the coming of of the Well-Beloved was near, and
that the revenge of the righteous would not tarry. The Judeo-Christian
believers especially held still too much to the temple for such a
sacrilege to fill them with fear. Nothing had been seen like this since
Nebuchadnezzar.
All the family of Jesus considered it
was time to flee. The murder of James had already much weakened the
connections of the Jerusalem Christians with Jewish orthodoxy; the
divorce between the Church and the Synagogue was ripening every day. The
hatred of 151the Jews to the pious sectaries,
being no longer supported by the Roman law, led without doubt to more
than one act of violence. The life of the holy people who as a habit
dwelt in the precincts and conducted their devotion then were very much
distressed, since the zealots had transformed the temple into a place of
arms and had polluted it by assassinations. Some allowed themselves to
say that the name which suited the city thus profaned was no longer that
of Sion, but that of Sodom, and that the position of the true Israelites
resembled that of their captive ancestors in Egypt.
The departure seems to have been decided
on in the early months of 68. To give more authority to that resolution
a report was spread to the effect that the heads of the community had
received a revelation on this matter; according to some this revelation
was made by the ministry of an angel. It is probable that all responded
to the appeal of the leaders, and that none of the brethren remained in
the city, which a very correct instinct showed them was doomed to
extermination.
Some indications lead us to believe that
the flight of the peaceful company was not carried out without danger.
The Jews, as it would appear, pursued them, the terrorists in fact
exercised an active overlook on the roads, and killed as traitors all
those who sought to escape, unless at least they could pay a good
rans
|
