The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book I. Life of Jesus

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History of the Origins of Christianity

History of the Origins of Christianity

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book I. Life of Jesus. by

Ernest Renan

Christian Classics Ethereal Library

About The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book I. Life of Jesus. by Ernest Renan Title: URL: Author(s): Publisher: Publication History: Rights: Date Created: CCEL Subjects: LC Call no: LC Subjects:

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book I. Life of Jesus. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/renan/lifeofjesus.html Renan, Joseph Ernest (1823-1892). Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library London: Mathieson & Company: 1890 (?) Copyright Christian Classics Ethereal Library 2005-05-20 All; History BR165.R42 V.1 Christianity History By period Early and medieval

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book I. Life of Jesus.

Ernest Renan

Table of Contents About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. ii Title Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 1 Prefatory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 2 Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 6 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 21 Chapter I. Place of Jesus in the History of the World.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 44 Chapter II. Infancy and Youth of Jesus—His First Impressions.. . . . . . . . p. 51 Chapter III. Education of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 54 Chapter IV. The Order of Thought from Whose Centre Jesus Was Developed.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 59 Chapter V. The First Sayings of Jesus—His Ideas of a “Father-God” and of a Pure Religion—First Disciples.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 68 Chapter VI. John the Baptist—Vist of Jesus to John, and His Abode in the Desert of Judæa—He Adopts the Baptism of John.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 75 Chapter VII. Development of the Ideas of Jesus Relative to the Kingdom of God.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 81 Chapter VIII. Jesus at Capernaum.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 87 Chapter IX. The Disciples of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 93 Chapter X. Preachings on the Lake.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 98 Chapter XI. The Kingdom of God Conceived as the Inheritance of the P o o r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 103 Chapter XII. Embassy to Jesus from John in Prison—Death of John—The Relations of His School with that of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 109 Chapter XIII. First Attempts on Jerusalem.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 113 Chapter XIV. Relations of Jesus with the Pagans and the Samaritans.. . . . p. 119 Chapter XV. Commencement of the Legend of Jesus—His Own Idea of His Supernatural Character.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 123 Chapter XVI. Miracles.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 129 Chapter XVII. Definite Form of the Ideas of Jesus in Respect of the Kingdom of God.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 134 Chapter XVIII. Institutions of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 140 Chapter XIX. Increasing Progression of Enthusiasm and of Exaltation.. . . . p. 146 Chapter XX. Opposition to Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 151 Chapter XXI. Last Journey of Jesus to Jerusalem.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 156 Chapter XXII. Machinations of the Enemies of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 162 iii


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Chapter XXIII. Last Week of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 167 Chapter XXIV. Arrest and Trial of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 174 Chapter XXV. Death of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 181 Chapter XXVI. Jesus in the Tomb.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 185 Chapter XXVII. Fate of the Enemies of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 188 Chapter XXVIII. Essential Character of the Work of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . p. 190 Appendix. Of the Use It Is Proper to Make of the Fourth Gospel in Writing the Life of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 197 Indexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 230 Index of Scripture References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 230 Greek Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 231 Latin Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 231 French Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 232 Index of Pages of the Print Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 233

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THE HISTORY OF THE

ORIGINS OF CHRISTIANITY.

BOOK I. LIFE OF JESUS.

BY

ERNEST RENAN MEMBER OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY.

London:

MATHIESON & COMPANY

iii ii

Ernest Renan


Ernest Renan

TO THE PURE SOUL of MY SISTER HENRIETTA, Who died at Byblus, 24th September, 1861.

FROM the bosom of God, in which thou reposest, dost thou recall those long days at Ghazir, when, alone with thee, I wrote these pages, which were inspired by the places we had visited together? Sitting silently by my side, thou didst read each sheet and copy it as soon as written—the sea, the villages, the ravines, the mountains being meanwhile spread out at our feet. When the overpowering light had given place to the innumerable host of stars, thy delicate and subtly questions, thy discreet doubts, brought me back to the sublime object of our common thoughts. Thou saidst to me one day that thou wouldst love this book, because, first, it had been written in thy presence, and because, also, it was to thine heart. If at times thou didst fear for it the narrow opinions of frivolous men, thou felt always persuaded that truly religious souls would, in the end, take delight in it. While in the midst of these sweet meditations, Death struck us both with his wing; the sleep of fever overtook us at the same hour, and I awoke alone! Thou sleepest now in the land of Adonis, near the holy Byblus and the sacred waters where the women of the ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears. Reveal to me, O good genius!—to me, whom thou lovedst—those truths which conquer death, strip it of fear, and make it almost beloved.

CONTENTS.

iv v

PAGE DEDICATION

iii

PREFACE (FIRST TIME IN ENGLISH)

ix

INTRODUCTION

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CHAPTER I. PLACE OF JESUS IN THE HISTORY OF THE 1 WORLD CHAPTER II. INFANCY AND YOUTH OF JESUS — HIS 13 FIRST IMPRESSIONS CHAPTER III. EDUCATION OF JESUS

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CHAPTER IV. THE ORDER OF THOUGHT FROM WHOSE 26 CENTRE JESUS WAS DEVELOPED CHAPTER V.

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THE FIRST SAYINGS OF JESUS — HIS 43 IDEAS OF A “FATHER GOD” AND OF A PURE RELIGION — FIRST DISCIPLES CHAPTER VI. vi

JOHN THE BAPTIST—VISIT OF JESUS TO 56 JOHN, AND HIS ABODE IN THE DESERT OF JUDEA—HE ADOPTS THE BAPTISM OF JOHN CHAPTER VII. DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS 66 RELATIVE TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD CHAPTER VIII. JESUS AT CAPERNAUM

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CHAPTER IX. THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS

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CHAPTER X. PREACHINGS ON THE LAKE

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CHAPTER XI. THE KINGDOM OF GOD CONCEIVED AS 104 THE INHERITANCE OF THE POOR CHAPTER XII. EMBASSY TO JESUS FROM JOHN IN 114 PRISON — DEATH OF JOHN — THE RELATIONS OF HIS SCHOOL WITH THAT OF JESUS CHAPTER XIII. FIRST ATTEMPTS ON JERUSALEM

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CHAPTER XIV. RELATIONS OF JESUS WITH THE PAGANS 130 AND THE SAMARITANS CHAPTER XV. vii

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COMMENCEMENT OF THE LEGEND OF 137 JESUS — HIS OWN IDEA OF HIS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER CHAPTER XVI. MIRACLES

147

CHAPTER XVII. DEFINITE FORM OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS 156 IN RESPECT OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD CHAPTER XVIII. INSTITUTIONS OF JESUS

167

CHAPTER XIX. INCREASING PROGRESSION OF 177 ENTHUSIASM AND OF EXALTATION CHAPTER XX. OPPOSITION TO JESUS

185

CHAPTER XXI. LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM 194 CHAPTER XXII. MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF 205 JESUS CHAPTER XXIII. LAST WEEK OF JESUS

213

CHAPTER XXIV. ARREST AND TRIAL OF JESUS

226

CHAPTER XXV. DEATH OF JESUS

239

CHAPTER XXVI. JESUS IN THE TOMB

246

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CHAPTER XVII. FATE OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS

250

CHAPTER XXVIII.

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ESSENTIAL CHARACTER OF THE WORK 254 OF JESUS 269 APPENDIX (FIRST TIME IN ENGLISH)

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PREFACE TO THE

THIRTEENTH EDITION. THE twelve first editions of this work differ only from one another in respect of a few trifling changes. The present edition, on the contrary, has been revised and corrected with the greatest care. During the four years which have elapsed since the book appeared, I have laboured incessantly to improve it. The numerous criticisms to which it has given rise have rendered the task in certain respects an easy one. I have read all those which contain anything important. I believe I can conscientiously affirm that not once have the outrage and the calumny, which have been imported into them, hindered me from deriving profit from the just observations which those criticisms might contain. I have weighed everything, tested everything. If, in certain cases, people should wonder why I have not answered fully the censures which have been made with such extreme assurance, and as if the errors alleged have been proved, it is not that I did not know of these censures, but that it was impossible for me to accept them. In the majority of such cases I have added in a note the texts or the considerations which have deterred me from changing my opinion, or better, by making some slight change of expression, I have endeavoured to show wherein lay the contempt of my critics. These notes, though very brief and containing little more than an indication of the sources at first hand, are sufficient in every case to point out to the intelligent reader the reasonings which have guided me in the composition of my texts. x

To attempt to answer in detail all the accusations which have been brought against me, it would have been necessary for me to triple or quadruple this volume: I should have had to repeat things which have already been well said, even in French; it would have been necessary to enter into a religious discussion, a thing that I have absolutely interdicted myself from doing; I should have had to speak of myself, a thing I shall never do. I write for the purpose of promulgating my ideas to those who seek the truth. As for those persons who would have, in the interests of their belief, that I am an ignoramus, an evil genius, or a man of bad faith, I do not pretend to be able to modify their opinions. If such opinions are necessary for the peace of mind of certain pious people, I would make it a veritable scruple to disabuse them of them. The controversy, moreover, if I had entered upon it, would have led me most frequently to points foreign to historical criticism. The objections which have been directed against me have proceeded from two opposing parties. One set has been addressed to me by freethinkers, who do not believe in the supernatural, nor, consequently, in the inspiration of the sacred books; another

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set by theologians of the liberal Protestant school, who hold such broad doctrinal views that the rationalists and they can readily understand one another. These, adversaries and I find ourselves on common ground; we start with the same principles; we can discuss according to the rules followed in all questions relating to matters of history, philology, and archæology. As to the refutations of my book (and these are much the most numerous) which have been made by orthodox theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, who believe in the supernatural and in the sacred character of the books of the Old and New Testament, they all involve a fundamental misapprehension. If the miracle has any reality, this book is but a tissue of errors. If the Gospels are inspired books, and true, consequently, to the letter, from beginning to end, I have been guilty of a great wrong in not contenting myself with piecing together the broken fragments of the four texts, like as the Harmonists have done, only to construct thus an ensemble at once most redundant and most contradictory. If, on the contrary, the miracle is an inadmissible thing, then I am right in regarding the books which contain miraculous recitals as histories mixed with fiction, as legends full of inaccuracies, errors, and of systematic expedients. If the Gospels are like other books I am right in treating them in the same manner as the Hellenist, the Arabian, the Hindoo treated the legendary documents which they studied. Criticism does not recognise infallible texts; its first principle is to admit that in the text which is examined there is the possibility of error. Far from being accused of scepticism, I ought to be classed with the moderate critics, since, instead of rejecting en bloc weak documents as so much trash, I essay to extract something historical out of them by means of delicate approximation. And as no one asserts that to put the question in such a manner implies a petitio principii, seeing we take for granted à priori that which is proved in detail, to wit, that the miracles related by the Gospels have had no reality, that the Gospels are not books written under the inspiration of Divinity. Those two negations are not with us the result of exegesis; they are anterior to exegesis. They are the outcome of an experience which has not been denied. Miracles are things which never happen; only credulous people believe they have seen them; you cannot cite a single one which has taken place in presence of witnesses capable of testing it; no special intervention of the Divinity, whether in the composition of a book, or in any event whatever, has been proved. For this reason alone, when a person admits the supernatural, such a one is without the province of science; he accepts an explanation which is non-scientific, an explanation which is set aside by the astronomer, the physician, the chemist, the geologist, the physiologist, one which ought also to be passed over by the historian. We reject the supernatural for the same reason that we reject the existence of centaurs and hippogriffes; and this reason is, that nobody has ever seen them. It is not because it has been previously demonstrated to me that the evangelists do not merit absolute credence that I reject the miracles which they recount. It is because they do recount miracles that I say, “The Gospels are legends; they may contain history, but, certainly, all that they set forth is not historical.” It is hence impossible that the orthodox person and the rationalist who denies the supernatural can be of much assistance in such questions. In the eyes of theologians, the Gospels and the books of the Bible in general are books like no others, books more historic than the best histories, inasmuch

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as they contain no errors. To the rationalist, on the contrary, the Gospels are texts to which the ordinary rules of criticism ought to be applied; we are, in this respect, like the Arabs in presence of the Koran and the hadith, like the Hindoos in presence of the Vedas and the Buddhist books. Is it because the Arabs regard the Koran as infallible? Is it because we accuse them of falsifying history that they relate the origins of Islamism differently from the Mussulman theologians? Is it because the Hindoos hold the Lalitavistara to be a biography?

xiii

How are such opinions, in setting out from opposed principles, to be mutually reconciled? All rules of criticism assume that a document subjected to examination has but a relative value, that it may be in error, and that it may be improved by comparing it with a better document. The profane savant, persuaded that all books which have come down to us as legacies are the work of man, did not hesitate to do an injury to texts when the texts contradicted one another, when they set forth absurd or formal statements which had been refuted by witnesses of greater authority. Orthodoxy, on the contrary, positive in advancing that the sacred books do not contain an error or a contradiction, tolerates the most violent tactics, expedients the most desperate, in order to get out of difficulties. Orthodox exegesis is, in this way, a tissue of subtleties. An isolated subtlety may be true; but a thousand subtleties cannot at once be true. If there were in Tacitus or Polybius errors so pronounced as those committed by Luke àpropos of Quirinius and of Theudas, we should say that Tacitus and Polybius have been deceived. Reasonings which we would not admit if the question were one of Greek or Latin literature, hypotheses which a Boissonade, or even a Rollin, would never think of, are held to be plausible when the question is one of exculpating a sacred author. Hence it is orthodoxy which is guilty of a petitio principii, when it reproaches rationalism with changing history, because the latter does not accept word for word the documents which orthodoxy holds to be sacred. Because a fact is written down, it does not thence follow that it is true. The miracles of Mahomet have been put into writing as well as those of Jesus; and certainly the Arab biographies of Mahomet, that of Ibn-Haschim, for example, has a much more historical character than the Gospels. Do we on this account admit the miracles of Mahomet? We follow Ibn-Haschim with more or less confidence when we have no reasons for doubting him. But when he relates to us things that are perfectly incredible we make no difficulty about abandoning him. Certainly, if we had four lives of Buddha, which were partly fabulous, and as irreconcilable amongst themselves as the four Gospels are to one another, and if a savant essayed to purge the four Buddhist narratives of their contradictions, we should not accuse that savant of falsifying the texts. It might well be that he attempted to unite discordant passages, that he sought a compromise, a sort of middle course, a narrative which should embrace nothing that was impossible, in which opposing testimony was balanced and misrepresented as little as possible. If, after that, the Buddhists believed in a lie, in the falsification of history, we would have a right to say to them: “The question here is not one of history, and if we must at times discard your texts it is the fault of those texts which contain things impossible of belief, and, moreover, which are contradictory.”

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At the bottom of all discussion on such matters is the question of the supernatural. If the miracle and the inspiration of certain books are actual facts, our method is detestable. If the miracle and the inspiration of some books are beliefs without any reality, our method is the proper one. Now, the question of the supernatural is determined to us with absolute certainty, by this simple reason, that there is no room for belief in a thing of which the world can offer no experimental trace. We do not believe in a miracle, just as we do not believe in dreams, in the devil, in sorcery, or in astrology. Have we any need to refute step by step the long reasonings of astrology in order to deny that the stars influence human events? No. It is sufficient for this wholly negative, as well as demonstrable experience, that we give the best direct proof—such an influence has never been proved. God forbid that we should be unmindful of the services that the theologians have rendered to science! The research and the constitution of the texts which serve as the basis of this history have been the work in many cases of orthodox theologians. The labour of criticism has been the work of liberal theologians. But there is one thing that a theologian can never be—I mean a historian. History is essentially disinterested. The historian has but one care, art and truth (two inseparable things; art guards the secret of the laws which are the most closely related to truth). The theologian has an interest — his dogma. Minimise that dogma as much as you will, it is still to the artist and the critic an insupportable burden. The orthodox theologian may be compared to a caged bird; every movement natural to it is intercepted. The liberal theologian is a bird, some of the feathers of whose wings have been clipped. He believes he is master of himself, and he in fact is until the moment he seeks to take his flight. Then it is seen that he is not completely the creature of the air. We proclaim it boldly; critical inquiries relative to the origin of Christianity will not have said their last word until they shall have cultivated, in a purely secular and profane spirit, the method of the Hellenists, the Arabs, the Hindoos, people strangers to all theology, who think neither of edifying, nor of scandalising, nor of defending, nor of overthrowing dogmas.

xv

Day and night, if I might so speak, I have reflected on these questions, questions which ought to be agitated without any other prejudices than those which constitute the essence of reason itself. The most serious of all unquestionably is that of the historic value of the fourth Gospel. Those who have not disagreed on such problems give room for the belief that they have not comprehended the whole difficulty. We may range the opinions on this Gospel into four classes, of which the following is the abridged expression. First opinion: “The fourth Gospel was written by the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee. The statements contained in that Gospel are all true; the discourses which the author puts into the mouth of Jesus were actually held by Jesus.” This is the orthodox opinion. From the point of view of rational criticism, this is wholly untenable. Second opinion: “The fourth Gospel is, in fact, by the Apostle John, although it may have been revised and retouched by his disciples. The facts recounted in that Gospel are direct traditions in regard to Jesus. The discourses are often from compositions expressing only the manner in which

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the author had conceived the mind of Jesus.” This is the opinion of Ewald, and in some respects that of Lücke, Weisse, and Reuss. This is the opinion that I adopted in the first edition of this work. Third opinion: “The fourth Gospel is not the work of the Apostle John. It was attributed to him by some of his disciples about the year 100. The discourses are almost entirely fictitious; but the narrative parts contain valuable traditions, ascending in part to the Apostle John.” This is the opinion of Weizsaecker and of Michael Nicolas. It is the opinion which I now hold. Fourth opinion: “The fourth Gospel is in no sense the work of the Apostle John. And whether, as regards the facts or the discourses which are reported in it, it is not a historic book; it is a work of the imagination and in part allegorical, concocted about the year 150, in which the author has proposed to himself, not to recount actually the life of Jesus, but to make believe in the idea that he himself had formed of Jesus.” Such is, with some variations, the opinion of Baur, Schwegler, Strauss, Zeller, Volkmar, Helgenfeld, Schenkel, Scholten, and Rénille.

xvi

I cannot quite ally myself to this radical party. I am convinced that the fourth Gospel has an actual connection with the Apostle John, and that it was written about the end of the first century. I avow, however, that in certain passages of my first edition I inclined too much in the direction of authenticity. The probative force of some arguments upon which I insisted appear to me now of less importance. I no longer believe that Saint Justin may have put the fourth Gospel on the same footing as the synoptics amongst the “Memoires of the Apostles.” The existence of Presbyteros Joannes, a personage distinct from the Apostle John, appears to me now as very problematical. The opinion according to which John, the son of Zebedee, could have written the work, an hypothesis which I have never altogether admitted, but for which, at moments, I might have shown a certain weakness, is here discarded as improbable. Finally, I acknowledge that I was wrong in repudiating the hypothesis of a false writing, attributed to an apostle who lived in the apostolic age. The second epistle of Peter, the authenticity of which no person can reasonably sustain, is an example of a work, much less important no doubt than the fourth Gospel, counterfeited under such conditions. Moreover, this is not for the moment the capital question. The essential question is to know what use it is proper to make of the fourth Gospel when one essays to write the life of Jesus. I persist in believing that that Gospel possesses a fund of valuable information, equal to that of the synoptics, and even sometimes superior. The development of this point possesses so much importance that I have made it the basis of an appendix at the end of this volume. The portion of the introduction relating to the criticism of the fourth Gospel has been revised and completed. In the body of the narrative several passages have also been modified in consequence of what has been just stated. All passages in a sentence which implied more or less that the fourth Gospel was by the Apostle John, or by an ocular witness of the evangelical facts, have been cut out. In order to trace the personal character of John, the son of Zebedee, I have thought of the rude Boanerge of Mark, of the terrible visionary of the Apocalypse, and not of the mystic, so full of tenderness,

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who has written the Gospel of love. I insist, with less confidence, on certain little details which are furnished us by the fourth Gospel. The limited quotations I have made from the discourses of that Gospel have been still further restricted. I had allowed myself to follow too far the opinions of the alleged apostle in what concerned the promise of the Paraclete. In like manner I am not now so sure that the fourth Gospel is right in respect of its disagreement with the synoptics as to the day on which Jesus died. As to the time of the Lord’s Supper, on the contrary, I persist in my opinion. The synoptic account which places the eucharistic institution on the last evening of Jesus appears to me to contain an improbability, equivalent to a quasi-miracle. It is hence, in my opinion, an adapted version, and founded upon a certain confusion of recollections. The critical examination of the synoptics has not been modified throughout. It has been completed and determined on some points, notably in that which concerns Luke. As regards Lysanias, a study of the inscription of Zenodorus at Baalbeck, which I did for the Phœnician Mission, has led me to believe that the evangelist could not have made so grievous a mistake as the ingenious critics think. As regards Quirinius, on the contrary, the last memoir of M. Mommsen has settled the question against the third Gospel. Mark seems to me more and more the primitive type of the synoptic narrative and the most authoritative text.

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The paragraph relative to the Apocrypha has been explained. The important texts published by M. Ceriani have been employed to advantage. I have great doubts in regard to the book of Enoch. I reject the opinion of Weisse, Volkmar, and Graetz, who believe that the whole book is posterior to Jesus. As to the most important portion of the book, which extends from chapter xxvii. to chapter lxxi., I dare not decide between the arguments of Helgenfeld and Colani, who regard this portion as posterior to Jesus; and the opinion of Hoffmann, Dillmann, Koestlin, Ewald, Lücke, and Weizsaecker, who hold it to be anterior. How much is it to be desired that the Greek text of that important writing could be found! I do not know why I persist in believing that this is not a vain hope. I have, in any case, stamped with doubt the inductions drawn from the aforenamed chapters. I have shown, on the contrary, the singular correspondences between the discourses of Jesus contained in the last chapters of the synoptic Gospels and the Apocalypses attributed to Enoch, relations in regard to which the discovery of the complete Greek text of the epistle attributed to Barnabas has cast much light, and which has been much enhanced by M. Weizsaecker. The certain results obtained by M. Volkmar in regard to the fourth book of Esdras, and which agree, in almost every particular, with those of M. Ewald, have been equally taken into consideration. Several new Talmudist citations have been introduced The portion accorded to Essenism has been enlarged. The position I have taken in discarding the bibliography has frequently been wrongly interpreted. I believe I have loudly enough proclaimed that which I owe to the masters of German science in general, and to each of them in particular, so that such a silence might not be taxed with ingratitude. Bibliography is only useful when it is complete. Now the German genius has displayed such activity in the field of evangelical criticism that if I had cited all the works relative to the questions treated

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in this book I would have tripled the extent of the notes and changed the character of my narrative. One cannot accomplish everything at once. I have restricted myself, therefore, to the rule of only admitting citations at first hand. Their number has been greatly multiplied. Besides, for the convenience of French readers who are not conversant with these studies, I have continued the revision of the summary list of the writings, composed in our language, wherever I could find details which I may have omitted. Many of these works are far removed from my ideas; but all are of a nature to make the enlightened man reflect and to make him understand our discussions.

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The thread of the narrative has been much changed. Certain expressions, too strong for communistic minds, which were of the essence of nascent Christianity, have been softened down. Among those holding personal relations with Jesus I have admitted some whose names do not figure in the Gospels, but who are known to us through evidence worthy of credence. That which relates to the name of Peter has been modified. I have also adopted another hypothesis in regard to Levi, son of Alpheus, and his relations with the Apostle Matthew. As to Lazarus, I unhesitatingly adopt now the ingenious hypothesis of Strauss, Baur, Zeller, and Scholten, according to which the pious pauper of the parable of Luke and the person restored to life by Jesus are one and the same individual. It will nevertheless be seen how I retain some reality in associating him with Simon the Leper. I adopt likewise the hypothesis of M. Strauss in respect of divers discourses attributed to Jesus during his last days, which appear to be quotations from writings spread over the first century. The discussion of the texts as to the duration of the life of Jesus has been reduced to greater precision. The topography of Bethphage and Dalmanutha has been altered. The account of Golgotha has been reproduced from the works of M. Vogüé. A person well-versed in the history of botany has taught me to distinguish, in the orchards of Galilee, between trees which have grown there for eighteen hundred years and those which have only been transplanted there since then. Some facts have also been communicated to me in regard to the potion administered to the crucified, to which I have given a place. In general, in the account of the last hours of Jesus, I have toned down some phraseology which might have too historical an appearance. It is in such cases where the favourite explanations of M. Strauss find their best application, where symbolic and dogmatic designs let themselves be seen at each step. I have said, and I repeat it, that if in writing the life of Jesus one confines oneself to advancing only details which are certain, it would be necessary to limit oneself to a few lines. He existed. He was from Nazareth in Galilee. There was a charm in his preaching, and he implanted in the minds of his disciples aphorisms which left a deep impression there. His two principal disciples were Peter and John, sons of Zebedee. He excited the hatred of the orthodox Jews, who brought him before Pontius Pilate, then procurator of Judæa, to have him put to death. He was crucified without the gates of the city. It was believed that a short time after he was restored to life. This is what is known to us for certain, even though the Gospels had not existed or were falsehoods, through authentic texts and incontestable data, such as the evidently authentic epistles of St. Paul, the epistle to the Hebrews, the Apocalypse, and other texts believed in by all. Beyond that, it is permissible

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to doubt. What was his family? What in particular was his affinity to that James, “brother of the Lord,” who after his death plays an important part? Was he actually related to John the Baptist? and did the most celebrated of his disciples belong to the school of baptism before they belonged to his? What were his Messianic ideas? Did he regard himself as the Messiah? What were his apocalyptic ideas? Did he believe that he would appear as the Son of Man in the clouds? Did he imagine he could work miracles? Were the latter attributed to him during his life? Did his legend grow up round himself, and had he cognisance of it? What was his moral character? What were his ideas in regard to the admission of Gentiles into the Kingdom of God? Was he a pure Jew like James, or did he break with Judaism, as did the most enthusiastic party of the Church subsequently? What was the order of his mental development? Those who seek only the indubitable in history must keep silent upon these points. The Gospels, in respect of these questions, are not much to be relied on, seeing that they frequently furnish arguments for two opposing theses, and seeing that the character of Jesus is therein modified to suit the views of the authors. For my part I think that on such occasions it is allowable to make conjectures, provided that they are presented as such. The texts, not being historic, give no certitude, but they give something. It is not necessary to follow them with a blind confidence, it is not necessary to reject their testimony with unjust disdain. We must strive to divine what they conceal, without being absolutely certain of having found it.

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It is singular that, in regard to almost all these points, it is the liberal school of theology which proposes the most sceptical solutions. The more sensible defenders of Christianity have come to consider it as advantageous to leave a gap in the historical circumstances bearing upon the birth of Christianity. Miracles, Messianic prophecies, formerly the bases of the Christian apology, have become an embarrassment to it; people seek to discard them. If we would believe the partisans of this theology, amongst whom I could cite so many eminent critics and noble thinkers, Jesus never pretended to perform a miracle; he did not believe himself to be the Messiah; he had no idea of the apocalyptic discourses which have been imputed to him as touching the final catastrophe. That Papias, so excellent a traditionist, and so zealous a collector of the words of Jesus, was an enthusiastic millenarian; that Mark, the oldest and the most authoritative of the evangelical narrators, was almost exclusively preoccupied with miracles, matters little. The career of Jesus is in this way so belittled that we are many times at a loss to tell what he was. His being condemned to death has no more right to be embraced in such a hypothesis than the accident which has made of him the chief of an apocalyptic and a Messianic movement. Was it on account of his moral precepts or his discourses on the Mount that Jesus was crucified? Certainly not. These maxims had for a long time been the current coin of the synagogue. No one has ever been put to death for repeating them. When Jesus was put to death, it was for saying something more than that. A learned man, who has taken an active part in these discussions, wrote me lately: “As in former times it was necessary to prove at all hazards that Jesus was God, so in our own times the question that the Protestant theological school has to prove is that he was not only a mere man, but also that he always regarded himself as such. People persist in representing him as a man of good sense, as a practical man par excellance,

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and transform him into the image and according to the spirit of modem theology. I believe with you that this is not doing justice to historical truth, but is neglecting an essential side of it.”

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This tendency has already been more than once logically produced in the bosom of Christianity. What did Marcion aim at? What did the Gnostics of the second century try to do? Simply to discard the material circumstances of a biography, the human details of which shocked them. Baur and Strauss yielded to analogous philosophical necessities. The divine Æon which was developed by humanity has nothing to do with anecdotic incidents, with the particular life of an individual. Scholten and Schenkel held certainly to a historic and actual Jesus, but their historic Jesus is neither a Messiah, nor a prophet, nor a Jew. People do not know what he aimed at, nor comprehend either his life or his death. Their Jesus is an æon after his own manner, a being impalpable, intangible. Genuine history is not acquainted with any such beings. Genuine history must construct its edifice out of two kinds of materials, and, if I may so speak, out of two factors: the first, the general state of the human soul in a given age and in a given country; the second, the particular incidents which, uniting with general causes, determined the course of events. To explain history by accidental facts is as false as to explain it by principles which are purely philosophic. The two explanations ought mutually to sustain and complete each other. The history of Jesus and of the apostles must, above all histories, be constructed out of a vast mixture of ideas and sentiments; nor would that even be sufficient. A thousand conjectures, a thousand whims, a thousand trifles, are mixed up with ideas and sentiments. To trace at this time of day the exact details of these conjectures, whims, and trifles is impossible; what legend has taught us in regard to this may be true, but it may also not be true. In my opinion, the best course to hold is to follow as closely as possible the original narratives, to discard impossibilities, to sow everywhere the seeds of doubt, and to put forth as conjectural the diverse manners in which the event might have taken place. I am not quite sure that the conversion of St. Paul came about as we have it related in the Acts; but it took place in a manner not widely different from that, for St. Paul himself has informed us that he had a vision of the resurrected Jesus, which gave an entirely new direction to his life. I am not sure whether the narrative of the Acts as to the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost is quite historic; but the ideas which were spread abroad as to the baptism of fire leads me to believe that a scene took place in the apostolic circle in which thunder played a part, as at Sinai. The visions of the resurrected Jesus were likewise occasionally the cause of the fortuitous circumstances interpreted by vivid and already preoccupied imaginations. If liberal theologians repudiate explanations of this kind, it is because they do not wish to subject Christianity to the laws common to other religious movements; because also, perhaps, they are not sufficiently acquainted with the theory of spiritual life. There are no religious movements in which such deceptions do not play a great part. It may even be affirmed that they hold a permanent position in certain communities, such as the pietist Protestants, the Mormons, and the convent Catholics. In those little excited worlds it is not rare that conversions are the result of some accident, in which the anxious soul sees the finger of God. These accidents, which always contain something puerile,

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are concealed by the believers; it is a secret between heaven and them. A fortuitous event is nothing to a cold or indifferent soul; it is a divine symbol to a susceptible soul. To say that it was an accident which changed St. Paul and St. Ignatius Loyola through and through, or rather which gave a new turn to their activity, is certainly inexact. It was the interior movement of those strong natures which had prepared the clap of thunder; yet the thunderclap had been determined by an exterior cause. All these phenomena, moreover, had reference to a moral state which no longer belongs to us. In the majority of their actions they were governed by dreams which they had seen the preceding night, by inductions drawn from a fortuitous object which struck their first waking view, or by sounds which they believed they heard. It has happened that the wings of a bird, currents of air, or headaches, have determined the fate of the world. In order to be sincere and exhaustive it is necessary to say this; and when certain commonplace documents tell us of incidents of this kind we must take care to pass them over in silence. In history there are but few details which are certain; details, nevertheless, possess always some significance. The historian’s talent consists in making a true narrative out of details which are of themselves but half true. xxiv

We can hence accord a place in history to particular incidents, without being on that account a rationalist of the old school or a disciple of Paulus. Paulus was a theologian who, wishing to have as little as possible to do with miracles, and not daring at the same time to treat the Bible narratives as legends, twisted them about so as to explain them in a wholly natural fashion. In this way Paulus desired to retain for the Bible all its authority and to enter into the real thoughts of the sacred authors. But I am a profane critic; I believe that no supernatural writing is true to the letter; I think that out of a hundred narratives of the supernatural there are eighty which have been pieced together by popular imagination. I admit, nevertheless, that in certain very rare cases legend has been derived from an actual fact and trans-formed in the imagination. As to the mass of supernatural data recounted by the Gospels and by the Acts, I shall attempt to show in five or six instances how the illusion may have been created. The theologian who is invariably methodical would have that a single explanation should hold good from one end of the Bible to the other. Criticism believes that every explanation should be attempted, or rather, that the possibility of each explanation should be successively demonstrated. That an explanation is repugnant to one’s ideas is no reason for rejecting it. The world is at once an infernal and a divine comedy, a strange “round,” led by a choragus of genius, now good, now evil, now stupid; the good defile into the ranks which have been assigned to them, in view of the accomplishment of a mysterious end. History is not history if in reading it one is not by turns charmed and disgusted, grieved and consoled. The first task of the historian is to make a careful sketch of the manner in which the events he recounts took place. Now, the history of religious beginnings transports us into a world of women and children, of brains ardent or foolish. These facts, placed before minds of a positive order, are absurd and unintelligible, and this is why countries such as England, of ponderous intellects, find

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it impossible to comprehend anything about it. That which is a drawback to the arguments, formerly so celebrated, of Sherlock or of Gilbert West upon the resurrection, of Lyttelton upon the conversion of Saint Paul, is not the reasoning; that is a triumph of solidity; it is the just appreciation of the diversity of means. Every tentative religion with which we are acquainted exhibits unmistakably an enormous mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. Read these narratives of primitive Saint Simonism, written with admirable candour by the surviving adepts. By the side of repulsive rôles, insipid declamations, what charm! what sincerity, when the man or the woman of the people enters upon the scene, hearing the artless confession of a soul which is open to the first gentle ray which has struck it! There is more than one example of beautiful durable things which have been founded upon singular puerilities. It were useless to seek for any proportion between the conflagration and the spark which lighted it. The devotion of Salette is one of the grandest religious events of our age. These basilicas, so respectable, of Chartres and of Laon, were reared upon illusions of the same sort. The Fête-Dieu originated in the visions of a female religionist of Liège who believed that in her prayers she always saw the full moon through a small hole. We could instance movements, absolutely sincere, which have been brought about by impostors. The discovery of the holy lance at Athens, in which the fraud was so patent, decided the fortune of the Crusades. Mormonism, the beginnings of which are so shameful, has inspired courage and devotion. The religion of the Druzes rests upon a tissue of absurdities which stagger the imagination, but it has its devotees. Islamism, which is the second great event in the history of the world, would not have existed if the son of Amina had not been an epileptic. The gentle and immaculate Francis d’Assisi would not have succeeded without Brother Elia. Humanity is so feeble of mind that the purest thing has need of the co-operation of some impure agent. Let us guard against applying our conscientious distinctions, our reasonings of cool and clear heads, to the appreciation of these extraordinary events, which are at once so much beyond and beneath us. There are those who would make Jesus a sage, a philosopher, a patriot, a good man, a moralist, or a saint. He was neither or any of these. He was a charmer. Let us not make the past our idol. Let us not believe that Asia is Europe. With us, for example, the fool is a creature outside the rules of society; we torture him so as to make him re-enter it; the horrible treatment of fools by ancient houses was the result of scholastic and Cartesian logic. In the East, the fool is a privileged being; he enters the highest councils without any one daring to stop him; people listen to him, he is consulted. He is a being believed to be in close proximity to God, inasmuch as, his individual reason being extinguished, he is believed to be a partaker in the divine reason. The wit which, through delicate raillery, rises above all defects of reason, exists only in Asia. A person educated in Islamism told me that, repairs having become necessary at the tomb of Mahomet, people at Medina for several years made an appeal to the masons, and announced that he who should descend into that dreadful place should have his head cut off on reascending. “It was necessary,” said my interlocutor to me, “to picture those places to oneself in a certain manner, and it was not for any person to say that they were otherwise.”

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Troubled consciences cannot have the clearness of good sense. Now, it is only troubled consciences which can lay powerful foundations. I have tried to draw a picture in which the colours should be disposed as they are in nature, that is to say, at once grand and puerile, in which one sees the divine instinct threading its way with safety through a thousand peculiarities. If the picture had been without shade, this would have been the proof that it was false. The condition of the written proofs does not permit of us telling in what instances the illusion was consistent with itself. All that we can say is, that sometimes it has happened thus. One cannot lead for years the life of a thaumaturgist without being often cornered—without having one’s hand forced by the public. The man who has a legend attaching to his life is led tyrannically by his legend. One begins by artlessness, credulity, absolute innocence; one ends in all sorts of embarrassments, and, in order to sustain the divine power which is at fault, one gets out of these embarrassments through the most desperate expedients. When one is put to the wall must one leave the work of God to perish, because God is slow of coming to the relief? Did not Joan of Arc more than once make her voice heard in response to the necessities of the moment? If the account of the secret revelation which she made to King Charles VII. has any reality, a supposition which it is difficult to deny, it must have been that that innocent girl had represented that she had received through supernatural intuition that which she had heard in confidence. An exposé of religious history which does not some day disclose indirectly suppositions of this sort is for the same reason argued to be incomplete. Every true, or probable, or possible circumstance most then have its proper place in my narration, together with its shade of probability. In such a history it will be necessary to speak not only of that which has taken place, but also of that which had a likelihood of taking place. The impartiality with which I have treated my subject has interdicted me from not accepting a conjecture, even one that shocks; for undoubtedly there were many shocking ones in the fashion of the things which are past and gone. I have applied from beginning to end the same process in an inflexible manner. I have given the good impressions which the texts have suggested to me; I could not, therefore, be silent as to the bad. I intend that my book shall retain its value even in the day when people shall have reached the point of regarding a certain amount of fraud as an element inseparable from religious history. It will be necessary to make my hero beautiful and charming (for undoubtedly he was so), and that, too, in spite of actions which, in our days, might be characterised in an unfavourable manner. People have praised me for having tried to construct a narrative lovely, human, and possible. Would my work have received these eulogiums if it had represented the origin of Christianity as absolutely immaculate? That would have been to admit the greatest of miracles. The result thence would have been a picture lifeless to the last degree. I do not say that this is for want of faults I may have made in the composition. Nevertheless, I must leave each text to produce its melodious or discordant note. If Goethe had been alive he would, with this reserve, have commended me. That great man would not have forgiven me for producing a portrait wholly celestial: he would have desired to find repellent details; for, assuredly, in actual life things happen which would wound us, if only it were given to us to see them.

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The same difficulty presents itself, moreover, in the history of the apostles. This history is admirable in its way. But what can be more shocking than the glossolaly, which is attested by the unexceptionable texts of St. Paul? Liberal theologians admit that the disappearance of the body of Jesus was one of the grounds for the belief in the resurrection. What does that signify, unless the Christian conscience at that moment was two-sided, that a moiety of that conscience gave birth to the illusion of the other moiety? If the disciples themselves had taken away the body and spread themselves over the city crying, “He is risen!” the imposture would have been discovered. But there can be no doubt that it was not they themselves who did the two things. For belief in a miracle to be accepted it is indeed necessary that someone be responsible for the first rumour which is spread abroad; but, ordinarily, this is not the principal author. The rôle of the latter is limited to not exclaiming against the reputation which people have given him. Moreover, even if he did exclaim, it would be useless; popular opinion would prove stronger than he. In the miracle of Salette, people possessed a clear idea of the artifice; but the conviction that it would do good to religion carried all before it. The fraud was divided between several unconscionable persons, or rather it had ceased to be a fraud and became a misapprehension. Nobody, in that case, deceives deliberately; everybody deceives innocently. Formerly it was taken for granted that every legend implied deceivers and deceived; in our opinion, all the collaborators of a legend are at once deceived and deceivers. A miracle, in other words, presupposes three conditions: first, general credulity; second, a little complaisance on the part of some; third, tacit acquiescence in the principal author. Through a reaction against the brutal explanations of the eighteenth century, we did not fall into the trap of hypotheses which implied effects without causes. Legend does not wholly create itself: people assist in giving it birth. These points d’appui in a legend are often of a rare elasticity. It is the popular imagination which makes the ball of snow; there, nevertheless, must have been an original nucleus. The two persons who composed the two genealogies of Jesus knew quite well that the lists were not of any great authenticity. The apocryphal books, the alleged apocalypses of Daniel, Enoch, and Esdras, proceeded from persons of strong convictions; but the authors of these works knew well they were neither Daniel, Enoch, nor Esdras. The priest of Asia who composed the romance of Thekla declared that he had done it out of love for Paul. It is incumbent that we should say a great deal about the author of the fourth Gospel, who was assuredly a personage of the first order. If you chase the illusion of religious history out of one door, it will re-enter by another. In fine, it would be difficult to cite a great event of the past, whatever it might be, in an entirely defensible manner. Shall we cease to be Frenchmen because France has been founded by centuries of perfidy? Shall we refuse to profit by the benefits of the Revolution because the Revolution committed crimes without number? If the house of Capet had succeeded in creating for us a good constitutional assize, similar to that of England, would we have wrangled over the cure of the king’s evil? Science alone is pure; for science possesses nothing practical; it does not touch men; the Propaganda takes no notice of it; its duty is to prove, not to persuade or to convert. He who has discovered a theorem publishes its demonstration for those who are capable of comprehending it.

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He does not mount a chariot; he does not gesticulate; he does not have recourse to oratorical artifices in order to induce people to adopt it who do not perceive its truth. Enthusiasm, certainly, has its good faith, but it is an ingenuous good faith; it is not the deep reflective good faith of the savant. Only the ignorant yield to bad reasonings. If Laplace had been able to gain the multitude over to his system of the world, he would not have limited himself to mathematical demonstrations. M. Littré, in writing the life of a man whom he regarded as his master, pressed sincerity to the point of leaving nothing unsaid that would render that man more amiable. That is without example in religious history. Science alone seeks after pure truth. She alone offers good reasons for truth, and brings a severe criticism into the employment of the methods of conviction. This is no doubt the reason why, up till now, she has had no influence on the people. It may be that in the future, when people are better instructed, even as we have been led to hope, they will yield only to good and carefully deduced proofs. But it would not be equitable to judge the great men of the past according to these principles. There are natures who resign themselves to impotence, who accept humanity, with all its weaknesses, such as it is. Many great things have not been accomplished without lies and without violence. If to-morrow the incarnate ideal were to come and offer itself to men in order to govern them, it would find itself confronted by the foolish, who wish to be deceived; by the wicked, who wish to be subdued. The sole irreproachable person is the contemplative man, who only aims at finding the truth, without either caring about making it a triumph or of applying it. Morality is not history. To paint and to record is not to approve. The naturalist who describes the transformations of the chrysalis neither blames nor praises it. He does not tax it with ingratitude because it abandons its shroud; he does not describe it as bold because it has found its wings: he does not accuse it of folly because it aspires to plunge into space. One may be the passionate friend of the true and the beautiful, and show oneself indulgent at the same time to the simple ignorance of the people. Our happiness has cost our fathers torrents of tears and deluges of blood. In order that pious souls may taste at the foot of the altar the inward consolation which gives them life, it has taken centuries of severe constraint, the mysteries of a sacerdotal polity, a rod of iron, funereal piles. The success which one owes to a wholly great institution does not demand the sacrifice of the sincerity of history. Formerly, to be a good Frenchman, it was necessary to believe in the dove of Clovis, in the national antiquities of the Treasure of Saint Denis, in the virtues of the oriflamme, in the supernatural vision of Joan of Arc; it was necessary to believe that France was the first of nations, that French royalty was superior to all other royalties, that God had for that crown a predilection altogether peculiar and was constantly engaged in protecting it. To-day we know that God protects equally all kingdoms, all empires, all republics; we own that many of the kings of France have been contemptible men; we recognise that the French character has its faults; we greatly admire a multitude of things which come from abroad. Are we on that account worse Frenchmen? We can say, on the contrary, that we are better patriots, since, in place of being blind to our faults, we seek to correct them; that, in place of depreciating the foreigner, we seek to imitate that which he has in him of good. In like manner we are Christians. He who speaks with irreverence of the

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royalty of the Middle Ages, of Louis XIV., of the Revolution, of the Empire, commits an act of bad taste. He who does not speak kindly of Christianity and of the Church of which he forms a part renders himself guilty of ingratitude. But filial recognition ought not to be carried to the length of closing our eyes to the truth. One is not wanting in respect to the government in making the remark that it is not able to satisfy the conflicting needs that are in man, nor to a religion in saying that she is not free from the formidable objections which science has raised against all supernatural belief. Responding to certain social exigencies and not to some others, governments fall by reason of the same causes which have founded them and which have been their strength. Responding to the aspirations of the heart at the expense of the protestations of reason, religions crumble away in turn, because no force here below can succeed in stifling reason.

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That day will be unfortunate for reason when she would stifle religion. Our planet, believe me, labours at some profound work. Do not pronounce rashly upon the inutility of such and such of its parts; do not say that it is necessary to suppress this wheel-work, which to appearance makes but the contrary play of the others. Nature, which has endowed the animal with an infallible instinct, has not put into humanity anything deceptive. From his organs you may boldly conclude his destiny. Est Deus in nobis. Religions are false when they attempt to prove the infinite, to determine it, to incarnate it, if I may so speak, but they are true when they affirm it. The greatest errors that they import into that affirmation are nothing compared to the price of the truth which they proclaim. The greatest simpleton, provided he practises the worship of the heart, is more enlightened as to the reality of things than the materialist who thinks he explains everything by accident, and leaves it there.

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INTRODUCTION. WHICH TREATS PRINCIPALLY OF THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS OF THIS HISTORY.

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A HISTORY of the “Origins of Christianity” ought to embrace the whole obscure and, so to speak, subterranean period which extends from the first beginnings of this religion to the time when its existence became a public fact, notorious and apparent to everybody. Such a history ought to consist of four parts. The first, which is now presented to the public, treats of the particular fact which was the starting point of the new religion, and is wholly concerned with the sublime personality of the Founder. The second should treat of the Apostles and their immediate disciples, or rather, of the revolutions which took place in religious thought in the first two generations of Christianity. This should end about the year 100, when the last friends of Jesus were just dead, and when the whole of the books of the New Testament had almost assumed the form in which they are now read. The third book should set forth the state of Christianity under the Antonines. We should then observe its slow development and its waging of an almost permanent war against the empire, which latter, having at that moment attained to the highest degree of administrative perfection and being governed by philosophers, combated in the nascent sect a secret and theocratic society, which the latter obstinately disowned, but which was a continual source of weakness. This book would embrace the whole of the second century. The fourth and last part should show the decided progress which Christianity had made from the time of Syrian emperors. In it we should see the learned constitution of the Antonines crumble away, the decadence of ancient civilisation set in irrevocably and Christianity profit by its ruin, Syria conquer the entire West, and Jesus, in combination with the gods and the deified sages of Asia, take possession of a society which philosophy and a purely civil government were unable longer to cope with. It was then that the religious ideas of the races established upon the coasts of the Mediterranean underwent a great change; that the Eastern religions everywhere took the lead; that Christianity, having become a large Church, totally forgot its millennium dreams, broke its last connections with Judaism, and passed entirely into the Greek and Roman world. The strifes and the literary labours of the third century, which had already taken place openly, have to be described only in their general features. Again, the persecutions of the commencement of the fourth century, the last effort of the empire to return to its old principles, which denied to religious associations a place in the State, should be recounted more briefly. Finally, the change of policy which, under Constantine, inverted the position, and made of the most free and most spontaneous religious movement an official worship subject to State control, and in its turn persecutor, would need only to be foreshadowed. I do not know whether I shall have life and strength to execute no vast a plan. I should be satisfied if, after writing the life of Jesus, it is given to me to relate, as I understand it, the history of the Apostles; the condition of the Christian conscience during the weeks which immediately succeeded the death of Jesus; the formation of the cycle of legends touching the resurrection; the

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first acts of the Church of Jerusalem, the life of St. Paul, the crisis at the time of Nero, the appearance of the Apocalypse, the ruin of Jerusalem, the foundation of the Hebrew-Christian sects of Batanea, the compilation of the Gospels, and the rise of the great schools of Asia Minor. Everything pales by the side of that marvellous first century. By a peculiarity rare in history, we can judge better of what passed in the Christian world from the year 50 to 75 than from the year 80 to 150. The plan upon which this history proceeds prevents the introduction into the text of long critical dissertations upon controversial points. A continuous succession of notes places likewise the reader in a position to verify the sources of all the propositions in the text. These notes are strictly limited to quotations at first hand—I mean, to the indication of the original passages upon which each assertion or hypothesis rests. I am aware that, to persons who have had little experience in these studies, many other explanations might be necessary; but it is not my habit to do over again what has once been done and done well. To cite only books written in French, the following can be recommended:1 The above works are for the most part excellent, and in them will be found explained a multitude of details upon which I have had to be very succinct. In particular, the criticism of the details of evangelical texts has been done by M. Strauss in a manner which leaves little to be desired. Although M. Strauss may at first have been deceived in his theory in regard to the authorship of the Gospels, and although his book, in my opinion, has the fault of occupying too much theological and too little historical ground, it is indispensable, so as to understand the motives which have guided me in a multitude of details, to follow the argument (always judicious, though sometimes a little subtle) of the book which has been so well translated by my learned co-worker M. Littré. xxxv

I am not aware that, in respect of ancient testimony, I have overlooked any source of information. Not to mention a multitude of scattered data respecting Jesus and the times in which he lived, we still have five great collections of writings. These are: first, the Gospels and the New Testament writings in general; second, the compositions called the “Apocrypha of the Old Testament;” third, the works of Philo; fourth, those of Josephus; fifth, the Talmud. The writings of Philo have the inestimable advantage of showing us the thoughts which, in the time of Jesus, stirred souls occupied with great religious questions. Philo lived, it is true, in quite a different sphere of Judaism from Jesus; yet, like him, he was quite free from the pharisaic spirit which reigned at Jerusalem; Philo is in truth the elder brother of Jesus. He was sixty-two years of age when the prophet of Nazareth had reached the highest point of his activity, and he survived him at least ten years. What a pity it is that the accidents of life did not direct his steps into Galilee! What would he not have taught us!

1

See Volume VIII. of this series, which contains the author’s notes of the whole seven volumes of the series, together with a complete index.—ED.

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Josephus, who wrote chiefly for the Pagans, did not exhibit the some sincerity. His meagre accounts of Jesus, John the Baptist, and of Judas the Gaulonite are colourless and lifeless. We feel that he sought to represent these movements, so profoundly Jewish in character and spirit, in a form which would be intelligible to the Greeks and Romans. Taken as a whole I believe the passage in regard to Jesus to be authentic. It is perfectly in the style of Josephus, and, if that historian mentioned Jesus at all, it is indeed in this manner that he would have spoken of him. We feel, however, that the hand of a Christian has retouched the fragment, and has added to it passages without which it would have been well nigh blasphemous, as well as abridged and modified some expressions. It is necessary to remember that Josephus owed his literary fortune to the Christians, who adopted his writings as essential documents of their sacred history. It is probable that in the second century they circulated an edition of them, corrected according to Christian ideas. At all events that which constitutes the immense interest of the books of Josephus in respect of our present subject is the vivid picture he gives of the times. Thanks to this Jewish historian, Herod, Herodias, Antipas, Philip, Annas, Kaïaphas, and Pilate are personages whom, so to speak, we can touch, and whom we can actually see living before us.

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The Apocrypha of the Old Testament, especially the Jewish part of the Sibylline verses, the book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the fourth book of Esdras, the Apocalypse of Baruch, together with the book of Daniel, which is also itself a real Apocrypha, possess a primary importance in the history of the development of the Messianic theories, and in the understanding of the conceptions of Jesus in regard to the kingdom of God. The book of Enoch, in particular, and the Assumption of Moses, were much read in the circle of Jesus. Some expressions imputed to Jesus by the synoptics are presented in the epistle attributed to Saint Barnabas as belonging to Enoch: Ος Ενὸχ λεγει. It is very difficult to determine the date of the different sections of which the book attributed to that patriarch in composed. None of them are certainly anterior to the year 150 B.C.: some of them may even have been written by a Christian pen. The section containing the discourses entitled “Similitudes,” and extending from chapter xxvii. to chapter lxxi., is suspected of being a Christian work. But this has not been proved. Perhaps this part is only a proof of alterations. Other additions or Christian revisions are recognisable here and there. The collection of the Sibylline verses needs to be regarded in the same light; but the latter is more easily established. The oldest part in the poem contained in Book III., v. 97–817; it appeared about the year 140 B.C. Respecting the date of the fourth book of Esdras everybody now is nearly agreed in assigning this Apocalypse to the year 97 A.D. It has been altered by the Christians. The Apocalypse of Baruch has a great resemblance to that of Esdras; we find there, as in the book of Enoch, several utterances imputed to Jesus. As to the book of Daniel, the character of the two languages in which it is written, the use of Greek words, the clear, precise, dated announcements of events which go back as far as the times of Antiochus Epiphanes; the false descriptions which are there drawn of ancient Babylon; the general tone of the book, which has nothing suggestive of

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the writings of the captivity, but, on the contrary, corresponds, by numerous analogies, to the beliefs, the manners, the turn of imagination of the epoch of Seleucidæ; the Apocalyptic form of the visions; the position of the book in the Hebrew canon which is outside the series of the prophets; the omission of Daniel in the panegyrics of chapter xlix. of Ecclesiasticus, in which his position is all but indicated; and a thousand other proofs, which have been deduced a hundred times, do not permit of a doubt that this book was but the product of the general exaltation produced among the Jews by the persecution of Antiochus. It is not in the old prophetic literature that it most be classed; its place is at the head of Apocalyptic literature, the first model of a kind of composition, after which were to come the various Sibylline poems, the book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the Apocalypse of John, the Ascension of Isaiah, the fourth book of Esdras.

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Hitherto, in the history of the origins of Christianity, the Talmud has been too much neglected. I think with M. Geiger that the true notion of the circumstances which produced Jesus must be sought in this peculiar compilation, in which so much knowledge is mixed with the most insignificant scholasticism. The Christian theology and the Jewish theology having followed uniformly two parallel paths, the history of the one cannot be understood without the history of the other. Innumerable material details in the Gospels find, moreover, their commentary in the Talmud. The vast Latin collections of Lightfoot, Schœttgen, Buxtorf, and Otho contained already on this point a mass of information. I have taken upon myself to verify in the original all the quotations which I have made use of, without an exception. The assistance which has been given in this part of my task by a learned Israelite, M. Newbauer, well-versed in Talmudic literature, has enabled me to go further and to elucidate certain parts of my subject by some new researches. The distinction here between epochs is very important, the compilation of the Talmud extending from the year 200 to the year 500, or thereabout. In the actual condition of these studies, we have brought to it as much discernment as it was possible in the actual state of these studies. Dates no recent will excite fears among persons accustomed to attach value to a document only for the epoch in which it was written. But such scruples would here be out of place. Jewish teaching from the Asmonean epoch up to the end of the second century was chiefly oral. These sorts of intellectual states must not be judged by the customs of an age in which much writing takes place. The Vedas, the Homeric poems, the ancient Arabic poems, were for centuries preserved only in memory, and yet these compositions present a very distinct and delicate form. In the Talmud, on the other hand, the form possesses no value. Let us add that before the Mischnah of Juda the saint, which obliterated the recollection of all others, there had been several essays at compilation, the commencement of which goes further back perhaps than is commonly supposed. The style of the Talmud is that of careless notes; the editors probably did no more than range under certain titles the enormous medley of writings which, for generations, had accumulated in the different schools. It remains for us to speak of the documents which, pretending to be biographies of the Founder of Christianity, must naturally take the place of honour in a life of Jesus. A complete treatise upon the compilation of the Gospels would be a work of itself. Thanks to the excellent work which, for

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the last thirty years, has been devoted to this question, a problem which was formerly held to be insoluble has been resolved, and, though there is room still left for much uncertainty, it is quite sufficient for the requirements of history. We shall have occasion later on to revert to this in our second book, seeing that the composition of the Gospels was one of the most important facts in the future of Christianity in the second half of the first century. We shall only touch in this place a single aspect of the subject, but one which is indispensable to the solidarity of our narrative. Putting to one side all that belongs to a picture of the apostolic times, we will inquire only to what extent the data furnished by the Gospels can be employed in a history arranged according to rational principles. That the Gospels are in part legendary is quite evident, inasmuch as they are full of miracles and of the supernatural; but there are legends and legends. Nobody disputes the principal traits in the life of Francis d’Assisi, although at every step the supernatural is encountered in it. Contrariwise, no one gives credence to the “Life of Apollonius of Tyana,” for the reason that it was written long after the hero, and avowedly as a pure romance. When, by whom, and under what conditions were the Gospels compiled? This is the chief question upon which the opinion, it is necessary to form of their credibility, depends.

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We know that each of the four Gospels bears at its head the name of a personage known either in Apostolic history or in evangelical history itself. If these titles are correct it is clear that the Gospels, without ceasing to be in part legendary, possess a high value, since they take us back to the half century which followed the death of Jesus, and even in two cases to eyewitnesses of his acts. As for Luke, doubt is hardly possible. The Gospel of Luke is a studied composition, founded upon anterior documents. It is the work of a man who selects, adapts, and combines. The author of this Gospel is undoubtedly the same as that of the Acts of the Apostles. Now, the author of the Acts appears to be a companion of Paul, an appellation which exactly fits Luke. I am aware that more than one objection can be raised against this opinion; but one thing is beyond question, to wit, the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts is a man belonging to the second Apostolic generation, and that is sufficient for our purpose. The date of that Gospel may, however, be determined with quite enough precision by considerations drawn from the book itself. The 21st chapter of Luke, which is an inseparable part of the work, was certainly written subsequently to the siege of Jerusalem, but not very long afterwards. We are here, then, upon solid ground; for the work in question has been written by the same person, and its unity is perfect. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark do not nearly possess the same stamp of individuality. They are impersonal compositions, in which the author wholly disappears. A proper name inscribed at the head of such works does not count for much.

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We cannot, moreover, reason here as in the case of Luke. The date which belongs to a particular chapter (to Matthew xiv. and Mark xiii. for example) cannot he rigorously applied to the works as a whole, for the latter are made up of fragments of epochs and of productions which are quite distinct. In general, the third Gospel appears to be posterior to the two first, and exhibits the character of a much more advanced composition. We cannot, nevertheless, conclude hence that the two Gospels of Mark and Matthew were in the some condition as we have them when Luke wrote his. These two works, entitled Mark and Matthew, in fact, remained for a long time in a loose state, if I may so speak, and were susceptible of additions. On this point we have an excellent witness, who lived in the first half of the second century. This was Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, a grave man, a traditionist, who was busy all his life in collecting what was known by any one of Jesus. After declaring that in such cases he preferred oral tradition to books, Papias mentions two accounts of the acts and words of Christ. First a writing of Mark, the interpreter of the Apostle Peter, a short incomplete composition, without chronological order, including narratives and discourses (λεχθέυτα ἢ πραχθέυτα), composed from the information and recollections of the Apostle Peter; second, a collection of sayings (λόγια) written in Hebrew by Matthew, which everybody has translated as he listed. Certain it is that these two descriptions accord pretty well with the general tenor of the two books now called the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to Mark—the former characterised by its long discourses; the second, above all, by anecdote, and being much more exact than the other on minor details—brief even to dryness, the discourses few in number and indifferently composed. Nevertheless, that these two works as read by us are absolutely identical with those which were read by Papias is not sustainable, because, first, the writings of Matthew which were perused by Papias were composed solely of discourses in Hebrew, different translations of which were in circulation, and, secondly, because the writings of Mark and those of Matthew were to him perfectly distinct, written without any collusion, and it would seem m different languages. Now in the actual state of the texts, the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to Mark present parallelisms so long, and so perfectly identical, that it must be supposed that the final compiler of the first had the second before him, or vice versâ, or that both copied from the same source. That which appears the most probable is that we have not the original compilation of either Matthew or Mark, that the two first Gospels as we have them are adaptations in which each sought to fill up the lacunes of one text from the other. In fact, each was desirous of possessing a complete copy. He whose copy contained discourses only filled it out with narratives, and contrariwise. It is in this way that “The Gospel according to Matthew” is found to have appropriated all the anecdotes of Mark, and that “The Gospel according to Mark” contains to-day many of the details which have come from the Logia of Matthew. Each, moreover, imbibed largely of the oral tradition which floated around him. This tradition is so far from having been exhausted by the Gospels that the Acts of the Apostles, and of the most ancient Fathers, cite many sayings of Jesus which appear authentic and are not found in the Gospels that we possess.

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It matters little for our present purpose that we should press this analysis further, or attempt, on the one hand, to reconstruct in a kind of way the original Logia of Matthew, or, on the other, to restore the primitive narrative to what it was when it left the pen of Mark. The Logia are doubtless presented to us in the great discourses of Jesus, which make up a considerable portion of the first Gospel. These discourses, in fact, form, when detached from the rest, a complete enough narrative. As for the original narratives of Mark, the text of them seems to make its appearance now in the first, now in the second Gospel, but most often in the second. In other words, the plan of the life of Jesus in the synoptics is founded upon two original documents: first, the discourses of Jesus collected by the Apostle Matthew; second, the collection of anecdotes and of personal information which Mark committed to writing from the recollections of Peter. It may be said that we still possess these two documents, mixed up with the facts of another production, in the two first Gospels, which bear, not without reason, the titles of “The Gospel according to Matthew” and “The Gospel according to Mark” respectively.

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In any case, that which is indubitable is that very early the discourses of Jesus were reduced to writing in the Aramean tongue; also, that very early his remarkable actions were taken down. These were not texts to be settled and fixed dogmatically. Besides the Gospels which have come down to us, there might be others which professed equally to set forth the tradition of eyewitnesses. We attach little importance to these writings, while their preservers, such as Papius, who lived in the first half of the second century, preferred always to them oral tradition. Seeing that the world was believed to be near an end, people had not much inclination to write books for the future; they were solely concerned about preserving in their heart the living image of him whom they hoped to see soon again in the clouds. Hence, the small authority which, for nearly a hundred years, evangelical texts enjoyed. People made no scruple about inserting paragraphs in them, of combining various narratives, and in perfecting the one by the other. The poor man who had only one book was anxious that it should contain all that was dear to his heart. These little books were lent by one to another; each transcribed into the margin of his copy the phrases and parables he found in others which affected him. The most beautiful thing in the world has thus proceeded from an obscure and wholly popular elaboration. No edition possessed an absolute value. The two editions attributed to Clement Romanus quote the sayings of Jesus with two notable variances. Justin, who often appeals to that which he calls “The Memoirs of the Apostles,” had before him a set of evangelical documents a little different from that which we have; at all events, he does not take the trouble to give them textually. The evangelical quotations in the pseudo-Clementine homilies of Ebionite origin present the some character. The spirit was everything; the letter nothing. It was when tradition, in the latter half of the second century, lost its power, that the text bearing the names of apostles or of apostolic men assumed a decisive authority and obtained the force of law. Even then free compositions were not absolutely interdicted; following the example of Luke people continued to write special Gospels by changing the ensemble of older texts.

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Who does not recognise the value of documents constructed thus out of the tender recollections and simple narratives of the first two Christian generations, still full of the strong impressions produced by the illustrious Founder, and which seems to have survived him for a long time? Let us add that those Gospels seemed to proceed from those branches of the Christian family which were most closely related to Jesus. The final labour of compilation of the text which bears the name of Matthew appears to have been done in one of the countries situated to the north-east of Palestine, such as Gaulonitis, Auranitis, and Batanea, where many Christians took refuge at the time of the Roman war, where were still to be found at the end of the second century relatives of Jesus, and where the first Galilean tendency was longer felt than elsewhere.

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So far we have only spoken of the three Gospels called the synoptic. It now remains to speak of the fourth, the one which bears the name of John. Here the question is much more difficult. Polycarp, the most intimate disciple of John, who often quotes the synoptics in his epistle to the Philippians, makes no allusion to the fourth Gospel. Papias, who was equally attached to the school of John, and who, if he had not been his disciple, as Irenæus believes he was, had associated a great deal with his immediate disciples—Papias, who had eagerly collected all the oral accounts relative to Jesus, does not say a word of a “Life of Jesus” written by the Apostle John. If such a mention could have been found in his work, Eusebius, who notices everything in it which bears on the literary history of the apostolic age, would undoubtedly have mentioned it. Justin, perhaps, knew the fourth Gospel; but he certainly did not regard it as the work of the Apostle John, since he expressly designates that apostle as the author of the Apocalypse, and takes not the least account of the fourth Gospel in the numerous facts which he extracts from the “Memoirs of the Apostles.” More than this, upon all the points where the synoptics and the fourth Gospel differ he adopts opinions at complete variance with the latter. This is all the more surprising, seeing that the dogmatic tendencies of the fourth Gospel are marvellously adapted to Justin. The same remarks apply to the pseudo-Clementine homilies. The words of Jesus quoted by that book are of the synoptic type. In two or three places there are, it would seem, facts borrowed from the fourth Gospel. But the author of the Homilies certainly does not accord to that Gospel an apostolic authority, since on many points be puts himself in direct contradiction with him. It appears that Marcion (about 140) could not have known the said Gospel, or attributed to it no importance as an inspired book. This Gospel accorded so well with his ideas that, if he had known it, he would have adopted it eagerly, and would not have been obliged, so as to have an ideal Gospel, to make a corrected edition of the Gospel of Luke. Finally, the apocryphal Gospels which may be referred to the second century, like the Protevangel of James, the Gospel of Thomas the Israelite, embellished the synoptic canvas, but they took no account of the Gospel of John. The intrinsic difficulties which result from the reading of the fourth Gospel itself are not less forcible. How is it that, by the side of information so precise, and in places felt to be that of eyewitnesses, we find discourses totally different from those of Matthew? How is it that the Gospel

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in question does not contain a parable or an exorcism? How is it to be explained that side by side with a general plan of the life of Jesus, which plan in some respects seems more satisfactory and more exact than that of the synoptics, appear those singular passages in which one perceives a dogmatic interest peculiar to the author, ideas most foreign to Jesus, and sometimes indications which put us on our guard to the good faith of the narrator? How is it, finally, that by the side of views the most pure, the most just, the most truly evangelical, we find those blemishes which we would rather look upon as the interpolation of an ardent sectary? Is this indeed John, son of Zebedee, the brother of James (who is not mentioned once in the fourth Gospel), who has written in Greek those abstract lessons on metaphysics, to which the synoptics offer no analogy? Is this the essentially Judaising author of the Apocalypse, who, in so few years, should have been stripped to this extent of his style and of his ideas? Is it an “Apostle of Circumcision,” who is likely to have composed a narrative more hostile to Judaism than the whole of St. Paul’s, a narrative in which the word “Jew” is almost equivalent to That of “enemy of Jesus”? Is it indeed he whose example was invoked by the partisans of the celebration of the Jewish passover in favour of their opinion, who could speak with a sort of disdain of the “Feasts of the Jews” and of the “Passover of the Jews”? All of this is important. For my part, I reject the idea that the fourth Gospel could have been written by the pen of a quondam Galilean fisherman. But that, taken all in all, this Gospel may have proceeded, about the end of the first century or the beginning of the second, from one of the schools of Asia Minor which was attached to John, that it presents to us a version of the life of the Master worthy of high consideration and often of being preferred, is indeed rendered probable, both by external evidence and by examining the document under consideration. And, in the first place, no one doubts that about the year 170 the fourth Gospel did exist. At that date there broke out at Laodicea on the Lycus a controversy relative to the Passover, in which our Gospel played an important part. Apollinaris, Athenagoras, Polycrates, the author of the epistle to the Churches of Vienne and of Lyons, professed already in regard to the alleged narrative of John the opinion that it would soon become orthodox. Theophilus of Antioch (about 180) said positively that the Apostle John was the author of it. Irenæus and the Canon of Muratori attest the complete triumph of our Gospel, a triumph in respect of which there could no longer be any doubt. But, if about the year 170 the fourth Gospel appeared as a writing of the Apostle John and invested with full authority, is it not evident that at this date it was not of ancient creation? Tatian, the author of the epistle to Diogenatus, seems indeed to have made use of it. The part played by our Gospel in Gnosticism, and especially in the system of Valentinus, in Montanism and in the controversy of the Aloges, is not less remarkable, and shows that from the last half of the second century this Gospel was included in every controversy, and served as a corner stone for the development of the dogma. The school of John is the one whose progress is the most apparent during the second century; Irenæus proceeded from the school of John, and between him and the Apostle there was only Polycarp. Now, Irenæus has not a doubt as to the authenticity of the fourth Gospel. Let as add that the first epistle attributed to Saint John is, according to all appearances, by

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the same author as the fourth Gospel; now the epistle seems to have been known to Polycarp; it was, it is said, cited by Papias; Irenæus recognised it as John’s.

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But, as some light is now required to be cast upon the reading of the work itself, we shall remark, first, that the author therein always speaks as an eyewitness. He wishes to pass for the Apostle John, and it is clearly seen that he writes in the interest of that apostle. In each he betrays the design of fortifying the authority of the son of Zebedee, of showing that he was the favourite of Jesus, and the most far-seeing of his disciples; that on all the most solemn occasions (at the Supper, at Calvary, at the Tomb), he occupied the chief place. The relations of John with Peter, which were on the whole fraternal, although not excluding a certain rivalry; the hatred, on the other hand, of Judas, a hatred probably anterior to the betrayal, seem to break through here and there. At times one is constrained to believe that John, in his old age, having perused the evangelical narratives which were in circulation, on the one hand, remarked various inaccuracies; on the other, was chagrined at seeing that in the history of Christ he was not accorded an important enough place; that then he commenced to recount a multitude of things which were better known to him than to the others, with the intention of showing that, in many instances where Peter only was mentioned, he had figured with and before him. Even during the life of Jesus these petty sentiments of jealousy had been betrayed between the sons of Zebedee and the other disciples. Since the death of James, his brother, John remained the sole inheritor of the intimate remembrances of which the two apostles, by common consent, were the depositaries. Those clear remembrances were preserved in the circle of John, and as the ideas of the times in the matter of literary good faith differed much from ours, a disciple, or rather one of those numerous sectaries, already semi-Gnostics, who from the end of the first century, in Asia Minor, commenced to modify greatly the idea of Christ, might have been tempted to take the pen for the apostle and to make on his own account a free revision of his Gospel. It would cost him no more to speak in the name of John than it cost the pious author of the second Epistle of Peter to write a letter in the name of the latter. To identify himself with the beloved Apostle of Jesus, he espoused all his sentiments, even his littlenesses. Hence this perpetual design of the alleged author to recall that he is the last surviving eyewitness, and the pleasure he takes in relating circumstances which could only be known to him. Hence, so many petty minute details which he would like passed off as the commentaries of an annotator: “It was the sixth hour;” “it was night;” “that man was called Malchus;” “they had lighted a fire, for it was cold;” “the coat was without seam.” Hence, finally, the bad arrangement of the compilation, the irregularity of the narrative, the disjointedness of the first chapters—so many inexplicable features, if we go on the supposition that our Gospel is a mere theological thesis without any historic value, yet perfectly comprehensible if we regard it as the recollections of an old man arranged without the assistance of those from whom they proceeded—recollections, sometimes possessing uncommon freshness, at others having been subjected to singular modifications. An important distinction, in fact, is to he remarked in the Gospel of John. This Gospel, on the one hand, presents a sketch of the life of Jesus which differs considerably from that of the synoptics.

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On the other, it puts into the mouth of Jesus discourses whose tone, style, character and doctrines have nothing in common with the Logia contained in the synoptics. In respect of the latter, the difference is such that one must make an unqualified choice. If Jesus spoke as Matthew would have us believe, he could not have spoken in the manner represented by John. Between these two authorities no one has hesitated, or will ever hesitate. Removed by a thousand leagues from the simple, disinterested and impersonal tone of the synoptics, the Gospel of John shows at every step the prepossession of the apologist, the arrière pensée of the sectary, the desire to establish a thesis and to overcome his adversaries. It was not by pretentious tirades, clumsy, badly written, and appealing little to the moral sense, that Jesus founded his divine work. Even though Papias had not informed us that Matthew wrote the sayings of Jesus in their original tongue, the natural, the ineffable truth, the incomparable charm contained in the synoptic Gospels, the profoundly Hebraic turn of these discourses, the analogies which they present to the sayings of the Jewish doctors of the period, their perfect harmony with the Galilean nature—all these characteristics, compared with the obscure Gnosticism and the distorted metaphysics which fill the discourses of John, speak loudly enough. We do not mean to say that there are not to be found in the discourses of John some brilliant flashes, some traits which really proceeded from Jesus. But the mystical tone of these discourses corresponds in nothing to the character of the eloquence of Jesus, such as it is pictured to us in the synoptics. A new spirit breathes through them; Gnoticism has previously found a footing; the Galilean era of the kingdom of God is at an end, the hope of the near advent of Jesus is further off; we enter the arid realm of metaphysics, into the darkness of abstract dogmatism. The spirit of Jesus is not there, and if the son of Zebedee has indeed traced those pages, it is to be supposed that in writing them he had forgotten the Lake of Gennesareth and the charming conversations he had heard upon its banks. One circumstance, moreover, which proves indeed that the discourses reported by the fourth Gospel are historical fragments, but that they ought to be regarded as compositions, intended to cover, with the authority of Jesus, certain doctrines dear to the author, is their complete harmony with the intellectual condition of Asia Minor at the time they were written. Asia Minor was then the theatre of a strange movement of syncretic philosophy; all the germs of Gnosticism existed there already. Cerinthus, a contemporary of John, said that æon named Christos was united by baptism to the man named Jesus, and had separated from him on the cross. Some of the disciples of John would appear to have drunk deeply from these strange springs. Can we affirm that the Apostle himself had not been subject to the same influences, that he did not experience something anolagous to the change which was wrought in St. Paul, and of which the epistle to the Colossians is the principal witness? No, certainly not. It may be that after the crisis of 68 (the date of the Apocalypse), and of the year 70 (the ruin of Jerusalem), the old Apostle, with an ardent and plastic soul, disabused of the belief of the near appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds, inclined towards the ideas that he found around him, many of which amalgamated quite well with certain Christian doctrines. In imputing these new ideas to Jesus, he only followed a very natural leaning. Our

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recollections are, like everything else, transformable; the ideal of a person we have known changes as we change. Regarding Jesus as the incarnation of truth, John has succeeded in attributing to him that which he had come to accept as the truth.

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It is nevertheless much more probable that John himself had no part in them, that the change was made around him rather than by him, and doubtless after his death. The long age of the apostle may have terminated in such a state of feebleness that he was in a measure at the mercy of those around him. A secretary might take advantage of this state to speak in his name that which the world called par excellence, “the old man,” Ὁ Πρεσβύτερος. Certain parts of the fourth Gospel have been added subsequently; such is the whole xxi. chapter, in which the author seems to have resolved to render homage to the apostle Peter after his death, and to answer the objections which might be drawn or were already drawn from the death of John himself (v. 21-23). Several other places bear the traces of erasures and of corrections. Not being accounted as wholly the work of John, the book could well remain fifty years in obscurity. Little by little people got accustomed to it, and finished by accepting it. Even before it had become canonical many simply made use of it as a book of mediocre authority, yet very edifying. On the other hand, the contradictions that it offered to the synoptic Gospels, which were much more widely circulated, prevented its being taken into account when setting forth the contexture of the life of Jesus, such as it was imagined to be. In this mode some explain away the whimsical contradictions presented in the writings of Justin and in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, in which are to be found traces of our Gospel, but which certainly are not to be placed upon the same footing as the synoptics. Hence also those species of allusions, which are not faithful quotations, but were made from it about the year 180. Hence, finally, this singularity, that the fourth Gospel appeared to emerge slowly from the Church of Asia in the second century, was first adopted by the Gnostics, but only obtained in the orthodox Church very limited credence, as can be seen from the controversy on the Passover, then it was universally recognised. I am sometimes led to believe that it was the fourth Gospel of which Papias was thinking when he opposed to the exact information in regard to the life of Jesus the long discourses and the singular precepts which others have attributed to him. Papias and the old Jadæo-Christian party came to esteem such novelties as very reprehensible. This could not have been the only instance that a book which was at first heretical would have forced the gates of the orthodox Church and become one of its rules of faith. There is one thing, at least, which I regard as very probable, and that is, that the book was written before the year 100; that is to say, at a time when the synoptics had not yet a complete canonicity. After this date it is impossible any longer to conceive that the author could force himself to go beyond the limits of the “Apostolic Memoirs.” To Justin, and apparently to Papias, the synoptic cadre constitutes the true and only plan of the life of Jesus. An impostor who wrote about the year 120 to 130 a fantastic gospel contented himself with treating in his own way the received version,

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as had been done in the apocryphal Gospels, and did not reverse from top to bottom what was regarded as the essential lines of the life of Jesus. This is so true that, from the second half of the second century, these contradictions became a serious difficulty in the hands of the aloges, and obliged the defenders of the fourth Gospel to invent the most embarrassing solutions. There is nothing to prove that the author of the fourth Gospel had, when writing, any of the synoptic Gospels under his eyes. The striking similarities of his narrative to the other three Gospels as touching the Passion leads one to suppose that there was then for the Passion as well as for the Last Supper an almost fixed account, which people knew by heart. It is impossible at this distance of time to comprehend all these singular problems, and we should undoubtedly encounter many surprises if it were given to us to penetrate the secrets of that mysterious school of Ephesus, which appeared frequently to take pleasure in pursuing obscure paths. But the latter is a capital test. Every person who sets himself to write the life of Jesus without having a decided opinion upon the relative value of the Gospels, who allows himself to be guided solely by the sentiment of the subject, would, in many instances, be induced to prefer the narrative of the fourth Gospel to that of the synoptics. The last months of the life of Jesus especially are explained only by John; several details of the Passion, which are unintelligible in the synoptics, assume both probability and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. On the other hand, I can defy anybody to compose a life of Jesus that is understandable, which takes into account the discourses that the alleged John imputes to Jesus. This fashion of his of incessantly preaching himself up and of exhibiting himself, this perpetual argumentation, this studied stage-effect, these long reasonings attached to each miracle, these lifeless and incoherent discourses, the tone of which is so often false and unequal, could not be endured by a man of taste alongside of the delightful phraseology which, according to the synoptics, constituted the soul of the teaching of Jesus. There are here evidently fictitious fragments, which represent to us the sermons of Jesus in the same way as the dialogues of Plato set forth the conversations of Socrates. They resemble the variations of a musician improvising on his own account upon a given theme. The theme in question may have existed previously; but in the execution the artist gives his fancy free scope. We perceive the factitious progressions, the rhetoric, the verisimilitude. Let us add that the vocabulary of Jesus is nowhere to be found in the fragments of which we speak. The expression of “Kingdom of God,” which was so common with the master, does not appear even once. But, contrariwise, the style of the discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth Gospel offers the most complete analogy to that of parts of the narrative of the same Gospel and to that of the author of the epistles called John. We see that the author of the fourth Gospel, in writing these discourses, did not give his recollections, but the somewhat monotonous workings of his own thought. Quite a new mystical language is displayed in them, language characterised by the frequent employment of the words “world,” “truth,” “life,” “light,” “darkness,” and which resembles much less that of the synoptics than that of the book of the sages—Philo and the Valentinians. If Jesus had ever spoken in that style, which

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is neither Hebraic nor Jewish, how does it come that, amongst the auditors, only a single one of the latter has kept the secret?

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For the rest, literary history offers one example which presents a certain analogy to the historic phenomenon we have just been describing, and which serves to explain it. Socrates, who, like Jesus, did not write, is known to us through two of his disciples, Xenophon and Plato; the former corresponding with the synoptics by reason of his compilation, at once consecutive, transparent and impersonal; the latter, by reason of his robust individuality, recalling the author of the fourth Gospel. In order to describe the Socratic teaching must we follow the “Dialogues” of Plato, or the “Discourses” of Xenophon? In such a case doubt is not possible; everyone sticks to the “Discourses” and not to the “Dialogues.” Does Plato nevertheless teach us nothing concerning Socrates? In writing the biography of the latter, would it be good criticism to neglect the dialogues? Who would dare to maintain this? Without pronouncing upon the question, it is material to know as to what hand indited the fourth Gospel; even if we were persuaded it was not that of the son of Zebedee, we can at least admit that this work possesses some title to be called “the Gospel according to John.” The historical sketch of the fourth Gospel is, in my opinion, the life of Jesus, such as it was known to the immediate circle of John. It is also my belief that this school was better acquainted with the different exterior circumstances of the life of the Founder than the group whose recollections go to make up the synoptic Gospels. Notably, in regard to the sojourns of Jesus at Jerusalem, it was in possession of facts that the other Gospels had not. Presbyteros Joannes, who is probably not a different person from the Apostle John, regarded, it is said, the narrative of Mark as incomplete and confused; he even had a theory which explained the omissions of the latter. Certain passages in Luke, which are a kind of echo of the Johannine traditions, prove, moreover, that the traditions preserved by the fourth Gospel were not to the rest of the Christian family something which was entirely unknown. These explanations will suffice, I think, to show the motives which in the course of my narrative have determined me to give the preference to this or that one of the four guides which we have for the life of Jesus. On the whole, I admit the four canonical Gospels to be important documents. All four ascend to the century which succeeded the death of Jesus; but their historic value is very diverse. Matthew evidently merits unlimited confidence in respect of the discourses; the latter are the Logia, the very notes which have been extracted from a clear and lively memory of the teaching of Jesus. A species of éclat at once mild and terrible, a divine force, if I may so speak, underlines these words, detaches them from the context, and to the critic renders them easily distinguishable. The person who undertakes the task of carving out of evangelical history a consecutive narrative possesses, in this regard, an excellent touchstone. The actual words of Jesus, so to speak, reveal themselves; as soon as we touch them in this chaos of traditions of unequal authority, we feel them vibrate; they translate themselves spontaneously and fit into the narrative naturally, where they constitute an unsurpassable relief.

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The narrative parts which are grouped in the first Gospel around this primitive nucleus do not possess the same authority. In them are to be found many silly enough legends, which proceeded from the piety of the second Christian generation. The accounts which Matthew gives in common with Mark present faults of transcription which prove a mediocre acquaintance with Palestine. Many of the episodes are repeated twice, several persons are duplicated, which shows that different sources have been utilised and largely amalgamated. The Gospel of Mark is much more firm, more precise, and less weighted with circumstances which have been added. Of the three synoptics it is the one which has remained the most primitive, the most original, the Gospel to which has been annexed the fewest posterior elements. Material details are given in Mark with a clearness which we should seek in vain for in the other evangelists. He delights to report certain sayings of Jesus in Syro-Chaldean. His observations are most minute, and come, no doubt, from an eyewitness. There is nothing to disprove that this eyewitness, who evidently had followed Jesus, who had loved him and observed him very closely, and who had preserved a lively image of him, was the Apostle Peter himself, as is maintained by Papias. As for the work of Luke, its historic value is sensibly more feeble. It is a document at second hand. Its manner of narration is more matured. The sayings of Jesus are there more reflective, more sententious. Some sentences are carried to excess and are false. Writing outside Palestine, and certainly after the siege of Jerusalem, the author indicates the places with less exactness than the two other synoptics; he is too fond of representing the temple as an oratory, where people go to do their devotions; he does not speak of the Herodians; he modifies details in order to bring the different narratives into closer agreement; he softens down passages which had become embarrassing because of the more exalted idea which people around him had attained to in regard to the divinity of Jesus; he exaggerates the marvellous; he commits errors of geography and of topography; he omits the Hebraic glosses; he appears to know little of Hebrew; he does not quote a word of Jesus in that language; he calls all the localities by their Greek names; he corrects at times in a clumsy manner the sayings of Jesus. We perceive in the author a compiler, a man who has not seen directly the witnesses, who labours at the texts, and permits himself to do them great violence in order to make them agree. Luke had probably under his eyes the original narrative of Mark and the Logia of Matthew. But he treats them with great freedom; at times he runs two anecdotes or two parables together to make one; sometimes he divides one in order to make two. He interprets the documents according to his own mind; he has not the absolute impassibility of Matthew and Mark. We might affirm this of his tastes and of his personal tendencies: he is a very exact devotee; he holds that Jesus has accomplished all the Jewish rites; he is a passionate democrat and Ebionite; that is to say, much opposed to property, and is persuaded that the poor will soon have their revenge; he is specially partial to the anecdotes which put into relief the conversion of sinners and the exaltation of the humble; he frequently modifies the ancient traditions so as to give them this acceptation. In his first pages he includes the legends touching the infancy of Jesus, related with the long amplifications,

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the canticles and the conventional proceedings which constitute the essential feature of the apocryphal Gospels. Finally, in the account of the last hours of Jesus, he introduces some circumstances which are full of a tender sentiment, as well as certain sayings of Jesus of rare beauty, which are not to be found in the more authentic narratives, and in which can be detected the hand of the legendary. Luke has probably borrowed them from a more recent collection, in which it is seen his chief aim was to excite sentiments of piety. A great reserve was naturally bespoken in regard to a document of this nature. It would have been as little scientific to neglect it as to employ it without discernment. Luke had under his eyes originals which we no longer have. He is less an evangelist than a biographer of Jesus, a “harmonist,” a reviser, after the manner of Marcion and Tatian. But he is a biographer of the first century, a divine artist who, independently of the information he has extracted from more ancient sources, shows us the character of the Founder with a happiness of treatment, a uniformity of inspiration, and a clearness that the other two synoptic do not possess. His Gospel is the one the reading of which possesses most charm: for, not to mention the incomparable beauty of its common basis, he combines a degree of art and of skill in composition which singularly enhances the effect of the picture, without seriously marring its truthfulness. To sum up, we are warranted in saying that the synoptic compilation has passed through three stages: first, the original documentary stage (λόγια of Matthew, λεχθέντα ἢ πραχθέντα of Mark), primary compilations no longer in existence; second, the simple amalgamation stage, in which the original documents were thrown together without any regard to literary form, and without any personal traits on the part of the authors becoming manifest (the present Gospels of Matthew and Mark); third, the combination stage, that of careful composition and reflection, in which we are conscious of an effort made to reconcile the different versions (the Gospel of Luke, the Gospels of Marcion, Tatian, &c.). The Gospel of John, as we have above said, is a composition of another order and altogether distinct. It will be observed that I have not made any use of apocryphal Gospels. In no sense ought these compositions to be placed on the same footing as the canonical Gospels. They are tiresome and puerile amplifications, having almost entirely the canonicals for a basis, and adding almost nothing to them of any particular value. Contrariwise, I have been most careful in collecting the shreds which have been preserved by the Fathers of the Church, by the ancient Gospels which formerly existed simultaneously with the canonicals, but which are now lost, such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the Gospels attributed to Justin, Marcion, and Tatian. The first two possess a peculiar importance, inasmuch as they were indited in Aramean like the Logia of Matthew; as they appear to have formed a version of the Gospel attributed to that apostle, and as they were the Gospel of Ebionim, that is to say, of those small Christian sects of Batanea who preserved the use of the Syro-Chaldean tongue, and appear to have continued, to some extent, in the footsteps of Jesus. But it most be owned that, in the condition they have come down

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to us, these Gospels are inferior, for the purposes of criticism, to the edition of the Gospel of Matthew which we possess. l

It will now, I presume, be understood what sort of historic value I put upon the Gospels. They are neither biographies after the manner of Suetonius, nor fictitious legends, after the manner of Philostratus; they are legendary biographies. I place them at once alongside of the legends of the saints, the lives of Plotinus, Proclus, Isidore, and other compositions of the same sort, in which historical truth and the desire to present models of virtue are combined in divers degrees. Inexactitude, a trait common to all popular compositions, makes itself particularly felt in them. Let us suppose that fifteen or twenty years ago three or four old soldiers of the Empire had individually set themselves to write a life of Napoleon from recollections of him. It is clear that their narratives would present numerous errors, great discordances. One of them would place Wagram before Marengo; another would boldly state that Napoleon ousted the government of Robespierre from the Tuileries; a third would omit expeditions of the highest importance. But one thing, possessing a great degree of truthfulness, would certainly result from these simple narratives—that is, the character of the hero, the impression he made around him. In this sense such popular narratives would be worth more than a solemn and official history. The same can also be said of the Gospels. Bent solely on bringing out strongly the excellency of the master, his miracles, his teaching, the evangelists manifest entire indifference to everything that is not of the very spirit of Jesus. The contradictions in respect of time, place, and persons were regarded as insignificant; for just as the greater the degree of inspiration that is attributed to the words of Jesus, so the less was granted to the compilers themselves. The latter looked upon themselves as simple scribes, and cared only for one thing—to omit nothing they knew.2 Without doubt some certain preconceived ideas must have been associated with such recollections. Several narratives, especially in Luke, are invented in order to bring out more vividly certain traits of the personality of Jesus. This personality itself underwent alteration each day. Jesus would be a unique phenomenon in history if, with the part which he played, he had not soon become imbued with it. The legend respecting Alexander was concocted before the generation of his companions in arms was extinct; that respecting St. Francis d’Assisi began in his lifetime. A rapid work of transformation went on in the same manner in the twenty or thirty years which followed the death of Jesus, and imposed upon his biography the absolute traits of an ideal legend. Death makes perfect the most perfect man; it renders him faultless to those who have loved him. At the same time, the wish to paint the Master created likewise the desire to explain him. Many anecdotes were concocted in order to prove that the prophecies regarded as Messianic had been fulfilled in him. But this procedure, the importance of which is undeniable, would not suffice to explain

2

See the passage from Papias, before cited.

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everything. No Jewish work of the time gives a series of prophecies declaring formally what the Messiah was to accomplish. Many of the Messianic allusions referred to by the evangelists are so subtle, so indirect, that it is impossible to believe they all had relation to a generally admitted doctrine. Sometimes they reasoned thus: “The Messiah was to do such a thing; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore Jesus has done such a thing.” Sometimes they reasoned inversely: “Such a thing has happened to Jesus; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore such a thing was to happen to the Messiah.”3 Explanations which are too simple are always false when it is a question of analysing the tissues of those profound creations of popular sentiment which baffle all science by their fulness and infinite variety. It is scarcely necessary to say that with such documents, in order to present only what is incontestable, we must confine ourselves to general lines. In almost all ancient histories, even in those which are much less legendary than these, details give rise to infinite doubts. When we have two accounts of the some fact, it is extremely rare that the two accounts are in accord. Is not this a reason, when we are confronted with but one perplexity, for falling into many? We may say that amongst the anecdotes, the discourses, the celebrated sayings reported by the historians, there is not one strictly accurate. Were there stenographers to take down these fleeting words? Was there an annalist always present to note the gestures, the conduct, the sentiments, of the actors? Let any one essay to attain to the truth as to the manner in which such or such a contemporary fact took place; he will not succeed. Two accounts of the same event given by two eyewitnesses differ essentially. Must we, hence, reject all the colouring of the narratives, and confine ourselves to recording the bare facts only? That would be to suppress history. Certainly I think, however, that if we except certain short and almost mnemonic axioms, none of the discourses reported by Matthew are textual; there is hardly one of our stenographic reports which is so. I willingly admit that that admirable account of the Passion embraces a multitude of trifling inaccuracies. Would it, however, be writing the history of Jesus to omit those sermons which exhibit to us in such a vivid manner the nature of his discourses, and to limit ourselves to saying, with Josephus and Tacitus, “that he was put to death by the order of Pilate” at the instigation of the priests”? That would be, in my opinion, a kind of inexactitude worse than that to which one exposes himself when admitting the details supplied by the texts. These details are not true to the letter, but they are rendered true by a superior truth; they are more true than the naked truth, in the sense that they are truths rendered expressive and articulate and raised to the height of an idea. I beg those who think that I have placed an exaggerated confidence in narratives which are in great part legendary to take note of the observation I have just made. To what would the life of Alexander be reduced if it were limited to that which is materially certain? Even partly erroneous

3

See, for example, John xix. 23, 24.

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traditions contain a portion of truth which history may not pass over. No one has reproached M. Sprenger for having, in writing the life of Mahomet, set much store by the hadith or oral traditions concerning the prophet, and for often having imputed to his hero words which are only known through this source. The traditions respecting Mahomet, nevertheless, do not have a superior historical character to the discourses and narratives which compose the Gospels. They were written between the year 50 and the year 140 of the Hegira. When the history of the Jewish schools in the ages which immediately preceded and followed the birth of Christianity shall be written, no one will make any scruple of attributing to Hillel, Shammai, Gamaliel, the maxims imputed to them by the Mishna and the Gemara, although these great compilations were written many centuries after the time of the doctors just mentioned. Contrariwise, those who believe that history ought to consist of a reproduction without comments of the documents which have come down to us, I beg them to take notice that such a course is not allowable. The four principal documents are in flagrant contradiction with one another; Josephus, moreover, sometimes rectifies them. It is necessary to make a choice. To allege that an event cannot take place in two ways at once, or in an absurd manner, is not to impose à priori philosophy upon history. Because he possesses several different versions of the same fact, or because credulity has mixed with all these versions fabulous circumstances, the historian most not conclude that the fact is not a fact; but he ought, in such a case, to be very cautious,—to examine the texts, and to proceed by induction. There is one class of narratives especially, apropos of which this principle must necessarily be applied—narratives of the supernatural. To seek to explain these narratives, or to transform them into legends, is not to mutilate facts in the name of theory; it is to begin with the observation of the very facts themselves. None of the miracles with which the old histories are filled took place under scientific conditions. Observation, which has not once been falsified, teaches us that miracles never take place save in times and countries in which they are believed, and in presence of persons disposed to believe them. No miracle ever took place in presence of an assembly of men capable of testing the miraculous character of the event. Neither common people nor men of the world are equal to the latter. It requires great precautions and long habit of scientific research. In our own days, have we not seen the great majority of people become dupes of the grossest frauds or of puerile illusions! Marvellous facts, attested by the populations of small towns, have, thanks to closer investigation, been condemned.4 Since it is proved that no contemporary miracle will bear discussion, is it not probable that the miracles of the past, which have all been performed in popular gatherings, would equally present their share of illusion, if It were possible to criticise them in detail?

4

See the Gazette des Tribunaux, 10th Sept, and 11th Nov., 1851; 28th May, 1857.

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It is not, then, in the name of this or that philosophy, but in the name of unbroken experience, that we banish the miracle from history. We do not say, “The miracle is impossible.” We say, “So far, a miracle has never been proved.” If to-morrow a thaumaturgist were to come forward with credentials sufficiently important to be discussed; if he were to announce that he was able, say, to raise the dead; what would be done? A commission, composed of physiologists, physicists, chemists, persons accustomed to historical criticism, would be named. That commission would choose a corpse, would assure itself that the death was indeed real, would designate the room in which the experiment should be made, would arrange a whole series of precautions, so as to leave no chance of doubt. If, under such conditions, resuscitation were effected, a probability, almost equal to certainty, would be established. As, however, it ought always to be possible to repeat an experiment—to do over again that which has been done once—and as, in the case of miracle, there can be no question of facility or difficulty, the thaumaturgist would be invited to reproduce his marvellous feat under different circumstances, upon other corpses, in another place. If the miracle was repeated each time, two things would be proved: first, that supernatural facts take place in the world; second, that the power of producing them belongs, or is delegated to, certain individuals. But who does not perceive that a miracle never took place under these conditions? that hitherto the thaumaturgist has always chosen the subject of the experiment, chosen the spot, chosen the public; that, moreover, it is the people themselves who most often, in consequence of the invincible desire to see something divine in great events and great men, create afterwards the marvellous legends? Until the order of things changes, we maintain it, then, as a principle of historical criticism, that a supernatural account cannot be admitted as such, that it always implies credulity or imposture, that it is the duty of the historian to explain it, and search out what share of truth, or of error, it may conceal. Such are the rules which have been adhered to in the composition of this narrative. In the reading of the texts, I have been able to combine with it an important source of information—the viewing of the places where the events occurred. The scientific mission, having for its object the exploration of ancient Phœnicia, which I directed in 1860 and 1861,5 led me to reside on the frontiers of Galilee, and to travel thither frequently. I have traversed, in every sense of the term, the country of the Gospels; I have visited Jerusalem, Hebron, and Samaria; scarcely any important locality in the history of Jesus has escaped me. All this history, which seems at a distance to float in the clouds of an unreal world, took thus a form, a solidity, which astonished me. The striking agreement of the texts and the places, the marvellous harmony of the evangelical idea, and of the country which served it as a framework, were to me a revelation. Before my eyes I had a fifth Gospel, disfigured though still legible, and from that time, in the narratives of Matthew and Mark, I saw instead of an

5

The work which will contain the results of this mission is in the press.

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abstract being, who could be said never to have existed, an admirable human figure living and moving. During the summer, having to go up to Ghazir, in Lebanon, to take a little repose, I fixed, in rapid sketches, the picture as it had appeared to me, and from them resulted this history. When a cruel affliction came to hasten my departure, I had only a few pages to write. In this manner the book was almost entirely composed near the very places where Jesus was born and lived. Since my return, I have laboured unceasingly to complete and arrange in detail the rough sketch which I had hastily written in a Maronite cabin, with five or six volumes around me. Many will perhaps regret the biographical form which my work has thus taken. When, for the first time, I conceived the idea of writing a history of the origins of Christianity, my intention was, in fact, to produce a history of doctrines, in which men and their actions would have hardly had a place. Jesus was scarcely to be named; I was especially bent on showing how the ideas which, under cover of his name, were produced, took root and covered the world. But I have since learned that history is not a simple game of abstractions; that men are more important than doctrines. It was not a certain theory in regard to justification and redemption which caused the Reformation; it was Luther and Calvin. Parseeism, Hellenism, Judaism, might have been able to combine under all forms; the doctrines of the Resurrection and of the Word might have gone on developing for ages without producing that grand, unique, and fruitful fact, which is called Christianity. That fact is the work of Jesus, of St. Paul, and of the apostles. To write the history of Jesus, of St. Paul, and of the apostles, is to write the history of the origins of Christianity. The anterior movements do not belong to our subject except as serving to explain the characters If these extraordinary men, who, naturally, could not be severed from that which preceded them. In such an effort, to make the great souls of the past live again, some degree of divination and of conjecture must be permitted. A great life is an organic whole which cannot be exhibited by the mere agglomeration of small facts. It requires a profound sentiment to embrace the whole, and to make it a perfect unity. The artist method in such a subject is a good guide; the exquisite tact of a Goethe would discover how to apply it. The essential condition of the creations of art is to form a living system of which all the parts are mutually dependent and connected. In histories of this kind, the great indication that we hold to the truth is to have succeeded in combining the texts in such a fashion that they shall constitute a logical and probable narrative, in which nothing shall be out of tune. The secret laws of life, of the progression of organic products, of the action of minute particles, ought to be consulted at each moment; for what is required to be reproduced is not the material circumstance, which it is impossible to verify; it is the soul itself of history; what most be sought after is not the petty certainty of minutiæ, it is the correctness of the general sentiment, the truthfulness of the colouring. Each detail which departs from the rules of classic narration ought to warn us to be on our guard; for the fact which requires to be related has been confined to the

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necessities of things, natural and harmonious. If we do not succeed in rendering it such by our narrative, it is only because we have not attained to seeing it aright. Suppose that, in restoring the Minerva of Phidias according to the texts, we produced an ensemble at once dry, jarring artificial; what must we conclude? Only one thing: the texts lack an appreciative interpretation; we must inquire into them calmly until they can be made to approximate and furnish a whole in which all the parts are happily blended. Should we then be sure of having feature for feature of the Greek statue? No; but we should not, at least, have the caricature of it; we should have the general spirit of the work—one of the forms in which it might have existed. This sentiment of a living organism we have not hesitated to take as our guide in the general arrangement of the narrative. The reading of the Gospels would be sufficient to prove that the authors, although conceiving a very true idea of the Life of Jesus, have not been guided by very rigorous chronological data; Papias, moreover, expressly teaches this, and bases his opinion upon evidence which seems to emanate from the Apostle John himself. The expressions, “At this time . . . after that . . . then . . . and it came to pass . . .” &c., are the simple transitions designed to connect different narratives with each other. To leave all the information furnished by the Gospels in the disorder in which tradition gives it, would no more be writing the history of Jesus than it would be writing the history of a celebrated man to give pell-mell the letters and anecdotes of his youth, his old age, and of his maturity. The Koran, which presents to us, in the loosest manner possible, fragments of the different epochs in the life of Mahomet, has discovered its secret to ingenious criticism; the chronological order in which the fragments were composed has been hit upon in such a way as to leave little room for doubt Such a re-arrangement is much more difficult in the Gospel, owing to the public life of Jesus having been shorter and less eventful than the life of the founder of Islamism. Nevertheless, the attempt to find a thread which shall serve as a guide through this labyrinth, ought not to be taxed with gratuitous subtlety. There is no great abuse of hypothesis in premising that a religious founder commences by attaching himself to the moral aphorisms which are already in circulation, and to the practices which are in vogue; nor, as he advances and gets full possession of his idea, that he delights in a kind of calm and poetical eloquence, remote from all controversy, sweet and free as pure feeling; nor, as he gradually warms, that he is animated by opposition, and finishes by polemics and strong invectives. Such are the periods which are plainly distinguishable in the Koran. The order which, with extremely fine tact, is adopted by the synoptic, supposes an analogous progress. If we read Matthew attentively, we shall find, in the arrangement of the discourses, a gradation greatly analogous to that just indicated. We may observe also the studied turns of expression which are made use of when it is desired to show the progress of the ideas of Jesus. The reader may, if he prefers, see in the divisions adopted in this respect, only the breaks indispensable for the methodical exposition of a profound and complicated thought.

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If love for a subject can assist in the understanding of it, it will also, I hope, be recognised that I have not been wanting in this condition. To construct the history of a religion, it is necessary first to have believed it (without this, we should not be able to understand why it has charmed and

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satisfied the human conscience); in the second place, to believe it no longer in an absolute manner, for absolute faith is incompatible with sincere history. But love exists apart from faith. In order not to attach one’s self to any of the forms which captivate the adoration of men, one need not renounce the appreciation of that which they contain of good and of beautiful. No transitory apparition exhausts the Divinity; God was revealed before Jesus—God will reveal Himself after him. Profoundly unequal, and so much the more Divine, because they are grander and more spontaneous, the manifestations of God which are hidden in the depths of the human conscience are all of the same order. Jesus cannot then belong solely to those who call themselves his disciples. He is the common honour of him who carries a human heart. His glory does not consist in being banished from history; we render him a truer worship in showing that all history is incomprehensible without him.

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THE LIFE OF JESUS. CHAPTER I. PLACE OF JESUS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. THE chief event in the world’s history is the revolution by which the noblest portions of humanity passed from the ancient religions comprised under the name of Paganism to a religion based on the divine unity, the trinity, and the incarnation of the Son of God. It took nearly a thousand years to make this conversion. The new religion itself was three hundred years in forming. But the revolution in question had its origin in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. There lived then a superior person, who, through his daring originality and the love he could inspire, created the object and fixed the point of departure of the future faith of humanity.

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Man, since he distinguished himself from the animal, has been religious: we mean, he sees something in nature beyond appearances, and in himself something beyond death. This sentiment, for thousands of years, was debased in the most singular manner. With many races it went no further than a belief in sorcerers, under the gross form in which it is still to be found in certain parts of Oceania. With other peoples the religious sentiment degenerated into the hideous scenes of butchery which characterised the ancient religion of Mexico. In other countries, Africa in particular, it did not get beyond Fetichism: we mean the adoration of a material object to which were attributed supernatural powers. Like the instinct of love, which at moments elevates the most vulgar man above himself, it sometimes takes the form of perversion and ferocity; similarly, this divine faculty of religion had for a long time the appearance of a cancer, which it was necessary to extirpate from the human species, the source of errors and of crimes which it was the duty of wise men to seek to suppress. The brilliant civilisations developed at a remote period in China, in Babylonia, and in Egypt, were the cause of a certain progress in religion. China attained early to a sort of good common sense, which prevented her from going wildly astray. She was cognisant neither of the advantages nor the abuses of the religious spirit. At all events, she had in this instance no influence in directing the great current of human thought. The religions of Babylonia and Syria never disengaged themselves from a substratum of strange sensuality; those religions continued to be, until their extinction in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, schools of immorality from which, at times, thanks to a kind of poetical instinct, glimpses of the divine world emanated. Egypt, in spite of an apparent kind of Fetichism, was able very early to embrace metaphysical dogmas and a lofty symbolism. But these interpretations of a refined theology were unquestionably not intuitive. Man, when possessed of a clear idea, has never amused himself by clothing it in symbols; most often it

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is the result of long reflection, and the impossibility felt by the human mind of giving itself up to the absurd, that we seek for ideas whose meaning is lost to us behind ancient mystic images. It is not from Egypt, moreover, whence has come the faith of humanity. The elements in the Christian religion which, after undergoing a thousand transformations, came from Egypt and Syria, are exterior forms of little consequence, or of dross such as is always retained in the purest worships. The grand defect of the religions in question was their superstitious character; they only threw into the world millions of amulets and charms. No great moral thought could emanate from races debased by a secular despotism and accustomed to institutions which prevented almost any exercise of individual liberty. The poetry of the soul, faith, liberty, sincerity, devotion, appeared simultaneously in the world with the two great races which, in a sense, have made humanity; we refer to the Indo-European and the Semitic races. The first religious intuitions of the Indo-European race were essentially naturalistic. But it was a profound and moral naturalism, an amorous embrace of nature by man, a delicious poetry, full of the sentiment of the infinite; the principle, in a word, of all that which the Germanic and Celtic genius, of that which, in later times, a Shakespeare and a Goethe, should express. This was neither religion nor moral reflection; it was melancholy, tenderness, and imagination; above all, it was extreme earnestness—that is to say, the essential condition of morals and religion. The faith of mankind, nevertheless, could not issue thence, for the reason that these old religions had much difficulty in detaching themselves from polytheism, and could not attain to a very distinct symbolism. Brahmanism has survived to our day only by virtue of the astonishing conservatism which India seems to possess. Buddhism has been stranded in all its attempts to reach the West. Druidism was an exclusively national form, and without universal application. The Greek attempts at reform, Orpheism, the Mysteries, were not able to give solid nourishment to the soul. Persia alone attained to the making of a dogmatic religion, which was almost monotheistic, besides being skilfully organised; but it is very possible that this organisation itself was only an imitation or borrowed. In any case, Persia has not converted the world; on the contrary, she was converted when she saw the flag of the divine unity proclaimed by Islam appear on her frontiers. It is the Semitic race whose glory it is to have founded the religion of humanity. Away beyond the confines of history, the Bedouin patriarch, resting under his tent and free from the disorders of an already corrupted world, prepared the faith of humanity. His superiority consisted in his strong antipathy against the voluptuous religions of Syria, a marked simplicity of ritual, a complete absence of temples, and the idol reduced to insignificant theraphim. Amongst all the tribes of the nomadic Semites that of the Beni-Israel was already marked out for a great future. From its ancient relations with Egypt there resulted impressions whose extent it would be difficult to determine, but this only served to enhance its hatred for idolatry. A “Law,” or Thora, written in very ancient times on tables of stone, which they attributed to Moses, their great liberator, was already the code of monotheism, and contained, when compared with the institutions of Egypt and Chaldea, powerful germs of social equality and of morality. A portable ark, surmounted by a sphinx, with staples on the two sides

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through which to pass poles, constituted all their religious matériel; all the sacred books of the nation were collected, its relics, its souvenirs, and, finally, the “book,” the journal of the tribe, which was always open, but in which entries were made with great discretion. The family charged with holding the poles and keeping watch over these portable archives, being near and having control of the book, acquired very soon some importance. The institution, however, which was to determine the future did not proceed thence. The Hebrew priest differed little from other priests of ancient times. The character which essentially distinguishes Israel among theocratic peoples is, that sacerdotalism has always been subordinated to individual inspiration. Besides its priests, each nomadic tribe had its nabi, or prophet, a sort of living oracle, who was consulted upon obscure questions, the solution of which presupposed the gift of clairvoyance in a high degree. The nabis of Israel, who were formed into groups or schools, possessed great superiority. Defenders of the ancient democratic spirit, enemies of the rich, opposed to all political organisation and to whatever might attract Israel into the paths of other nations, they were the true agents of the religious pre-eminence of the Jewish people. Very early they held forth boundless hopes, and when the people, victims to some extent of their impolitic counsels, were crushed by the might of Assyria, they proclaimed that an endless reign was in store for Judah, that Jerusalem would one day be the capital of the whole world, and that the human race would be made Jews. Jerusalem, with its temple, appeared to them as a city placed upon the summit of a mountain, towards which all peoples should turn, as an oracle whence universal law should issue, as the centre of an ideal kingdom, where the human race, pacified by Israel, should find once more the delights of Eden. Obscure utterances began already to be heard, which extolled the martyrdom and celebrated the power, of “the Man of Sorrows.” Apropos of one of these sublime sufferers, who, like Jeremiah, were to dye the streets of Jerusalem with their blood, one of the inspired composed a song upon the sufferings and the triumph of the “servant of God,” in which all the prophetic force of the genius of Israel seemed concentrated. “ For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground; he hath no form nor comeliness. He is despised and rejected of men; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our grief, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. And he made his grave with the wicked. When thou shalt make his

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soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.” [Isaiah lii. 13 et seq., and liii. entirely.]

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Great alterations were made at the same time in the Thora. New texts, such as Deuteronomy, assuming to represent the true law of Moses, were produced, which inaugurated in reality a spirit very different from that of the old nomads. An ardent fanaticism was the dominant characteristic of this spirit. Infatuated believers provoked incessant persecutions against all who strayed from the worship of Jehovah; a code of blood, prescribing the penalty of death for religious derelictions, was successfully established. Piety almost always brings in its train the singular contradictions—vehemence and gentleness. This zeal, unknown to the coarser simplicity of the age of the Judges, inspired tones of eager prophecy and of tender unction of which the world until now had never heard. A strong tendency towards social questions already made itself felt. Utopias, dreams of a perfect society, were admitted to the code. The Pentateuch, a mélange of patriarchal morality and of ardent devotion, primitive intuitions and pious subtleties, like those with which the souls of Hezekiah, Josiah, and Jeremiah were charged, was thus determined in its present form, and was for ages the absolute rule of the national mind. This great book once created, the history of the Jewish people developed with an irresistible force The great empires which succeeded each other in Western Asia, in destroying the hope of a terrestrial kingdom, threw them into religious dreams, which they cherished with a kind of sombre passion. Caring little for the national dynasty or for political independence, they accepted all governments which permitted them to practise freely their worship and to follow their usages. Israel will no longer have other guidance than that of its religious enthusiasts, other enemies than those of the Divine unity, other country than its Law. And this Law, it must be remarked, was entirely social and moral. It was the work of men penetrated with a high ideal of the present life, who believed they had found the best means of realising it. The general conviction was that the Thora, closely followed, could not fail to give perfect felicity. This Thora has nothing in common with the Greek or Roman “Laws,” which are cognisant of little else than abstract right, and entered little into the questions of private happiness and morality. We feel beforehand that the results which will proceed from the Jewish Law will be of a social, and not of a political order, that the work at which this people labours is a kingdom of God, not a civil republic; a universal institution, not a nationality or a country.

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Despite numerous failures, Israel admirably sustained this vocation. A series of pious men, Ezra, Nehemiah, Onias, the Maccabees, eaten up with zeal for the Law, succeeded each other in the defence of the ancient institutions. The idea that Israel was a holy people, a tribe chosen by God and bound to Him by a covenant, took more and more a firm root. A great expectation filled their souls. The whole of the Indo-European antiquity had placed paradise in the beginning; its

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poets, who had wept a golden age, had passed away. Israel placed the age of gold in the future. The perennial poesy of religious souls, the Psalms, with their divine and melancholy harmony, blossomed from this exalted piety. Israel became actually and par excellence the people of God, while around it the Pagan religions were more and more reduced; in Persia and Babylonia to an official charlatanism, in Egypt and Syria to a gross idolatry, and in the Greek and Roman world to parade. That which the Christian martyrs did in the first centuries of our era; that which the victims of persecuting orthodoxy have done, even in the bosom of Christianity, up to our time, the Jews did during the two centuries which preceded the Christian era. They were a living protest against superstition and religious materialism. An extraordinary activity of ideas, terminating in the most opposite results, made of them, at this epoch, a people the most striking and original in the world. Their dispersion along the whole Mediterranean littoral, and the use of the Greek language, which they adopted when out of Palestine, prepared the way for a propagandism of which ancient societies, broken up into small nationalities, had not yet presented an example.

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Up to the time of the Maccabees, Judaism, in spite of its persistence in announcing that it would one day be the religion of the human race, had had the characteristic of all the other worships of antiquity—it was a worship of the family and the tribe. The Israelite thought, indeed, that his worship was the best, and spoke with contempt of strange gods. Nevertheless, he believed also that the religion of the true God had only been made for himself. One embraced the religion of Jehovah when one entered the Jewish family; not otherwise. No Israelite dreamed of converting the stranger to a worship which was the patrimony of the sons of Abraham. The development of the pietistic spirit, beginning with Ezra and Nehemiah, led to a much firmer and more logical conception. Judaism became, in a more absolute manner, the true religion; the right of entering it was given to him who wished it; soon it became a work of piety to bring into it the greatest number possible. True, the generous sentiment which elevated John the Baptist, Jesus, and St. Paul above the petty ideas of race did not yet exist; for, by a strange contradiction, these converts (proselytes) were little respected, and were even treated with disdain. But the idea of an exclusive religion, the idea that there was something in the world superior to country, to blood, to laws, the idea which was to make apostles and martyrs, was founded. A profound pity for the Pagans, however brilliant might be their worldly fortune, was henceforward the sentiment of every Jew. By a series of legends, destined to furnish established models (Daniel and his companions, the mother of the Maccabees and her seven sons, the romance of the racecourse of Alexandria), the guides of the people sought above all to inculcate this idea—that virtue consists in a fanatical attachment to fixed religious institutions. The persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes made of this idea a passion, almost a frenzy. It was something very analogous to what happened under Nero two hundred and thirty years later. Rage and despair threw believers into the world of visions and of dreams. The first apocalypse, “The Book of Daniel,” appeared. It was like a revival of prophecy, though under a very different form from the ancient one, and with a much larger conception of the destinies of the world. The Book of Daniel gave, in a manner, to the Messianic hopes their last expression. The Messiah was no

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longer a king, after the manner of David and Solomon, a theocratic and Mosaic Cyrus; he was a “Son of man” appearing in the clouds, a supernatural being, invested with human form, charged to rule the world, and to preside over the golden age. Perhaps the Sosiosch of Persia, the great prophet who was to come, charged with preparing the reign of Ormuzd, furnished some features for this new ideal. The unknown author of the Book of Daniel had, in any case, a decisive influence on the religious event which was going to transform the world. He devised the mise-en-scène, and the technical terms of the new Messianism; and it might be applied to him what Jesus said of John the Baptist,—“Before him, the prophets; after him, the kingdom of God.” A few years later the same ideas were reproduced under the name of the patriarch Enoch. Essenism, which seems to have been in direct relationship with the apocalyptic school, was created about the same time, and offered a first rough sketch of the grand discipline which was soon to constitute the education of humanity.

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It must not, however, be supposed that this movement, so profoundly religious and soul-stirring, had particular dogmas to give it impulse, as was the case in all the conflicts which have broken out in the bosom of Christianity. The Jew of this time had as little of the theologian about him as may be. He did not speculate upon the essence of the Divinity; the beliefs about angels, about the end of man, about the Divine hypostasis, of which the first germs might already be perceived, were quite optional—they were meditations, which each one cherished according to the turn of his mind, but of which a great number of men had never heard. Those who did not share in these particular imaginings were even the most orthodox, and who adhered to the simplicity of the Mosaic law. No dogmatic power, analogous to that which orthodox Christianity has given to the Church, then existed. It was not until the beginning of the third century, when Christianity had fallen into the hands of reasoning races, crazy about dialectics and metaphysics, that that fever for definitions commenced which made the history of the Church the history of a great controversy. There were disputes also among the Jews; some ardent schools brought opposite solutions to almost all the questions which were agitated; but in these contests, the principal details of which are preserved in the Talmud, there is not a single word of speculative theology. Observe and maintain the Law, because the Law was just, and because, in being well observed, it gave happiness; this was the whole of Judaism. No credo, no theoretical symbol. A disciple of the boldest Arabic philosophy, Moses Maimonides, succeeded in becoming the oracle of the synagogue, because he was a well-informed canonist. The reigns of the last Asmoneans, and that of Herod, saw the excitement grow still stronger. They were filled with an uninterrupted series of religious movements. In proportion as that power became secularised, and passed into the hands of unbelievers, the Jewish people lived less and less for the earth, and allowed themselves to become more and more absorbed by the strange force which was operating in their midst. The world, distracted by other spectacles, knew nothing of what was passing in this forgotten corner of the East. The minds in touch with their age were, however, better informed. The tender and prescient Virgil seems to respond, as by a secret echo, to the second Isaiah; the birth of a child throws him into dreams of a universal palingenesis. These

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dreams were general, and formed a species of literature which was indicated by the name Sibylline. The quite recent formation of the empire exalted the imagination; the great era of peace on which it entered, and that impression of melancholy sensibility which souls experience after long periods of revolution, gave rise everywhere to boundless hopes. In Judæa expectation was at its zenith. Holy persons, such as old Simeon, who, legend tells us, held Jesus in his arms; Anna, daughter of Phanuel, regarded as a prophetess, passed their life about the temple, fasting and praying, that it might please God not to withdraw them from the world until they should see the fulfilment of the hopes of Israel. They felt a powerful presentiment of the approach of something unknown. This confused mixture of clear views and of dreams, this alternation of deceptions and of hopes, these ceaseless aspirations, which were driven back by an odious reality, found at last their expression in the incomparable man, to whom the universal conscience has most justly decreed the title of Son of God, because he has given to religion a direction which no other can or probably ever will be able to emulate.

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CHAPTER II. INFANCY AND YOUTH OF JESUS—HIS FIRST IMPRESSIONS. JESUS was born at Nazareth, a small town of Galilee, which until his time had no celebrity. During the whole of his life he was designated by the name of “the Nazarene,” and it is only by a puzzling enough evasion that, in the legends concerning him, it can be shown that he was born at Bethlehem. We shall see later on the motive for this supposition, and how it was the necessary consequence of the Messianic character attributed to Jesus. The precise date of his birth is not known. It took place during the reign of Augustus, about 750 of the Roman year, that is to say, some years before the first of that era which all civilised nations date from—the day on which it is believed he was born. The name of Jesus, which was given him, is an alteration from Joshua. It was a very common name; but people naturally sought later on to discover some mystery in it, as well as an allusion to his character of Saviour. Perhaps Jesus himself, like all mystics, exalted himself in this respect. It is thus that more than one great vocation in history has been caused by a name given to a child without premeditation. Ardent natures never can bring themselves to admit chance in anything that concerns them. God has ordained everything for them, and they see a sign of the supreme will in the most insignificant circumstances.

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The population of Galilee, as the name indicates, was very mixed. This province reckoned amongst its inhabitants, in the time of Jesus, many who were not Jews (Phœnicians, Syrians, Arabs, and even Greeks). The conversions to Judaism were not rare in mixed countries like this. It is therefore impossible to raise any question of race here, or to try to discover what blood flowed in the veins of him who has most of any contributed to efface the distinctions of blood in humanity. He sprang from the ranks of the people. His father Joseph and his mother Mary were of humble position, artisans living by their work, in that condition which is so common in the East, and which is neither ease nor poverty. The extreme simplicity of life in such countries, by dispensing with the need of modern comforts, renders the privileges of the wealthy almost useless, and makes every one voluntarily poor. On the other hand, the total absence of taste for art and for that which tends to the elegance of material life, gives a naked aspect to the house of the man who otherwise wants for nothing. If we take into account the sordid and repulsive features which Islamism has carried into the Holy Land, the town of Nazareth, in the time of Jesus, did not perhaps much differ from what it is to-day. The streets where he played as a child we can see in the stony paths or in the little cross-ways which separate the dwellings. The house of Joseph no doubt closely resembled those poor shops, lighted by the door, which serve at once as workshop, kitchen, and bedroom, the

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furniture consisting of a mat, some cushions on the ground, one or two earthenware pots, and a painted chest.

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The family, whether it proceeded from one or several marriages, was rather numerous. Jesus had brothers and sisters, of whom he seems to have been the eldest. All have remained obscure, for it appears that the four personages who are given as his brothers—one of whom at least, James, had acquired great importance in the earliest years. of the development of Christianity—were his cousins-german. Mary, in fact, had a sister also named Mary, who married a certain Alpheus or Cleophas (these two names appear to designate the same person), and was the mother of several sons, who played a considerable part among the first disciples of Jesus. These cousins-german, who adhered to the young Master, while his own brothers opposed him, took the title of “brothers of the Lord.” The real brothers of Jesus, as well as their mother, had no notoriety until after his death. Even then they do not appear to have equalled in importance their cousins, whose conversion had been more spontaneous, and whose characters seem to have had more originality. Their names were unknown to the extent that, when the evangelist put in the mouth of the men of Nazareth the enumeration of the brothers according to natural relationship, the names of the sons of Cleophas first presented themselves to him. His sisters were married at Nazareth, and he spent there the first years of his youth. Nazareth was a small town situated in a hollow, opening broadly at the summit of the group of mountains which close the plain of Esdraelon on the north. The population is now from three to four thousand, and it can never have varied much. The cold is keen there in winter, and the climate very healthy. Nazareth, like all the small Jewish towns at this period, was a heap of huts built without plan, and would exhibit that withered and poor aspect which characterise villages in Semitic countries. The houses, as it would seem, did not differ much from those cubes of stone, without exterior or interior elegance, which cover to-day the richest parts of the Lebanon, and which, surrounded with vines and fig-trees, are far from being disagreeable. The environs, moreover, are charming; and no place in the world was so well adapted for dreams of absolute happiness. Even to-day Nazareth is a delightful abode, the only place, perhaps, in Palestine in which the soul feels itself relieved from the burden which oppresses it in the midst of this unequalled desolation. The people are amiable and cheerful; the gardens fresh and green. Anthony the Martyr, at the end of the sixth century, gives an enchanting picture of the fertility of the environs, which he compares with paradise. Some valleys on the western side fully bear out his description. The fountain, where formerly the life and gaiety of the little town were concentrated, is destroyed; its broken channels contain now only a muddy stream. But the beauty of the women who meet there in the evening,—that beauty which was already remarked in the sixth century, and which was looked upon as a gift of the Virgin Mary,—is still most strikingly preserved. It is the Syrian type in all its grace, so full of languor. There is no doubt that Mary was there almost every day, and took her place with her jar on her shoulder in the file of her obscure companions. Anthony the Martyr remarks that the Jewish women, usually disdainful

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to Christians, were here very affable. At the present day religious animosity is less pronounced at Nazareth than elsewhere.

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The prospect from the town is limited; but if we ascend a little and reach the plateau, swept by a perpetual breeze, which overlooks the highest houses, the view is splendid. On the west are displayed the fine outlines of Carmel, terminated by an abrupt spur which seems to plunge into the sea. Next are spread out the double summit which dominates Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of patriarchal age; the hills of Gilboa, the small picturesque group to which are attached the graceful or terrible recollections of Shunem and of Endor; and Tabor, with its rounded form, which antiquity compared to a bosom. Through a crevice between the mountains of Shunem and Tabor are seen the valley of the Jordan and the high plains of Peræa, which on the east side form a continuous line. On the north, the mountains of Safed, in inclining towards the sea, conceal St.-Jean-d’Acre, but reveal the outline of the Gulf of Khaifa. Such was the country of Jesus. This enchanted circle, this cradle of the kingdom of God, was the world of Jesus for years. Even in his later life he did not depart much from the familiar scenes of his childhood. For, yonder northwards, a glimpse is caught, almost on the flank of Hermon, of Cæsarea-Philippi, the furthest point he had reached in the Gentile world; and southwards, the more sombre aspect of these Samaritan hills foreshadows the dreariness of Judea beyond, parched as by a scorching wind of desolation and death. If the world, should it remain Christian, though it should attain to a better idea of the esteem in which the origins of its religion should be held, ever wishes to replace by authentic holy places the mean and apocryphal sanctuaries to which the piety of dark ages attached itself, it is upon this ground of Nazareth that it will rebuild its temple. There, at the spot where Christianity was born, and at the centre of the activity of its Founder, the great church ought to be raised in which all Christians might worship. There, also, on the spot where sleep Joseph the carpenter and thousands of forgotten Nazarenes, who never passed beyond the outskirts of their valley, would be a better station than any in the world for the philosopher to contemplate the course of human events, to console himself for the disappointments which those inflict upon our most cherished instincts, and to reassure himself as to the divine end which the world pursues through endless falterings, and in spite of the universal vanity.

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CHAPTER III. EDUCATION OF JESUS. NATURE here, at once smiling and grand, was the whole education of Jesus. He learnt to read and to write, no doubt, according to the Eastern method, which consisted in putting into the hands of the child a book, which he repeated rhythmically with his little comrades, until he knew it by heart. It is doubtful, however, whether he understood the Hebrew writings in their original tongue. His biographers make him quote them according to the translations in the Aramean language; and his methods of exegesis, as far as we can make them out from his disciples, much resembled those which were then common, and which form the spirit of the Targummim and the Midraschim.

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The schoolmaster in the small Jewish towns was the hazzan, or reader in the synagogues. Jesus frequented little the higher schools of the scribes or sopherim (Nazareth had perhaps none of them), and he had not any of those titles which confer, in the eyes of the vulgar, the privileges of knowledge. It would, nevertheless, be a great error to imagine that Jesus was what we call an ignoramus. Scholastic education among us draws a great distinction, in respect of personal worth, between those who have received and those who have been deprived of it. It was different in the East, and in the good old days. The rude state in which among us the person remains who has not passed through the schools—in consequence of our isolated and entirely individual life—was unknown in those societies where moral culture, and, above all, the general spirit of the age, was transmitted by the constant intercourse between men of all kinds. The Arab, who has never had a teacher, is, notwithstanding that, a decidedly superior man; for the tent is a sort of academy, always open, where, from meeting with well-educated people, very considerable intellectual and even literary activity is produced. Refinement of manners and acuteness of intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call education. The men of the schools, on the contrary, are those who pass for pedantic and badly-trained people. In this social state, ignorance, which among us at once relegates a man to an inferior grade, is the condition of great things and of great originality. It is not at all likely that Jesus knew Greek. This language had spread only to a small extent in Judæa beyond the classes who participated in the government, and the towns which were inhabited by Pagans, like Cæsarea. The mother tongue of Jesus was the Syrian dialect mixed with Hebrew, which was spoken in Palestine at that time. There is even greater reason to conclude that he knew nothing of Greek culture. This culture was indeed proscribed by the doctors of Palestine, who included in the same malediction “the man who breeds swine, and the person who teaches his son Greek science.” At all events, it had not penetrated to little towns such as Nazareth. Notwithstanding the anathema of the doctors, some Jews, it is true, had already embraced the Hellenic culture.

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Without speaking of the Jewish school of Egypt, in which the attempts to amalgamate Hellenism and Judaism had been in operation nearly two hundred years, a Jew, Nicholas of Damascus, had become, even at this time, one of the most distinguished men, one of the best informed, and one of the most respected of his age. Josephus was destined soon to furnish another example of a Jew completely Grecianised. But Nicholas was only a Jew in blood. Josephus declares that he himself was an exception among his contemporaries; and the whole schismatic school of Egypt was detached to such a degree from Jerusalem that we do not find the least allusion to it either in the Talmud or in Jewish tradition. At Jerusalem itself Greek was very little studied: indeed, Greek studies were considered to be dangerous, and even servile; at the best they were held to be only an effeminate accomplishment. The study of the Law stood alone as “liberal,” and worthy of a thoughtful man. When he was asked as to the time when it would be right to teach children “Greek wisdom,” a learned Rabbi replied: “At the time which is neither day nor night; for it is written of the Law, Thou shalt study it day and night.” It seems clear, therefore, that neither directly nor indirectly did any element of “profane” culture reach Jesus. He knew nothing beyond Judaism; his mind preserved that free innocence which is invariably weakened by an extended and varied culture. In the very bosom of this Judaism he remained a stranger to many efforts somewhat parallel to his own. On the one hand, the asceticism of the Essenes or Therapeutæ did not seem to have had any direct influence upon him; on the other, the fine efforts of religious philosophy made by the Jewish school of Alexandria, of which Philo, his contemporary, was the ingenious interpreter, were unknown to him. The frequent resemblances which may be discovered between himself and Philo, those excellent maxims concerning the love of God, of charity, and rest in God, which sound like an echo between the Gospel and the writings of the illustrious Alexandrian thinker, arise from the common tendencies which the demands of the age inspired in all lofty minds. Happily for him, he was also ignorant of the strange scholasticism which was taught at Jerusalem, and which soon was to form the Talmud. If some Pharisees had already brought it into Galilee, Jesus did not associate with them, and when later he met this silly casuistry face to face, it only inspired him with disgust. We may believe, however, that the principles of Hillel were not unknown to him. This Rabbi, fifty years before him, had uttered certain aphorisms which were almost analogous to his own. By his poverty so meekly borne, by the sweetness of his character, by his antagonism to priests and hypocrites, Hillel was the true master of Jesus, if it may be allowed that one should speak of a master in connection with such a lofty genius as his. The perusal of the books of the Old Testament made a deep impression on Jesus. The canon of the holy books was composed of two principal parts—the Law, that is to say, the Pentateuch, and the Prophets, such as we possess them now. An extensive and allegorical method of interpretation was applied to all these books; and the attempt was made to draw from them what was a response to the aspirations of the age. The Law, which did not represent the ancient laws of the country, but

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Utopias—the factitious laws, and the pious frauds of the pietistic kings—had become, since the nation had ceased to govern itself, an inexhaustible theme of subtle interpretations. As to the Prophets and the Psalms, the popular persuasion was that almost all the somewhat mysterious details that were in these books had reference to the Messiah, and it was sought to find there the type of him who should realise the hopes of the nation. Jesus participated in the liking which every one had for these allegorical interpretations. But the true poetry of the Bible which escaped the doctors of Jerusalem disclosed itself most fully to the fine genius of Jesus. The Law does not seem to have had much charm for him; he believed he could accomplish better things. But the religious poetry of the Psalms discovered a wonderful agreement with his own lyrical soul; and they remained, during his whole life, his nourishment and support. The prophets, especially Isaiah and the writer who continued his record of the times of the captivity, with their brilliant dreams of the future, their impetuous eloquence, and their invectives mingled with enchanting pictures, were his true masters. He, doubtless, also read many apocryphal works—somewhat modern writings, whose authors, in order to give their productions an authority which would not be granted except to very ancient scriptures, had invested themselves with the names of prophets and patriarchs. One of these books above all others moved him; that was the book of Daniel. This work, composed by an enthusiastic Jew of the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and headed by the name of an ancient sage, was the resumé of the spirit of these later days. Its author, a true creator of the philosophy of history, was the first who had been bold enough to see in the onward march of the world and the succession of empires only a series of facts subordinated to the destinies of the Jewish people. Jesus was at an early age penetrated by these high hopes. Perhaps, moreover, he had read the books of Enoch, then regarded with equal reverence as the holy books, and the other writings of the same class, which kept up so much excitement in the popular imagination. The advent of the Messiah, with its glories and terrors, the nations falling to pieces one after another, the cataclysm of heaven and earth, were the familiar food of his imagination; and, as these revolutions were believed to be so close at hand that numbers of people sought to calculate their exact dates, the supernatural state into which men are led by such visions appeared to Jesus from the first quite simple and perfectly natural. That he had no acquaintance with the general condition of the world is a fact which is seen in each feature of his best authenticated discourses. The earth to him appeared as still divided into kingdoms making war upon each other; he seemed to ignore the “Roman peace,” and the new state of society which its age inaugurated. He had no exact idea of the Roman power; the name of “Cæsar” was all that had reached him. He saw being built, in Galilee or its neighbourhood, Tiberias, Julias, Diocæsarea, Cæsarea—splendid works of the Herods, who sought by these magnificent structures to prove their admiration for Roman civilisation, and their devotion to the members of the family of Augustus; and the names of these places, although strangely altered, now serve to designate, as by a caprice of fate, miserable hamlets of Bedouins. Jesus probably also saw Sebaste, a work of Herod the Great, a showy city, whose ruins would make one believe that it had been transported there ready made, like some machine which had only to be set up in its place. This ostentatious

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piece of architecture was shipped to Judæa in portions; the hundreds of columns, all of the same diameter, the ornament of some insipid “Rue de Rivoli”—these were what he called “the kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them.” But this luxury of power, this administrative and official art, displeased him. What he really loved were his Galilean villages, a confused mixture of huts, of nests and holes cut in the rocks, of wells, of tombs, of fig-trees and olives. He always clung closely to nature. The courts of kings constantly presented to him the idea of places where men wear fine clothes. The charming impossibilities with which his parables abound, when he brings kings and mighty ones on the stage, prove that he never had any conception of aristocratic society except as a young villager who sees the world through the prism of his own simplicity. Jesus was still less acquainted with the new idea, created by Grecian science, which is the basis of all philosophy and which modern science has largely confirmed, viz., the exclusion of the supernatural forces to which the simple faith of the ancient times attributed the government of the universe. Almost a century before him, Lucretius had expressed, in an admirable manner, the unchangeableness of the general system of nature. The negation of miracle — the idea that everything in the world happens by laws in which the personal intervention of superior beings has no share—was universally admitted in the great schools of all the countries which had accepted Grecian science. Perhaps even Babylon and Persia were not strangers to it. Jesus knew nothing of this progress. Although born at a time when the principle of positive science was already proclaimed, he lived entirely in the supernatural. Never, perhaps, had the Jews been more possessed with the thirst for the marvellous. Philo, who lived in a great intellectual centre, and who had received a very complete education, possessed only a chimerical and inferior knowledge of science.

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Jesus on this point differed in no respect from his companions. He believed in the devil, whom he regarded as a kind of evil genius, and he imagined, like all the world, that nervous maladies were produced by demons who possessed the patient and agitated him. The marvellous was not the exceptional to him; it was his normal state. The idea of the supernatural, with its impossibilities, does not arise except with the birth of the experimental science of nature. The man who is a stranger to all idea of physical law, and who believes that by prayer he can alter the path of the clouds, can arrest disease and even death, finds nothing extraordinary in miracle, inasmuch as the whole course of things is for him the result of the freewill of the Divinity. This intellectual condition was always that of Jesus. But in his great soul such a belief produced effects altogether opposed to those wrought on the vulgar. Among the latter, faith in the special action of God led to a foolish credulity, and deceptions on the part of charlatans. With him it led to a profound idea of the familiar relations of man with God, and to an exaggerated belief in the power of man—beautiful errors which were the secret of his influence; for, if they became one day the means of putting him in a position of error in the eyes of the natural philosopher and the chemist, they gave him, over his own age, a power which no individual has ever possessed before or since.

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At an early age his extraordinary character revealed itself. Legend delights to show him even in his infancy in revolt against parental authority, and deviating from the common lines to follow his vocation. It is at least certain that for the relations of kinship he cared little. His family do not seem to have loved him, and more than once he appears to have been severe towards them. Jesus, like all men exclusively preoccupied by an idea, came to think little of the ties of blood. It is the bond of thought alone which natures like his recognise. “Behold my mother and my brethren,” said he, extending his hand towards his disciples; “he that doeth the will of my Father, the same is my brother and sister.” The simple people did not understand this view of things, and one day a woman who was passing near him cried out, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps that thou hast sucked!” But he replied, “Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it!” Soon, in his daring revolt against nature, he went still further; we shall soon see him trample under foot everything that is human—blood, love, country—preserving soul and mind simply for the idea which presented itself to him in the guise of absolute goodness and truth.

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CHAPTER IV. THE ORDER OF THOUGHT FROM WHOSE CENTRE JESUS WAS DEVELOPED.

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AS the cooled earth no longer permits us to comprehend the phenomena of primitive creation, because the fire which once penetrated it is extinct, so deliberate explanations contain always something insufficient, when the question is one of applying our timid methods of analysis to the revolutions of the creative epochs which have decided the fate of humanity. Jesus lived at one of those epochs when the game of public life is freely played, when the stake of human activity is increased a hundredfold. Every great part, then, entails death; for such movements suppose liberty and an absence of preventive measures, which could not exist without a terrible alternative. In the present day, man risks little and gains little. In the heroic periods of human activity, man risked all and gained all. The good and the wicked, or at least those who believe themselves and are believed to be such, form opposing armies. The apotheosis is attained by the scaffold; characters have distinctive features, which engrave them as eternal types in the memory of men. Except in the French Revolution, no historical centre was as appropriate as that in which Jesus was formed, for developing those hidden forces which humanity holds as in reserve, and which are not seen except in days of excitement and peril. If the government of the world were a speculative problem, and the greatest philosopher was the man best fitted to tell his fellow-men what they ought to believe, it would be from calmness and reflection that those great moral and dogmatic truths which we call religions would proceed. But it is nothing of the kind. If we except Sakya-Mouni, the great religious founders have not been metaphysicians. Buddhism itself, which is based on pure thought, has conquered one-half of Asia by motives wholly political and moral. As for the Semitic religions, they are as little philosophical as it is possible to be. Moses and Mahomet were not speculators: they were men of action. It was by proposing action to their fellow-countrymen, and to their contemporaries, that they governed humanity. Jesus, in like manner, was not a theologian or a philosopher, having a more or less well-constructed system. To be a disciple of Jesus, it was not necessary to sign any formulary, or to repeat any confession of faith; one thing only was necessary—to attach oneself to him, to love him. He never disputed about God, for he felt Him directly in himself. The rock of metaphysical subtleties, against which Christianity has dashed since the third century, was in no wise erected by the founder. Jesus had neither dogma nor system; he had a fixed personal resolution, which, exceeding in intensity every other created will, directs to this hour the destinies of humanity. The Jewish people have had the advantage, from the Babylonian captivity up to the Middle Ages, of being always in a state of extreme tension. This is why the interpreters of the spirit of the nation, during this long period, seem to have written under the action of a violent fever, which placed them constantly either above or under reason, rarely in its middle pathway. Never did man

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seize the problem of the future and of his own destiny with a more desperate courage, or was more determined to go to extremes. Not separating the fate of humanity from that of their little race, the Jewish thinkers were the first who sought to discover a general theory of the progress of our species. Greece, always confined within itself, and only concerned with its petty provincial quarrels, has had admirable historians. Stoicism had enounced the highest maxims upon the duties of man considered as a citizen of the world and as a member of a great brotherhood; but previous to the Roman period it would be a vain attempt to discover in classic literature a general system of the philosophy of history, embracing all humanity. The Jew, on the contrary, thanks to a sort of prophetic sense, has made history enter into religion. Possibly he owes a little of this spirit to Persia, which, from an ancient date, conceived the history of the world as a series of evolutions, over which a prophet presided.

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Each prophet had his reign of a thousand years, and out of those successive ages, analogous to the millions of ages devolved to each Buddha of India, was composed the train of events which prepared the reign of Ormuzd. At the end of the time when the circle of the revolutions shall be completed, the perfect Paradise will appear. Men will then live happily: the earth will be like a great plain; there will be only one language, one law, and one government for all men. But this advent is to be preceded by terrible calamities. Dahak (the Satan of Persia) will break his chains and fall upon the world. Two prophets will then come to comfort mankind, and to prepare for the great advent.

These ideas ran through the world, and penetrated even to Rome, where they inspired a cycle of prophetic poems, whose fundamental ideas were the division of the history of humanity into periods, the succession of the gods representing these epochs, a complete renewal of the world, and the final coming of a golden age. The book of Daniel, certain parts of the book of Enoch, and the Sibylline books are the Jewish expression of the same theory. It was certainly not the case that these thoughts were universal. They were, on the contrary, embraced at first only by some people of vivid imaginations and readily impressed by strange doctrines. The dry and narrow author of the book of Esther never thought of the rest of the world except to despise it and to wish it evil. The sated and undeceived Epicurean who writes Ecclesiastes thinks so little of the future that he considers it even useless to work for his children. In the eyes of this egotistical celibate, the highest advice of wisdom is to find one’s chief good in mis-spent money. But great achievements made by any people are generally the work of the minority. In spite of all their defects, hard, egotistical, scoffing, cruel, narrow, subtle, sophistical, the Jews are nevertheless the authors of the finest movement of disinterested enthusiasm of which history speaks. Opposition always makes the glory of a country. In one sense, the greatest men of a nation are often those whom it puts to death. Socrates honoured the Athenians, who would not suffer him to live. Spinoza was the greatest modern Jew, and the synagogue expelled him with ignominy. Jesus was the glory of the people of Israel, and they crucified him. A gigantic dream haunted for centuries the Jewish people, constantly renewing its youth in its decrepitude. A stranger to the theory of individual recompenses which Greece had spread under the name of immortality of the soul, Judæa concentrated on her national future all her power of

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love and longing. She believed herself to possess divine promises of a boundless future; and as the bitter reality which, from the ninth century before our era, gave the domination of the world more and more to physical force brutally crushed these aspirations, she took refuge in the union of the most impossible ideas, and attempted the strangest gyrations. Before the captivity, when all the earthly future of the nation disappeared in consequence of the separation of the northern tribes, they had dreamt of the restoration of the house of David, the reconciliation of the two divisions of the people, and the triumph of theocracy and the worship of Jehovah over idolatrous systems. At the time of the captivity, a poet full of harmony foresaw the splendour of a future Jerusalem, to which the nations and distant isles should be tributaries, under colours so charming that it teemed a glance from the eyes of Jesus had leached him from a distance of six centuries.

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The victories of Cyrus at one time appeared to realise all that had been hoped for. The grave disciples of the Avesta and the adorers of Jehovah believed themselves brothers. Persia had begun by banishing the multiple dévas and by transforming them into demons (divs), to draw from the old Arian imagination, which was essentially naturalistic, a species of monotheism. The prophetic tone of many of the teachings of Iran resemble greatly certain compositions of Hosea and Isaiah. Israel reposed under the Achemenidæ, and under Xerxes (Ahasuerus) made itself feared by the Iranians themselves. But the triumphant and often cruel entrance of Greek and Roman civilisation into Asia, threw it back upon its dreams. More than ever it invoked the Messiah as the judge and avenger of the nations. In fact, there was a complete renovation—a revolution which should take hold of the world by its roots, and shake it from top to bottom—in order to satisfy the fearful longing for vengeance excited in Israel by the consciousness of its superiority and the sight of its humiliations. If Israel had possessed the doctrine called spiritualism, which divides man into two parts—the body and the soul—and finds it quite natural that while the body decays the soul survives, this paroxysm of rage and of energetic protestation would have had no raison d’être. But such a doctrine, proceeding from the Grecian philosophy, was not in the traditions of the Jewish mind. The ancient Hebrew writings contain no trace of future rewards or punishments. Whilst the idea of the solidarity of the tribe existed, it was natural that a strict retribution according to individual merits should not be thought of. So much the worse for the pious man who happened to live in a time of impiety; he suffered like the rest the public misfortunes consequent on the general irreligion. This doctrine, bequeathed by the sages of the patriarchal era, produced day by day unsustainable contradictions. Already at the time of Job it was much shaken; the old men of Teman who professed it were considered behind the age, and the young Elihu, who intervened in order to combat them, dared to utter as his first thesis this essentially revolutionary sentiment, “Great men are not always wise; neither do the aged understand judgment.” With the complications which had taken place in the world since the time of Alexander, the old Temanite and Mosaic principle became still more intolerable. Never had Israel been more faithful to the Law, and yet it was subjected to the atrocious persecution of Antiochus. Only a declaimer, accustomed to repeat old phrases denuded of sense, would dare to assert that these evils proceeded from the unfaithfulness of the people. What! these

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victims who died for their faith, these heroic Maccabees, this mother with her seven sons, will Jehovah forget them eternally? Will he abandon them to the corruption of the grave? Worldly and incredulous Sadduceeism might possibly not recoil before such a consequence, and a consummate sage, like Antigonus of Soco, might indeed maintain that we must not practise virtue like a slave in expectation of a recompense—that we must be virtuous without hope. But the mass of the nation could not be contented with that. Some, attaching themselves to the principle of philosophical immortality, imagined the righteous living in the memory of God, glorious for ever in the remembrance of men, and judging the wicked who had persecuted them. “They live in the sight of God; . . . they are known of God.” That was their reward. Others, especially the Pharisees, had recourse to the doctrine of the resurrection. The righteous will live again in order to participate in the Messianic reign. They will live again in the flesh, and for a world of which they will be the kings and the judges; they will be present at the triumph of their ideas and at the humiliation of their enemies.

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We find among the ancient people of Israel only very indecisive traces of this fundamental dogma. The Sadducee, who did not believe it, was in reality faithful to the old Jewish doctrine; it was the Pharisee, the believer in the resurrection, who was the innovator. But in religion it is always the zealous sect which innovates, which progresses, and which has influence. Besides this, the resurrection, an idea totally different from that of the immortality of the soul, proceeded very naturally from the anterior doctrines and from the position of the people. Perhaps Persia also furnished some of its elements. In any case, combining with the belief in the Messiah, and with the doctrine of a speedy renewal of all things, the dogma of the resurrection formed those apocalyptic theories which, without being articles of faith (the orthodox Sanhedrim of Jerusalem does not seem to have adopted them), pervaded all imaginations, and produced an extreme fermentation from one end of the Jewish world to the other. The total absence of dogmatic rigour caused very contradictory notions to be admitted at one time, even upon so primary a point. Sometimes the righteous were to await the resurrection; sometimes they were to be received at the moment of death into Abraham’s bosom; sometimes the resurrection was to be general; sometimes it was to be reserved only for the faithful; sometimes it presupposed a new earth and a new Jerusalem; sometimes it implied a previous annihilation of the universe. Jesus, from the moment he began to think, entered into the burning atmosphere which had been created in Palestine by the ideas we have just referred to. These ideas were taught in no school; but they were “in the air” around him, and his soul was early penetrated by them. Our hesitations and doubts never reached him. On this summit of the hill of Nazareth, where no man of the present day can sit without an uneasy, although frivolous, feeling as to his own destiny, Jesus sat habitually without a doubt. Free from selfishness, the source of our troubles, he thought of nothing but his work, his race, and humanity at large. Those mountains, that sea, that azure sky, those high plains in the horizon, were for him not the melancholy vision of a soul which interrogates nature upon her fate, but the certain symbol, the transparent shadow of an invisible world and a new heaven.

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He never attached much importance to the political events of his time, and he was probably badly informed regarding them. The dynasty of the Herods lived in a world so different from his own that he doubtless only knew it by name. Herod the Great died about the year in which Jesus was born, leaving imperishable memories—monuments which must compel the most malevolent posterity to associate his name with that of Solomon; his woks, nevertheless, was incomplete, and could not be continued. Profanely ambitious, lost in a maze of religious controversies, this astute Idumean had the advantage which coolness and judgment, stripped of morality, give one in the midst of passionate fanatics. But his conception of a secular kingdom of Israel, even if it had not been an anachronism in the state of the world in which it was conceived, would have miscarried, like the similar project which Solomon formed, in consequence of the difficulties arising from the peculiar character of the nation. His three sons were nothing but lieutenants of the Romans, analogous to the rajahs of India under the English Government. Antipater, or Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Peræa, whose subject Jesus was all his life, was an idle and empty prince, a favourite and flatterer of Tiberius, and too often misled by the evil influence of his second wife Herodias. Philip, Tetrarch of Gaulonitis and Batanea, into whose territories Jesus made frequent journeys, was a much better sovereign. As to Archelaus, Ethnarch of Jerusalem, he could not have known him. Jesus was about ten years of age when this man, weak and characterless, although sometimes violent, was deposed by Augustus. The last trace of self-government was, in this way, lost to Jerusalem. United to Samaria and Idumea, Judæa formed a kind of dependency of the province of Syria, in which the senator Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, a well-known consular personage, was the imperial legate. A series of Roman procurators, subordinate in affairs of importance to the imperial legate of Syria—Coponius, Marcus Ambivius, Annius Rufus, Valerius Gratus, and lastly (in the 26th year of our era) Pontius Pilate—followed each other, and were incessantly occupied in extinguishing the volcano which was rumbling beneath their feet. Continual seditions, excited by the zealots of Mosaism, were constantly during this period agitating Jerusalem. The death of the seditious was certain; but death, when the matter concerned the integrity of the Law, was sought for with avidity. To overturn the Roman eagles, to destroy the works of art raised by the Herods, in which the Mosaic regulations were not always respected, to rebel against the votive escutcheons raised by the procurators, and whose inscriptions seemed to them tainted by idolatry, were perpetual temptations to fanatics who had reached that degree of exaltation which removes all regard for life. Thus it was that Judas, son of Sariphea, and Matthias, son of Margaloth, two greatly celebrated doctors of the Law, formed against the established order a party of bold aggression, which continued after their execution. The Samaritans were agitated by movements of the same kind. The Law seems never to have counted more impassioned votaries than at this period, when there already lived that man who, by the full authority of his genius and of his great soul, was about to abrogate it. The “zelotes” (kanaïm) or “sicarii,” pious assassins, who imposed on themselves the task of killing whoever in their estimation broke the Law, began to appear. Representatives of a totally different spirit, the Thaumaturges, considered as in some measure

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divine, found credence in consequence of the imperious necessity which the age expressed for the supernatural and the divine.

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A movement which had much more influence on Jesus was that of Judas, the Gaulonite or Galilean. Of all the constraints to which countries newly conquered by Rome were subjected, the census was the most unpopular. This measure, which always irritates nations little accustomed to the responsibilities of great central administrations, was specially odious to the Jews. Already, under David, we see how a numbering of the people provoked violent recriminations, and the threatenings of the prophets. The census, in fact, was the basis of taxation. Now, taxation, in the estimation of a pure theocracy, was almost an impiety. God being the sole Master whom man ought to recognise, to pay tithe to a secular sovereign was, in a manner, to put him in the place of God. Completely ignorant of the idea of the State, the Jewish theocracy only acted up to its logical induction — the negation of civil society and of all government. The money in the public treasury was regarded as stolen. The census ordered by Quirinius (in the sixth year of the Christian era) powerfully awakened these ideas, and caused a tremendous ferment. A disturbance broke out in the northern provinces. One Judas, of the town of Gamala, on the eastern shore of the lake of Tiberias, and a Pharisee named Sadoc, by denying the lawfulness of the impost, created a numerous party, which soon broke out into open revolt. The fundamental maxims of this school were that liberty was better than life, and that no man ought to be called “master,” this title belonging to God alone. Judas had, doubtless, many other principles, which Josephus, always careful not to compromise his co-religionists, designedly suppresses; for it is impossible to understand how, for so simple an idea, the Jewish historian should give him a place among the philosophers of his nation, and should regard him as the founder of a fourth school, equal to those of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. Judas was evidently the chief of a Galilean sect, which was imbued with Messianic ideas, and became a political movement. The procurator, Coponius, crushed the sedition of the Gaulonite; but the party survived and preserved its chiefs. Under the leadership of Menahem, son of its founder, and of one Eleazar, his kinsman, we find it again very active in the last struggles of the Jews with the Romans. Jesus, it may be, saw this Judas, who had conceived a Jewish revolution of a kind so different from his own ideal; at all events, he knew the opinions of his school, and it was probably by a reaction against his mistake that he pronounced the axiom upon the “penny” of Cæsar. Wisely standing aloof from all sedition, Jesus profited by the fault of his predecessor, and dreamed of another kingdom and of another deliverance. Galilee was thus a vast furnace, in which the most diverse elements were heaving to a boiling point. An extraordinary contempt for life, or, to speak more correctly, a kind of longing for death, was the result of these agitations. Experience counts for nothing in great fanatical movements. Algeria, in the first days of the French occupation, saw arise, each springtime, inspired men who declared that they were invulnerable and were sent by God to expel the infidels; the following year their death was forgotten, and their successors found an undiminished credence. Very stern on the one hand, the Roman power was not at all meddlesome, and permitted much liberty. These great

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brute-force despotisms, terrible in repression, were not so suspicious as powers which have some dogma to uphold. They allowed everything to be done up to the point at which they thought they ought to use vigorous measures. In his wandering career, Jesus does not appear to have been once annoyed by the civil authorities. Such a liberty, and above all the happiness which Galilee enjoyed in being much less restrained by the bonds of Pharisaic pedantry, gave to this province a real advantage over Jerusalem. The revolution, or, in other words, the Messianic expectations, caused a general mental fermentation here. Men believed that they were on the eve of beholding the great renovation; the Scriptures, tortured into a variety of meanings, became food for the most colossal hopes. In each line of the simple writings of the Old Testament they saw the assurance, and, in a certain sense, the programme of the future reign, which should bring peace to the righteous, and seal for ever the work of God.

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From all time this division into two parties, opposed to each other in interest and spirit, had been for the Hebrew people a principle which had been fertile in moral growth. Every nation called to high destinies ought to form a complete little world, including within it the opposite poles. Greece presented, a few leagues apart, Sparta and Athens, the two antipodes to a superficial observer, but in reality rival sisters, each necessary to the other. It was the same with Judæa. Less brilliant in one sense than the development of Jerusalem, that of the north was on the whole much more fruitful; the noblest works of the Jewish people have always proceeded thence. A complete absence of the love of nature, almost amounting to something dry, narrow, and even ferocious, has stamped upon all purely Jerusalemitish works a character grand indeed, but sad, arid, and repulsive. With its solemn doctors, its insipid canonists, its hypocritical and atrabilious devotees, Jerusalem could not conquer humanity. The north has given to the world the simple Shulamite, the humble Canaanite, the passionate Magdalene, the good foster-father Joseph, and the Virgin Mary. It is the north alone which has made Christianity; Jerusalem, on the contrary, is the true home of that obstinate Judaism which, founded by the Pharisees and fixed by the Talmud, has traversed the Middle Ages and come down to us. A beautiful aspect of nature contributed to the formation of this less austere, though less sharply monotheistic spirit, if I may venture so to call it, which impressed all the dreams of Galilee with a charming and idyllic character. The region round about Jerusalem is, perhaps, the gloomiest country in the world. Galilee, on the contrary, was exceedingly verdant, shady, smiling, the true home of the Song of Songs and the Canticles of the well-beloved. During the two months of March and April the country is a carpet of flowers, with an incomparable variety of colouring. The animals are small and extremely gentle,—delicate and lively turtle-doves, blue-birds so light that they rest on a blade of grass without bending it; crested larks which advance nearly under the very feet of the traveller; little river-tortoises with sweet and lively eyes, and also storks with grave and modest

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mien, which, dismissing all timidity, allow themselves to be approached quite closely, and seem almost to invite the companionship of men. In no country in the world do the mountains spread themselves out with more harmony, or inspire loftier thought. Jesus seems to have specially loved them. The most important acts of his career took place on mountains. It was there he was the most inspired; it was there he held secret communings with the ancient prophets; it was there he showed himself transfigured before the eyes of his disciples. This lovely country, which at the present day has become (through the woful impoverishing influence which Islamism has wrought on human life) so sad and wretched, but where everything that man cannot destroy breathes still an air of freedom, sweetness, and tenderness, overflowed with happiness and joy at the time of Jesus. The Galileans were reckoned brave, energetic and laborious. If we except Tiberias, built by Antipas in the Roman style, in honour of Tiberius (about the year 15), Galilee had no large towns. The country was nevertheless covered with small towns and large villages well peopled, and cultivated with skill in every direction. From the ruins of its ancient splendour which survive we can trace an agricultural people in no way gifted in art, caring little for luxury, indifferent to the beauties of form, and exclusively idealistic. The country abounded in fresh streams and fruits; the large farms were shaded with vines and fig-trees; the gardens were a mass of apple and walnut trees, and pomegranates. The wine was excellent, if it may be judged from what the Jews still obtain at Safed, and they drank freely of it. This contented and easily satisfied life did not at all resemble the gross materialism of our peasantry, or the coarse happiness of agricultural Normandy, or the heavy mirth of the Flemings. It spiritualised itself in mysterious dreams, in a kind of poetical mysticism, blending heaven and earth. Leave the austere John Baptist in his desert of Judæa, to preach penitence, to inveigh unceasingly, and to live on locusts in the company of jackals! Why should the companions of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? Joy will be a part of the kingdom of God. Is she not the daughter of the humble in heart, of the men of goodwill? The entire history of infant Christianity is in this sense a delightful pastoral. A Messiah at the marriage supper, the courtesan and the good Zaccheus called to his feasts, the founders of the kingdom of heaven like a bridal procession;—this is what Galilee has dared to offer, and what the world has really accepted. Greece has drawn admirable pictures of human life in sculpture and poetry, but always without backgrounds or receding perspectives. Here were wanting the marble, the practised workmen, the exquisite and refined language. But Galilee has created for the popular imagination the most sublime ideal; for behind its idyll the fate of humanity moves, and the light which illumines its picture is the sun of the kingdom of God. Jesus lived and grew up amidst those elevating surroundings. From his infancy, he went almost every year to the feast at Jerusalem. The pilgrimage was for the provincial Jews a solemnity of sweet associations. Several entire series of psalms were consecrated to celebrate the happiness of thus journeying in family society during several days in springtime across the hills and valleys, all

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having in prospect the splendours of Jerusalem, the solemnities of the sacred courts, and the joy of brethren dwelling together. The route which Jesus usually followed in these journeys was that which is taken in the present day, through Ginæa and Shechem. From Shechem to Jerusalem travelling is very toilsome. But the neighbourhood of the old sanctuaries of Shiloh and Bethel, near which the pilgrim passes, keeps the mind awake with interest. Ain-el-Haramié, the last halting-place, is a melancholy and yet charming spot; and few impressions equal that which one feels when encamping there for the night. The valley is narrow and sombre, while a dark stream issues from the rocks full of tombs, which form its banks. It is, I believe, “the valley of tears,” or of dropping waters, which is sung of as one of the stations on the way in the delightful eighty-fourth Psalm; and it became, to the sweet and sad mysticism of the Middle Ages, the emblem of life. The next day, at an early hour, the travellers would be at Jerusalem; this expectation, even at the present day, sustains the caravan, rendering the night short and slumber light. These journeys, during which the assembled nation exchanged its ideas, and which created annually in the capital centres of great excitement, placed Jesus in contact with the mind of his countrymen, and doubtless inspired him from his youth with a lively antipathy to the defects of the official representatives of Judaism. It is observable that very early the desert had been for him like a school, and to this he had made prolonged visits. But the God he found there was not his God. It was emphatically rather the God of Job, severe and terrible, and who is accountable to none. Sometimes Satan came to tempt him. He then returned from these sojourns into his beloved Galilee, and found again his heavenly Father, in the midst of the green hills and the clear fountains—among the crowds of women and children who, with joyous soul and the song of the angels in their hearts, waited for the salvation of Israel.

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CHAPTER V. THE FIRST SAYINGS OF JESUS—HIS IDEAS OF A “FATHER-GOD” AND OF A PURE RELIGION—FIRST DISCIPLES. JOSEPH died before his son had assumed any public position. Mary remained, in a manner, the head of the family; and this explains why Jesus, when it was desired to distinguish him from others of the same name, was most frequently called “the son of Mary.” It would seem that having, through her husband’s death, become friendless in Nazareth, she retired to Cana, which was probably her native place. Cana was a little town about two or two and a half hours’ journey from Nazareth, at the base of the hills which bound the plain of Asochis on the north. The prospect, less grand than that at Nazareth, extends over the whole plain, and is bounded in the most picturesque manner by the mountains of Nazareth and the hills of Sepphoris. Jesus appears to have resided in this place for some time. There he probably passed a part of his youth, and his first manifestations were made at Cana.

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He followed the same occupation as his father—that of a carpenter. This was no humiliating or vexatious circumstance. The Jewish custom demanded that a man devoted to intellectual work should assume a handicraft. The most celebrated doctors had their trades; it was thus that St. Paul, whose education was so elaborate, was a tent-maker, or upholsterer. Jesus never married. All his power of loving expended itself on what he considered his heavenly vocation. The extremely delicate sentiment which one observes in his manner towards women did not interfere with the exclusive devotion he cherished for his idea. Like Francis d’Assisi and Francis de Sales, he treated as sisters the women who threw themselves into the same work as he did; he had his Saint Clare, and his Françoise de Chantals. However, it is probable that they loved himself better than his work; he was certainly more beloved than loving. As happens frequently in the case of very lofty natures, his tenderness of heart transformed itself into an infinite sweetness, a vague poetry, a universal charm. His relations, free and intimate, but of an entirely moral kind, with women of doubtful character, are also explained by the passion which attached him to the glory of his Father, and which made him jealously anxious for all beautiful creatures who could contribute to it. What was the progress of thought in Jesus during this obscure period of his life? Through what meditations did he enter upon his prophetic career? We cannot tell, his history having come to us in the shape of scattered narratives and without exact chronology. But the development of living character is everywhere the same, and it cannot be doubted that the growth of a personality so powerful as that of Jesus obeyed very rigorous laws. An exalted conception of the Divinity—which he did not owe to Judaism, and which appears to have been in all its parts the creation of his great intellect—was in a manner the source of all his power. It is essential here that we put aside the ideas familiar to us, and the discussions in which little minds exhaust themselves. In order properly

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to understand the precise character of the piety of Jesus, we must forget all that is placed between the gospel and ourselves. Deism and Pantheism have become the two poles of theology. The paltry discussions of scholasticism, the dryness of spirit of Descartes, the deep-rooted irreligion of the eighteenth century, by lessening God, and by limiting Him, in a manner, by the exclusion of everything which is not His very self, have stifled in the breast of modern rationalism all fertile ideas of the Divinity. If God, in fact, is a fixed entity outside of us, he who believes himself to have peculiar relations with God is a “visionary,” and, as the physical and physiological sciences have shown us that all supernatural visions are illusions, the logical Deist finds it impossible to understand the great beliefs of the past. Pantheism, on the other hand, in suppressing the Divine personality, is as far as it can be from the living God of the ancient religions. Were the men who have best comprehended God—Sakya-Mouni, Plato, St. Paul, St. Francis d’Assisi, and St. Augustine (at some periods of his fluctuating life)—Deists or Pantheists? Such a question has no meaning. The physical and metaphysical proofs of the existence of God were quite indifferent to them. They felt the Divine within themselves. We must place Jesus in the first rank of this great family of the true sons of God. Jesus had no visions; God did not speak to him as to one outside of himself; God was in him; he felt himself with God, and he drew from his own heart all he said of his Father. He lived in the bosom of God by an unceasing communication; he did not see Him, but he understood Him, without need of the thunder or the burning bush of Moses, of the revealing tempest of Job, of the oracle of the old Greek sages, of the familiar genius of Socrates, or of the angel Gabriel of Mahomet. The imagination and the hallucination of a Saint Theresa, for example, are valueless here. The intoxication of the Soufi proclaiming himself identical with God is also a totally different thing. Jesus never once announced the sacrilegious theory that he was God. He believed himself to be in direct communication with God—he believed himself to be the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which has existed in the bosom of humanity is that of Jesus. We understand, on the other hand, that Jesus, commencing his work with such a disposition of mind, could never be a speculative philosopher like Sakya-Mouni. Nothing is further from scholastic theology than the Gospel. The speculations of the Greek doctors on the Divine essence proceed from an entirely different spirit. God, conceived simply as Father, was all the theology of Jesus. And this was not with him a theoretical principle, a doctrine more or less proved, which he sought to inculcate in others. He did not argue with his disciples; he demanded from them no effort of attention. He did not preach his opinions; he preached himself. Very great and very disinterested minds often present, associated with much elevation, that character of perpetual attention to themselves, and extreme personal susceptibility, which, in general, is peculiar to women. Their conviction that God is in them, and occupies Himself perpetually with them, is so strong that they have no fear of obtruding themselves upon others; our reserve, and our respect for the opinion of others, which is a part of our weakness, could not belong to them. This exaltation of self is not egotism; for such men, possessed by their idea, give their lives freely, in order to seal their work;

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it is the identification of self with the object it has embraced, carried to its utmost limit. It is regarded as vain glory by those who see in the new teaching only the personal phantasy of the founder; but it is the finger of God to those who see the result. The fool stands side by side here with the inspired man, only the fool never succeeds. It has not yet been given to mental aberration to influence seriously the progress of humanity. 47

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Jesus, no doubt, did not reach at one step this high assertion of himself. But it is probable that, from the first, he looked on himself as standing with God in the relation of a son to his father. This was his grand act of originality; there was nothing here in common with his race. Neither the Jew nor the Mussulman has understood this delightful theology of love. The God of Jesus is not the tyrannical master who kills, damns, or saves us, just as it pleases Him. The God of Jesus is our Father. We hear Him while listening to the gentle inspiration which cries within us—“Father.” The God of Jesus is not the partial despot who has chosen Israel for His people, and protects them against all the world. He is the God of humanity. Jesus would not be a patriot like the Maccabees, or a theocrat like Judas the Gaulonite. Boldly elevating himself above the prejudices of his nation, he would establish the universal Fatherhood of God. The Gaulonite maintained that it was better for one to die than to give the title of “Master” to any other than God; Jesus would allow any man to take this name, but reserves for God a title dearer still. Yielding to the powerful of the earth, who were to him the representatives of force, a respect full of irony, he establishes the supreme consolation—the recourse to the Father whom each one has in heaven, and the true kingdom of God which every man carries in his heart. This expression—“the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven”—was the favourite term of Jesus to describe the revolution he was bringing into the world. Like nearly all the terms relating to the Messiah, it came from the book of Daniel. According to the author of that extraordinary book, the four profane empires destined to extinction would be succeeded by a fifth empire— that of the saints, which should endure for ever. This reign of God upon earth naturally led to the most diverse interpretations. In the later days of his life Jesus believed that this reign would be realised in a material form by a sudden renovation of the world. But this was, doubtless, not his first idea. The admirable moral which he drew from the notion of the Father-God is not that of enthusiasts who believe the world to be nearly at an end, and who prepare themselves by asceticism for a chimerical catastrophe; it is that of a world which has lived and would live still. “The kingdom of God is within you,” he said to those who cunningly sought for external signs. The realistic conception of the Divine Advent was only a cloud, a transient error, which his death has made us forget. The Jesus who founded the true kingdom of God, the kingdom of the meek and the humble, was the Jesus of early life, of those pure and cloudless days when the voice of his father re-echoed within his bosom in clearer tones. It was then for some months—a year perhaps—that God truly dwelt on earth. The voice of the young carpenter acquired all at once an extraordinary sweetness. An infinite charm was exhaled from his person, and those who had hitherto seen him recognised him as the same no longer. He had not as yet any disciples, and the group of people which gathered round him

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was neither a sect nor a school; but there was already felt among them a common spirit, and an influence both sweet and penetrating. His amiable character, and doubtless one of those exquisite faces which sometimes appear in the Jewish race, threw around him a fascination from which no one, in the midst of these kindly and fresh-minded peoples, could escape.

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Paradise would, in fact, have been brought to earth if the ideas of the young Master had not far transcended that level of ordinary goodness which the human race has found it hitherto impossible to pass. The brotherhood of men, as sons of God, and the moral consequences which have resulted from it, were deduced with exquisite feeling. Like all the rabbis of the period, Jesus little affected consecutive reasonings, but clothed his teaching in concise aphorisms, and in an expressive form, oft-times enigmatical and singular. Some of these maxims came from the books of the Old Testament. Others were the thoughts of more modern sages, especially of Antigonus of Soco, Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, which had reached him, not through a course of learned study, but as oft-repeated proverbs. The synagogue was rich in very happily-expressed maxims, which formed a sort of current proverbial literature. Jesus adopted almost all this oral teaching, but imbued it with a superior spirit. Generally exceeding the duties laid down by the Law and the elders, he demanded perfection. All the virtues of humility, pardon, charity, abnegation, and self-denial—virtues which have been called with good reason Christian—if it is meant by this that they have been truly preached by Christ—were found in germ in this first declaration. As to justice, he contented himself with repeating the well-known axiom—“Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” But this old wisdom, selfish enough as it was, did not satisfy him. He went to excess, declaring—“Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.” “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.” “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you; pray for them that persecute you.” “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” “Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.” “Be therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” “Whosoever shalt exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.” In regard to alms, pity, good works, kindness, the desire for peace, and complete disinterestedness of heart, he had little to add to the teaching of the synagogue. But he stamped them with an emphasis full of unction, and thus gave novelty to those aphorisms which had long been current. Morality is not composed of principles more or less well-expressed. The poetry of the precept, which makes one love it, is more than the precept itself, viewed as an abstract truth. Now, it cannot be denied that these maxims, borrowed by Jesus from his predecessors, produce quite a different effect in the Gospel to that in the ancient Law, in the Pirké Aboth, or in the Talmud. It is neither the ancient Law nor the Talmud which has conquered and changed the world. Little original in itself—if it is meant by that that one might recompose it almost entirely by means of more ancient maxims—the morality of the Gospel remains no less the loftiest creation of the human conscience, the most beautiful code of perfect life which any moralist has traced.

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Jesus did not speak against the Mosaic law; but it is clear that he saw its insufficiency, and he let this be distinctly understood. He repeated constantly that more must be done than the ancient sages commanded. He forbade the least harsh word; he prohibited divorce, and all swearing; he censured revenge; he condemned usury; he held voluptuous desire to be as criminal as adultery. He demanded a universal forgiveness of injuries. The motive on which he grounded these maxims of exalted charity was always the same. . . . . “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good.” “For if,” he added, “ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” A pure worship, a religion without priests or external observances, resting entirely on the feelings of the heart, on the imitation of God, on the direct communication between the conscience and the heavenly Father, was the result of these principles. Jesus never shrank from this daring consequence, which made him, in the very centre of Judaism, a revolutionist of the first rank. Why should there be any intermediaries between man and his Father? As God only looks on the heart, of what use are these purifications—these observances which only relate to the body? Even tradition, a thing so sacred to the Jew, is nothing compared to a pure feeling. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who, in praying, turned their heads to see if they were observed, who gave alms with ostentation, and put on their garments marks by which they might be recognised as pious persons—all these grimaces of false devotion disgusted him. “They have their reward,” said he; “but thou, when thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thy alms may be in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, Himself shall reward thee openly.” “And thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him.”

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He did not affect any outward sign of asceticism, contenting himself with praying, or rather meditating, upon the mountains and in those solitary places where man has always sought God. This lofty idea of the relations of man with God, of which so few minds, even after him, have been capable, is summed up in a prayer which he compiled from some pious phrases already current amongst the Jews, and which he taught his disciples: — “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation; deliver us from the evil one.” Jesus insisted particularly upon the idea that the heavenly Father knows better than we do what we need, and that we almost sin against Him in asking Him for this or that particular thing.

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Jesus did nothing more in this matter than to carry out the consequences of the great principles which Judaism had established, but which the official classes of the nation inclined more and more to despise. The Greek and Roman prayers were almost always full of egotism. Never had Pagan priest said to the faithful, “If thou bring thy offering to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way; first be reconciled with thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Alone in antiquity, the Jewish prophets, especially Isaiah, in their antipathy to the priesthood, had discovered a little of the true nature of the worship which man owes to God. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. Incense is an abomination unto me: for your hands are full of blood; cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, and then come.” In later times such doctors as Simeon the Just, Jesus son of Sirach, and Hillel, almost reached this point, and declared that the sum of the Law was righteousness. Philo, in the Judæo-Egyptian world, attained at the same time as Jesus ideas of a high moral sanctity; and the consequence of this was a decreasing regard for the customs of the Law. Shemaïa and Abtalion also more than once showed themselves very liberal casuists. Rabbi Johanan ere long went so far as to place works of mercy above even the study of the Law! Jesus alone, however, proclaimed this principle in an effective manner. Never has any man been less a priest than Jesus, and never has there been a greater enemy of forms which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. In this way we are all his disciples and his successors; in this way he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is the essential thing for humanity, by this he has merited the divine rank which men have awarded him. An absolutely new idea—the idea of a worship founded upon purity of heart and on human brotherhood—made, through him, its entrance into the world—an idea so elevated that the Christian Church ought by this fact to disclose exhaustively its design, but an idea which, in our days, only some minds are able to grasp. An exquisite sympathy with nature furnished Jesus with expressive images at every turn. Sometimes a wonderful ingenuity, which we call wit, adorned his aphorisms; at other times their vivacity consisted in the happy use of popular proverbs. “How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull the mote out of thine eye; and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite; first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” These lessons, long concealed in the heart of the young Master, soon gathered round him a few disciples. The spirit of the age was in favour of small churches; it was the time of the Essenes or Therapeutæ. Certain Rabbis, each having his own distinctive teaching, Shemaïa, Abtalion, Hillel, Shammaï, Judas the Gaulonite, Gamaliel, and many others whose maxims form the Talmud, appeared on all sides. They wrote very little; the Jewish doctors of that age did not make books; everything was done by conversation and public lessons, to which it was sought to give a form easily remembered. The day when the youthful carpenter of Nazareth began openly to proclaim those

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maxims, for the most part already propagated, but which, thanks to him, have been able to regenerate the world, marked therefore no very startling event. It was only one Rabbi more (true, the most fascinating of them all), and around him a few young people, greedy to hear him and to search for the unknown. It requires time to awaken men from inattention. There was not as yet any Christian, though true Christianity was founded already, and doubtless it has never been more perfect than at this first period. Jesus added nothing more enduring to it afterwards. What do I say? In one sense he compromised it; for every idea, in order to prevail, must make sacrifices; we never come out of the battle of life unscathed.

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To conceive the good, in fact, is not enough; it is necessary to make it succeed amongst men. To this end, less pure paths must be followed. No doubt, if the Gospel were confined to some chapters of Matthew and Luke, it would be more perfect, and would certainly not be open now to so many objections; but without miracles would it have converted the world? If Jesus had died at the period of his career which we have now reached, there would not have been in, his life a single page that could wound us; but, although greater thus in the eyes of God, he would have remained unknown to men; he would have been lost in the crowd of great unknown spirits—himself the noblest of them all; the truth would not have been promulgated, and the world would not have profited by the immense moral superiority with which the Father had endowed him. Jesus, the son of Sirach, and Hillel had uttered aphorisms nearly as elevated as his own. Hillel, however, will never be reckoned as the true founder of Christianity. In morals, as in art, precept is nothing; practice is everything. The idea which lies hidden in a picture of Raphael is of small moment; it is the picture itself which is prized. In the same manner, in morals, truth is very little thought of when it only reaches the condition of being a mere feeling; it only attains its full value when it is realised in the world as a certain fact. Some men of mediocre morality have written a number of good maxims. Some very virtuous men, on the other hand, have done nothing to continue in the world the tradition of virtue. The palm is his who has been powerful both in words and deeds, who has discerned the good, and at the price of his blood, has made it triumph. Jesus, from this double point of view, is without equal; his glory remains entire, and will ever be renewed.

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CHAPTER VI. JOHN THE BAPTIST—VISIT OF JESUS TO JOHN, AND HIS ABODE IN THE DESERT OF JUDÆA—HE ADOPTS THE BAPTISM OF JOHN. AN extraordinary man, whose position, in the absence of documents to describe it, remains to us in some measure enigmatical, appeared about this time, and was unquestionably connected to some extent with Jesus. This connection rather tended to make the young prophet of Nazareth deviate from his path; but it also suggested many important accessories to his religious institution, and, at all events, it furnished his disciples with a very strong authority to recommend their master in the eyes of a certain class of Jews. About the year 28 of our era (the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius), there spread through all Palestine the fame of a certain Johanan or John, a young ascetic full of zeal and enthusiasm. John was of the priestly race, and was born, it would seem, at Juttah, near Hebron, or at Hebron itself. This city, which may be called patriarchal beyond all others, situated a short distance from the desert of Judæa, and within a few hours’ journey of the great desert of Arabia, was at that time what it is still to-day, one of the bulwarks of monotheism in its most austere form. From his infancy John was a Nazir—that is to say, subjected by vow to certain abstinences. The desert by which he was, so to speak, surrounded, attracted him from early life. He led there a life like that of a Yogui of India, clothed with skins or cloth of camel’s hair, having for food only locusts and wild honey. A certain number of disciples were grouped around him, sharing his life or studying his severe doctrine. We might imagine ourselves transported to the banks of the Ganges, if special features had not revealed in this recluse the last descendant of the grand prophets of Israel. 57

Since the Jewish nation had begun to reflect upon its destiny with a kind of despair, the imagination of the people had reverted with much complacency to the ancient prophets. Now, of all the personages of the past, the remembrance of whom came like the dreams of a troubled night to awaken and agitate the people, the greatest was Elias. This giant of the prophets and his rough solitude of Carmel, where he shared the life of wild beasts, dwelling in the hollows of the rocks, whence he issued like a thunderbolt to make and unmake kings, had become, by successive transformations, a sort of superhuman being, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, and one who had not tasted of death. It was generally believed that Elias would return and restore Israel. The austere life which he had led, the terrible remembrances he had left behind him—the impression of which is still vivid in the East—that sombre portraiture which, even in our own days, causes trembling and death; all this mythology, full of vengeance and terrors, powerfully struck the public imagination and stamped, as with a birth-mark, all the creations of the popular mind. Whoever aspired to any great influence over the people must imitate Elias; and, as a solitary life had been the essential characteristic of that prophet, they were accustomed to think of “the man of God” as

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a hermit. They imagined that all holy personages would have their days of penitence, of solitary life, and of austerity. The retreat to the desert thus became the condition and the prelude of high destinies.

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There can be no doubt that this idea of imitation had occupied John’s mind to a considerable degree. The anchorite life, so opposed to the spirit of the ancient Jewish people, and with which the vows, such as those of the Nazirs and the Rechabites, had no relation, pervaded all parts of Judæa. The Essenes were grouped near the birthplace of John, on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea. Abstinence from flesh, wine, and from sexual pleasures was regarded as the novitiate of the prophets. People imagined that the chiefs of any sect should be recluses, having their own rules and institutions, like the founders of religious orders. The teachers of the young were also at times a species of anchorites, resembling to some extent the gourous of Brahminism. In fact, might there not in this be a remote influence of the mounis of India? Perhaps, some of those wandering Buddhist monks who overran the world, as the first Franciscans did in later times, preaching by their actions and converting people who knew not their language, might have turned their steps towards Judæa, as they certainly did towards Syria and Babylon. On this point we have no certainty. Babylon had become for some time a true focus of Buddhism. Boudasp (Bodhisattva) was reputed a wise Chaldean, and the founder of Sabeism. Sabeism was, as its etymology indicates, baptism—that is to say, the religion of many baptisms—the origin of the sect still existing called “Christians of St. John,” or Mendaites, which the Arabs call el-Mogtasila, “the Baptists.” It is very difficult to unravel these vague analogies. The sects floating between Judaism, Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism, which we find in the region beyond the Jordan during the first centuries of our era, present to criticism the most singular problem, in consequence of the confused accounts of them which have come down to us. We may believe, at all events, that many of the external practices of John, of the Essenes, and of the Jewish spiritual teachers of this time, were derived from influences then but recently received from the far East. The fundamental practice which gave to the sect of John its character, and which has given him his name, has always had its centre in lower Chaldea, and constitutes a religion which is practised there to this day. This practice was baptism, or total immersion. Ablutions were already familiar to the Jews, as they were to all the religions of the East. The Essenes had given them a peculiar extension. Baptism had become an ordinary ceremony at the introduction of proselytes into the bosom of the Jewish religion—a sort of initiatory rite. But never before the Baptist’s time had there been given to immersion either this form or importance. John had fixed the scene of his labours in that part of the desert of Judæa which borders on the Dead Sea. At the periods when he administered baptism, he betook himself to the banks of the Jordan, either to Bethany or to Bethabara, on the eastern shore, probably opposite Jericho, or to a place called Ænon, or the Fountains, near Salim, where there was much water. There considerable crowds, mainly of the tribe of Judah, hastened to him to be baptized. In a few months he thus became one of the most influential men in Judæa, and all the multitude held him in high estimation.

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The people considered him a prophet, and many imagined that he was Elias who had risen from the dead. The belief in such resurrections was widely spread; it was thought that God would raise from their graves certain of the ancient prophets to serve as the leaders of Israel to its final destiny. Others took John for the Messiah himself, although he certainly made no such pretension. The priests and scribes, opposed to this revival of prophetism, and always antagonistic to enthusiasts, despised him. But the popularity of the Baptist awed them, and they dared not speak against him. It was a victory which the feeling of the vulgar gained over the priestly aristocracy. When the chief priests were obliged to explain their exact position on this point, they were much embarrassed. Baptism, however, was to John nothing more than a sign, destined to make an impression and to prepare men’s minds for some great movement. There is no doubt that he was imbued in the highest degree with the Messianic expectations. “Repent,” said he, “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He announced a “great wrath,” that is to say, terrible calamities which were to come, and declared that the axe was already at the root of the tree, and that the tree would soon be cast into the fire. The Messiah he described had a fan in his hand, gathering in the wheat and burning the chaff. Repentance, of which baptism was the type, the giving of alms, and the reformation of manners, were to John’s mind the great means of preparation for the coming events. We cannot discover in what light exactly he looked at these events. What we are sure of is that he preached with much power against the same adversaries as Jesus attacked later on, against the rich priests, the Pharisees, the doctors—in one word, against official Judaism; and that, like Jesus, he was specially welcomed by the despised classes. He reduced to a small value the title “son of Abraham,” and declared that God could raise up children to Abraham from the stones on the ground. It does not seem that he possessed, even in germ, the great idea which led to the triumph of Jesus—the conception of a pure religion; but he powerfully served this idea by substituting a private rite for those legal ceremonies for which priests were required, just as the Flagellants of the Middle Ages were the precursors of the Reformation, by denying to the official clergy the monopoly of the sacraments and of absolution. The general tone of his sermons was severe and stern. The expressions he used against his adversaries appear to have been very violent. It was a harsh and continuous invective. It is probable that he did not remain a complete stranger to politics. Josephus, who was almost directly brought into connection with John through his teacher Banou, lets us understand this by his ambiguous words, and the catastrophe which put an end to the Baptist’s life seems to imply that it was so. His disciples led a very austere life, fasted frequently, and affected a sad and anxious demeanour. We appear sometimes to discover the dawn of the theory of communism in goods—the tenet that the rich man is obliged to share what he possesses with the poor. The poor already appeared as the class who would benefit in the first instance by the kingdom of God. Although the centre of John’s action was Judæa, his fame penetrated quickly to Galilee and reached Jesus, who, by his first discourses, had already gathered round him a little circle of hearers. Enjoying up to this point little authority, and doubtless impelled by the desire to see a teacher whose instructions had so much in them that was in sympathy with his own ideas, Jesus left Galilee and

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went with his small band of pupils to visit John. The new comers were baptized like every one else. John very warmly welcomed this group of Galilean disciples, and found nothing objectionable in their remaining distinct from his own followers. The two teachers were young; they had many ideas in common; they loved one another and vied with each other before the public in reciprocal kindness of expression. At the first glance, such a fact surprises us in John the Baptist, and we are tempted to call it in question. Humility has never been a feature of strong Jewish minds. It might have been expected that a character so stubborn, a sort of Lamennais, always irritated, would be very passionate, and suffer neither rivalry nor half adhesion. But this manner of viewing things rests upon a false conception of the person of John. We imagine him an old man; he was, on the contrary, of the same age as Jesus, and very young according to the ideas of the time. In mental development, he was the brother rather than the father of Jesus. The two young enthusiasts, full of the same hopes and the same hatreds, were able to make common cause, and mutually to support each other. Certainly an aged teacher, seeing a man without celebrity approach him, and maintain towards him an aspect of independence, would have rebelled; we have scarcely an example of a leader of a school receiving with eagerness his future successor. But youth is capable of all abnegations, and it may be readily admitted that these two young enthusiasts, full of the same hopes and the same hatreds, made common cause and mutually helped each other. These good relations became afterwards the starting-point of a whole system developed by the evangelists, which consisted in giving John’s attestation as the primary basis of the Divine mission of Jesus. Such was the degree of authority attained by the Baptist that men thought it would be impossible to find in the world a better guarantee. But far from the Baptist having abdicated before Jesus, Jesus, during all the time he passed with him, recognised him as his superior, and only developed his own genius with timidity.

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It seems, indeed, that, notwithstanding his profound originality, Jesus, during some weeks or months, was the imitator of John. The way before him was yet obscure. At all times, moreover, Jesus yielded much to opinion, and adopted many things which were not in exact accordance with his own ideas, or for which he cared little, merely because they were popular; but these accessories never injured his principal idea, and were always subordinate to it. Baptism had been brought into great favour by John; Jesus thought himself obliged to follow his example; therefore he baptized, and his disciples also. No doubt they accompanied this ceremony with preaching similar to that of John. The river Jordan was thus covered on all sides by Baptists, whose discourses were more or less successful. The disciple soon equalled the master, and his baptism was much prized. There was on this subject some jealousy among the disciples; the pupils of John came to him to complain of the increasing success of the young Galilean, whose baptism would soon, they feared, supplant their own. But the two masters remained superior to these little jealousies. According to a tradition, it was in the school of John where was formed the most celebrated group of the disciples of Jesus. The superiority of John was, besides, too indisputable for Jesus (still little known) to think of contesting it. He desired only to increase under John’s shadow, and considered himself obliged, in

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order to gain the multitude, to employ the external means which in the case of John had produced such astonishing success. When he began to preach again after John’s arrest, the first words which are said to have been used by him are nothing but the repetition of one of the familiar phrases of the Baptist. Many other expressions of John are to be found verbally in his discourses. The two schools appear to have lived for a long time with a good mutual understanding, and, after John’s death, Jesus, as his trusty friend, was one of the first to be informed of the event. 64

John, in fact, was soon cut short in his prophetic career. Like the old Jewish prophets, he was, in the highest degree, a censurer of the established authorities. The extreme vivacity with which he expressed himself regarding them could not fail to draw him into an embarrassing position. In Judæa, John does not appear to have been disturbed by Pilate; but, in Perea, beyond the Jordan, he came into the territories of Antipas. This tyrant was uneasy at the political leaven which was thinly veiled by John in his preaching. The great assemblages of men, formed by religious and patriotic enthusiasm, which had gathered round the Baptist, had a suspicious aspect. An entirely personal grievance, besides, was added to these motives of state, and rendered the death of the austere censurer inevitable. One of the most strongly-marked characters in this tragical family of the Herods was Herodias, grand-daughter of Herod the Great. Violent, ambitious, and passionate, she detested Judaism, and despised its laws. She had been married, probably against her will, to her uncle, Herod, son of Mariamne, whom Herod the Great had disinherited, and who never had assumed any public part. The inferior position of her husband, in comparison with the other members of the family, allowed her no peace of mind; she resolved to be sovereign at any cost. Antipas was the instrument through which she acted. This weak man, having become desperately enamoured of her, promised to marry her and to repudiate his first wife, the daughter of Hâreth, king of Petra, and emir of the neighbouring tribes of Perea. The Arabian princess, having obtained a hint of this purpose, resolved to fly. Concealing her design, she pretended that she wished to make a journey to Machero, in her father’s territory, and caused herself to be conducted by the officers of Antipas.

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Makaur, or Machero, was a colossal fortress built by Alexander Janneus, and rebuilt by Herod, in one of the most rugged wadys to the east of the Dead Sea. This was a wild and savage country, full of extraordinary legends, and was believed to be haunted by demons. The fortress was just on the boundary of the States of Hâreth and Antipas. At this period it was in the possession of Hâreth. Having been forewarned, the latter had prepared everything for the flight of his daughter, who was reconducted, from tribe to tribe, to Petra. The almost incestuous union of Antipas and Herodias then took place. The Jewish laws as to marriage were a constant rock of offence between the irreligious family of the Herods and the strict Jews. The members of this numerous and somewhat isolated dynasty being obliged to intermarry to a large extent, there frequently resulted violations of the limits prescribed by the Law. John was thus the echo of the general feeling when he rebuked Antipas. This was more than sufficient to

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decide the latter to follow up his suspicions. He caused the Baptist to be arrested and confined in the fortress of Machero, of which he had probably taken possession after the departure of the daughter of Hâreth.

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More timid than cruel, Antipas did not wish to put John to death. According to certain reports, he feared popular sedition. According to another version, he had taken pleasure in listening to his prisoner, and these interviews had thrown him into great perplexities. What is certain is, that the detention was prolonged, and that John preserved, even in prison, an extensive influence. He correspnded with his disciples, and we find him still in connection with Jesus. His faith in the near approach of the Messiah only became firmer; he attentively followed the movements outside, and sought to discover the signs that were favourable to the accomplishment of the hopes by which he was sustained.

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CHAPTER VII. DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS RELATIVE TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD. UP to the arrest of John, which may be dated approximately in the summer of the year 29, Jesus did not quit the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea and of the Jordan. A sojourn in the desert of Judæa was generally considered as the preparation for great things, as a sort of “retreat” before public acts. Jesus in this respect followed the example of others, and passed forty days in no other society than that of the wild beasts, maintaining a rigorous fast. The minds of the disciples were much exercised in regard to this sojourn. The desert was, according to popular belief, the abode of demons. There are to be found in the world few regions more desolate, more God-forsaken, more shut off from all outward life, than the rocky declivity which forms the western border of the Dead Sea. It was believed that, during the time Jesus passed in this frightful country, he had gone through terrible trials; that Satan had assailed him with his illusions or tempted him by seductive promises, and that finally, to reward him for his victory, angels had come and ministered to him. 67

It was probably in returning from the desert that Jesus was informed of the arrest of John the Baptist. He had no further reason now to prolong his stay in a country which was comparatively strange to him. Perhaps he feared also being involved in the severities exercised towards John, and did not wish to expose himself at a time in which, seeing the little celebrity he had, his death could in no way serve the advancement of his ideas. He accordingly went back to Galilee, his true fatherland, ripened by an important experience, and having acquired, through contact with a great man very different from himself, a consciousness of his own originality. On the whole, the influence of John had been more harmful than useful to Jesus. It checked his development; for everything leads us to believe that when he went towards Jordan he had ideas superior to those of John, and it was out of a kind of concession that he inclined for a moment towards baptism. Probably if the Baptist, to whose authority it would have been difficult to submit himself, had remained at liberty, he would not have thought of casting off the yoke of rites and of materialistic practices, and henceforth might have remained an unknown Jewish sectary; for the world had not yet abandoned these practices for others. It is the charm of a religion stripped of all exterior forms that has attracted the most elevated minds to Christianity. The Baptist once imprisoned, his followers became rapidly fewer, and Jesus found himself at liberty to follow his own bent. The only things he was indebted in a sort of way to John for were instruction in the art of preaching and in attracting popularity. From that moment, in fact, he preached with much more force, and awed the multitude with his authority.

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It appears also that his close intercourse with John, not so much by the influence of the Baptist as by the natural development of his own mind, matured many of his ideas about the “kingdom of

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heaven.” His watchword henceforth is “glad tidings;” and the announcement that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus is no longer a delightful moralist merely, aspiring to embody in a few vivid and concise aphorisms sublime lessons; he is a transcendental revolutionary who attempts to renovate the world from its very basis, and to found on earth the ideal which he has conceived. “The kingdom of God” is at hand is to be synonymous with being a disciple of Jesus. The phrase “kingdom of God” or “kingdom of Heaven,” as we have already said, had been long familiar to the Jews. Jesus, however, gave to it a moral sense—a social application, that the author of the book of Daniel himself, in his enthusiastic apocalypse, dared hardly venture upon. In the world, as it is constituted, it is the evil that prevails. Satan is the “king of this world,” and everything obeys him. The priests and the doctors do not the things which they order others to do. The just are persecuted, and the sole portion of the good is to weep. The “world” is a species of enemies of God and His saints; but God will reveal Himself and avenge His saints. The day is at hand; for abomination is rampant. The reign of justice is to have its turn.

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The advent of the reign of justice is to be a great and unexpected revolution. The world is to be turned upside down; the present state being bad, to represent the future, it is sufficient to conceive as near as may be the contrary of that which exists. The first shall be last. A new order will rule humanity. At present the good and the bad are mixed like wheat and tares in a field. The Master allows them to grow together; but the hour of abrupt separation is to come. The kingdom of God is to be like a great net, which gathers both good and bad fish; we put the good into vessels, and cast the bad away. The beginning of that great revolution will be hardly recognisable. It will be like the grain of mustard seed, which, though the least of all seeds, being cast into the earth, becomes a tree under the leaves of whose branches the birds come and repose; or again, it will be like the leaven, which, put into bread, leavens the whole lump. A series of often obscure parables was designed to express the surprises of that unexpected advent, its apparent injustices, its inevitable and definite character. Who is to establish this kingdom of God? Let us recall that the first thought of Jesus—a thought so deeply rooted in him that it was probably intuitive forming part of his very being—was that he was the son of God, the bosom friend of his father, the executor of His decrees. The response of Jesus to such a question could not then be doubtful. The persuasion that he should found the kingdom of God took, in the most absolute manner, possession of his mind. He looked upon himself as the universal reformer. Heaven, earth, all nature, depravity, disease, and death are only his instruments. In the glow of his heroic will, he believes himself to be all powerful. If the earth does not lend itself to this complete transformation, it will be broken up, purified by fire and by the breath of God. A new heaven will be created, and the whole earth peopled with the angels of God.

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A complete revolution, extending to nature itself —such was the fundamental idea of Jesus. Henceforth, it is certain, he renounced politics; the example of Judas the Gaulonite showed him the uselessness of popular seditions. He never dreamt of revolting against the Romans and the tetrarchs. The wild and anarchical principles of the Gaulonite found no favour with him. His submission to the powers that be, derisive at bottom no doubt, was outwardly complete. He paid tribute to Cæsar, to avoid trouble. Liberty and right do not belong to this world; why then trouble himself with vain susceptibilities? Despising the earth, convinced that the world did not merit solicitude, he sought refuge in his ideal kingdom; he established that great doctrine of transcendent contempt, the true doctrine of the freedom of mind which alone can bring peace. But so far he had not said. “My kingdom is not of this world.” Much obscurity was mixed up with his most perfect views. Sometimes singular temptations crossed his mind. In the desert of Judæa, Satan proposed to give him the kingdoms of this world. Not knowing the power of the Roman Empire, he could, with the amount of enthusiasm there was in Judæa, resulting soon after in so terrible a military resistance, he could, I say, considering the daring and the numbers of his partisans, hope to establish a kingdom. Many times, no doubt, this was the supreme thought with him: The kingdom of God, is it to be realised by force or by gentleness, by revolt or by patience? One day, we are told that the common people of Galilee sought to carry him away and make him king; but Jesus fled into the mountains, and remained there for some time alone. His lofty nature shielded him from the error which would make him an agitator or a chief of rebels, a Theudas or a Barkokeba. The revolution that he sought to bring about was a moral revolution; but he had not yet reached the point of trusting to the angels and the last trumpet for its execution. It was only upon men and through men that he wished to act. A visionary, who had no other idea than the approximateness of the last judgment, would not have had this care for the amelioration of human souls, and would not have laid down the finest moral precepts humanity has ever received. There was no doubt still much vagueness in his ideas; and it was exalted sentiment rather than fixed design which urged him on to the sublime work he had conceived, though in a manner quite different from what he imagined. It is in fact the kingdom of God, I mean, the kingdom of mind, that he founded, and, if Jesus from the bosom of his father sees his work bearing fruit through the ages, he may indeed truly say: “This is what I wished.” That which Jesus founded, and which will remain his to all eternity—deductions being made for the imperfections which enter into everything accomplished by mankind—is the doctrine of freedom of mind. Greece had already exalted ideas on the subject. Several stoics had discovered the means of being free under a tyrant. But, in general, the ancient world only understood liberty as attached to certain political forms; Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus and Cassius were concrete examples of such liberty. The true Christian is much more free from all restraints; here below he is a stranger; what boots it to him who is the temporary ruler of this earth, which is not his country? Liberty to him means truth. Jesus was not sufficiently acquainted with history to comprehend how opportune such a doctrine was—the very moment when republican

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liberty was expiring, and when the small municipal institutions of antiquity were being absorbed in the Roman Empire. But his admirable sound sense and the truly prophetic instinct that he had of his mission, guided him here with marvellous certainty. By these words: “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things which are God’s,” he originated something unknown to politics—a refuge for souls in the midst of an empire of brute force. To be sure, such a doctrine had its dangers. To establish as a principle that to look at a coin was a symbol of the acknowledgment of legitimate authority, to proclaim that the perfect man contemptuously pays tribute without question, was to annihilate the ancient forms of republicanism and to encourage all kinds of tyranny. Christianity, in this sense, has contributed much to weaken the sense of duty in the citizen, as well as to place the world absolutely in the power of existing circumstances. But in constituting an immense free association, which, during three hundred years, eschewed politics, Christianity amply compensated for the wrong it had done to civic virtue. Thanks to him, the power of the State was limited to terrestrial things; the mind was freed, or at all events, the terrible sceptre of Roman authority was broken for ever. The man who is especially preoccupied with the duties of public life does not spare those who place some other object above his party strifes. He especially blames those who subordinate political to social questions, and profess for the former a sort of indifference. In one sense he is right; for exclusiveness is prejudicial to the good government of human affairs. But what have parties done to promote the general morality of our species? If Jesus, instead of founding his heavenly kingdom, had betaken himself to Rome, and had worn his life out in conspiring against Tiberius, or in regretting Germanicus, what would have become of this world? Neither as a stern republican nor as a zealous patriot could he have stemmed the great public current of his age, though in pooh-poohing politics he has revealed to the world the truth that country is not everything, and that the man is anterior and superior to the citizen.

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The principles of our positive science have been injured by the dreams embraced in the scheme of Jesus. We know the history of the world. The kind of revolutions expected by Jesus are only produced by geological or astronomical causes, and no one has ever been able to connect them with things moral. But to be just to great originators, they must not be fastened with the prejudices they only shared. Columbus discovered America, though he started out with the most erroneous ideas; Newton believed his silly explanation of the Apocalypse to be as certain as his theory of gravitation. Shall we place a mediocre man of our times above a Francis d’Assisi, a St. Bernard, a Joan of Arc, or a Luther, because he is exempt from the errors that these persons have taught? Ought we to measure men by the correctness of their ideas of physics, and by the more or less exact knowledge they possess of the true natural laws of the universe? Let us understand better the position of Jesus and whence he derived his power. The Deism of the eighteenth century and a certain kind of Protestantism have accustomed us to regard the founder of the Christian faith merely as a great moralist, a benefactor of mankind. We see no more in the gospel than good maxims; we throw a convenient veil over the strange intellectual state whence it had its origin. There are some people

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who regret even that the French Revolution departed more than once from principle, and that it was not brought about by wise and moderate men. Let us not impose our petty plans and commonplace notions on those extraordinary movements which are so far above our grasp! Let us continue to admire the “morality of the Gospel;” let us suppress in our religious teachings the chimera which was the soul of it, but do not let us imagine that with the simple ideas of happiness or of individual morality we can again move the world. The idea of Jesus was much more profound. His was the most revolutionary idea that human brain ever conceived. But the historian must take it in its entirety, and not with those timid suppressions which strip it of the very thing which has rendered it efficacious for the regeneration of humanity. At bottom, the ideal is always a Utopia. When we wish at the present time to represent the Christ of the modern conscience, the consoler, the judge of these times, what do we do? That which Jesus himself did over 1800 years ago. We suppose the conditions of the real world quite other than they are; we represent a moral liberator breaking without weapons the chains of the negro, bettering the condition of the common people, delivering oppressed nations. We forget that that implies the subversion of the world, the climate of Virginia and that of the Congo modified, the blood and the race of millions of men changed, our social complications restored to a chimerical simplicity, and the political stratifications of Europe displaced from their natural order. The “restitution of all things” desired by Jesus was not more difficult. That new earth, that new heaven, that new Jerusalem, which comes from above, this cry, “Behold I make all things new,” are the characteristics common to reformers. The contrast of the ideal with the sad reality invariably produces in mankind those revolts against cold reason which mediocre minds consider as follies, until the day of their triumph arrives, and then those who have combated them are the first to acknowledge their great wisdom. That there may have been a contradiction between the belief in the approaching end of the world and the general moral system of Jesus, conceived in prospect of a permanent state of humanity, nearly analogous to that which now exists, no one will attempt to deny. It was exactly this contradiction that ensured the success of his work. The millenarian alone would have done nothing lasting; the moralist alone would have done nothing powerful. The millenarian gave the impulse, the moralist ensured the future. Hence Christianity united the two conditions of great success in this world—a revolutionary starting point and the possibility of vitality. Everything which is intended to succeed ought to respond to these two wants; for the world seeks both to change and to endure. Jesus, at the same time that he announced an unparalleled subversion in human affairs, proclaimed the principles upon which society has reposed for eighteen hundred years. That which, in fact, distinguishes Jesus from the agitators of his time and from those of all times is his perfect idealism. In some respects Jesus was an anarchist, for he had no notion of civil government. The latter seemed to him an abuse, pure and simple. He spoke of it in vague terms, after the manner of one of the commonalty who knows nothing of politics. Every magistrate appeared to him a natural enemy of the people of God; and he forewarned his disciples of conflicts with the civil powers without imagining for a moment that there was anything in this to be ashamed

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of. But the desire to supplant the rich and powerful never manifests itself in him. His aim is to annihilate wealth and power, but not to seize upon them. He prepares his disciples for persecutions and punishments, but in no single instance is the idea of armed resistance foreshadowed. The idea that man is all-powerful through suffering and resignation, that man triumphs over force through purity of heart, is an idea unique with Jesus. Jesus is not a spiritualist; for everything to him had a palpable realisation. But he is a thorough idealist, matter being for him but the symbol of the idea, and the real the vivid expression of that which does not manifest itself. 76

To whom shall we apply, upon whom shall we rely, to found the kingdom of God? The opinion of Jesus never wavered upon this point. That which is cherished by man is an abomination in the sight of God. The founders of the kingdom of God are the weak and lowly. Neither the rich, the learned, nor the priests; but women, common people, the humble, little children. The grand distinguishing mark of the Messiah is:—“The poor have the gospel preached to them.” The idyllic and gentle nature of Jesus here asserted its superiority. A great social revolution, in which rank should be levelled, in which all authority should be brought under, was his dream. The world will not believe him; the world will kill him. But his followers will not be of this world. They will be a small band of the lowly and humble, who will conquer the world by their very humility. The sentiment which made the “world” the antithesis of “Christian” has, in the mind of the Master, its full justification.

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CHAPTER VIII. JESUS AT CAPERNAUM.

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HAUNTED by a more and more imperious idea, Jesus, with a quiet determination, henceforth follows the path his extraordinary genius and the circumstances in which he lived have traced out for him. Till now, he had only communicated his thoughts to a few persons who had been secretly drawn towards him; henceforward his teaching was public and sought after. He was now about thirty years of age. The small group of hearers who went with him to John was undoubtedly increased, and perhaps he had been joined by some of the disciples of John. It was with this first nucleus of a church, on his return into Galilee, that he boldly proclaimed the “glad tidings of the kingdom of God.” This kingdom was at hand; and it was he, Jesus, who was that “Son of Man,” whom Daniel in his vision had beheld as the divine herald of the final and supreme revelation. We must remember that in the Jewish ideas, which were averse to art and mythology, the simple form of man had a superiority over that of Cherubim, and of the fantastic animals which the imagination of the people, since it had been subjected to the influence of Assyria, had ranged around the Divine Majesty. Already in Ezekiel, the Being seated on the supreme throne, far above the monsters of the mysterious chariot, the great revealer of prophetic visions, had the figure of a man. In the book of Daniel, in the midst of the vision of the empires, represented by animals, at the moment when the great judgment commences, and when the books are opened, a Being, “like unto a Son of Man,” advances towards the Ancient of days, who confers on him the power to judge the world, and to govern it for eternity. Son of Man, in the Semitic languages, especially in the Aramean dialects, is a simple synonym of man. But this chief passage of Daniel struck the mind; the words, Son of Man, became, at least in certain schools, one of the titles of the Messiah, regarded as judge of the world, and as king of the new era about to be inaugurated. The application which Jesus made of it to himself was therefore the proclamation of his Messiahship, and the affirmation of the coming catastrophe in which he was to figure as judge, clothed with the full powers which had been delegated to him by the Ancient of days. The success of the teaching of the new prophet was this time decisive. A group of men and women, all characterised by the same spirit of juvenile frankness and of simple innocence, adhered to him and said: “Thou art the Messiah!” As the Messiah was to be the Son of David, he was naturally conceded this appellation, which was synonymous with the former. Jesus accepted it with pleasure, although it might cause him some embarrassment, his origin being so well known. For himself, he preferred the title of “Son of Man,” an apparently humble title, but it was connected directly with the Messianic hopes. That was the appellation by which he designated himself, although, in his mouth, the “Son of Man” was a synonym of the pronoun I, which he avoided using.

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But no one ever thus addressed him, doubtless because the name in question did not quite suit him, until the day of his coming advent.

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Jesus’ centre of action, at this period of his life, was the little town of Capernaum—situated on the shore of the lake of Gennesareth. The name of Capernaum, into which enters the word caphar, village, seems to denote a small town of the old character, in contradistinction to the great towns built according to the Roman fashion, such as Tiberias. The name was so little known that Josephus, in one place in his writings, takes it for the name of a fountain, the fountain having more celebrity than the village close to it. Like Nazareth, Capernaum had no history, and had not participated in the profane movement favoured by the Herods. Jesus was much attached to this town, and made it a second home. Shortly after his return, he made an unsuccessful experiment upon Nazareth. One of his biographers naïvely remarks that he could work no miracle there. The knowledge that was possessed of his family—a family of little importance—destroyed his authority. People could not regard as the son of David one whose brother, sister, and sister-in-law they were seeing every day. Besides, it is to be remarked that his family were very decidedly opposed to him, refusing point blank to believe in his divine mission. At one time, his mother and his brothers maintained that he had lost his senses, and, treating him as an exalted idiot, attempted to put him under restraint. The Nazarenes, much more violent, desired, it is said, to kill him by throwing him down from a steep rock. Jesus pointedly retorted that this risk was common to all great men, and applied to himself the proverb—“A prophet hath no honour in his own country.” This check was far from discouraging him. He returned to Capernaum, where he found the people much more favourably disposed to him, and from there he organised a series of missions into the small surrounding towns. The people of this beautiful and fertile country rarely assembled together except on the Sabbath. This was the day he selected for his teaching. Each town had then a synagogue or place of meeting. It was a rectangular room, not very large, with a portico, decorated in the Greek style. The Jews, not having any architecture of their own, never attempted to give to those edifices an original design. The remains of many ancient synagogues are still to be seen in Galilee. They have all been constructed of large and good materials; but their appearance is rather paltry, owing to the profusion of floral ornaments, foliage, and network which characterise Jewish edifices. In the interior there were benches, a pulpit for public reading, and a recess for holding the sacred rolls. These edifices, which had nothing of the temple about them, were the centres of Jewish life. There the people assembled on the Sabbath for prayer, and to listen to the reading of the Law and the Prophets. As Judaism, outside of Jerusalem, had, properly speaking, no clergy, the first to arrive stood up and read the lessons, paraschæ et haphtara, of the day, adding thereto an original, a personal midrasch, or commentary, in which he expounded his own views. This was the origin of the “homily,” whose finished models we find in the smaller treatises of Philo. The auditors had a right to interrupt and to question the reader; thus, the meeting degenerated quickly into a kind of free discussion assembly. It had a president, “elders,” a hazzan—a recognised reader or apparitor, “deputies”— a sort of secretaries or messengers, who conducted the correspondence between the

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different synagogues—a shammasch or sacristan. The synagogues were thus really small independent republics; they had an extended jurisdiction, guaranteed enfranchisement, exercised an authority over the enfranchised. Like all the municipal corporations up to an advanced period of the Roman Empire, they issued honorary decrees, which had the force of law in the community, and pronounced sentences of corporal punishment, which were executed ordinarily by the hazzan.

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With the marked activity of mind that has always characterised the Jews, such an institution, despite the arbitrary restraints it tolerated, could not fail to give rise to very animated discussions. Thanks to the synagogues, Judaism has been able to pass unscathed through eighteen centuries of persecution. These were so many little separate worlds which at once conserved the national spirit, and offered a ready field for intestine struggles. Within the walls of the synagogues there was vented an enormous amount of passion. Disputes for precedence were keen. To have a reserved seat in the first row was the recompense for great piety, or the privilege of wealth which was the most envied. On the other hand, the liberty accorded to every one, of instituting himself reader and expounder of the sacred text, offered wonderful facilities for the propagation of new ideas. This was one of the great opportunities of Jesus, and the means he most often used in laying down his doctrines. He entered the synagogue and stood up to read; the hazzan gave him the scroll, which he unrolled, and from which he read the lesson of the day. From this reading he evolved some points bearing on his own ideas. As there were few Pharisees in Galilee, the discussion did not assume that degree of animation and that acrimonious tone of opposition which he would have encountered at the very first step at Jerusalem. These good Galileans had never heard a discourse so well adapted to their happy dispositions. They admired him, and they encouraged him; they found that he spoke well, and that his reasonings were convincing. He resolved the hardest questions without any difficulty; the charm of his speech and of his person captivated these ingenuous folk, whose minds had not yet been contaminated by the pedantry of the doctors. Thus, the authority of the young Master increased daily, and, as a matter of course, the more people believed in him the more he believed in himself. His sphere, however, was limited. It was confined to the basin of the lake of Tiberias, and even here there was one locality which he preferred. The lake is five or six leagues long and three or four broad; though it has the appearance of an all but perfect oval, it forms, from Tiberias to the mouth of the Jordan, a sort of gulf, whose curve measures about three leagues. This was the field in which the seed sown by Jesus found at length a congenial soil. Let us run over it step by step, and endeavour to raise the mantle of aridity and of desolation with which the demon of Islamism has covered it. The first objects we encounter on leaving Tiberias are steep rocks, a mountain which appears to roll into the sea. The mountains then gradually recede, and a plain (El Ghoueir), almost level with the sea, opens out. It is a charming grove of rich verdure, furrowed by the plentiful waters which issue partly from a great round reservoir of ancient construction (Aïn Medawara). On the verge of this plain, which is, strictly speaking, the country of Gennesareth, we find the miserable

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village of Medjdel. At the opposite side of the plain (always following the lake) we come upon the site of a town (Khan Minyeh) with charming streams (Aïn-et-Tin), a pretty road, narrow and deep, cut out of the rocks, which Jesus certainly often traversed, and which serves as an outlet into the plain of Gennesareth and to the northern slopes of the lake. A mile from this place the traveller crosses a stream of salt water (Aïn Tabiga), issuing from several large springs a few yards from the lake, and entering it through the middle of a dense mass of verdure. After a further journey of forty minutes over the bare slopes which stretch from Aïn Tabiga to the mouth of the Jordan, we at last find some huts and a collection of monumental ruins, called Tell-Houm.

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Five small towns (which will be as long spoken of by mankind as Rome or Athens) were in the time of Jesus scattered about the space which extends from the village of Medjdel to Tell-Houm. Of these five towns, Magdala, Dalmanutha, Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin, the first alone can to-day be identified with any certainty. The horrible village of Medjdel has doubtless retained the name and the situation of the little town that gave to Jesus his most faithful friend (Mary Magdalene); Dalmanutha is altogether unknown. Possibly Chorazin was a little more inland, on the north side. As for Bethsaida and Capernaum, conjecture has placed them at Tell-Houm, Aïn-et-Tin, Khan Minyeh, and at Aïn Medawara. In topography, as in history, it might indeed be said that a profound design has sought to conceal the traces of the great founder. It is doubtful whether, upon that wofully devastated soil, we shall ever succeed in fixing the spots whence mankind would gladly flock to kiss the imprints of his feet. The lake, the horizon, the shrubs, the flowers, are all that remain of the little canton, three or four leagues in extent, where Jesus began his Divine work. The trees have totally disappeared. In this country, where the vegetation was formerly so rich that Josephus saw in it a kind of miracle—Nature, according to him, being pleased to bring forth side by side the plants indigenous to cold countries, the products of the torrid zones, the trees of temperate climates, laden all the year round with flowers and fruits—in this country travellers are now obliged to calculate a day beforehand the place where they will on the morrow find a shady nook to sit down to lunch. The lake has become deserted. A solitary, dilapidated barque now ploughs the waves, formerly the scene of so much activity and of happiness. But the waters are still smooth and transparent. The coast, formed of rocks and pebbles, is indeed that of a small sea, not that of a mere pond, like the banks of Lake Huleh. It is clean, neat, mudless, always beaten on the same spot by the gentle waves. There are small clearly-defined promontories, covered with rose laurels, tamarisks, and prickly caper bushes; at two places especially, at the mouth of the Jordan near Tarichea and at the edge of the plain of Gennesareth, there are delightful parterres where the waves ebb and flow over masses of turf and flowers. The Aïn-Tabiga brook forms a little estuary, which is full of pretty shells. Flocks of aquatic birds cover the lake. The sky is dazzling with light. The empyrean blue waters, deeply embedded between glittering rocks, appear, when viewed from the summit of the mountains of Safed, to lie at the bottom of a cup of gold. To the north, the snowy ravines of Hermon are traced in white lines upon the sky; to the west, the high undulating plateaux of Gaulonitis and Peræa,

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absolutely barren and clothed by the sun with a kind of velvety atmosphere, form one compact mountain, or rather a long high terrace, which runs from Cæsarea-Philippi to the south as far as the eye can reach. The heat upon the shore is, in summer, very oppressive. The lake occupies a hollow which is over six hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and thus is subjected to the torrid conditions of the Dead Sea. A luxurious vegetation tempered in former times these excessive heats. One can hardly understand that a furnace such as the whole lake basin now is, beginning with the month of May, had ever been the scene of marvellous activity. Josephus, however, found the climate very temperate. Undoubtedly, there has been here, as in the Campagna of Rome, some change of climate, attributable to historical causes. It is Islamism, and, above all, the Mussulman reaction against the crusades, which has withered, as with a blast of death, the region preferred by Jesus. The beautiful country of Gennesareth did not suspect that within the brain of this peaceful wayfarer were concealed its destinies. 85

A dangerous compatriot indeed! He has ruined the country which had the insuperable honour of giving him birth. Coveted by two rival fanaticisms, after it had become the object of universal love or hate, Galilee, as the price of its glory, has been changed into a desert. But who will say that Jesus would have been happier if he had lived in obscurity in his own village until he had reached the age of mature manhood? and as for the ungrateful Nazarenes, who would ever think of them if one of their number had not, at the risk of compromising the future prosperity of their town, discovered his Father and proclaimed himself the Son of God ?

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At the time of which we speak, four or five large villages, situated about half an hour’s walk from one another, formed the little world of Jesus. He seems never to have visited Tiberias, a heathen city, peopled for the most part by Pagans, and the permanent residence of Antipas. Sometimes, however, he wandered forth of his favourite region. For instance, he went by boat along the eastern shore to Gergesa. In the north, we find him at Paneas, or Cæsarea-Philippi, at the foot of Mount Hermon. Moreover, he finally made a journey to Tyre and Sidon, a country which at that time must have been in an exceedingly flourishing condition. In all these countries he was surrounded with Paganism. At Cæsarea he saw the celebrated grotto of Panium, which was considered the source of the Jordan, and around which popular belief had entwined many strange legends; he could admire the marble temple that Herod had erected near there in honour of Augustus; he stopped probably before the numerous votive statues erected to Pan, to the Nymphs, to the Echo of the Grotto, which piety had already accumulated in this beautiful spot. The rationalistic Jew, accustomed to look on strange gods for deified men or for demons, had come to consider all these symbolical representations as idols. The attractions of naturalistic worship, which carried away the more sanguine races, did not move him. It is undoubted that he had no knowledge of what the ancient sanctuary of Melkarth at Tyre might still contain of a primitive worship more or less analogous to that of the Jews. Paganism, which, in Phœnicia, had raised on every hill a temple and a sacred

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grove—outward evidences of great industry and vulgar riches—hardly elicited a smile from him. Monotheism takes away the capacity for understanding Pagan religions. A Mussulman suddenly introduced into polytheistic countries seems to have no eyes. Certainly, Jesus learned little or nothing in these journeys. He always came back to his beloved shores of Gennesareth. His thoughts were centred there, and there he found faith and love.

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CHAPTER IX. THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

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IN this earthly paradise, which the great historic revolutions had, up till then, affected but little, there lived a people in perfect harmony with the country itself—active, honest, light and tender-hearted. The lake of Tiberias is one of the best fishing-grounds in the world. Very productive fisheries had been established, particularly at Bethsaida and Capernaum, and had created a certain opulence. These fisherman families formed a gentle and peaceable society, extending, by means of numerous ties of relationship, over the whole lake region we have named. Their comparatively idle lives left their imagination quite free. The ideas concerning the kingdom of God found, amongst these small coteries of good people, more credence than anywhere else. Nothing that we call civilisation, in the Greek or worldly sense, had yet penetrated into their midst. Nor had they any of our German and Celtic earnestness; but although their goodness was often, perhaps, wholly superficial, their manners were quiet, and they had a certain amount of intelligence and shrewdness. We can imagine them as being somewhat similar to the better population of the Lebanons, but with the faculty, which the latter lacked, of producing great men. Jesus met there his true kindred. He installed himself as one of them. Capernaum became “his own city,” and, in the midst of the little circle which adored him, he forgot his sceptical brothers, ungrateful Nazareth and its mocking incredulity. One house especially, at Capernaum, offered him an agreeable asylum and devoted disciples. It was that of two brothers, sons of one Jonas, who was probably dead at the time when Jesus came to fix his abode upon the banks of the lake. These two brothers were Simon, surnamed in Syro-Chaldaic Cephas, in Greek Petros, “the Stone,” or Peter, and Andrew. Born at Bethsaida, they had established themselves at Capernaum when Jesus entered on public life. Peter was married and had children, and his mother-in-law lived with him Jesus loved that house, and resided there constantly. Andrew appears to have been a disciple of John the Baptist, and Jesus had probably become acquainted with him on the banks of the Jordan. The two brothers, even at the time when it seemed they were most occupied with their Master, continued always to follow the calling of fishermen. Jesus, who delighted in playing upon words, said sometimes that he would make them fishers of men. In fact, among all his disciples, none of them were more firmly attached to him. It would seem that John, like Andrew, had known Jesus in the school of John the Baptist. The two families of Jonas and Zebedee appear to have been very closely related. Another family, that of Zabdia or Zebedee, a well-to-do fisherman and the owner of several boats, extended to Jesus a hearty welcome. Zebedee had two sons; James, who was the elder, and a younger son, John, who later on was destined to play so important a part in the history of infant

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Christianity. Both were zealous disciples. Salome, wife of Zebedee, was also strongly attached to Jesus, and accompanied him till his death.

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The women, in fact, received him very gladly. He had in their society those reserved manners which render a very agreeable union of ideas between the two sexes possible. The separation of men and women which has checked all refined development among the peoples of the East was, undoubtedly, then, as in our day, much less rigorous in the country and in the villages than in the large towns. Three or four devoted Galilean women always accompanied the young Master, and disputed among themselves for the pleasure of listening to him and of attending on him in turn. These women imported into the new sect an enthusiastic element, as well as something of the marvellous, the importance of which was already felt. One of them, Mary Magdalene, who has made the name of her poor native town so celebrated in the world, appears to have been a very excitable person. In the language of the time, she had been possessed of seven devils: that is to say, she had been afflicted with nervous and apparently inexplicable maladies. Jesus, by his unspotted and gentle loveliness, soothed that excitable organisation. The Magdalene remained faithful to him even to Golgotha, and on the day but one following his death played a most important part, for, as we shall see later on, she was the principal medium through which was established faith in the resurrection. Joanna, wife of Chuza, one of the attendants of Antipas, Susannah, and others whose names are unknown, accompanied him constantly and ministered unto him. Some of them were rich, and, placing their fortunes at the disposal of the young Prophet, put him in a position to live without having to follow the occupation to which he had been brought up. There were still many others who followed him habitually and recognised him as their Master:— one Philip of Bethsaida, Nathaniel, son of Tolmai or Ptolemy, of Cana, perhaps a disciple of the first period; and Matthew, probably the person who was the Xenophon of infant Christianity. He had, according to tradition, been a publican, and, as such, handled with greater facility the kalam than the others. It was then probably that he began to think of writing those memoirs which are the bases of that which we know of the teachings of Jesus. Others of the disciples were Thomas or Didymus, who, though he doubted sometimes, was warm-hearted, and a man of generous impulses; one Lebbæus or Thaddeus; Simon the Zelot, who was, perhaps, a disciple of Judas the Gaulonite, belonging to the party of the Kenaim, which was formed at that time, and which was soon to play so great a part in the affairs of the Jewish nation; lastly Joseph Barsaba, surnamed Justus; Matthias; a personage conjectured to be named Ariston; Judas, son of Simon, of the city of Kerioth, who was the black sheep of the faithful flock, and who acquired such unenviable renown. He was, it appears, the only one of them who was not a Galilean. Kerioth was a town at the extreme south of the tribe of Judah, a day’s journey beyond Hebron. We have seen that the family of Jesus was in general little predisposed towards him. Nevertheless, James and Jude, his cousins, by Mary Cleophas, became from that time his disciples, and Mary Cleophas herself was of the number of those persons who followed him to Calvary. At this period

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we do not read of his mother being with him. It is only after the death of Jesus that Mary becomes of great importance, and that the disciples seek to attach her to themselves. It is then, too, that the members of the family of the founder, under the appellation of brothers of the Lord, form an influential group, which for long was at the head of the Church at Jerusalem, and which after the sack of the city sought refuge in Batanea. The simple fact of having been on terms of intimacy with him became a decided advantage, just as, after the death of Mahomet, the wives and daughters of the prophet, who were of no account during his life-time, became great authorities.

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In this friendly throng Jesus had avowedly his favourites, and a select circle of confidants. The two sons of Zebedee, James and John, appear to have taken the front rank in that small council. They were full of fire and passion. Jesus had uniquely designated them “sons of thunder,” on account of their excessive zeal, a zeal which, if it had had the control of the thunder, would have made too frequent use of it. John, in particular, appears to have been on a certain footing of familiarity with Jesus. Perhaps the numerous and active school which later on attached itself to the second of the sons of Zebedee, and who wrote, it appears, his recollections in a manner which did not sufficiently conceal the interests of the school, the records of which are to be found in his recollections (souvenirs), has exaggerated the warm attachment that the Master bore for him. But what is more significant is, that in the synoptical Gospels, Simon Barjona, or Peter, James, son of Zebedee, and John his brother, formed a sort of inner council, which Jesus called together at certain times when he had reason to challenge the faith and the intelligence of the others. It appears, besides, that all three were associated as fishermen. The affection of Jesus for Peter was deep. The character of that disciple —upright, sincere, impulsive—pleased Jesus, who sometimes allowed himself to smile at his eager manner. Peter, who was not much of a mystic, communicated to the Master his simple doubts, his dislikes, his human weaknesses, with an honest unreserve that recalls that of Joinville towards St. Louis. Jesus, full of confidence and esteem, reproved him in a friendly manner. As regards John, his youth, his exquisite tenderness of heart, and his lively imagination, must have possessed a great charm. The individuality of that extraordinary man did not develop itself till afterwards. If he is not the author of the bizarre Gospel which bears his name, and which, although the character of Jesus is misrepresented in it in many particulars, embraces such precious teachings, it is at least possible that he had been the occasion of it. Accustomed to ponder over his recollections with the feverish restlessness of an excited mind, he transformed his Master in wishing to describe him, and has furnished to the skilful forgers the pretext of a narrative in the compilation of which it does not appear that perfect good faith was the guiding principle. No hierarchy, strictly speaking, existed in this infant sect. They were to call each other “brothers,” and Jesus absolutely proscribed titles of superiority, such as rabbi, “master,” “father,” he alone being Master, and God alone being Father. The greatest was to be the servant of the others. Nevertheless, Simon Barjona distinguished himself among his fellows by a certain personal importance. Jesus lived with him and discoursed from his boat; his house was the head-quarters of evangelical preaching. In public, he was regarded as chief of the band, and it was to him that the

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superintendent of the tax collectors addressed himself for payment of the taxes due by the sect. Simon was the first to acknowledge Jesus to be the Messiah. In a moment of unpopularity, when Jesus demanded of his disciples: “Will ye also go away?” Simon answered: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” At various times Jesus conferred on him in his Church a certain priority, and interpreted his Syriac surname of Képha (stone), wishing to signify thereby that he would make him the corner-stone of the new building. At one time, he seems to promise him “the keys of the kingdom of Heaven,” and to accord him the right of pronouncing upon earth decisions to be ratified always in eternity.

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No doubt this preference given to Peter excited not a little jealousy. In view of the future, particularly, was this jealousy kindled—in view of that kingdom of God, in which all the disciples would be seated on thrones, at the right and the left of the Master, in order to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. They demanded of him who should then be the nearest to the “Son of Man,” acting in some sort as his first minister and assessor. The two sons of Zebedee aspired to these positions. Filled with such a thought they induced their mother, Salome, who one day took Jesus apart, and solicited him for the two highest places for her sons. Jesus evaded the request by repeating his habitual maxim that he who exalteth himself shall be brought low, and that the kingdom of heaven will be possessed by the meek and lowly. This created some stir in the band: and there was ill-feeling manifested against James and John. The same rivalry is frequently seen in the Gospel of John, in which the writer is never tired of declaring himself to be “the beloved disciple,” and the one to whom the Master in dying confided the care of his mother, who seeks to place himself near Simon Peter—nay, sometimes before him—in the important situations in which the older evangelists omitted to mention him. Among the persons above mentioned, every one of them, of which we know anything, commenced life as a fisherman. In a country of simple manners, in which every one labours, this profession was not so degrading as the declamations of preachers would have us believe, in order the better to magnify the miraculous origins of Christianity. At all events, none of them belonged to a socially elevated class. Matthew or Levi, son of Alphæus, alone had been a publican. But those to whom that name was given in Judæa were not the farmers-general [of taxes], who were men of exalted rank (always Roman patricians), and called at Rome publicani. They were the agents of the farmers-general, subordinate servants, simple customs officers. The great route from Acre to Damascus, one of the most ancient routes in the world, which traversed Galilee skirting the lake, increased greatly the number of this class of employés there. At Capernaum, which was probably on the line of the route, there was a numerous staff. That occupation has never been popular; but amongst the Jews it was regarded as wholly criminal. Taxation, which was new to them, was the symbol of their vassalage. One school, that of Judas the Gaulonite, maintained that to pay taxes was an act of Paganism. The customs officers, moreover, were abhorred by the zealots of the Law. They were only spoken of in conjunction with assassins, highway robbers, and people of infamous character. Jews who accepted such positions were excommunicated and rendered incapable of

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making a will; their money was accursed, and the casuists forbade its being exchanged. These poor people, placed under the ban of society, lived by themselves apart. Jesus accepted an invitation to dine at the house of Levi, at which were present, according to the language of the times, “many publicans and sinners.” That was a great scandal. In those proscribed houses one ran the risk of meeting wicked society. We shall often see him in this position—careless in regard to shocking the prejudices of well-disposed persons, seeking to elevate the ignorant classes by means of the orthodox, and thus exposing himself to the most cutting reproaches of the zealots. Pharisaism, in addition to a sort of external respectability, made infinite observances the test of salvation. The true moralist—who proclaimed only that God required but one thing—to wit, rectitude of sentiment—came to be welcomed by all who were not imbued with the official hypocrisy.

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Jesus owed these numerous conquests to an infinite charm of person and of speech. One penetrating word, one look falling upon a simple conscience, which was only waiting to be aroused, made such a one an ardent disciple. Sometimes Jesus made use of an innocent artifice, which was also employed at a later period by Joan of Arc. He pretended to have an intimate knowledge of something affecting the person he wished to gain over, or he would recall some circumstance dear to that person’s heart. It was in this manner, it is said, that he touched Nathaniel, Peter, and the Samaritan woman. Dissimulating the real source of his power—I mean his superiority to his surroundings—he allowed it to be believed, in order to satisfy the aspirations of the times—aspirations, moreover, which he fully shared—that a revelation from on high had disclosed to him the secrets and the workings of hearts. Everybody imagined that he moved in a higher sphere than that of mankind. It was said that he spoke with Moses and Elias upon the mountains; it was believed that in those moments of solitude the angels came and ministered unto him, and established a supernatural intercourse between him and heaven.

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CHAPTER X. PREACHINGS ON THE LAKE.

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SUCH was the group which, on the banks of the Lake of Tiberias, surrounded Jesus. The aristocracy was represented there by a customs-officer and the wife of a steward. The rest were composed of fishermen and common people. They were extremely ignorant; their intellect was feeble. They believed in apparitions and ghosts. Not one particle of Greek culture had penetrated this chief circle. Moreover, their Jewish instruction was very imperfect, but they were full of heart and good will. The beautiful climate of Galilee rendered the existence of these honest fishermen a perpetual enjoyment. They were a true prelude to the kingdom of God—simple, good, happy—rocked gently on their charming little lake, or sleeping at night on its banks. One cannot realise the intoxication of a life which thus glides away under the canopy of heaven; the feelings, now gentle, now ardent, produced by this continual contact with nature; the dreams of those starry nights, under the infinite expanse of the azure dome. It was during such a night that Jacob, with his head resting on a stone, beheld in the stars the promise of an innumerable posterity, and the mysterious ladder reaching from earth to heaven, by which the Elohim ascended and descended. At the time of Jesus heaven was not shut nor the earth grown cold. The cloud still opened above the Son of Man; the angels ascended and descended upon his head; visions of the kingdom of God were reported everywhere, for the reason that man carried them in his heart. The clear and mild eyes of those simple souls contemplated the universe in its mythic origin. The world probably discovered its secret to the divinely enlightened consciences of these happy children, whose purity of heart merited that one day they should see God. Jesus lived with his disciples almost always in the open air. Sometimes he entered a boat and taught the multitudes assembled on the shore. Sometimes he sat upon the mountains which skirted the lake, where the air was so pure and the sky so luminous. The faithful band led thus a gay and roaming life, receiving the inspirations of the Master fresh from his lips. An innocent doubt was now and then started, some mildly sceptical question raised. A smile or a look from Jesus sufficed to silence the objection. At each step—in the passing cloud, in the sprouting seed, in the ripening corn—they descried a sign of the kingdom which was at hand. They believed they were about to see God, and to become the masters of the world. Tears were turned into joy—it was the advent of “peace on earth” (universelle consolation). “Blessed,” said the Master, “are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which, are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. v. 3-10).

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His preaching was unimpassioned and pleasing, redolent of nature and of the perfume of the fields. He loved the flowers, and drew from them his most charming lessons. The birds of the air, the sea, the mountains, the frolics of children, were introduced by turn into his discourses. His style had nothing of the Greek period about it, but resembled much more the turn of the Hebrew parabolists, and in particular the sentences of the Jewish doctors, his contemporaries, which are to be found in the Pirke Aboth. His expositions were not very extended; they formed a species of sorites after the manner of the Koran, which, being put together, constituted later on those long discourses which were written by Matthew. No note of transition linked together these diverse fragments. In general, however, the same inspiration pervaded them all and gave them unity. It was in the parable, especially, that the Master excelled. Nothing in Judaism could have served him as a model for that charming style. It was a creation of his. No doubt there are to be found in Buddhist books some parables precisely of the same tone and of the same form as the Gospel parables. But it is hard to allow that a Buddhist influence had any effect on them. The spirit of meekness and of deep sentiment which animated equally primitive Christianity and Buddhism is sufficient to explain these similarities. A total indifference to exterior things, and for vain superfluities as regards manners and customs, which our colder climates render imperative, were the outcome of the innocent and sweet lives passed in Galilee. Cold climates, by bringing man and the outer world into perpetual conflict, have caused too much store to be set by researches after comfort and luxury. On the other hand, the climates which awaken fewer desires are the countries of idealism and of poetry. The accessories of life are there insignificant as compared to the pleasure of living. The adornment of dwellings is there superfluous, for people remain within doors as little as possible. The strong and regularly-served food of less generous climates would be looked upon as heavy and disagreeable. And, as for the luxury of clothing, what can equal that which God has given to the earth and to the birds of the air? Labour, in climates of this description, seems useless; what it affords is not worth what it costs. The animals of the field are better clothed than the most opulent of men, and they toil not. This contempt, when it does not proceed from idleness, greatly assists to elevate the souls of men, and inspired Jesus with some charming apologues. “Lay not up for yourselves,” said he, “treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God

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so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek): for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matt. vi. 19-34).

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This essentially Galilean sentiment had a decisive influence upon the destinies of the primitive sect. The happy band, trusting to its Heavenly Father to supply its wants, held, as a fundamental principle, the cares of life to be an evil, which extinguished in man the germ of all that was good. Each day it asked of God the bread for the morrow. Wherefore lay up treasure? The kingdom of God is at hand. “Sell that ye have and give alms,” said the Master; “provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not.” What more nonsensical than for one to heap up treasures for heirs one shall never see! As an example of human folly, Jesus loved to cite the case of a man who, when he had enlarged his barns and laid up goods for many years, died before having enjoyed them. Brigandage, which was deeply rooted in Galilee, added much force to this point of view. The poor, who could not suffer from it, came to regard themselves as the favoured of God, whilst the rich, whose possessions were so unsafe, were the people actually disinherited. In our communities, established upon a very rigorous idea in regard to property, the position of the poor is wretched; they have not the right to a spot under the sun. There are no flowers, no grass, no shade except for the one who possesses the earth. In the Orient these are the gifts of God, which belong to no one. The landlord has but a slender privilege; nature is the patrimony of all. Further, primitive Christianity in those things was only following in the footsteps of the Jewish sects who practised the monastic life. A communistic element pervaded all those sects (Essenians, Therapeutæ), which were looked upon with disfavour equally by Pharisees and Sadducees. The Messianic beliefs, which among the orthodox Jews wore a wholly political aspect, had for the two sects just named a purely social meaning. By means of an easy, regulated, and contemplative mode of life, leaving to each individual freedom of action, these small churches, which were supposed (not wrongly, perhaps) to be an imitation of the neo-pythagorian institutes, thought to inaugurate on earth the kingdom of Heaven. Dreams of a blessed life, founded upon the fraternity of man and the worship of the true God, engrossed exalted intellects, which resulted in bold and sincere attempts being made everywhere, but to no purpose. Jesus, whose relations with the Essenes it is very difficult to make out (resemblances in history do not always imply relations), was in this unquestionably at one with them. Community of goods was for some time the rule in the new society. Avarice was the cardinal sin. Now, it is necessary to remark that the sin of “avarice,” against which moral Christianity has been so severe, was then the mere attachment to property. The first condition of being a perfect disciple of Jesus was to sell

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one’s property and give the proceeds to the poor. Those who recoiled from that step were not admitted into the community. Jesus often repeated that he who finds the kingdom of God must buy it at the sacrifice of all his goods, and that in doing so he makes an advantageous exchange. “Again: The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Again: The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant-man seeking goodly pearls: who, when he hath found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it” (Matt. xiii. 44-46). But, alas! The inconveniences of this method were not long in making themselves felt. A treasurer was required. Judas of Kerioth was chosen for the office. Rightly or wrongly, he was accused of stealing from the common purse; a great antipathy was raised against him—he came to a bad end. Sometimes the Master, better versed in things pertaining to Heaven than in those belonging to earth, taught a political economy yet more remarkable. In a fanciful parable, a steward is praised for having made friends amongst the poor at the expense of the rich, so that the poor in turn might introduce him into the kingdom of Heaven. The poor, in fact, having become the dispensers of this kingdom, would not admit anyone to it unless those who had given them something. A discreet man, thinking of the future, had, therefore, to seek to win their favour. “And the Pharisees, also, who were covetous,” says the Evangelist, “heard all these things; and they derided him.” Did they also hear the remarkable parable which follows?—“There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table; moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom: and he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented” (Luke xvi. 19-25). What could be more just? Later on this was denominated the parable of the “wicked rich man.” But it is purely and simply the parable of the rich man. He is in hell because he is rich, because he does not give his goods to the poor, because he dines well, whilst others at his door fare badly. Finally, Jesus, in a less extravagant moment, does not insist on the obligation of selling one’s goods and of giving them to the poor, except as suggesting perfection; but he nevertheless makes this terrible declaration:—“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” In all this a very admirable sentiment dominated the mind of Jesus as well as the minds of the band of joyous children which accompanied him, and made him the true source of the peace of the soul for eternity, and the grand consoler of life. In disengaging men from what he called “the cares of this world,” Jesus may have gone to excess, and struck at the conditions essential to human

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society; but he founded that high spirituality which has during centuries filled souls with joy in passing through this vale of tears. He saw quite clearly that man’s inattention, his want of philosophy and morality, proceeded most often from the amusements he indulges in, from the cares which assail him, and which are multiplied beyond measure by civilisation. The Gospel, in some sort, has been the supreme remedy for the weariness of ordinary life, a perpetual sursum corda, a powerful distraction from the miserable cares of the world, a gentle appeal like that of Jesus to the ear of Martha: “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful.” Thanks to Jesus, existence the most gloomy, the most absorbed by sad and humiliating duties, has been cheered by a glimpse of heaven! In our troublous civilisations, the recollection of the free life led in Galilee is like perfume from another world, like the “dew of Hermon,” which has prevented barrenness and vulgarity from pervading entirely the field of God.

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CHAPTER XI. THE KINGDOM OF GOD CONCEIVED AS THE INHERITANCE OF THE POOR. THESE maxims—good for a country in which life is nurtured by the air and the light, and that delicate communism of a band of children of God, leaning with confidence on the bosom of their Father—might suit a simple sect which was firmly of the belief that its dreams were about to be realised. But it is evident that such principles did not satisfy the whole of the society. Jesus, in fact, soon perceived that the official world would on no account tolerate his kingdom. He therefore took his resolution with extreme boldness. Putting the world, with its unfeeling heart and its narrow prejudices, on one side, he turned towards the common people. A great substitution of one class for another must take place. The kingdom of God is made: first, for children and for those who resemble them; second, for the outcast of this world, victims of that social arrogance which repels the good though humble man; third, for heretics and schismatics, publicans, Samaritans, and Pagans of Tyre and Sidon. A forcible parable explained and justified that appeal to the people. A king prepares a wedding feast, and sends his servants to seek out those that are invited. Each one of the invited excuses himself; some even maltreat the messengers. The king thereupon takes firm measures. The fashionable people have rejected his invitation. Be it so; he will have the first comers instead, the people collected from the highways and byeways, the poor, the beggars, the lame; it matters not; the room must be filled. “I say unto you,” said the king, “that none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.” 105

Pure Ebionism, that is to say, the doctrine that the poor (ebionim) alone shall be saved, that the kingdom of the poor is at hand, was, hence, the doctrine of Jesus. “Woe unto you that are rich,” said he, “for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep” (Luke vi. 24, 25). “Then said he also to him that bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just” (Luke xiv. 12-14). It is, in an analogous sense, perhaps, that he often repeated, “Be good bankers”—that is to say, make good investments for the kingdom of God, in giving your wealth to the poor, conformably to the old proverb, “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord” (Prov. xix. 17). But this was no new fact. The most exalted democratic movement, the memory of which has been preserved by mankind (the only one, also, that has succeeded, for it alone has maintained itself in the domain of pure thought) had agitated for a long time the Jewish race. The idea that God is the avenger of the poor and of the weak against the rich and powerful is found in every page of

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the books of the Old Testament. The history of Israel is, of all histories, that in which the popular notions have most certainly predominated. The prophets, the truest, and in a sense the boldest tribunes, had thundered incessantly against the great, and had established a close relation between the terms “rich, impious, violent, wicked,” on the one hand, and between “poor, gentle, humble, pious,” on the other. Under the Seleucidæ, the aristocracy having almost all apostatised and gone over to Hellenism, these associations of ideas were but strengthened. The Book of Enoch contains even fiercer maledictions against the world, the rich, and the powerful than those of the Gospels. In this book luxury is held up as a crime. “The Son of Man,” in that fantastic apocalypse, dethrones kings, tears them away from their voluptuous life and plunges them into hell. The initiation of Judæa into profane life, the recent introduction of an exclusively worldly element of luxury and of comfort, provoked a violent reaction in favour of patriarchal simplicity. “Woe unto you who despise the humble dwelling and inheritance of your fathers? Woe unto you who build your palaces with the sweat of others! Each stone, each brick of which it is built is a sin.” The word “poor” (ebion) had become a synonym of “saint,” of “friend of God.” This was the appellation the Galilean disciples of Jesus loved to give one another: it was for a long time the designation of the Judaising Christians of Batanea, and of the Hauran (Nazarenes, Hebrews) who remained faithful to the language as well as to the earlier teachings of Jesus, and who boasted of having amongst them the descendants of his family. At the end of the second century, these devout sectaries, who had lived outside the path of the great current that had carried away the other churches, were treated as heretics (Ebionites), and in order to explain their name a pretended heresiarch, Ebion, was invented. We may see, at a glance, that this exaggerated taste for poverty could not be very durable. It was one of those Utopian elements which always mingle in the origin of great movements, and which time rectifies. Thrown into the centre of human society, Christianity very easily consented to receive rich men into her bosom, just as Buddhism, exclusively monastical in its origin, soon began, as conversions multiplied, to admit the laity. But the mark of origin is ever preserved. Although it quickly passed away and was forgotten, Ebionism left a leaven in the whole history of Christian institutions which has not been lost. The collection of the principal Logia, or discourses, of Jesus was made in the Ebionitish centre of Batanea. “Poverty” remained an ideal from which the true followers of Jesus were never after separated. To possess nothing was the truly evangelical state; mendicancy became a virtue, a holy condition. The great Umbrian movement of the thirteenth century, which is, among all the attempts at religious construction, that which most resembles the Galilean movement, took place entirely in the name of poverty. Francis d’Assisi, the man who, more than any other, by his exquisite goodness, by his delicate, pure, and tender communion with universal life, most resembled Jesus, was a poor man. The mendicant orders, the innumerable communistic sects of the middle ages (Pauvres de Lyon, Bégards, Bons-Hommes, Fratricelles, Humiliés, Pauvres évangéliques, &c.) grouped under the banner of the “Everlasting Gospel,” pretended to be, and in fact were, the true disciples of Jesus. But even in this instance the most impracticable dreams of the new religion were fruitful in results. Pious mendicity, so impatiently

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borne by our industrial and well-organised communities, was in its day, and in a suitable climate, full of charm. It offered to a multitude of mild and contemplative souls the only condition suited to them. To have made poverty an object of love and desire, to have raised the beggar to the altar, and to have sanctified the coat of the poor man, was a master-stroke which political economy may not appreciate, but in the presence of which the true moralist cannot remain indifferent. Humanity, in order to bear its burden, needs to believe that it is not paid entirely by wages. The greatest service which can be rendered to it is to repeat often that it lives not by bread alone. Like all great men, Jesus loved the people, and felt himself at home with them. The Gospel, in his idea, is made for the poor; it is to them he brings the glad tidings of salvation. All the despised ones of orthodox Judaism were his favourites. Love of the people and pity for its weakness (the sentiment of the democratic chief, who feels the spirit of the multitude live in him, and recognises him as its natural interpreter) shine forth at each moment in his acts and discourses.

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The chosen flock presented, in fact, a very mixed character, and one likely to astonish rigorous moralists. It counted in its fold men with whom a Jew, respecting himself, would not have associated. Perhaps Jesus found in this society, unrestrained by ordinary rules, more mind and heart than in a pedantic and formal middle-class, proud of its apparent morality. The Pharisees, exaggerating the Mosaic prescriptions, had come to believe themselves defiled by contact with men less strict than themselves; in their meals they almost rivalled the senseless distinctions of caste in India. Jesus, despising these miserable aberrations of the religious sentiment, loved to eat with those who suffered on account of them; by his side at table were to be found persons said to lead wicked lives, perhaps solely from the fact that they did not share the follies of the false devotees. The Pharisees and the doctors cried out against the scandal. “See,” said they, “with what men he eats!” Jesus returned apt answers, which exasperated the hypocrites: “They that be whole need not a physician.” Or again: “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost until he find it? And when he hath found it he layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing.” Or again, “The Son of man is come to save that which was lost.” Or, once more: “I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Lastly, that delightful parable of the prodigal son, in which he who has fallen is represented as having a sort of privilege of love over him who has always been just. Weak or guilty women, surprised at so much that was charming, and perceiving, for the first time, the great attractions of contact with virtue, approached him freely. People were astonished that he did not repulse them. “Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.” Jesus rejoined with the parable of a creditor who forgives his debtors’ unequal debts, and he did not hesitate to prefer the lot of him to whom was remitted the greater debt. He appreciated conditions of soul only in proportion to the love contained therein. Women, with sorrowful hearts, and disposed on account of their sins to feelings of humility, were nearer to his kingdom than ordinary natures, who often are deserving of little credit for not having fallen. On the other hand, we can conceive that these

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tender souls, finding in their conversion to the sect an easy means of rehabilitation, would passionately attach themselves to him.

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Far from seeking to allay the murmurs raised by his disdain for the social susceptibilities of the time, he seemed to take pleasure in exciting them. Never did any one avow more loftily this contempt for the “world,” which is the first condition of great things and of great originality. He pardoned the rich man only when the rich man, because of some prejudice, was disliked by society. He much preferred people of questionable lives and who had little consideration in the eyes of the orthodox leaders. “The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him.” We can understand how galling the reproach of not having followed the good example set by prostitutes would be to men making a profession of seriousness and of rigid morality. He had no outward affectation or any show of austerity. He did not eschew pleasure; he went willingly to marriage feasts. One of his miracles was performed to enliven a wedding feast at a small town. In the East, weddings take place in the evening. Each person carries a lamp; and the lights coming and going produce a very agreeable effect. Jesus liked these gay and animated scenes and drew parables from them. Such levity, compared with that of John the Baptist, gave offence. One day, when the disciples of John and the Pharisees were observing the fast, it was asked, “Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then they shall fast in those days.” His sweet gaiety found expression in lively reflections and amiable pleasantries “But whereunto,” said he, “shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But Wisdom is justified of her children.” He thus traversed Galilee in the midst of a continual feast. He rode on a mule (which in the East is a good and safe mode of travelling), whose large black eyes, shaded by long eye-lashes, give it an expression of gentleness. His disciples sometimes disposed themselves around him with a kind of rustic pomp, at the expense of their garments, which they used as carpets. They placed them on the mule which carried him, or spread them on the earth in his path. When he entered a house it was considered a joy and a blessing. He halted in the villages and at the large farms, where he received open hospitality. In the East, when a stranger enters a house it becomes at once a public place. All the village assembles there; the children invade it; they are put out by the servants, but always return. Jesus could not suffer these innocent auditors to be treated harshly; he caused them to be brought to him and embraced them. The mothers, encouraged by such treatment, brought him

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their children in order that he might touch them. Women came to pour oil upon his head, and perfumes on his feet. His disciples sometimes repulsed them as importunates; but Jesus, who loved ancient usages, and everything that indicated simplicity of heart, rectified the ill done by his too zealous friends. He protected those who wished to honour him. In this way children and women came to adore him. The reproach of alienating from their families these gentle creatures, always ready to be led astray, was one of the most frequent charges of his enemies. 112

The nascent religion was thus in many respects confined to women and children. The latter were like a young guard around Jesus for the inauguration of his innocent royalty, and made him little ovations which much pleased him, calling him “son of David,” crying Hosanna, and bearing palms around him. Jesus, like Savonarola, perhaps made them serve as instruments for pious missions; he was very glad to see these young apostles, who did not compromise him, rush to the front and give him titles which he dared not take himself. He let them speak, and when he was asked if he heard, he replied evasively that the praise which fell from young lips was the most agreeable to God. He lost no opportunity of repeating that the little ones are sacred beings, that the kingdom of God belongs to children, that we must become children to enter there, that we ought to receive it as a child, that the heavenly Father hides his secrets from the wise, and reveals them to babes. The notion of disciples in his mind is almost synonymous with that of children. Once, when they had one of those quarrels for precedence which were not uncommon, Jesus took a little child, placed him in their midst, and said to them, “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

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It was infancy, in fact, in its divine freshness, in its simple bewilderments of joy, which took possession of the earth. Every one believed that the kingdom so much desired might appear at any moment. Each one already saw himself seated on a throne beside the master. They divided the places amongst themselves; they strove to reckon the precise date of its advent. The latter was called the “Glad Tidings;” the doctrine had no other name. An old word, “paradise,” which the Hebrew, like all the languages of the East, had borrowed from the Persian, and which at first designated the parks of the Achæmenidæ kings, summed up the general dream; a delightful garden, in which the charming life led here below would be continued for ever. How long did this intoxication last? We do not know. No one, during the course of this magical apparition, measured time any more than we measure a dream. Duration was suspended; a week was as an age. But, whether it filled years or months, the dream was so beautiful that humanity has lived upon it ever since, and it is still our consolation to gather its weakened perfume. Never did so much joy fill the bosom of man. For one moment humanity, in the most vigorous effort she ever made to rise above the world, forgot the leaden weight which pressed her to earth and the sorrows of the life below. Happy the one who has been able to behold this divine unfolding, and to enjoy, though but for one day, this unexampled illusion! But more happy still, Jesus would say to us, is he who, freed from all illusion,

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shall reproduce in himself the celestial vision, and, with no millenarian dream, no chimerical paradise, no signs in the heavens, but by the uprightness of his motives and the poetry of his soul, shall be able to create anew in his heart the true kingdom of God!

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CHAPTER XII. EMBASSY TO JESUS FROM JOHN IN PRISON—DEATH OF JOHN—THE RELATIONS OF HIS SCHOOL WITH THAT OF JESUS. WHILST joyous Galilee was celebrating in feasts the coming of the well-beloved, the disconsolate John, in his prison of Machero, was pining away with expectation and desire. The success of the young master whom he had seen some months before as his auditor had reached him. It was said that the Messiah predicted by the prophets, he who was to re-establish the kingdom of Israel, had come, and was making known his presence in Galilee by marvellous works. John wished to inquire into the truth of this rumour, and, as he was allowed to communicate freely with his disciples, he chose two of them to go to Jesus in Galilee. The two disciples found Jesus at the height of his fame. The appearance of happiness which reigned around him surprised them. Accustomed to fasts, to earnest prayer, and to a life full of aspirations, they were astonished to see themselves transported suddenly into the midst of welcome rejoicings. They told Jesus their message: “Art thou he that should come? Or do we look for another?” Jesus, who from that time hesitated no longer respecting his peculiar character as Messiah, enumerated to them the works which ought to characterise the coming of the kingdom of God—such as the healing of the sick, and the glad tidings of a salvation near at hand preached to the poor. He had done all these works. “And blessed is he,” said Jesus, “whosoever shall not be offended in me.”

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We do not know whether this answer reached John the Baptist, or into what temper it threw the austere ascetic. Did he die consoled and certain that he whom he had announced already lived, or did he retain some doubts as to the mission of Jesus? There is nothing to inform us. Seeing, however, that his school continued to exist a considerable time side by side with the Christian churches, we are constrained to believe that, notwithstanding his regard for Jesus, John did not regard him as the one who was to realise the divine promises. Death came, moreover, to end his perplexities. The untamable freedom of the ascetic was to crown his restless and troubled career by the only end which was worthy of it. The indulgence which Antipas had at first shown towards John was not of long duration. In the conversations which, according to the Christian tradition, John had had with the tetrarch, he did not cease repeating to him that his marriage was unlawful, and that he ought to send Herodias away. We can easily imagine the hatred which the grand-daughter of Herod the Great must have engendered against this importunate counsellor. She only waited an opportunity to ruin him. Her daughter, Salome, by her first marriage, and like her ambitious and dissolute, entered into her designs. That year (probably the year 30) Antipas was at Machero on the anniversary of his birthday. Herod the Great had caused to be constructed in the interior of the fortress a magnificent

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palace, in which the tetrarch frequently resided. He gave a great feast there, during which Salome executed one of those character dances which were not considered in Syria as unbecoming a distinguished person. Antipas, being greatly delighted, asked the dancer what she most desired, who, at the instigation of her mother, replied, “Give me here John Baptist’s head in a charger.” Antipas was sorry, but he could not refuse. A guard took the charger, went and cut off the head of the prisoner, and brought it. The disciples of the Baptist obtained his body and placed it in a tomb. The people were much offended. Six years later, Hâreth having attacked Antipas, in order to recover Machero and avenge the dishonour of his daughter, Antipas was completely beaten; and his defeat was generally regarded as a punishment for the murder of John. The news of John’s death was brought to Jesus by the disciples of the Baptist. The last step John had taken in regard to Jesus had succeeded in establishing between the two schools the most intimate bonds. Jesus, fearing an increase of ill-will on the part of Antipas, took the precaution to retire to the desert. Many people followed him thence. Thanks to a strict frugality, the holy band succeeded in living there, and in this there was naturally seen a miracle From that time Jesus always spoke of John with redoubled admiration. He declared unhesitatingly that he was more than a prophet, that the Law and the ancient prophets had force only until he came, that he had abrogated them, but that the kingdom of heaven in turn had superseded him. In fine, he assigned him a special place in the economy of the Christian mystery, which constituted him the link of union between the Old Testament and the advent of the new reign.

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The prophet Malachi, whose opinion in this matter was soon brought to bear, had persistently declared a precursor of the Messiah, who was to prepare men for the final renovation, a messenger who should come to make straight the paths before the elected of God. This messenger was none other than the prophet Elias, who, according to a widely-spread belief, was soon to descend from heaven, whither he had been carried, in order to prepare men by repentance for the great advent, and to reconcile God with His people. Sometimes they associated with Elias either the patriarch Enoch, to whom for one or two centuries they had been attributing high sanctity; or Jeremiah, whom they regarded as a sort of protecting genius of the people, constantly occupied in praying for them before the throne of God. This idea, of two of the old prophets rising again, to act as precursors to the Messiah, is discovered in so striking a form in the doctrine of the Parsees that we feel much inclined to believe that it comes from that source. Be that as it may, it formed at the time of Jesus an integral portion of the Jewish theories in regard to the Messiah. It was admitted that the appearance of “two faithful witnesses,” clothed in garments of repentance, would be the preamble of the great drama about to be unfolded, to the astonishment of the universe. We can understand that, with these ideas, Jesus and his disciples could not hesitate about the mission of John the Baptist. When the scribes raised the objection that it could not yet be a question of the Messiah, inasmuch as Elias had not yet appeared, they replied that Elias had come, that John

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was Elias raised from the dead. By his manner of life, by his opposition to the established political authorities, John recalled, in fact, that strange figure in the ancient history of Israel. Nor was Jesus silent in regard to the merits and excellences of his forerunner. He said that among the children of men none greater had been born. He vehemently blamed the Pharisees and the doctors for not having accepted his baptism, and for not being converted at his voice. 118

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The disciples of Jesus were faithful to these principles of their master. Respect for John was an unquestioned tradition during the whole of the first Christian generation. He was supposed to be a relative of Jesus. His baptism was regarded as the most important fact, and, in some sort, as the prefatory obligation of all gospel history. In order to establish the mission of the son of Joseph upon testimony admitted by all, it was stated that John, at the first sight of Jesus, proclaimed him the Messiah; that he recognised himself his inferior, unworthy to unloose the latchets of his shoes; that he refused at first to baptize him, and maintained that it was he who ought to be baptized by Jesus. These were exaggerations, which are sufficiently refuted by the doubtful form of John’s last message. But, in a more general sense, John remains in the Christian legend that which he was in reality,—the austere forerunner, the gloomy preacher of repentance before the joy on the arrival of the bridegroom, the prophet who announces the kingdom of God and dies before beholding it. This giant in primitive Christianity, this eater of locusts and wild honey, this rugged redresser of wrongs, was the absinthe which prepared the lip for the sweetness of the kingdom of God. His beheading by Herodias inaugurated the era of Christian martyrs; he was the first witness for the new faith. The worldly, who regarded him their true enemy, could not permit him to live; his mutilated corpse, extended on the threshold of Christianity, indicated the bloody path in which so many others were to follow. The school of John did not die with its founder. It existed some time distinct from that of Jesus, and from the first on good terms with the latter. Many years after the death of the two masters, people were still baptized with the baptism of John. Certain persons were members of the two schools at the same time,—for example, the celebrated Apollos, the rival of St. Paul (about the year 54), and a goodly number of the Christians of Ephesus. Josephus entered in the year 53 the school of an ascetic named Banou, who presents a striking resemblance to John the Baptist, and who was perhaps of his school. This Banou lived in the desert, and was clothed with the leaves of trees. His only nourishment was wild plants and fruits, and he baptized himself frequently, both day and night, in cold water, in order to purify himself. James, who was called the “brother of the Lord,” practised a similar asceticism. Later, about the year 80, Baptism was in conflict with Christianity, especially in Asia Minor. The author of the writings attributed to John the evangelist appears to combat it in an indirect manner. One of the Sibylline poems seems to proceed from this school. As to the sects of Hemerobaptists, Baptists, and Elchasaïtes (Sabiens, Mogtasila of the Arabian writers), who in the second century filled Syria, Palestine, and Babylonia, and whose representatives still exist in our days among the Mendaites, called “Christians of St. John,” they had the same origin as the movement of John the Baptist rather than being an authentic descent from him. The true school of John, half Christian in its character, became a small Christian sect, and died out in

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obscurity. John had distinctly foreseen the destiny of the two schools. If he had yielded to a pitiful rivalry, he would to-day be forgotten in the crowd of sectaries of his time. By his self-abnegation, he has attained a glorious and unique position in the religious pantheon of humanity.

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CHAPTER XIII. FIRST ATTEMPTS ON JERUSALEM. JESUS went almost every year to Jerusalem for the feast of the passover. The particulars of these journeys are meagre, for the synoptics do not speak of them, and the remarks in the fourth Gospel are on this point very confused. It was, it would seem, in the year 31, and certainly after the death of John, that the most important of the visits of Jesus to Jerusalem took place. Several of the disciples followed him. Although Jesus attached at that time little value to the pilgrimage, he conformed himself to it in order not to offend Jewish opinion, with which he had not yet broken. These journeys besides were essential to his design; for he felt already that, in order to play a leading part, he must go from Galilee, and attack Judaism in its stronghold, which was Jerusalem.

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The little Galilean community was here by no means at home. Jerusalem was then nearly what it is to-day, a city of pedantry, acrimony, disputes, hatreds, and littleness of mind. Its fanaticism was extreme, and religious seditions were very frequent. The Pharisees were dominant; the study of the Law, pushed to the most insignificant minutiae, and reduced to questions of casuistry, was the only study. This exclusively theological and canonical culture contributed in nowise to refine the intellect. It was something analogous to the barren doctrine of the Mussulman fakir, to that empty science debated round the mosques, which is a great expenditure of time and a pure waste of dialectical skill, without aiding the right discipline of the mind. The theological education of the modern clergy, although very dry, can give us no idea of this, for the Renaissance has introduced into all our teachings, even the most extravagant, something of belles lettres and of method, the consequence of which is that scholasticism has taken a taint, more or less, of the humanities. The science of the Jewish doctor, of the sofer, or scribe, was purely barbarous, absurd beyond measure, and stripped of all moral element. To cap the evil, it filled with ridiculous pride those who had wearied themselves in acquiring it. Proud of the pretended knowledge which had cost him so much trouble, the Jewish scribe had the same contempt for Greek culture as the learned Mussulman of our time has for European civilisation, as the old catholic theologian had for the knowledge of men of the world. The tendency of this scholastic culture was to turn the mind against all that was refined, to create esteem only for those childish difficulties on which they had wasted their lives, and which were regarded as the natural occupation of persons making a profession of seriousness. This odious society could not but weigh very heavily on the tender and susceptible northern mind. The contempt of the Jerusalemites for the Galileans rendered the separation still more complete. In that beautiful temple, the object of all their desires, they often only experienced insult. A verse of the pilgrim’s psalm, “I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God,” seemed expressly made for them. A contemptuous priest-hood laughed at their simple devotion, just as formerly in Italy the clergy, familiarised with the sanctuaries, witnessed coldly and almost jestingly

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the fervour of the pilgrim arriving from afar. The Galileans spoke a rather corrupt dialect, their pronunciation was faulty; they confounded diverse aspirates which led to mistakes that were much laughed at. In religion, they were regarded as ignorant and not very orthodox; the expression “foolish Galileans” had become proverbial. It was believed (not without reason) that they were not of pure Jewish blood, and it was held, as a matter of course, that Galilee could not produce a prophet. Placed thus on the confines of Judaism, nay almost outside of it, the poor Galileans had only one badly interpreted passage in Isaiah on which to build their hopes. “Land of Zebulon, and land of Naphtali, way of the sea, Galilee of the nations! The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” The reputation of the native city of Jesus was particularly bad. It was a popular proverb, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” The great barrenness of nature in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem must have added to the dislike Jesus had for the place. The valleys are without water; the soil is arid and stony. Casting the eye into the valley of the Dead Sea, the view is somewhat striking; elsewhere it is monotonous. The hill of Mizpeh, around which clusters the most ancient historical remembrances of Israel, alone relieves the eye. The city presented, at the time of Jesus, nearly the same aspect that it does now. It had very few ancient monuments, for until the time of the Asmoneans the Jews had remained strangers to all the arts. John Hyrcanus had begun to embellish it, and Herod the Great had made it one of the most magnificent cities of the East. The Herodian constructions, by their grand character, perfection of execution, and beauty of material, may dispute superiority with the most finished works of antiquity. A great number of superb tombs, displaying original taste, were erected at the same time in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The style of these monuments was Grecian, but appropriate to the customs of the Jews, and considerably modified in accordance with their principles. The ornamental sculptures of the human figure which the Herods had sanctioned, to the great disgust of the purists, were discarded and superseded by floral decorations. The taste of the ancient inhabitants of Phœnicia and Palestine for monoliths cut out of the solid rock seemed to be revived in these singular tombs cut in the rock, and in which Grecian orders are so strangely applied to an architect of troglodytes. Jesus, who regarded works of art as a pompous display of vanity, viewed these monuments with displeasure. His absolute spiritualism, and his settled conviction that the form of the old world was about to pass away, left him only a taste for things belonging to the heart. The temple, at the time of Jesus, was quite new, while its exterior works were not yet completed. Herod had begun its reconstruction in the year 20 or 21 before the Christian era, in order to make it uniform with his other edifices. The main body of the temple was finished in eighteen months; the porticoes took eight years; and the accessory portions were raised slowly, and were only finished a short time before the taking of Jerusalem. Jesus probably saw the work progressing, not without a degree of secret vexation. These hopes of a long future seemed an insult to his approaching advent. Clearer-sighted than the unbelievers and the fanatics, he foresaw that these superb edifices would have but a short duration.

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The temple, nevertheless, formed a marvellously imposing whole, of which the present haram, in spite of its beauty, can scarcely give us any idea. The courts and the porticoes served as the daily rendezvous for a considerable gathering, so much so that this great space was at once temple forum, tribunal, and university. All the religious discussions of the Jewish schools, all the canonical instruction, even the legal processes and civil causes, all the activity of the nation, in short, was concentrated there. It was a place where arguments were perpetually clashing, a battle-field of disputes, resounding with sophisms and subtle questions. The temple thus resembled much a Mahometan mosque. At this period the Romans treated all strange religions with the greatest respect, provided they were kept within proper limits, and carefully refrained from entering the sanctuary; Greek and Latin inscriptions marked the point up to which those who were not Jews were permitted to advance. But the tower of Antonia, the headquarters of the Roman forces, commanded the whole enclosure, and enabled them to see all that passed therein. The guarding of the temple belonged to the Jews; its superintendence was entrusted to a captain, who caused the gates to be opened and shut, prohibited any one from crossing the enclosure with a stick in his hand, or with dusty shoes, or when carrying parcels, or to take a near cut. They were especially scrupulous in watching that no one entered within the inner gates in a state of legal impurity. The women had an entirely separate court. It was in the temple that Jesus passed his days, whilst he remained at Jerusalem. The period of the feasts attracted to the city extraordinary affluence. Lodged in parties of ten to twenty persons in one chamber, the pilgrims invaded every quarter and lived in that huddled state in which Orientals delight. Jesus was lost in the crowd, and his poor Galileans who grouped around him were of small account. He probably felt that there he was in a hostile world which would receive him only with disdain. Everything he saw he disapproved of. The temple, like all much-frequented places of devotion, presented a not very edifying spectacle. The service of this entailed a multitude of repulsive enough details, especially of mercantile operations, in consequence of which actual shops were established within the sacred enclosure. There people sold beasts for the sacrifices; there one found tables for the exchange of money; at times it seemed as if one were in a bazaar. The inferior officers of the temple fulfilled, doubtless, their functions with the irreligious vulgarity characteristic of the sacristans of all ages. This profane and indifferent air in the handling of holy things wounded the religious sentiment of Jesus, sometimes leading him to excess. He said that they had made the house of prayer a den of thieves. One day, in fact, it is said, that, carried away by his anger, he scourged the vendors with a “scourge of small cords,” and overturned their tables. In general, he cared little for the temple. The worship that he had conceived for his Father had nothing to do with scenes of butchery. All these old Jewish institutions displeased him, and he was pained in being obliged to conform to them. Thus, neither the temple nor its site inspired pious sentiments in the bosom of Christianity, except in the case of the Judaising Christians. The true proselytes had an aversion to this ancient sanctuary. Constantine and the first Christian emperors left the Pagan constructions of Hadrian standing there. It was the enemies of Christianity, such as Julian, who remembered the

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temple. When Omar entered Jerusalem, the site of the temple was designedly polluted in hatred of the Jews. It was Islamism, that is to say, a sort of resurrection of Judaism, in its most Semitic form, which rendered it honours The place has always been antichristian.

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The pride of the Jews completed the discontent of Jesus, and rendered his sojourn in Jerusalem painful. In proportion as the great ideas of Israel ripened, the priesthood were debased. The institution of synagogues had given to the interpreter of the Law, to the doctor, a great superiority over the priest. There were no priests except at Jerusalem, and even there, reduced to entirely ritual functions, almost, like our parish priests, excluded from preaching, they were surpassed by the orator of the synagogue, the casuist, the sofer or scribe, though the latter was but a layman. The celebrated men of the Talmud were not priests; they were learned men according to the ideas of the time. The high priesthood of Jerusalem held, it is true, a very elevated rank in the nation; but it was by no means at the head of the religious movement. The sovereign pontiff, whose dignity had already been degraded by Herod, became more and more a Roman functionary, who was frequently removed in order that others might share the profits of the office. Opposed to the Pharisees, who were important lay zealots, the priests were almost all Sadducees, that is to say, members of that unbelieving aristocracy which had been formed around the temple, lived by the altar, though they saw the vanity of it. The sacerdotal caste was separated to such a degree from the national sentiment and from the great religious movement which urged the people on, that the name of “Sadducee” (sadoki), which at first simply designated a member of the sacerdotal family of Sadok, had become synonymous with “Materialist” and with “Epicurean.” An element worse still had begun, since the reign of Herod the Great, to corrupt the high-priesthood. Herod having fallen in love with Mariamne, daughter of a certain Simon, son of Boëthus of Alexandria, and having wished to marry her (about the year 28 J.C.), saw no other means of ennobling his father-in-law and raising him to his own rank than by making him high-priest. This intriguing family remained masters, almost without interruption, of the sovereign pontificate for thirty-five years. Closely allied to the reigning family, it did not lose the office until after the deposition of Archelaus, and recovered it (the year 42 of our era) after Herod Agrippa had for some time recommenced the work of Herod the Great. Under the name of Boëthusim, a new sacerdotal nobility was formed, which was very worldly, being little devotional, and closely allied to the Sadokites. The Boëthusim, in the Talmud and the rabbinical writings, are depicted as a kind of unbelievers, and always reproached as Sadducees. From all this there resulted a kind of “court of Rome” around the temple, living by politics, little carried away by excess of zeal, even rather fearing them, not wishing to hear of holy personages or of innovators, for this “court” derived profit from the established routine. These epicurean priests had not the violence of the Pharisees; they only wished for quietness; it was their moral indifference, their cold irreligion, which revolted Jesus. Although quite distinct, the priests and the Pharisees were thus confounded in his antipathies. But being a stranger, and without influence, he was long compelled to restrain his displeasure within himself, and only to communicate his sentiments to the intimate friends who accompanied him.

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Before his last stay, much more protracted than any he had made at Jerusalem, and which was terminated by his death, Jesus endeavoured, however, to make himself heard. He preached; people spoke of him; and they conversed upon certain acts of his which were looked upon as miraculous. But from all that there resulted neither an established church at Jerusalem, nor a group of Jerusalemite disciples. The charming lawgiver, who forgave everyone provided they but loved him, could not find much response in this sanctuary of vain disputes and of obsolete sacrifices. The sole result was that he formed some valuable friendships, the advantage of which he reaped afterwards. He does not appear at that time to have made the acquaintance of the family of Bethany, which, amidst the trials of the latter months of his life, brought him so much consolation. But perhaps he had relations with that Mary, mother of Mark (whose house became some years later the rendezvous of the apostles), and with Mark himself. But very early he attracted the attention of a certain Nicodemus, a rich Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrim, and a man highly considered in Jerusalem. This man, who appears to have been upright and sincere, felt himself drawn towards the young Galilean. Not wishing to compromise himself, he came to see Jesus by night, and had a long conversation with him. He undoubtedly preserved a favourable impression of him, for later on he defended Jesus against the prejudices of his colleagues, and, at the death of Jesus, we find him tending with pious care the corpse of the master. Nicodemus did not become a Christian; he had too much regard for his position to take part in a revolutionary movement which as yet numbered no men of note amongst its adherents. But he evidently had much friendship for Jesus, and rendered him service, though powerless to rescue him from a death which even at this period was all but decreed. As to the celebrated doctors of the time, Jesus does not appear to have had any connection with them. Hillel and Shammai were dead; the greatest authority of the day was Gamaliel, grandson of Hillel. He had a liberal mind, was a man of the world, open to secular opinions, and rendered tolerant by his intercourse with good society. Differing from the very strict Pharisees, who walked veiled or with closed eyes, he gazed even upon Pagan women. The sectaries excused this, as well as a knowledge of Greek in him, because he had access to the court. After the death of Jesus he expressed very moderate views in regard to the new sect. St. Paul sat at his feet, but it is highly improbable that Jesus ever entered his school. One idea, at least, which Jesus carried away from Jerusalem, and which henceforth appeared to be rooted in his mind, was that there was no union possible between him and the ancient Jewish religion. The abolition of the sacrifices, which had caused him so much disgust, the suppression of an impious and haughty priesthood, and, in a general sense, the abrogation of the Law, appeared to him an absolute necessity! From this moment he is no longer a Jewish reformer, but it is as a destroyer of Judaism that he poses. Some advocates of the Messianic notions had already admitted that the Messiah would bring a new law, which should be common to all people. The Essenes, who were scarcely Jews, appear also to have been indifferent to the temple and to the Mosaic observances. But these were only isolated or unavowed instances of boldness. Jesus was the first who dared to

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say that from his time, or rather from that of John, the Law was abolished. If sometimes he used more guarded terms it was in order not to shock too violently existing prejudices. When he was driven to extremities he lifted the veil entirely, and declared that the Law had no longer any force. On this subject he used striking comparisons. “No man putteth a piece of new cloth into an old garment, neither do men put new wine into old bottles.” Herein lies his chief characteristic as teacher and originator. The temple excluded all except Jews from its enclosure by scornful placards. Jesus did not approve this. That narrow, hard, and uncharitable Law was only made for the children of Abraham. Jesus maintained that every well-disposed man, every man who received and loved him, was a son of Abraham. The pride of blood appeared to him the chief enemy that he had to combat. In other words, Jesus was no longer a Jew. He was in the highest degree revolutionary; he called all men to a worship founded solely on the fact of their being children of God. He proclaimed the rights of man, not the rights of the Jew; the religion of man, not the religion of the Jew; the deliverance of man, not the deliverance of the Jew. Ah! how far removed was this from a Gaulonite Judas or a Matthias Margaloth, preaching revolution in the name of the Law! The religion of humanity was thus established, not upon blood, but upon the heart. Moses was superseded, the temple was rendered useless, and was irrevocably condemned.

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CHAPTER XIV. RELATIONS OF JESUS WITH THE PAGANS AND THE SAMARITANS.

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AS a consequence of these principles, Jesus contemned all religion which was not of the heart. The foolish practices of the devotees, the exterior rigorism, which trusted to formality for salvation, had in him a mortal enemy. He cared little for fasting. He preferred forgiving an injury to sacrifice. The love of God, charity and reciprocal forgiveness, were his whole law. Nothing could be less priestly. The priest, by virtue of his office, ever advocates public sacrifice, of which he is the appointed minister; he discourages private prayer, which is a means of dispensing with his office. We should seek in vain in the Gospel for one religious rite recommended by Jesus. Baptism to him was only of secondary importance; and as to prayer, he prescribes nothing, except that it must come from the heart. As is always the case, many thought to substitute the good-will of feeble souls for genuine love of goodness, and imagined they could gain the kingdom of heaven by saying to him, “Rabbi, Rabbi,” but he rebuked them, and proclaimed that his religion consisted in doing good. He often quoted the passage in Isaiah, “This people honour me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” The Sabbath was the principal point upon which was raised the whole edifice of Pharisaic scruples and subtleties. This ancient and excellent institution had become a pretext for the miserable disputes of casuists, and a source of a thousand superstitious beliefs. It was believed that nature observed it; all intermittent sources were accounted “Sabbatical.” This was, moreover, the point upon which Jesus most delighted in defying his adversaries. He openly violated the Sabbath, and only replied by subtle raillery to the reproaches that were heaped upon him. For a still stronger reason he despised a host of modern observances, which tradition had added to the Law, and which on that very account were dearer than any other to the devotees. Ablutions, and the too subtle distinctions between things pure and impure, found in him a pitiless opponent. “There is nothing from without a man,” said he, “that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.” The Pharisees, who were the propagators of these mummeries, were the target for all his attacks. He accused them of exceeding the Law, of inventing impracticable precepts, in order to create occasions of sin in man: “Blind leaders of the blind,” said he, “take care lest ye also fall into the ditch.” “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” He was not sufficiently acquainted with the Gentiles to think of founding anything lasting upon their conversion. Galilee contained a great number of Pagans, but, as it appears, no public and organised worship of false gods. Jesus could see this worship displayed in all its splendour in the country of Tyre and Sidon, at Cæsarea Philippi and in the Decapolis, but he paid little attention to it. In him we never find the wearisome Jewish pedantry of his time, nor those declamations against

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idolatry so familiar to his co-religionists from the time of Alexander, and which fill, for instance, the book of “Wisdom.” That which struck him in the Pagans was not their idolatry, but their servility. The young Jewish democrat agreeing on this point with Judas the Gaulonite, admitting no master but God, was hurt at the honours with which they surrounded the persons of sovereigns, and the mendacious titles frequently given to them. With this exception, in the greater number of instances in which he comes in contact with Pagans, he shows towards them great indulgence; sometimes he professes to conceive more hope of them than of the Jews. The kingdom of God is to be transferred to them. “When the lord, therefore, of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto these husbandmen? He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vine-yard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.” Jesus adhered so much the more to this idea, as the conversion of the Gentiles was, according to Jewish notions, one of the surest signs of the advent of the Messiah. In his kingdom of God he represents, as seated at a feast, by the side of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, men come from the four winds of heaven, whilst the lawful heirs of the kingdom are rejected. Sometimes, it is true, there is to be found, in the commands he gives to his disciples, an entirely contrary tendency: he seems to recommend them to preach salvation to the orthodox Jews only; he speaks of Pagans in a manner conformable to the prejudices of the Jews. But we must remember that the disciples, whose narrow minds did not lend themselves to this supreme indifference for the privileges of the sons of Abraham, may have given the instruction of their master the bent of their own ideas. Besides, it is very possible that Jesus may have vacillated on this point; just as Mahomet speaks of the Jews in the Koran, sometimes in the most honourable manner, sometimes with extreme harshness, according as he hoped or not to win their favour. Tradition, in fact, ascribes to Jesus two entirely opposite rules of proselytism, which he may have practised in turn: “He that is not against us is on our part.” “He that is not with me is against me.” Impassioned contention involves almost necessarily these sorts of contradictions. It is certain that he numbered amongst his disciples many men whom the Jews designated “Hellenes.” This term had in Palestine divers meanings. Sometimes it designated the Pagans; sometimes the Greek-speaking Jews dwelling among the Pagans; sometimes men of Pagan origin converted to Judaism. It was probably in this last category of Hellenes that Jesus found sympathy. The affiliation with Judaism had numerous degrees; but the proselytes always remained in a state of inferiority as compared with the Jew by birth. The former were called “proselytes of the gate,” or “men fearing God,” and were subject to the precepts of Noah, and not to those of Moses. This very inferiority was unquestionably the cause which drew them to Jesus, and gained them his favour.

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It was in the same manner that he treated the Samaritans. Surrounded like a small island, by the two great provinces of Judaism (Judæa and Galilee), Samaria formed in Palestine a kind of enclosure in which was preserved the ancient worship of Gerizim, closely related and rivalling that of Jerusalem. This poor sect, which had neither the genius nor the perfect organisation of Judaism, properly so called, was treated by the Jerusalemites with extreme harshness. They placed them on the same footing with Pagans, but hated them more. Jesus, from a spirit of opposition, was well

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disposed towards them. He often preferred the Samaritans to the orthodox Jews. If, on the other hand, he seems to forbid his disciples from going to preach to them, reserving his gospel for the Israelites proper, this was no doubt a precept dictated by special circumstances, to which the apostles have attached too absolute a meaning. Sometimes, in fact, the Samaritans received him badly, because they supposed him to be imbued with the prejudices of his co-religionists; in like manner as in our days the European free-thinker is regarded as an enemy by the Mussulman, who always believes him to be a fanatical Christian. Jesus knew how to rise above these misunderstandings. He had many disciples at Shechem, and he passed there at least two days. On one occasion he meets with gratitude and true piety from a Samaritan only. One of his most beautiful parables is that of the man injured on the way to Jericho. A priest passes by and sees him, but goes on his way; a Levite also passes, but does not stop; a Samaritan has compassion on him, approaches, and pours oil into his wounds, and binds them up. Jesus argues hence that true brotherhood is established amongst men by charity, and not by religious tenets. The “neighbour” who in Judaism was limited to the co-religionist was in his estimation the man who has pity on his fellow without distinction of sect. Human brotherhood in its widest sense abounds in all his teaching. These ideas, which beset Jesus on his leaving Jerusalem, found vivid expression in an anecdote which has been preserved in regard to his return. The route from Jerusalem into Galilee passes Shechem at a distance of about half an hour’s walk, at the opening of the valley commanded by Mounts Ebal and Gerizim. This route was in general shunned by the Jewish pilgrims, who preferred journeying by the long detour through Peræa rather than expose themselves to the ill-treatment of the Samaritans, or have to ask anything of them. It was forbidden to eat and drink with them; for it was an axiom of certain casuists that “a piece of Samaritan bread is the flesh of swine.” When they followed this route, provisions were always laid up beforehand; yet it was rarely they could avoid scuffles and ill-treatment. Jesus shared neither these scruples nor these fears. Arrived, by this route, at the point whence the valley of Shechem opens on the left, he felt fatigued, and stopped near a well. The Samaritans were then as now in the habit of giving to the different spots of their valley names drawn from patriarchal reminiscences. They called this well the well of Jacob; it was probably the same that is called even up to this day Bir-Iakoub. The disciples entered the valley and went to the city to buy provisions; Jesus sat by the side of the well, having Gerizim in front of him.

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It was about noon, and a woman of Shechem came to draw water. Jesus asked of her to drink. which excited great astonishment in the woman, the Jews generally forbidding all intercourse with the Samaritans. Won by the conversation of Jesus, the woman recognising in him a prophet, and anticipating reproaches about her worship, she took up speech first. “Sir,” said she, “our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”

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The day on which he uttered this saying, he was in reality Son of God. He uttered for the first time the sentence upon which will repose the edifice of eternal religion. He founded the pure worship, of all ages, of all lands, that which all elevated souls will embrace until the end of time. Not only was his religion on this day the best religion of humanity, it was the absolute religion; and if other planets have inhabitants endowed with reason and morality, their religion cannot be different from that which Jesus proclaimed near Jacob’s well. Man has not been able to hold to it; for we can attain the ideal but for a moment. This sentiment of Jesus has been a bright light amidst gross darkness; it has taken eighteen hundred years for the eyes of mankind (I ought rather to say for an infinitely small portion of mankind) to become accustomed to it. But the light will grow into the full day, and, after having traversed all the circles of error, mankind will come back to this sentiment and regard it as the immortal expression of its faith and its hopes.

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CHAPTER XV. COMMENCEMENT OF THE LEGEND OF JESUS—HIS OWN IDEA OF HIS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. JESUS, having completely lost his Jewish faith, and being filled with revolutionary ardour, returned to Galilee. His ideas are now expressed with perfect clearness. The simple aphorisms of the first part of his prophetic career, borrowed in part from the Jewish rabbis anterior to him, and the beautiful moral teachings of his second period, are discarded for a decided policy. The Law must be abolished; and it is to be abolished by him. The Messiah has come, and he it is who is the Messiah. The kingdom of God is soon to be revealed; and it is he who will reveal it. He knows well that he will suffer for his boldness; but the kingdom of God cannot be conquered without violence; it is by crises and commotions that it is to be established. The Son of man after his death will return in glory, accompanied by legions of angels, and those who have rejected him will be confounded. The boldness of such a conception ought not to surprise us. Long before this Jesus regarded his relation to God as that of a son to his father. That which in others would be insupportable pride ought not in him to be treated as presumption.

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The title of “Son of David” was the first that he accepted, probably without his being implicated in the innocent frauds by which it was sought to secure it to him. The family of David had, as it appears, been long extinct; nor did the Asmoneans, who were of priestly origin, nor Herod, nor the Romans dream for a moment that any representative whatever of the ancient dynasty existed in their midst. But from the close of the Asmonean dynasty the dream of an unknown descendant of the ancient kings, who should avenge the nation of its enemies, worked in every brain. The universal belief was that the Messiah would be son of David, and, like him, would be born at Bethlehem. The first thought of Jesus was not this exactly. The remembrance of David, which was uppermost in the minds of the majority of the Jews, had nothing in common with his heavenly reign. He believed himself the Son of God, and not the son of David. His kingdom, and the deliverance which he meditated, were of quite another order. But opinion on this point made him do himself a sort of violence. The immediate consequence of the proposition, “Jesus is the Messiah,” was this other proposition, “Jesus is the son of David.” He allowed a title to be given him without which he could not hope for success. And in the end he appears to have taken pleasure in it, inasmuch as he performed most willingly the miracles which were asked of him by those who used this title in addressing him. In this, as in many other circumstances of his life, Jesus yielded to the notions which were current in his time, although they were not precisely his own. He associated with his doctrine of the “kingdom of God” all that could stimulate the heart and the imagination. Hence it is that we have seen him adopt the baptism of John, although it could not be of much importance to him.

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One great difficulty presented itself, to wit, his birth at Nazareth, which was of public notoriety. We do not know whether Jesus endeavoured to remove this objection. Perhaps it did not present itself in Galilee, where the idea that the son of David should be a Bethlehemite was less spread. To the Galilean idealist, moreover, the title of “son of David” was sufficiently justified, if he to whom it was given should retrieve the glory of his race, and bring back the great days of Israel. Did Jesus, by his silence, assent to the fictitious genealogies which his partisans invented in order to prove his royal descent? Did he know anything of the legends invented to prove that he was born at Bethlehem; and particularly of the attempt to connect his Bethlehemite origin with the census which had taken place by order of Quirinius, the imperial legate. We cannot tell. The inexactitude and the contradictions of the genealogies lead to the belief that they were the result of popular notions operating at various points, and that none of them was sanctioned by Jesus. Never with his own lips does he designate himself son of David. His disciples, much less enlightened than he, some-times magnified what he said of himself; but very often he knew nothing of these exaggerations. And we must add that, during the first three centuries, considerable portions of Christendom obstinately denied the royal descent of Jesus and the authenticity of the genealogies. The legend about him was thus the result of a great and entirely spontaneous conspiracy, and began to surround him during his lifetime. There has been no great event in history which has not given rise to a series of fables; and Jesus could not, even had he wished, put a stop to these popular creations. Doubtless a sagacious observer would have detected in them the germ of the narratives which were to ascribe to him a supernatural birth, either by reason of the idea, very prevalent in ancient times, that the incomparable man could not be born of the ordinary relations of the two sexes; or for the purpose of fulfilling the requirements of an imperfectly understood chapter of Isaiah, which was believed to foretell that the Messiah should be born of a virgin; or, lastly, as the result of a belief that the “breath of God,” already regarded as a divine hypostasis, was a principle of fecundity. There was by this time, no doubt, more than one current anecdote regarding his infancy, conceived for the purpose of showing in his biography the accomplishment of the Messianic ideal, or rather the prophetic, that the allegorical exigences of the times reputed to the Messiah. A generally admitted idea was that the Messiah should be announced by a star, that messengers from far countries should come soon after his birth to render him homage, and to bring presents to him. It was alleged that the oracle was accomplished through the pretended Chaldean astrologers who should arrive about that time at Jerusalem. At other times he was connected from his birth with celebrated men, such as John the Baptist, Herod the Great, and two aged persons, Simeon and Anna, who had left memories of great sanctity. A rather loose chronology characterised these combinations, which for the most part were founded on a travesty of real facts. But a singular spirit of gentleness and goodness, an intensely popular sentiment, permeated all these fables, and made them a supplement to his preaching. It was especially after the death of Jesus that such narratives received their development. We can, however, believe that they were circulated during his life even, exciting no more than pious credulity and simple admiration.

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That Jesus never dreamt of passing himself for an incarnation of the true God, there can be no doubt. Such an idea was quite foreign to the Jewish mind; and there is no trace of it in the three first gospels; we only find it alluded to in portions of the fourth, which cannot be accepted as reflecting the thoughts of Jesus. Sometimes Jesus even seems to take precautions to repress such a doctrine. The accusation that he made himself God, or the equal of God, is presented, even in the fourth Gospel, as a calumny of the Jews. In the latter Gospel he declares himself less than his Father. Elsewhere he avows that the Father has not revealed everything to him. He believes himself to be more than an ordinary man, but separated from God by an infinite distance. He is Son of God, but all men are or may become so, in divers degrees. Every one each day ought to call God his father; all who are raised again will be sons of God. The divine son-ship was attributed in the Old Testament to beings who, it was by no means pretended, were equal with God. The word “son” has in the Semitic tongues and in the New Testament the widest meaning. Besides, the idea Jesus had of man was not that low idea which a cold Deism has introduced. In his poetic conception of nature, one breath alone pervades the universe: the breath of man is that of God; God dwells in man, and lives by man, the same as man dwells in God, and lives by God. The transcendent idealism of Jesus never permitted him to have a very clear notion of his own personality. He is his Father, his Father is he. He lives in his disciples; he is everywhere with them; his disciples are one, as he and his Father are one. The idea to him is everything; the body, which makes the distinction of individuals, is nothing. The title “Son of God,” or simply “Son,” became thus for Jesus a title analogous to “Son of man,” with the sole difference that he called himself “Son of man,” and does not seem to have made the same use of the phrase, “Son of God.” The title, Son of man, expressed his character as judge; that of Son of God, participation in the supreme designs and his power. This power had no limits. His Father had given him all power. He had the right to alter even the Sabbath. No one could know the Father but through him. The Father had delegated to him the right to judge. Nature obeyed him: but she obeys also all who believe and pray, for faith can do everything.

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We must bear in mind that no idea of the laws of nature marked, either in his own mind or in that of his hearers, the limit of the impossible. The witnesses of his miracles thanked God “for having given such power unto men.” He pardoned sins; he is superior to David, to Abraham, to Solomon, to the prophets. We do not know in what form, nor to what extent, these affirmations of himself were made. Jesus ought not to be judged by the rule governing our petty conventionalities. The admiration of his disciples overwhelmed and carried him away. It is evident that the title of Rabbi, with which he was at first contented, no longer satisfied him; the title even of prophet or messenger of God responded no longer to his ideas. The position which he assigned himself was that of a superhuman being, and he wished to be regarded as having a higher relationship with God than other men. But it must be observed that these words, “superhuman” and “supernatural,” borrowed from our pitiful theology, had no meaning in the exalted religious consciousness of Jesus. To him nature and the development of humanity were not limited kingdoms outside of God—paltry realities subject to the laws of a desperate rigorism. There was no supernatural for him, for the reason that there was no nature. Intoxicated with infinite love, he forgot the heavy chain which

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holds the spirit captive; he cleared at one bound the abyss, impossible to most, which the weakness of the human faculties has formed between God and man.

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We cannot mistake in these affirmations of Jesus the germ of the doctrine which was, later on, to make of him a divine hypostasis, in identifying him with the Word, or “second God,” or eldest Son of God, or Angel Metathronas, which Jewish theology created apart from him. A sort of necessity produced this theology, in order to correct the extreme rigour of the old Monotheism, to place near God a vicegerent, to whom the eternal Father is supposed to delegate the government of the universe. The belief that certain men are incarnations of divine faculties or “powers” was wide-spread; the Samaritans possessed about the same time a thaumaturgus, which they identified with the “great power of God.” For nearly two centuries, the speculative minds of Judaism had yielded to the tendency of personifying the divine attributes, and certain expressions which were connected with the Divinity. Thus, the “breath of God,” which is often referred to in the Old Testament, is considered as a separate being, the “Holy Spirit” In like manner, the “Wisdom of God” and the “Word of God” became distinct existing entities. This was the germ of the process which has engendered the Sephiroth of the Cabbala, the Æons of Gnosticism, the hypostasis of Christianity, and all that dry mythology, consisting of personified abstractions, to which Monotheism is obliged to resort when it wishes to pluralise the Deity. Jesus appears to have remained a stranger to these hair-splittings of theology, which were soon to fill the world with barren disputes. The meta-physical theory of the Word, such as we find it in the writings of his contemporary Philo, in the Chaldæan Targums, and even in the book of “Wisdom,” is neither seen in the Logia of Matthew, nor in general in the synoptics, the most authentic interpreters of the words of Jesus. The doctrine of the Word, in fact, had nothing in common with Messianism. The “Word” of Philo, and of the Targums, is in no sense the Messiah. It was later that Jesus came to be identified with the Word, and when, in starting from that principle, there was created quite a new theology, very different from that of the “kingdom of God.” The essential character of the Word was that of Creator and of Providence. Now, Jesus never pretended to have created the world, nor to govern it. His office was to judge it, to renovate it. The position of president at the final assizes of humanity, was the function which Jesus attached to himself, and the office which all the first Christians attributed to him. Until the great day he sits at the right hand of God, as His Metathronos, His first minister, and His future avenger. The superhuman Christ of the Byzantine absides, seated as judge of the world, in the midst of the apostles in the same rank with him, and superior to the angels who only assist and serve, is the identical representation of that conception of the “Son of man” of which we find the first features so strongly indicated in the book of Daniel. In any case, the rigour of scholastic rejection had no place in such a world. All the collection of ideas we have just stated formed in the mind of the disciples a theological system so little settled that the Son of God, this kind of duplication of the Divinity, is made to act purely as man. He is tempted—he is ignorant of many things—he corrects himself—he changes his opinion—he is cast

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down, discouraged—he asks his Father to spare him trials—he is submissive to God as a son. He who must judge the world does not know the date of the day of judgment. He takes precautions for his safety. Immediately after his birth he has to be concealed to escape from powerful men who wish to kill him. All this is simply the work of a messenger of God—of a man protected and favoured by God. We must not ask here for logic or sequence. The need Jesus had of obtaining credence, and the enthusiasm of his disciples, piled up contradictory notions. To those who believed in the coming of the Messiah, and to the enthusiastic readers of the books of Daniel and of Enoch, he was the Son of man; to the Jews holding the common faith, and to the readers of Isaiah and Micah, he was the Son of David; to the disciples he was the Son of God, or simply the Son. Others, without being blamed by the disciples, took him for John the Baptist risen from the dead, for Elias, for Jeremiah, conformable to the popular belief that the ancient prophets were about to reappear, in order to prepare the way of the Messiah. An absolute conviction, or rather the enthusiasm which freed him from the possibility of doubt, shrouded all this boldness. We, with our cold and scrupulous natures, little understand how any one can be so entirely possessed by the idea of which he has made himself the apostle. To us, the deeply earnest races, conviction signifies to be sincere with one’s self. But sincerity to one’s self has not much meaning to Oriental peoples, little accustomed to the subtleties of the critical spirit. Honesty and imposture are words which, in our rigid consciences, are opposed as two irreconcilable terms. In the East they are connected by a thousand subtle links and windings. The authors of the Apocryphal books (of “Daniel” and of “Enoch” for instance), men highly exalted, in order to aid their cause, committed, without a shadow of scruple, an act which we should term a fraud. The literal truth has little value to the Oriental; he sees everything through the medium of his ideas, his interests, and his passions.

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History is impossible if we do not fully admit that there are many standards of sincerity. Faith knows no other law than the interest in that which it believes to be true. The aim which it pursues being for it, absolutely holy, it makes no scruple about introducing bad arguments into a thesis where good ones do not succeed. If such a proof is not sound, how many others are? If such a prodigy is not real, how many others have been so? How many pious men, convinced of the truth of their religion, have sought to conquer the obstinacy of other men, by the use of means the weakness of which they could clearly apprehend? How many stigmatics, fanatics, and occupants of convents have been carried away by the influence of the world in which they lived, and by their individual beliefs in feigned acts, either for the purpose of not being considered as beneath others, or to sustain the cause when in danger! All great things are done through the people; now we can only lead the people by adapting ourselves to their ideas. The philosopher who, knowing this, isolates and intrenches himself in his nobleness, is highly praiseworthy. But he who takes humanity with its illusions, and seeks to act with it and upon it, cannot be blamed. Cæsar knew well that he was not the son of Venus; France would not be what it is if it had not for a thousand years believed in the Holy Ampulla of Rheims. It is, of course, easy for us, who are so powerless, to call this

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falsehood, and, proud of our feeble honesty, to treat with contempt the heroes who have accepted the battle of life under other conditions. When we have effected by our scruples what they accomplished by their falsehoods, we shall have the right to be severe upon them. At least, we must make a marked distinction between societies like our own, where everything takes place in the full light of reflection, and simple and credulous societies, in which the beliefs that have governed ages have been born. Nothing great has been established which does not rest on a legend. The only culprit in such cases is the humanity which is willing to be deceived.

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CHAPTER XVI. MIRACLES. TWO means of proof, miracles and the accomplishment of prophecies, could alone, in the opinion of the contemporaries of Jesus, establish a supernatural mission. Jesus, and above all his disciples, employed these two processes of demonstration in perfect good faith. For a long time Jesus had been convinced that the prophets had written only in reference to him. He recognised himself in their sacred oracles; he regarded himself as the mirror in which all the prophetic spirit of Israel had read the future. The Christian school, perhaps even in the lifetime of its founder, endeavoured to prove that Jesus answered perfectly to all that the prophets had predicted of the Messiah. In many cases these comparisons were quite superficial, and are hardly appreciable by us. They were most frequently fortuitous or insignificant circumstances in the life of the master which recalled to the disciples certain passages of the Psalms and the Prophets, in which, in consequence of their constant preoccupation, they saw images of what was passing before their eyes. The exegesis of the time consisted thus almost entirely in a play upon words, and in quotations made in an artificial and arbitrary manner. The synagogue had no officially settled list of the passages which related to the future reign. The Messianic references were very freely applied, and constituted artifices of style rather than serious argument.

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As to miracles, at that time they were regarded as the indispensable mark of the divine, and as the sign of the prophetic vocation. The legends of Elijah and Elisha were full of them. It was understood that the Messiah would perform many. In Samaria, a few leagues from where Jesus was, there was a magician named Simon, who acquired an almost divine character by his illusions. Afterwards, when it was sought to establish the reputation of Apollonius of Tyana, and to prove that his life had been the sojourn of a god upon the earth, it was not thought possible to succeed therein except by inventing a vast cycle of miracles. The Alexandrian philosophers themselves, Plotinus and others, were supposed to have performed several. Jesus was, therefore, obliged to choose between these two alternatives—either to renounce his mission or to become a thaumaturgist. It must be borne in mind that all antiquity, with the exception of the great scientific schools of Greece and their Roman disciples, believed in miracles; and that Jesus not only believed in them, but also had not the least idea of an order of nature regulated by laws. His knowledge on this point was not at all superior to that of his contemporaries. Nay, more, one of his most deeply rooted opinions was that by faith and prayer man had entire power over nature. The faculty of performing miracles was held to be a privilege regularly conferred by God upon men, and there was nothing surprising in it. The lapse of time has changed that which constituted the power of the great founder of Christianity into something offensive to our ideas, and, if ever the worship of Jesus loses its hold

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upon humanity, it will be precisely on account of those acts which originally inspired belief in him. Criticism experiences no embarrassment in presence of this kind of historical phenomenon. A thaumaturgist of our days, unless of an extreme simplicity, like that manifested by certain stigmatics of Germany, is odious; for he performs miracles without believing in them; he is a mere charlatan. But, if we take a Francis d’Assisi, the question becomes altogether different; the cycle of miracles attending the origin of the order of St. Francis, far from offending us, affords us real pleasure. The founders of Christianity lived in at least as complete a state of poetic ignorance as did St. Clair and the tres socii. The disciples deemed it quite natural that their master should have interviews with Moses and Elias, that he should command the elements, and that he should heal the sick. We must remember, besides, that every idea loses something of its purity as soon as it aspires to realise itself. Success is never attained without some injury being done to the sensibility of the soul. Such is the feebleness of the human mind that the best causes are ordinarily gained only by bad arguments. The demonstrations of the primitive apologists of Christianity were based upon very poor reasonings. Moses, Christopher Columbus, Mahomet, have only triumphed over obstacles by constantly making allowance for the weakness of men, and by not always giving the true reasons for the truth. It is probable that those about Jesus were more struck by his miracles than by his eminently divine discourses. Let us add that doubtless popular rumour, both before and after the death of Jesus, enormously exaggerated the number of occurrences of this kind. The types of the gospel miracles, in fact, do not present much variety; they are repetitions of each other, and seem fashioned from a very small number of models, accommodated to the taste of the country. It is impossible, amongst the miraculous narratives so tediously enumerated in the Gospels, to distinguish the miracles attributed by common consent to Jesus from those in which he consented to play an active part. It is especially impossible to ascertain whether the offensive circumstances attending them, the groanings, the strugglings, and other features savouring of jugglery, are really historical, or whether they are the fruit of the belief of the compilers, strongly prepossessed with theurgy, and living, in this connection, in a world analogous to that of the spiritualists of our days. Popular opinion, in fact, insisted that the divine virtue was in man thus an epileptic and convulsive principle. Almost all the miracles that Jesus believed he performed appear to have been miracles of healing. Medicine was at that period in Judæa what it still is in the East, that is to say, far from being scientific, and absolutely dependent upon individual inspiration. The scientific school of medicine, founded by Greece five centuries before, was at the time of Jesus unknown to the Jews of Palestine. In such a state of knowledge, the presence of a superior man, treating the sick with gentleness, and giving him by some tangible signs the assurance of his recovery, is often a decisive remedy. Who would dare to say that in many cases, excepting, of course, certain peculiar injuries, the touch of a superior being is not equal to all the resources of pharmacy? The mere pleasure of seeing such a one, cured. He gives what he can—a smile, a hope, and these are not in vain. Jesus had no more idea than the majority of his countrymen of a rational medical science; he shared the general belief that healing was to be effected by religious practices, and such a belief

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was perfectly consistent. From the moment that disease was regarded as the punishment of sin, or as the act of a demon, and in no way as the result of physical causes, the best physician was the holy man who had power in the supernatural world. Healing was regarded as a moral act; Jesus, who was conscious of moral power, would believe himself specially gifted to heal. Convinced that the touching of his robe, the imposition of his hands, the application of his saliva, benefited the sick, he would have been hard-hearted if he had refused to those who suffered, a solace which it was in his power to bestow. The healing of the sick was considered as one of the signs of the kingdom of God, and was always associated with the emancipation of the poor. Both were the signs of the great revolution that was to culminate in the relief of all infirmities. The Essenians, who had so many ties of relationship with Jesus, passed also for very powerful spiritual physicians. One of the species of cure which Jesus most frequently performed was exorcism, or the casting out of devils. A strange disposition to believe in demons pervaded all minds. It was a universal opinion, not only in Judæa, but everywhere, that demons took possession of the bodies of certain persons and made them act contrary to their will. A Persian div, often named in the Avesta, Aeschmadaëva, the “div of concupiscence,” adopted by the Jews under the name of Asmodeus, became the cause of all the hysterical afflictions of women. Epilepsy, in mental and nervous maladies, when the patient seems no longer to belong to himself, and in infirmities the cause of which is not apparent, such as deafness and dumbness, were explained in the same manner. The admirable treatise, “On Sacred Disease,” by Hippocrates, which set forth the true principles of medicine on this subject, four centuries and a half before Jesus, had not banished from the world so great an error. It was supposed that there were processes more or less efficacious for driving away the demons; and the occupation of exorcist was a regular profession like that of physician. There is no doubt that Jesus had in his lifetime the reputation of possessing the greatest secrets of this art. There were then many lunatics in Judæa, doubtless the result of the great mental excitement. These fools, who were permitted to roam about, as they still are in the same districts, inhabited the abandoned sepulchral caves, which were the ordinary retreat of vagrants. Jesus had much control over these unfortunates. A thousand singular stories are related in connexion with his cures, in which the credulity of the time had full scope. Nevertheless these difficulties must not be exaggerated. The disorders which were regarded as “possessions” were often very slight. In our times, in Syria, people are regarded as mad or possessed by a demon (these two ideas were expressed by the same word, medjnoun) who are only somewhat eccentric. A gentle word often suffices in such cases to drive away the demon. Such were doubtless the means employed by Jesus. Who knows if his celebrity as an exorcist was not spread almost without his own knowledge? Persons who reside in the East are occasionally surprised to find themselves, after some time, in possession of a great reputation, as doctors, sorcerers, or discoverers of treasures, without being able to account to themselves for the facts which have given rise to these fancies. Many circumstances, moreover, seem to indicate that Jesus only became a thaumaturgist late in life and against his inclination. He often performs his miracles only after he has been besought

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to do so, and with a degree of reluctance, reproaching those who asked them for their hardness of heart. One singularity, apparently inexplicable, is the care he takes to perform his miracles in secret, and the request he addresses to those whom he heals to tell no one. When the demons wish to proclaim him the Son of God, he forbids them to open their mouths; but they recognise him in spite of himself. These traits are especially prominent in Mark, who is pre-eminently the evangelist of miracles and exorcisms. It seems that the disciple, who has furnished the fundamental teachings of this Gospel, importuned Jesus with his admiration for prodigies, and that the master, wearied of a reputation which weighed upon him, had often said to him, “See thou say nothing to any man.” Once this discordance evoked a singular outburst, a fit of impatience, in which the annoyance of these perpetual demands of weak minds caused Jesus to break forth. One would say, at times, that the character of thaumaturgist was disagreeable to him, and that he sought to give as little publicity as possible to the marvels which, in a manner, grew under his feet. When his enemies asked a miracle of him, especially a celestial miracle, a “sign from heaven,” he obstinately refused. It is, therefore, permissible to believe that his reputation of thaumaturgist was imposed upon him, that he did not resist it much, but also that he did nothing to aid it, and that, at all events, he felt the vanity of public opinion on this point. We should be lacking in historical method if we listened here too much to our repugnances. The essential condition of the true critic is to comprehend the diversity of times, and to divest himself of instinctive habits, which are the results of a purely rational education. In order to meet the objections which might be raised against the character of Jesus, we must not suppress facts which, in the eyes of his contemporaries, were considered of the greatest importance, It would be convenient to say that these are the additions of disciples much inferior to their Master, who, not being able to conceive his true grandeur, have sought to magnify him by illusions unworthy of him. But the four narrators of the life of Jesus are unanimous in extolling his miracles; one of them, Mark, interpreter of the Apostle Peter, insists so much on this point that, if we trace the character of Christ only according to this Gospel, we should represent Jesus as an exorcist in possession of charms of rare efficacy, as a very potent sorcerer, who inspired fear, and whom the people wished to get rid of. We will admit, then, without hesitation, that acts which would now be considered as acts of illusion or folly held a large place in the life of Jesus. Must we sacrifice to these uninviting features the sublimity of such a life? God forbid. A mere sorcerer would not have brought about a moral revolution like that effected by Jesus. If the thaumaturgist had effaced in Jesus the moralist and the religious reformer, there would have proceeded from him a school of theurgy, and not Christianity. The problem, moreover, presents itself in the same manner with respect to all saints and religious founders. Things now considered morbid, such as epileptic visions, were formerly principles of power and greatness. Physicians know the name of the disease which made the fortune of Mahomet. Almost in our own day, the men who have done the most for their kind (the excellent Vincent de Paul himself!) were, whether they wished it or not, thaumaturgists. If we set out with the principle

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that every historical personage to whom acts have been attributed, which we in the nineteenth century hold to be irrational or savouring of quackery, was either a madman or a charlatan, all criticism is falsified. The school of Alexandria was a noble school, but, nevertheless, it gave itself up to the practices of an extravagant theurgy. Socrates and Pascal were not exempt from hallucinations. Facts ought to explain themselves by proportionate causes. The weaknesses of the human mind only engender weakness; great things have always great causes in the nature of man, although they are often produced amidst a crowd of littlenesses which, to superficial minds, eclipse their grandeur. In a general sense, it is therefore true to say that Jesus was only thaumaturgist and exorcist in spite of himself. Miracles are ordinarily the work of the public much more than of him to whom they are attributed. Jesus persistently shunned the performance of the prodigies which the multitude would have created for him; the greatest miracle would have been his refusal to perform any; never would the laws of history and popular psychology have suffered so great a derogation. He was no more able than St. Bernard, or Francis d’Assisi, to moderate the avidity of the multitude and of his own disciples for the marvellous. The miracles of Jesus were a violence done to him by his age, a concession forced from him by a passing necessity. The exorcist and the thaumaturgist have alike passed away; but the religious reformer will live eternally. Even those who did not believe in him were struck with these acts, and sought to be witnesses of them. The Pagans, and persons unacquainted with him, experienced a sentiment of fear, and sought to remove him from their district. Many thought perhaps to abuse his name by connecting it with seditious movements. But the purely moral and in no respect political tendency of the character of Jesus saved him from these entanglements. His kingdom was in the circle of disciples, whom a like freshness of imagination and the same foretaste of heaven had grouped and retained around him.

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CHAPTER XVII. DEFINITE FORM OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS IN RESPECT OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. WE suppose that this last phase of the activity of Jesus continued about eighteen months, reckoning from the time of his return from the Passover of the year 31 to his journey to the feast of tabernacles of the year 32. During that interval the mind of Jesus does not appear to have been enriched by any new element; but all that was in him developed and grew with ever-increasing power and boldness.

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The fundamental idea of Jesus from the first was the establishment of the kingdom of God. But this kingdom of God, as we have already said, appears to have been understood by Jesus in very different senses. At times he might be taken for a democratic leader desiring only the reign of the poor and the disinherited. At other times the kingdom of God is the literal accomplishment of the apocalyptic visions of Daniel and Enoch. Finally, the kingdom of God is often a spiritual kingdom, and the near deliverance is a deliverance of the spirit. The revolution then desired by Jesus was that which has actually taken place; the establishment of a new worship, purer than that of Moses. All these thoughts appear to have been coexistent in the mind of Jesus. The first, however—that of a temporal revolution—does not appear to have had much hold on him; Jesus never regarded the earth or the riches of the earth, or material power as a thing worth caring for. He had no exterior ambition. Sometimes, by a natural consequence, his great religious importance was on the point of being changed into mere social importance. Men came requesting him to judge and arbitrate on questions which affected their interests. Jesus rejected these proposals with scorn, treating them as insults. Full of his heavenly ideal, he never abandoned his disdainful poverty. As to the other two conceptions of the kingdom of God, Jesus appears always to have held them simultaneously. If he had been only an enthusiast, led away by the apocalypses on which the popular imagination fed, he would have remained an obscure sectary, inferior to those whose ideas he followed. If he had been only a puritan, a sort of Channing or “Savoyard vicar,” he would undoubtedly have been unsuccessful. The two parts of his system, or, rather, his two conceptions of the kingdom of God, rest one on the other, and this reciprocal support has been the cause of his incomparable success. The first Christians were visionaries living in a circle of ideas which we should term reveries; but, at the same time, they were the heroes of that social war which has resulted in the enfranchisement of the conscience, and in the establishment of a religion from which the pure worship, proclaimed by the founder, will eventually proceed. The apocalyptic ideas of Jesus, in their most complete form, may thus be summed up: The existing order of humanity is approaching its termination. This termination will be an immense revolution, “an anguish” similar to the pains of child-birth; a palingenesis, or, in the words

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of Jesus himself, a “new birth,” preceded by dark calamities and heralded by strange phenomena. In the great day there will appear in the heavens the sign of the Son of man; it will be a startling and luminous vision like that of Sinai, a great storm rending the clouds, a fiery meteor flashing rapidly from east to west. The Messiah will appear in the clouds, clothed in glory and majesty, to the sound of trumpets and surrounded by angels. His disciples will sit by his side upon thrones. The dead will then arise, and the Messiah will proceed to judgment. 158

At this judgment men will be divided into two classes according to their works. The angels will be the executors of the sentences. The elect will enter into a delightful abode which has been prepared for them from the foundation of the world; there they will be seated, clothed with light, at a feast presided over by Abraham, the patriarchs, and the prophets. They will be the smaller number. The rest will depart into Gehenna. Gehenna was the western valley of Jerusalem. There the worship of fire had been practised at various times, and the place had become a kind of sewer. Gehenna was, therefore, in the mind of Jesus a gloomy, filthy valley, full of fire. Those excluded from the kingdom will there be burnt and eaten by the never-dying worm, in company with Satan and his rebel angels. There, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. The kingdom of heaven will be as a closed room, lighted from within, in the midst of a world of darkness and torments. This new order of things will be eternal. Paradise and Gehenna will have no end. An impassable abyss separates the one from the other. The Son of man, seated on the right hand of God, will preside over this final condition of the world and of humanity.

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That all this was taken literally by the disciples and by the master himself at certain moments appears clearly evident from the writings of the time. If the first Christian generation had one profound and constant belief, it was that the world was near its end, and that the great “revelation” of Christ was soon to take place. The startling proclamation, “The time is at hand,” which commences and closes the Apocalypse; the incessantly reiterated appeal, “He that hath ears to hear let him hear!” were the cries of hope and encouragement for the whole apostolic age. A Syrian expression, Maranatha, “Our Lord cometh!” became a sort of password, which the believers used amongst themselves in order to strengthen their faith and their hope. The Apocalypse, written in the year 68 of our era, fixed the end at three years and a half. The “Ascension of Isaiah” adopts a calculation closely approaching this. Jesus never indulged in such precision. When he was interrogated as to the time of his advent he always refused to reply; once even he declared that the date of this great day was known only by the Father, who had revealed it neither to the angels nor to the Son. He said that the time when the kingdom of God was most anxiously expected was just that in which it would not appear. He constantly repeated that it would be a surprise, as in the times of Noah and of Lot; that we must be on our guard, always ready to depart; that each one must watch and keep his lamp trimmed as for a wedding procession, which arrives unforeseen; that the Son of man would come like a thief, at an hour when he would not be expected; that he would appear as a flash of lightning, running from

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one end of the heavens to the other. But his declarations as to the proximity of the catastrophe leave no room for any equivocation. “This generation,” said he, “shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled. There be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” He reproaches those who do not believe in him for not being able to read the signs of the future kingdom. “When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather; for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day; for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” By an illusion common to all great reformers, Jesus imagined the end to be much nearer than it really was; he did not take into account the slowness of the movements of humanity; he thought to realise in one day that which, eighteen centuries later, has still to be accomplished. These formal declarations preoccupied the Christian family for nearly seventy years. It was believed that some of the disciples would see the day of the final revelation before dying. John, in particular, was considered as being of this number; many believed that he would never die. Perhaps this was a later opinion suggested towards the end of the first century, by the advanced age which John seems to have reached; this age having given occasion to the belief that God wished to prolong his life indefinitely until the great day, in order to realise the words of Jesus. When he died in turn, the faith of many was shaken, and his disciples attached to the prediction of Christ a more subdued meaning.

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At the same time that Jesus fully admitted the Apocalyptic beliefs, such as we find them in the apocryphal Jewish books, he admitted the dogma which is the complement, or rather the condition of them all, namely, the resurrection of the dead. This doctrine, as we have already said, was still somewhat new in Israel; a number of people either did not know it, or did not believe in it. It was the faith of the Pharisees, and of the fervent adherents of the Messianic beliefs. Jesus accepted it unreservedly, but always in the most idealistic sense. Many imagined that in the resuscitated world they would eat, drink, and marry. Jesus, indeed, admits into his kingdom a new passover, a table, and a new wine; but he expressly excludes marriage from it. The Sadducees had on this subject an apparently gross argument, but at bottom quite conformable with the old theology. It will be remembered that, according to the ancient sages, man survived only in his children. The Mosaic code had consecrated this patriarchal theory by a strange institution, the levitical law. The Sadducees drew thence subtle deductions against the resurrection. Jesus escaped them by formally declaring that in the life eternal there would no longer exist differences of sex, and that men would be like the angels. Sometimes he seems to promise resurrection only to the just, the punishment of the wicked consisting in complete annihilation. Oftener, however, Jesus declares that the resurrection shall bring eternal confusion to the wicked. It will be seen that nothing in all these theories was absolutely new. The Gospels and the writings of the apostles scarcely contain anything as regards apocalyptics but what might be found already in “Daniel,” “Enoch,” the “Sibylline Oracles,” and the assumption of Moses, which are of Jewish

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origin. Jesus accepted these ideas, which were generally received among his contemporaries. He made them his basis of action, or rather one of his bases; for he had too profound an idea of his true work to establish it solely upon such fragile principles, so liable to receive from facts a crushing refutation.

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It is evident, indeed, that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a literal manner, had no future. The world, in continuing to endure, entirely disproves it. One generation of man at the most, was reserved for it. The faith of the first Christian generation is intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so. After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he might be, of the group which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was convicted of falsehood. If the doctrine of Jesus had been simply belief in an approaching end of the world, it would certainly now be sleeping in oblivion. What is it, then, that has saved it? The great breadth of the Gospel conceptions, which has permitted doctrines suited to very different intellectual conditions to be found under the same creed. The world has not ended, as Jesus announced, and as his disciples believed. But it has been renewed, and in one sense renewed as Jesus desired. It is because his thought was two-sided that it has been fruitful. His chimera has not had the fate of so many others which have crossed the human mind, because it concealed a germ of life which having been introduced, thanks to a covering of fable, into the bosom of humanity, has thus brought forth eternal fruits. And let us not say that this is a benevolent interpretation, imagined in order to clear the honour of our great master from the cruel contradiction inflicted on his dreams by reality. No, no; this true kingdom of God, this kingdom of the spirit, which makes each one, king and priest; this kingdom which, like the grain of mustard-seed, has become a tree which overshadows the world, and under whose branches the birds have their nests, was understood, wished for, and founded by Jesus. By the side of the false, cold, and impossible idea of an ostentatious advent, he conceived the real city of God, the true “renaissance,” the Sermon on the Mount, the apotheosis of the weak, the love of the people, regard for the poor, and the re-establishment of all that is humble, true, and simple. This rehabilitation he has depicted as an incomparable artist, by features which will last eternally. Each of us owes that which is best in himself to him. Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal? We must, then, attach several meanings to the divine city conceived by Jesus. If his only thought had been that the end of time was near, and that we must prepare for it, he would not have surpassed John the Baptist. To renounce a world ready to crumble, to detach one’s self gradually from the present life, and to aspire to the kingdom about to come; such would have been the essence of his preaching. The teaching of Jesus had always a much larger scope. He proposed to himself to create a new state of humanity, and not merely to prepare the end of that which did exist. Elias or Jeremiah, reappearing in order to prepare men for the supreme crisis, would not have preached as he did. This is so true that this morality, attributed to the latter

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days, is found to be the eternal morality, that which has saved humanity. Jesus himself in many cases makes use of modes of speech which do not enter at all into a material kingdom. He often declares that the kingdom of God has already begun; that every man bears it within himself, and can, if he be worthy, enjoy it; that each one silently creates this kingdom by the true conversion of the heart. The kingdom of God at such times is only the highest form of good; a better order of things than that which exists, the reign of justice, which the faithful, according to their ability, ought to help in establishing; or, again, the liberty of the soul, something analogous to the Buddhist “deliverance,” the result of isolation. These truths, which to us are pure abstractions, were living realities to Jesus. Everything in his mind was concrete and substantial. Jesus was the man who believed most thoroughly in the reality of the ideal. 164

In accepting the Utopias of his time and his race, Jesus, thanks to the fruitful misconceptions of their import, thus knew how to elevate them into great truths. His kingdom of God was no doubt the approaching apocalypse, which was about to be unfolded in the heavens. But it was still, and probably above all, the kingdom of the soul, founded on liberty and on the filial sentiment which the virtuous man feels when resting on the bosom of his Father. It was a pure religion, without forms, without temple and without priest; it was the moral judgment of the world, delegated to the conscience of the just man, and to the arm of the people. This is what was destined to live; this is what has lived. When, at the end of a century of vain expectation, the materialistic hope of a near end of the world was exhausted, the true kingdom of God became apparent. Complaisant explanations drew a veil over the real kingdom, which did not come. The Apocalypse of John, the first book, properly speaking, of the New Testament, being too formally tied to the idea of an immediate catastrophe, was rejected by the second plan, held to be unintelligible, and tortured in a thousand ways. At least, its accomplishment was adjourned to an indefinite future. Some poor benighted ones who, in a fully enlightened age, still preserved the hopes of the first disciples, became heretics (Ebionites, Millenarians) lost in the shallows of Christianity. Mankind had passed to another kingdom of God. The degree of truth contained in the thought of Jesus had prevailed over the chimera which obscured it.

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Let us not, however, despise this chimera, which has been the thick rind of the sacred fruit on which we live. This fantastic kingdom of heaven, this endless pursuit after a city of God, which has constantly preoccupied Christianity during its long career, has been the principle of that great instinct of futurity which has animated all reformers, persistent believers in the Apocalypse, from Joachim of Flora down to the Protestant sectary of our days. This impotent effort to establish a perfect society has been the source of the extraordinary tension which has always made the true Christian an athlete struggling against the present. The idea of the “kingdom of God,” and the Apocalypse, which is the complete image of it, are thus, in a sense, the highest and most poetic expressions of human progress. No doubt they must also have given rise to great errors. The end of the world, suspended as a perpetual menace over mankind, was, by the periodical panics which it caused during centuries, a great hindrance to all secular development. Society, being no longer

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certain of its existence, contracted therefrom a degree of trepidation, and those habits of servile humility which rendered the Middle Ages so inferior to ancient and modern times. A profound change had also taken place in the mode of regarding the coming of Christ. When it was first announced to mankind that the end of the world was at hand, like the infant which receives death with a smile, it experienced the greatest access of joy that it has ever felt. But in growing old, the world became attached to life. The day of grace, so long expected by the simple souls of Galilee, became to these iron ages a day of wrath: Dies iræ, dies illa! But even in the midst of barbarism, the idea of the kingdom of God continued fruitful. “At the approach of the end of the world . . . “are the charters of enfranchisement. In spite of the feudal church, of sects, and of religious orders, holy persons continued to protest, in the name of the Gospel, against the iniquity of the world. Even in our days, troubled days, in which Jesus has no more authentic followers than those who seem to deny him, the dreams of an ideal organisation of society, which have so much analogy with the aspirations of the primitive Christian sects, are only in one sense the blossoming of the same idea, one of the branches of that immense tree in which germinates all thought of a future, and of which the “kingdom of God” will be eternally the root and stem. All the social revolutions of humanity will be grafted on this phrase. But, tainted by a coarse materialism, and aspiring to the impossible, that is to say, to found universal happiness upon political and economical measures, the “socialist” attempts of our time will remain unfruitful, until they take as their rule the true spirit of Jesus; I mean absolute idealism—the principle that in order to possess the world we must renounce it. The phrase “kingdom of God,” on the other hand, expresses also very happily the want which the soul experiences of a supplementary destiny, of a compensation for the present life. Those who do not accept the definition of man as a compound of two substances, and who regard the deistical dogma of the immortality of the soul as in contradiction with physiology, love to fall back upon the hope of a final reparation, which under an unknown form shall satisfy the wants of the heart of man. Who knows if the highest term of progress after millions of ages may not evoke the absolute conscience of the universe, and in this conscience the awakening of all that has lived? A sleep of a million of years is not longer than the sleep of an hour. St. Paul, on this hypothesis, was right in saying, In ictu oculi! It is certain that moral and virtuous humanity will have its reward, that one day the ideas of the poor but honest man will judge the world, and that on that day the ideal figure of Jesus will be the confusion of the frivolous man who has not believed in virtue and of the egotist who has not been able to attain to it. The favourite phrase of Jesus continues, therefore, full of an eternal beauty. A sort of grandiose divinity seems in this to have guided the incomparable master, and to have held him in a vague sublimity, embracing at the same time various orders of truths.

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CHAPTER XVIII. INSTITUTIONS OF JESUS.

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THAT which proves, moreover, that Jesus was never entirely absorbed in his apocalyptic ideas is that, at the very time he was most preoccupied with them, he laid with rare foresight the basis of a church destined to endure. It is scarcely possible to doubt that he himself only chose from among his disciples those who were pre-eminently called the “apostles,” or the “twelve,” since on the day after his death we find them forming a distinct body, and filling up by election the vacancies that had been produced in their midst. They were the two sons of Jonas; the two sons of Zebedee; James, son of Alphæus; Philip; Nathaniel bar-Tolmai; Thomas; Matthew; Simon Zelotes; Thaddeus or Lebbæus; and Judas of Kerioth. It is probable that the idea of the twelve tribes of Israel had had something to do with the choice of this number. The “twelve,” at all events, formed a group of privileged disciples, among whom Peter maintained a fraternal priority, and to them Jesus confided the propagation of his work. There was nothing, however, which suggested a regularly organised sacerdotal school. The lists of the “twelve,” which have been preserved, present many uncertainties and contradictions; two or three of those who figure in them have remained completely obscure. Two, at least, Peter and Philip, were married and had children. Jesus evidently confided secrets to the twelve, which he forbade them to communicate to the world. It seems sometimes as if his intentions had been to surround his person with some mystery, to postpone the most important testimony till after his death, and to reveal himself clearly only to his disciples, confiding to them the care of demonstrating him afterwards to the world. “What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.” He was thus spared the necessity of too precise declarations, and created a kind of medium between the public and himself. What is certain is that there were teachings reserved to the apostles, and that he explained many parables to them, the meaning of which was ambiguous to the multitude. An enigmatical form and a degree of oddness in connecting ideas were customary in the teachings of the doctors, as may be seen in the sentences of the Pirké Aboth. Jesus explained to his disciples whatever was peculiar in his apothegms or in his apologues, and showed them his meaning stripped of the wealth of illustration which sometimes obscured it. Many of these explanations appear to have been carefully preserved.

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During the lifetime of Jesus the apostles preached, but without ever departing far from him. Their preaching, moreover, was confined to the announcement of the speedy coming of the kingdom of God. They went from town to town, receiving hospitality, or rather taking it themselves, according to custom. The guest in the East has much authority; he is superior to the master of the house; the latter places the greatest confidence in him. This fireside preaching is well suited to the propagation of new doctrines. The hidden treasure is communicated, and payment is thus made for what is

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received; politeness and good feeling lend their aid; the household is touched and converted. Remove Oriental hospitality, and it would be impossible to explain the propagation of Christianity. Jesus, who adhered strongly to the good old customs, encouraged his disciples to make no scruple of profiting by this ancient public right, probably abolished already in the great towns where there were hostelries. “The labourer,” said he, “is worthy of his hire!” Once installed in the house of any one they were to remain there, eating and drinking what was offered them as long as their mission lasted. Jesus desired that, by imitating his example, the messengers of the glad tidings should render their preaching agreeable by kindly and polished manners. He directed that, on entering a house, they should give the host the salaam—wish him happiness. Some hesitated; the salaam being then, as now, in the East, a sign of religious communion, which is not risked with persons of a doubtful faith. “Fear nothing,” said Jesus; “if no one in the house is worthy of your salute, it will return unto you.” Sometimes, in fact, the apostles of the kingdom of God were badly received, and came to complain to Jesus, who generally sought to conciliate them. Some of them, persuaded of the omnipotence of their master, were hurt at this forbearance. The sons of Zebedee wanted him to call down fire from heaven upon the inhospitable towns. Jesus answered these outbursts with a fine irony, and stopped them by saying, “ The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” 170

He sought in every way to establish as a principle that his apostles were as himself. It was believed that he had communicated his marvellous virtues to them. They cast out demons, prophesied, and formed a school of renowned exorcists, although certain cases were beyond their power. They also made cures, either by the imposition of hands or by the unction of oil, one of the fundamental processes of Oriental medicine. Lastly, like the Psylli, they could handle serpents and drink with impunity deadly potions. The further we get from Jesus this theurgy becomes more and more offensive. But there is no doubt that it was a common practice in the primitive Church, and that it held a chief place in the estimation of the world around. Charlatans, as generally happens, exploited this movement of popular credulity. Even in the lifetime of Jesus many, without being his disciples, cast out demons in his name. The true disciples were much hurt at this, and sought to prevent them. Jesus, who saw in this a homage to his renown, did not manifest much severity towards them. It must be observed, moreover, that these supernatural gifts had, if I may say so, become a trade. Carrying the logic of absurdity to the extreme, certain men cast out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons. They imagined that this sovereign of the infernal regions must have entire authority over his subordinates, and that in acting through him they were certain to make the intruding spirit depart. Some even sought to buy from the disciples of Jesus the secret of the miraculous powers which had been conferred upon them.

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The germ of a church began from this time to appear. This fertile idea of the power of men in association (ecclesia) seemed indeed an idea of Jesus. Full of the purely idealistic doctrine that it is the union of love which brings souls together, he declared that whenever men assembled in his name, he would be in their midst. He confided to the Church the right to bind and to unbind (that is to say, to render certain things lawful or unlawful), to remit sins, to reprimand, to warn with authority, and to pray with the certainty of being heard. It is possible that many of these sayings may have been attributed to the master, so as to give a foundation to the collective authority by which subsequently it was sought to replace that of Jesus. At all events, it was only after his death that particular churches were seen to be constituted, and even this first constitution was made purely and simply on the model of the synagogues. Many personages who had loved Jesus much, and had founded great hopes upon him, such as Joseph of Arimathea, Lazarus, Mary Magdalen, and Nicodemus, did not, it seems, enter these churches, but clung to the tender or respectful memory which they had preserved of him. Moreover, there is no trace, in the teaching of Jesus, of an applied morality or of a canonical law, ever so slightly defined. Once only, respecting marriage, he spoke with decision, and forbade divorce. Neither was there any theology or creed. There were hardly any opinions respecting the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, from which, afterwards, were drawn the Trinity and the Incarnation, but they still remained in a state of indeterminate imagery. The later books of the Jewish canon recognised already in the Holy Spirit a sort of divine hypostasis, sometimes identified with Wisdom or the Word. Jesus insisted upon this point, and pretended to give to his disciples a baptism by fire and by the Spirit, as much preferable to that of John. For Jesus, this Holy Spirit, was not distinct from the inspiration emanating from God the Father in a continuous manner. People then speculated. It was pretended that Jesus had promised his disciples to send them after his death, to replace him, a Spirit who should teach them all things and bear witness to the truths he himself had promulgated. One day the apostles believed they had received the baptism of this spirit in the form of a great wind and tongues of fire. In order to designate this Spirit, people made use of the word Paraklit, which the Syro-Chaldaic had borrowed from the Greek (παρακλητος), and which appears to have had in this case the meaning of “advocate,” “counsellor,” and sometimes that of “interpreter of celestial truths,” and of “teacher charged to reveal to men the hitherto hidden mysteries.” It is very doubtful whether Jesus made use of this word. It was in this case an application of the process which the Jewish and Christian theologies would follow during centuries, and which was to produce a whole series of divine assessors, the Metathronos, the συναδελφος or Syndelphon, and all the personifications of the Cabala. Still, in Judaism, these creations were to remain free and individual speculations, whilst in Christianity, commencing with the fourth century, they were to form the very essence of orthodoxy and of the universal dogma. It is needless to remark how remote from the thought of Jesus was the idea of a religious book, containing a code and articles of faith. Not only did he not write, but it was contrary to the spirit of the nascent sect to produce sacred books. They believed themselves on the eve of the great final

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catastrophe. The Messiah came to put the seal upon the Law and the Prophets, not to promulgate new texts. Further, with the exception of the Apocalypse, which was in one sense the only revealed book of the primitive Christianity, the writings of the apostolic age were works arising from circumstances, making no pretentions to furnish a completely dogmatic whole. The Gospels had at first an entirely personal character, and much less authority than tradition. 173

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Had not the sect, however, some sacrament, some rite, some rallying point? It had the one which all tradition ascribes to Jesus. One of the favourite notions of the master was that he was the new bread, a bread very superior to manna, and on which mankind was to live. This notion, the germ of the Eucharist, took in his mouth at times singularly concrete forms. On one occasion especially, in the synagogue of Capernaum, he took a bold step, which cost him several of his disciples. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.” And he added, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” These words excited deep murmurings. The Jews then murmured at him because he said, “I am the bread which came down from heaven. And they said, is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?” But Jesus, insisting with still more force, said, “I am that bread of life; your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” The ill-feeling was now at its height: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus, going still further, said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father has sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.” Such paradoxical obstinacy offended several of his disciples, who ceased to follow him. Jesus did not retract; he only added: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” The twelve remained faithful, despite this odd preaching. It gave to Cephas, in particular, an opportunity of showing his absolute devotion and of proclaiming once more, “Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” It is probable that henceforward in the common repasts of the sect, there was established some custom which from the discourse was badly received by the men of Capernaum. But the apostolic traditions on this subject are very divergent and probably intentionally incomplete. The synoptical gospels, whose account is confirmed by St. Paul, suppose that a unique sacramental act served as basis to the mysterious rite, and refer it to “the last supper.” The fourth gospel, which has accurately preserved to us the incident at the synagogue of Capernaum, does not speak of such an act, although

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it describes the last supper at great length. Elsewhere we see Jesus recognised in the breaking of bread, as if this act had been to those who associated with him the most characteristic of his person. When he was dead, the form under which he appeared to the pious memory of his disciples was that of chairman of a mysterious banquet, taking the bread, blessing it, breaking and giving it to those present. It is probable that this was one of his habits, and that at such times he was particularly amiable and tender. One material circumstance, the presence of fish upon the table (a striking indication, which proves that the rite was instituted on the shore of Lake Tiberias), was itself almost sacramental, and became a necessary part of the conceptions of the sacred feast. Their repasts had become the sweetest moments of the infant community. At these times they all assembled; the master spoke to each one, and kept up a charming and lively conversation. Jesus loved these seasons, and was pleased to see his spiritual family thus grouped around him. The participation of the same bread was considered as a kind of communion, a reciprocal bond. The master used, in this respect, extremely strong terms, which were afterwards taken in a very literal sense. Jesus was, at once, very idealistic in his conceptions and very materialistic in his expression of them. Wishing to express the thought that the believer lives only by him, that altogether (body, blood, and soul) he was the life of the truly faithful, he said to his disciples, “I am your nourishment,”—a phrase which, turned in figurative style, became, “My flesh is your bread, my blood your drink.” Then the modes of speech employed by Jesus, always strongly subjective, carried him yet further. At table, pointing to the food, he said, “I am here,” holding the bread; “this is my body; holding up the wine, “This is my blood,”—all modes of speech which were equivalent to, “I am your nourishment.”

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This mysterious rite obtained in the lifetime of Jesus great importance. It was probably established some time before the last journey to Jerusalem, and it was the result of a general doctrine much more than a determinate act. After the death of Jesus, it became the great symbol of Christian communion, and it is to the most solemn moment of the life of the Saviour that its establishment is referred. It was wished to be shown in the consecration of bread and wine, a farewell memorial which Jesus, at the moment of quitting life, had left to his disciples. They recognised Jesus himself in this sacrament. The wholly spiritual idea of the presence of souls, which was one of the most familiar to the master, which made him say, for instance, that he was personally with his disciples when they were assembled in his name, rendered this easily admissible. Jesus, we have already said, never had a very clear idea of that which constitutes individuality. In the degree of exaltation to which he had attained, the ideal surpassed everything to such an extent that the body counted for nothing. We are one when we love one another, when we live in dependence on each other; it was thus that he and his disciples were one. His disciples adopted the same language. Those who for years had lived with him had seen him constantly take the bread and the cup “between his holy and venerable hands,” and thus offer himself to them. It was he whom they ate and drank; he became the true passover, the former one having been abrogated by his blood. It is impossible to translate into our essentially hard and fast tongue, in which a rigorous distinction between the material and

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the metaphorical must always be observed, habits of style whose essential character is to attribute to metaphor, or rather to the idea it represents, a complete reality.

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CHAPTER XIX. INCREASING PROGRESSION OF ENTHUSIASM AND OF EXALTATION. IT is clear that such a religious society, founded exclusively on the expectation of the kingdom of God, must be in itself very incomplete. The first Christian generation lived almost entirely upon expectations and dreams. On the eve of seeing the world come to an end, it regarded as useless everything which served but to prolong the world. The desire to possess property was regarded as reprehensible. Everything which attaches man to earth, everything which draws him aside from heaven, was to be avoided. Although several of the disciples were married, there was, it seems, to be no more marriage after one became a member of the sect. The celibate was greatly preferred. At one time the master seems to approve of those who should mutilate themselves in view of the kingdom of God. In this he acted up to his precept. “If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee; it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell-fire.” The cessation of generation was often considered as the symbol and condition of the kingdom of God.

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We can perceive that this primitive Church never could have formed a durable society but for the great variety of germs embraced in the teaching of Jesus. It required more than another century for the true Christian Church—that which has converted the world—to disengage itself from this small sect of “latter-day saints,” and to become a framework applicable to the whole of human society. The same thing, moreover, took place in Buddhism, which at first was founded only for monks. The same thing would have happened in the order of St. Francis, if that order had succeeded in its attempt to become the rule of the whole of human society. Being Utopian in their origin, and succeeding by their very exaggeration, the great systems of which we have just been speaking have only spread over the world after being profoundly modified, and after abandoning their excesses. Jesus did not overstep this first and entirely monachal period, in which it was believed that the impossible could be attempted with impunity. He did not make any concession to necessity. He boldly preached war against nature and a total rupture with the ties of blood. “Verily I say unto you,” said he, “there is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.” The instruction which Jesus is alleged to have given to his disciples breathes the same exaltation. He who was so lenient with the outside world, he who contented himself sometimes with formal adhesions, exercised towards his own an extreme rigour. He would have no “all buts.” We should call it an “order,” founded upon the most austere rules. Wrapped up in his idea that the cares of life

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trouble and debase man, Jesus required of his companions a complete detachment from the earth, an absolute devotion to his work. They ought not to carry with them either money or provisions for the way, not even a scrip, or a change of raiment. They ought to practise absolute poverty, live on alms and hospitality. “Freely ye have received, freely give,” said he, in his beautiful language. Arrested and arraigned before the judges, they were not to prepare their defence; the heavenly advocate would inspire them as to what they should say. The Father would confer upon them His spirit from on high. This spirit would regulate all their acts, direct their thoughts, and guide them through the world. If chased from one town, they were to cast at it the dust from their shoes, and that none might plead ignorance, declaring always the proximity of the religion of God. “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel,” added he, “till the Son of man shall have appeared.” A strange ardour animates all these discourses, which may in part be the creation of the enthusiasm of his disciples, but which even in that case came indirectly from Jesus, since such enthusiasm was his work. Jesus informed those who wanted to follow him that they would be subjected to severe persecutions and the hatred of mankind. He sent them forth as lambs in the midst of wolves. They would be scourged in the synagogues, and dragged to prison. Brother should deliver up brother to death, the father the son. When they were persecuted in one country, they were to flee to another. “The disciple,” said he, “is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” “Whosoever, therefore,” continued he, “shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.”

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In these fits of severity he went the length of suppressing the desires of the flesh. His requirements had no longer any bounds. Despising the healthy limits of man’s nature, he demanded that the latter should exist only for him, that he should love him alone. “If any man come to me,” said he, “and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” There was something strange and more than human thus mixed up in his speech; it was like a fire consuming light to its root, and reducing everything to a frightful wilderness. The harsh and gloomy sentiment of distaste for the world, and of the excessive self-abnegation which characterises Christian perfection, was for the founders not the refined and cheerful moralist of his earlier days, but the sombre giant whom a kind of presentiment was withdrawing, more and more without the pale of humanity. We should even say that, in these moments, when warring against the most legitimate cravings of the heart, Jesus had forgotten the pleasure of living, of loving, of seeing, and of feeling. Employing more unmeasured language, he dared to say, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and follow me. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than

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me is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake and the Gospel’s shall find it. What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Two anecdotes of the kind we cannot accept as historical, which were intended to be an exaggeration of a trait of character, clearly illustrating this defiance of nature. He said to one man, “Follow me!”— But he said, “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.” Jesus answered, “Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.” Another said to him, “Lord I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.” Jesus replied, “No man, having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” An extraordinary assurance, and at times accents of singular sweetness, reversing all our ideas of him, made these exaggerations acceptable. “Come unto me,” cried he, “all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” A great danger might result in the future from this exalted memory, which was expressed in hyperbolical language and with a terrible energy. By thus detaching man from earth, the ties of life were severed. The Christian would be praised for being a bad son, or a bad patriot, if it was for Christ that he resisted his father and fought against his country. The ancient city, the parent republic, the state, or the law common to all, were thus placed in hostility with the kingdom of God. A fatal germ of theocracy was introduced into the world.

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From this point another consequence may be perceived. This morality, invented for a time of crisis, being transported into a peaceful country, into the bosom of a society assured of its own duration, must seem impossible. The Gospel was thus destined to become for Christians a Utopia, which very few would give themselves the trouble to inquire into. These terrible maxims, for the greater number sunk into profound oblivion, were encouraged by the clergy itself; the Gospel man was a dangerous man. The most selfish, proud, hard, and worldly of all human beings, a Louis XIV., for instance, found priests to persuade him, in spite of the Gospel, that he was a Christian. But, on the other hand, there have always been holy men who accepted the sublime paradoxes of Jesus literally. Perfection being placed beyond the ordinary conditions of society, a complete Gospel life could only be led away from the world, and thus the principle of asceticism and of monasticism was established. Christian societies would have two moral rules; the one moderately heroic for common men, the other exalted in the extreme for the perfect man; and the perfect man would be the monk, subjected to rules which professed to realise the Gospel ideal. It is certain that this ideal, were it only on account of the celibacy and poverty it imposed, could not become the common law. The monk would thus, in some respects, be the only true Christian. Ordinary common sense revolts at these excesses; and to believe in the latter is to believe that the impossible is a mark of weakness and error. But ordinary common sense is a bad judge where the question at issue has reference to great things. To obtain little from humanity, we must ask much. The immense moral progress due the Gospel is the result of its exaggerations. It is thus that it has been, like stoicism, but with infinitely

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greater fulness, a living argument for the divine powers, which are, in man, an exalted monument of the potency of the will.

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We may readily imagine that to Jesus, at this period of his life, everything which did not belong to the kingdom of God had absolutely disappeared. He was, if we may say so, totally outside nature: family, friendship, country, had no longer any meaning for him. He, no doubt, from this moment, had already sacrificed his life. At times, we are tempted to believe that, seeing in his own death a means of founding his kingdom, he conceived the purpose of allowing himself to be killed. At other times, although such a thought was only afterwards erected into a doctrine, death presented itself to him as a sacrifice, destined to appease his Father and to save mankind. A singular taste for persecution and torments possessed him. His blood appeared to him as the water of a second baptism with which he ought to be saturated, and he seemed possessed by a strange haste to anticipate this baptism, which alone could quench his thirst. The grandeur of his views upon the future was at times surprising. He did not deceive himself as to the terrible storm he was about to cause in the world. “Think not,” said he, boldly and beautifully, “that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. There shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” “I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?” “They shall put you out of the synagogues,” he continued; “yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.” “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. Remember the word that I said unto you: The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

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Carried away by this fearfully increasing enthusiasm, and governed by the necessities of a preaching more and more exalted, Jesus was no longer free; he belonged to his mission, and, in one sense, to mankind. Sometimes it might have been averred that his reason was disturbed. He suffered great mental anguish and agitation. The great vision of the kingdom of God, dangling constantly before his eyes, bewildered him. It must be remembered that, at times, those about him believed him to be mad, while his enemies declared him to be possessed. His excessively impassioned temperament carried him incessantly beyond the bounds of human nature. His work not being a work of the reason, jeering at all the laws of the human mind, that which he most imperiously required was “faith.” This was the word most frequently repeated in the little guest-chamber. It is the watchword of all popular movements. It is clear that none of these movements would take place, if it were necessary that their author should gain his disciples one by one by force of logic. Reflection leads only to doubt, and if the authors of the French Revolution, for instance, had had to be previously convinced by lengthened meditations, they would all have become old without accomplishing anything. Jesus, in like manner, aimed less at convincing his hearers than at exciting their enthusiasm.

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Urgent and imperative, he suffered no opposition: men must be converted, nothing less would satisfy him. His natural gentleness seemed to have abandoned him; he was sometimes harsh and capricious. His disciples at times did not understand him, and experienced in his presence a feeling akin to fear. Sometimes his displeasure at the slightest opposition led him to commit inexplicable and apparently absurd acts.

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It was not that his virtue deteriorated; but his struggle in the cause of the ideal against the reality became insupportable. Contact with the world pained and revolted him. Obstacles irritated him. His notion of the Son of God became disturbed and exaggerated. One is such at certain times, through sudden illuminations, and is lost in the midst of long obscurities. Divinity has its intermittencies; one is not the Son of God all his life and in consecutive manner. The fatal law which condemns an idea to decay as soon as it seeks to convert men, was applicable to Jesus. Contact with men degraded him to their level. The tone he had adopted could not be sustained beyond a few months; it was time that death came to liberate him from an endurance strained to the utmost, to remove him from the impossibilities of an interminable path, and by delivering him from a trial in danger of being too prolonged, introduce him henceforth sinless into celestial peace.

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CHAPTER XX. OPPOSITION TO JESUS.

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DURING the early period of his career, Jesus does not appear to have encountered any serious opposition. His preaching, thanks to the extreme liberty which was enjoyed in Galilee, and to the great number of teachers who arose on all sides, made no noise outside a somewhat restricted circle of persons. But when Jesus entered upon a career brilliant with prodigies and public successes, the storm began to howl. More than once he was obliged to conceal himself and fly. Antipas, however, never interfered with him, although Jesus expressed himself sometimes very severely respecting him. At Tiberias, his usual residence, the Tetrarch was only one or two leagues distant from the district chosen by Jesus for the field of his activity; he was told of his miracles, which he doubtless took to be clever tricks, and desired to see them. The incredulous were at that time very curious about this sort of illusions. With his ordinary tact, Jesus refused to gratify him. He took care not to be led astray by an irreligious world, which wished to extort from him some idle amusement; he aspired only to gain the people; he reserved for the simple, means suitable to them alone. Once the report was spread that Jesus was no other than John the Baptist risen from the dead. Antipas became anxious and uneasy; he employed artifice to rid his dominions of the new prophet. Certain Pharisees, under the pretence of being interested in Jesus, came to tell him that Antipas was seeking to kill him. Jesus, despite his great simplicity, saw the snare, and did not depart. His wholly pacific attractions, and his remoteness from popular agitation, ultimately reassured the Tetrarch and dissipated the danger.

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The new doctrine was by no means received with equal favour in all the towns of Galilee. Not only did incredulous Nazareth continue to reject him who was to become her glory; not only did his brothers persist in not believing in him, but also the cities of the lake themselves, in general well-disposed, were not wholly converted. Jesus often complained of the incredulity and hardness of heart which he encountered, and although it is natural in such reproaches to make allowance for a certain kind of exaggeration of the preacher, although we are sensible of that kind of convicium seculi which Jesus affected in imitation of John the Baptist, it is clear that the country was far from yielding itself entirely to the kingdom of God. “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida!” cried he; “for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell; for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee.” “The queen of the south,” added he, “shall rise up in the judgment against the men of this generation, and shall condemn

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it; for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” His roaming life, at first so full of charm, now began to weigh upon him. “The foxes,” said he, “have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” He accused unbelievers of not yielding to evidence.

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Jesus, in fact, could not withstand opposition with the coolness of the philosopher, who, understanding the reason of the various opinions which divide the world, finds it quite natural that all should not be of his opinion. One of the principal defects of the Jewish race is its harshness in controversy, and the abusive tone which it almost always infuses into it. There never were in the world such bitter quarrels as those of the Jews among themselves. It is the sentiment of nice discernment which makes the polished and moderate man. Now, the lack of this feeling is one of the most constant features of the Semitic mind. Refined works, such as the dialogues of Plato, for example, are altogether foreign to these nations. Jesus, who was exempt from almost all the defects of his race, and whose dominant quality was precisely an infinite delicacy, was led in spite of himself to make use of the general style in polemics. Like John the Baptist, he employed very harsh terms against his adversaries. Of an exquisite gentleness with the simple, he was irritated in presence of incredulity, however little aggressive. He was no longer the mild teacher who delivered the “Sermon on the Mount,” who as yet had met with neither resistance nor difficulty. The passion that underlay his character led him to make use of the keenest invectives. This singular mixture ought not to surprise us. A man of our own times, M. de Lamennais, has forcibly presented the same contrast. In his beautiful book, “The Words of a Believer,” the most immoderate anger and the sweetest relentings alternate, as in a mirage. This man, who was extremely kind in the intercourse of life, became foolishly intractable toward those who did not think as he did. Jesus, in like manner, applied to himself, not without reason, the passage from Isaiah: “He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench.” And yet many of the recommendations which he addressed to his disciples contain the germs of a real fanaticism, germs which the Middle Ages were to develop in a cruel manner. Must we reproach him for this? No revolution can be effected without some harshness. If Luther, or the actors in the French Revolution, had had to observe the rules of politeness, neither the Reformation nor the Revolution would have taken place. Let us congratulate ourselves in like manner that Jesus encountered no law which punished the outrageous denunciation of one class of citizens. The Pharisees in such a case would have been inviolate. All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles. A critical philosopher would have said to his disciples: Respect the opinion of others, and believe that no one is so completely right that his adversary is completely wrong. But the action of Jesus has nothing in common with the disinterested speculation of the philosopher. To say that we have touched the ideal for a moment,

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and have been deterred by the wickedness of a few, is a thought insupportable to an ardent soul. What must it have been for the founder of a new world?

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The invincible obstacle to the designs of Jesus came in particular from orthodox Judaism, represented by the Pharisees. Jesus drifted away more and more from the ancient Law. Now, the Pharisees were the backbone of Judaism. Although this party had its centre at Jerusalem, it had, nevertheless, adherents either established in Galilee or who often came to the North. They were, in general, men of a narrow mind, giving much attention to externals; with a devoutness that was haughty, formal, and self-satisfied. Their manners were ridiculous, and excited the smiles of even those who respected them. The epithets which the people gave them, and which savour of caricature, prove this. There was the “bandy-legged Pharisee” (Nikfi), who walked in the streets dragging his feet and knocking them against the stones; the “bloody-browed Pharisee” (Kizai), who went with his eyes shut in order not to see the women, and dashed his head so much against the walls that it was always bloody; the “pestle Pharisee” (Medoukia), who kept himself bent double like the handle of a pestle; the “Pharisee of strong shoulders” (Schikmi), who walked with his back bent as if he carried on his shoulders the whole burden of the Law; the “What-is-there-to-do?-I-do-it Pharisee,” always on the outlook for a precept to fulfil. To these we must add the “dyed Pharisee,” whose whole outward devotion was but a varnish of hypocrisy. This rigourism was, in fact, often only apparent, and concealed in reality great moral laxity. The people, nevertheless, were duped by it. The people, whose instinct is always right, even when it goes furthest astray on the question of individuals, is very easily deceived by false devotees. That which it loves in them is good and worthy of being loved; but it has not sufficient penetration to distinguish the appearance from the reality. The antipathy which, in such an impassioned state of society, would necessarily break out between Jesus and persons of this character is easy to understand. Jesus sought only the religion of the heart; the religion of the Pharisees consisted almost exclusively in observances. Jesus sought after the humble and all kinds of outcasts; the Pharisees saw in this an insult to their religion of respectability. The Pharisee was an infallible and impeccable man, a pedant always certain of being in the right, taking the first place in the synagogue, praying in the street, giving alms to the sound of a trumpet, and watching to see whether people saluted him. Jesus maintained that each one ought to await the judgment of God with fear and trembling. The bad religious tendency represented by Pharisaism by no means reigned without opposition. Many men before or during the time of Jesus, such as Jesus, son of Sirach (one of the real ancestors of Jesus of Nazareth), Gamaliel, Antigonus of Soco, and especially the gentle and noble Hillel, had taught much more elevated and almost Gospel doctrines. But these good seeds had been choked. The beautiful maxims of Hillel, summing up the whole Law as equity, and those of Jesus, son of Sirach, making worship consist in the pursuit of the good, were forgotten or anathematised. Shammai, with his narrow and exclusive mind, had prevailed. An enormous mass of “traditions” had stifled the Law, under the pretext of protecting and interpreting it. No doubt these conservative measures had their useful side; it is well that the

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Jewish people loved its Law even to madness, inasmuch as this frantic love in saving Mosaism under Antiochus Epiphanes and under Herod, preserved the leaven necessary for the production of Christianity. But taken by themselves, these obsolete precautions we speak of were only puerile. The synagogue, which was the depository of them, was no more than a parent of error. Its reign was ended; and yet to ask for its abdication was to ask for that which an established power has never done or been able to do.

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The conflicts of Jesus with official hypocrisy were continual. The ordinary tactics of the reformers who appeared in the religious state which we have just described, and which might be called “traditional formalism,” were to oppose the “text” of the sacred books to “traditions.” Religious zeal is always an innovator, even when it pretends to be in the highest degree conservative. Just as the neo-Catholics of our days are getting further and further away from the Gospel, so the Pharisees, at each step, got further away from the Bible. This is why the Puritan reformer is as a rule essentially “biblical,” setting out with the unchangeable text in order to criticise the current theology, which has changed from generation to generation. Thus acted later the Karaites and the Protestants. Jesus applied the axe to the root of the tree much more energetically. True, we see him sometimes quoting texts against the false masores or traditions of the Pharisees. But, in general, he set little store by exegesis; it was the conscience to which he appealed. With the same stroke he cut through both text and commentaries. He showed indeed to the Pharisees that by their traditions they seriously perverted Mosaism, but he by no means pretended himself to return to Mosaism. His goal was the future, not the past. Jesus was more than the reformer of an obsolete religion; he was the founder of the eternal religion of humanity. Disputes broke out, especially in regard to a number of external practices introduced by tradition, a tradition which neither Jesus nor his disciples observed. The Pharisees reproached him sharply for this. When he dined with them he scandalised them greatly by not going through the customary ablutions. “Give alms,” said he, “of such things as ye have; and behold, all things are clean unto you.” That which in the highest degree wounded his sensitive nature was the air of assurance which the Pharisees carried into religious matters; their contemptible devotion which ended in a vain seeking after precedents and titles, and not the improvement of their hearts. An admirable parable expressed this thought with infinite charm and justice. “Two men,” said he, “went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.” A hatred which death alone could assuage was the consequence of these struggles. John the Baptist had previously provoked enmities of the same kind. But the aristocrats of Jerusalem, who

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despised him, had allowed simple men to regard him as a prophet. In this case, however, the war was to the death. It was a new spirit that had appeared in the world, which shattered all that had preceded it. John the Baptist was a thorough Jew: Jesus was scarcely one at all. Jesus always addressed himself to refined moral sentiment. He was only a disputant when he argued against the Pharisees, his opponents forcing him, as almost always happens, to adopt their tone. His exquisite irony, his stinging remarks, always went to the heart. They were everlasting stings, and have remained festering in the wound. This Nessus-shirt of ridicule which the Jew, son of the Pharisees, has dragged in tatters after him during eighteen centuries, was woven by Jesus with a divine skill. Masterpieces of fine raillery, their features are written in lines of fire upon the flesh of the hypocrite and the false devotee. Incomparable traits worthy of a Son of God! A god alone knows how to kill in this way. Socrates and Molière only grazed the skin. The former carried fire and rage to the very marrow.

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But it was also just that this great master of irony should pay for his triumph with his life. Even in Galilee the Pharisees sought to kill him, and employed against him the manœuvre which ultimately succeeded at Jerusalem. They endeavoured to interest in their quarrel the partisans of the new political order which was established. The facilities Jesus found for escaping into Galilee, and the weakness of the government of Antipas, baffled these attempts. He exposed himself to danger of his own free will. He saw clearly that his action, if he remained interned in Galilee, was necessarily limited. Judea attracted him as by a charm; he wished to put forth a last effort to gain over the rebellious city, and seemed anxious to undertake the task of fulfilling the proverb—that a prophet must not die outside Jerusalem.

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CHAPTER XXI. LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM.

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FOR a long time Jesus had been conscious of the dangers which surrounded him. During a period which we may estimate at eighteen months, he avoided going on a pilgrimage to the holy city. At the feast of Tabernacles of the year 32 (according to the hypothesis we have adopted), his relations, always malevolent and incredulous, persuaded him to go there. The evangelist seems to insinuate that there was some hidden project to ruin him in this invitation. “Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, show thyself to the world.” Jesus, suspecting some treachery, at first refused; but when the caravan of pilgrims had set out, he started on the journey, unknown to every one, and almost alone. It was the last farewell which he bade to Galilee. The feast of Tabernacles fell at the autumnal equinox. Six months had still to run before the fatal denouement. But, during this interval, Jesus did not again see his beloved provinces of the north. The pleasant days are passed; he must now traverse, step by step, the sorrowful path which will terminate in the anguish of death. His disciples and the pious women who ministered to him found him again in Judea. But how much everything else was changed for him! Jesus was a stranger at Jerusalem. He felt that there was a wall of resistance he could not pierce. Surrounded by snares and obstacles, he was unceasingly pursued by the ill-will of the Pharisees. In place of that illimitable faculty of belief, the happy gift of youthful natures, which he found in Galilee—instead of those good and gentle people, amongst whom opposition (always the fruit to some extent of ill-will and indocility) had no existence, he encountered there at each step an obstinate incredulity, upon which the policy that had succeeded so well in the north had little effect. His disciples were despised as being Galileans. Nicodemus, who, on one of his former journeys, had had a conversation with him by night, almost compromised himself with the Sanhedrim, by having sought to defend him. “Art thou also of Galilee they said to him. “Search and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.”

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The city, as we have already said, was disliked by Jesus. Until then he had always eschewed great centres, preferring to pursue his avocation in the country and the towns of small importance. Many of the precepts which he had given to his apostles were absolutely inapplicable outside a simple society of humble men. Having no idea of the world, and accustomed to the amiable communism of Galilee, remarks continually escaped him, the simplicity of which at Jerusalem would appear very singular. His imagination and his love of nature found themselves restrained within these walls. True religion does not proceed from the tumult of towns, but from the tranquil serenity of the fields.

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The arrogance of the priests rendered the precincts of the temple disagreeable to him. One day some of his disciples, who were better acquainted with Jerusalem than he, wished to draw his attention to the beauty of the buildings of the temple, the admirable choice of materials, and the richness of the votive offerings that covered the walls. “Seest thou these buildings?” said he; “there shall not be left one stone upon another.” He refused to admire anything, unless it was a poor widow who passed at that moment, and threw a small coin into the box. “She has cast in more than they all,” said he; “for all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had.” This manner of regarding critically all that was going on at Jerusalem, of extolling the poor who gave little, of slighting the rich who gave much, and of blaming the opulent priesthood who did nothing for the good of the people, naturally exasperated the sacerdotal caste. The seat of a conservative aristocracy, the temple, like the Mussulman karam which succeeded it, was the last place in the world whence revolution could succeed. Imagine for a moment an innovator in our days going to preach the overturning of Islamism round the mosque of Omar! Jerusalem, however, was the centre of the Jewish life, the point where it was necessary to conquer or die. On this Calvary, where Jesus certainly suffered more than at Golgotha, his days passed away in disputation and bitterness, in the midst of tedious controversies as to canonical law and exegesis, for which his great moral elevation served him to little purpose—nay, placed him rather at a disadvantage. 197

In the midst of this troubled life, the sensitive and kindly heart of Jesus succeeded in creating a refuge, where he enjoyed much soft contentment. After having passed the day disputing in the temple, towards evening Jesus descended into the valley of Kedron, and took a little repose in the orchard of a farming establishment (probably for the making of oil) named Gethsemane (which was used as a pleasure resort by the inhabitants), after which he proceeded to pass the night upon the Mount of Olives, which limits on the east the horizon of the city. This side is the only one, in the environs of Jerusalem, which presents an aspect somewhat pleasing and verdant. The plantations of olives, figs, and palms were numerous around the villages, farms, or enclosures of Bethphage, Gethsemane, and Bethany. There were upon the Mount of Olives two great cedars, the recollection of which was long preserved amongst the dispersed Jews; their branches served as an asylum to clouds of doves, and under their shade were established small bazaars. All this precinct was in a manner the abode of Jesus and his disciples; we can see that they knew it almost field by field and house by house. The village of Bethany, in particular, situated at the summit of the hill, upon the incline which commands the Dead Sea and the Jordan, at a journey of an hour and a half from Jerusalem, was the place preferred by Jesus. He made there the acquaintance of a family consisting of three persons, two sisters and a third member, whose friendship had a great charm for him. Of the two sisters, the

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one, named Martha, was an obliging, kind, and bustling person; the other, named Mary, on the contrary, pleased Jesus by a sort of languor, and by her strongly-developed speculative instincts. Often, when seated at the feet of Jesus, she forgot, in listening to him, the duties of real life. Her sister, upon whom fell all the duty at such times, gently complained. “Martha, Martha,” said Jesus to her, “thou art troubled, and carest about many things; now, one thing only is needful. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away.” A certain Simon, the leper, who was the owner of the house, appears to have been the brother of Martha and Mary, or, at least, to have formed part of the family. It was there, in the midst of a pious friendship, that Jesus forgot the vexations of public life. In this tranquil abode he consoled himself for the bickerings with which the Pharisees and the scribes unceasingly irritated him. He often sat on the Mount of Olives, facing Mount Moriah, having beneath his view the splendid perspective of the terraces of the temple, and its roofs covered with glittering plates of metal. This view struck strangers with admiration. At the rising of the sun, especially, the sacred mountain dazzled the eyes, and appeared like a mass of snow and of gold. But a profound feeling of sadness poisoned for Jesus the spectacle that filled all other Israelites with joy and pride. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.” It was not that many good people here, as in Galilee, were not touched. But such was the power of the dominant orthodoxy that very few dared to confess it. They feared to discredit themselves in the eyes of the Jerusalemites by placing themselves in the school of a Galilean. They would have risked being driven from the synagogue, which, in a mean and bigoted society, was the greatest affront. Excommunication, besides, carried with it the confiscation of all possessions. By ceasing to be a Jew a man did not become a Roman; he remained without protection in the power of a theocratic legislation of the most atrocious severity. One day the inferior officers of the temple, who had assisted at one of the discourses of Jesus, and had been enchanted with it, came to confide their doubts to the priests. “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?” was the reply to them; “ but this people who knoweth not the Law are cursed.” Jesus remained thus at Jerusalem, a provincial, admired by provincials like himself, but spurned by all the aristocracy of the nation. The chiefs of the school were too numerous for any one to be stirred by seeing one more appear. His voice made little noise in Jerusalem. The prejudices of race and of sect, the direct enemies of the spirit of the Gospel, were too deeply rooted there. The teaching of Jesus in this new world necessarily became much modified. His beautiful discourses, the effect of which was always calculated upon when addressed to youthful imaginations and consciences morally pure, here fell upon stone. He who was so much at his ease on the shores of his charming little lake felt constrained and not at home in the company of pedants. His perpetual self-assertion appeared somewhat fastidious. He was obliged to become controversialist, jurist, exegetist, and theologian. His conversations, generally so full of charm, became a rolling fire of disputes, an interminable train of scholastic battles. His harmonious genius was wasted in insipid

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argumentations upon the Law and the prophets, in which case we should have preferred not seeing him sometimes play the part of aggressor. He lent himself with a condescension which wounds us to the captious criticisms to which the merciless cavillers subjected him. In general, he extricated himself from difficulties with much finesse. His reasonings, it is true, were often subtle (simplicity of mind and subtlety touch each other; when simplicity reasons, it is often a little sophistical); we find that sometimes he courted misconceptions, and prolonged them intentionally; his argumentation, judged according to the rules of Aristotelian logic, was very feeble. But when the unequalled charm of his mind could be displayed, he was triumphant. One day it was intended to embarrass him by presenting to him an adulteress and asking him what was to be done to her. We know the admirable answer of Jesus. The fine raillery of a man of the world, tempered by a divine goodness, could not be expressed in a more exquisite manner. But the wit which is allied to moral grandeur is that which fools forgive the least. In pronouncing this sentence of so just and pure a taste, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,” Jesus pierced hypocrisy to the heart, and with the same stroke sealed his own death-warrant. It is probable, in fact, that but for the exasperation caused by so many bitter retorts, Jesus might long have remained unnoticed, and have been lost in the dreadful storm which was soon about to overwhelm the whole Jewish nation. The high priesthood and Sadducees treated him rather with disdain than hatred. The great sacerdotal families, the Boethusim, the family of Hanan, were only fanatical in their conservatism. The Sadducees, like Jesus, rejected the “traditions” of the Pharisees. By a very strange singularity, it was these unbelievers who, denying the resurrection, the oral Law, and the existence of angels, were the true Jews. Or rather, as the old Law in its simplicity no longer satisfied the religious wants of the time, those who strictly adhered to it, and rejected modern inventions, were regarded by the devotees as impious, just as an evangelical Protestant of the present day is regarded as an unbeliever in orthodox countries. At all events, from such a party no very strong reaction against Jesus could proceed. The official priesthood, with its eyes turned towards political power, and intimately connected with it, did not comprehend these enthusiastic movements. It was the middle-class Pharisees, the innumerable soferim, or scribes, living on the science of “traditions,” who took the alarm, and whose prejudices and interests were in reality threatened by the doctrine of the new teacher. One of the most constant efforts of the Pharisees was to draw Jesus into the discussion of political questions, and to compromise him as being connected with the party of Judas the Gaulonite. Their tactics were clever; for it required all the great ingenuity of Jesus to avoid conflict with the Roman authority, whilst he was proclaiming the kingdom of God. They sought to break through this ambiguity, and compel him to explain himself. One day, a group of Pharisees, and of those politicians named “Herodians” (probably some of the Boethusim), approached him, and, under pretence of pious zeal, said unto him, “Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man. Tell us, therefore, what thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar, or not?” They hoped for an answer, which would give them a pretext for

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delivering him up to Pilate. The reply of Jesus was admirable. He made them show him the image of the coin. “Render,” said he, “unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Sage words, which have decided the future of Christianity! Words of a perfected spiritualism, and of marvellous justness, which have established the separation between the spiritual and the temporal, and laid the basis of true liberalism and true civilisation! His gentle and penetrating genius inspired him when he was alone with his disciples, with accents full of tenderness! “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. The sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. He goeth before them, and the sheep follow him; for they know his voice. The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” The idea that the crisis of humanity was close at hand frequently recurred to him. “Now,” said he, “learn a parable of the fig-tree: When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh. Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” His powerful eloquence found expression always when contending with hypocrisy. “The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. All, therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

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“But all their works they do to be seen of men; they make broad their phylacteries, enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. Woe unto them! . . . . . . ”Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge, shut up the kingdom of heaven against men! For ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence, make long prayers: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves! Woe unto you, for ye are as graves which appear not; and the men that walk over them are not aware of them. “Ye fools, and blind! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the Law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to

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leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel! Woe unto you! “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleannesss. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 204

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ Wherefore, ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. ‘Therefore, also,’ said the Wisdom of God, ‘I will send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city. That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Bacharias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.’ Verily, I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation.”

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His terrible dogma of the substitution of the Gentiles,—the idea that the kingdom of God was going to be transferred to others, because those for whom it was destined would not receive it, is used as a fearful menace against the aristocracy, and his title “Son of God,” which he openly assumed in striking parables, wherein his enemies appeared as murderers of the heavenly messengers, was an open defiance of legal Judaism. The bold appeal he addressed to the poor was still more seditious. He declared that he had “come that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind.” One day, his dislike of the temple forced from him an imprudent speech: “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.” We do not know what meaning Jesus attached to this phrase, in which his disciples sought for allegories. But as only a pretext was wanted, this sentence was quickly laid hold of. It reappeared in the preamble of his death-warrant, and rang in the ears amidst his last agonies of Golgotha. These irritating discussions always ended in tumult. The Pharisees threw stones at him; in doing which they only fulfilled an article of the Law, which commanded that every prophet, even a thaumaturgist, who should turn the people from the ancient worship, be stoned without a hearing. At other times they called him mad, possessed, Samaritan, or even sought to kill him. These words were taken note of in order to invoke against him the laws of an intolerant theocracy, which the Roman government had not yet abrogated.

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CHAPTER XXII. MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS.

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JESUS passed the autumn and a part of the winter at Jerusalem. This season is there rather cold. The portico of Solomon, with its covered aisles, was the place where he habitually walked. This portico, the only portion of the ancient temple which remained, consisted of two galleries, formed by two rows of columns, by the wall which overlooked the valley of Kedron, which was doubtless less covered with debris than it is at the present time. The depth of the ravine could not be measured from the height of the portico; and it seemed, in consequence of the angle of the slopes, as if an abyss opened immediately beneath the wall. The other side of the valley even at that time was adorned with sumptuous tombs. Some of the monuments, which may be seen at the present day, were perhaps those cenotaphs in honour of ancient prophets which Jesus pointed out, when, seated under the portico, he denounced the official classes, who covered their hypocrisy or their vanity by these colossal piles. At the end of the month of December he celebrated at Jerusalem the feast established by Judas Maccabeus in memory of the purification of the temple after the sacrileges of Antiochus Epiphanes. It was also called the “Feast of Lights,” because, during the eight days of the feast, lamps were kept lighted in the houses. Jesus soon after undertook a journey into Perea and to the banks of the Jordan, —that is to say, into the same country he had visited some years previously, when he belonged to the school of John, and where he himself had administered baptism. He seems to have reaped some consolation from this journey, specially at Jericho. This city, either as the terminus of several important routes, or on account of its gardens of spices and its rich cultivation, was a customs station of some importance. The chief receiver, Zaccheus, a rich man, desired to see Jesus. As he was of small stature, he mounted a sycamore tree near the road which the procession had to pass. Jesus was touched with this condescension in a person of consideration, and at the risk of giving offence he went to the house of Zaccheus. There was much murmuring at his thus honouring the house of a sinner by a visit. In parting, Jesus described his host as a good son of Abraham; and, as if to add to the vexation of the orthodox, Zaccheus became a Christian; he gave, it is said, the half of his goods to the poor, and restored fourfold to those whom he might have wronged. Further, this was not the only pleasure Jesus experienced there. On leaving the town, the beggar Bartimeus pleased him much by persistently calling him “son of David,” although he was enjoined to be silent. The cycle of Galilean miracles appeared for a time to recommence in this country, a country similar in many respects to the provinces of the north. The delightful oasis of Jericho, at that time well watered, must have been one of the most beautiful places in Syria. Josephus speaks of it with the same admiration as of Galilee, and calls it, like the latter province, a “divine country.”

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After Jesus had completed this kind of pilgrimage to the scenes of his earliest prophetic activity, he returned to his beloved abode in Bethany. That which most pained the faithful Galileans at Jerusalem was that he had not done any miracles there. Grieved at the cold reception which the kingdom of God found in the capital, the friends of Jesus wished, it seems, for a great miracle which should strike powerfully the incredulity of the Jerusalemites. A resurrection of a man known at Jerusalem appeared to them the most likely to carry conviction. It is to be supposed that Martha and Mary had spoken to Jesus on the subject. We must bear in mind that the essential condition of true criticism is to understand the diversity of times, and to rid ourselves of the instinctive repugnances which are the fruit of a purely rational education. We must also remember that in this dull and impure city of Jerusalem Jesus was no longer himself. Not by any fault of his own, but by that of others, his conscience had lost something of its originate purity. Desperate, and driven to extremity, he was no longer his own master. His mission overwhelmed him, and he yielded to the torrent. As always happens in the lives of great and inspired men, he suffered the miracles opinion demanded of him rather than performed them. At this distance of time, and with only a single text, bearing evident traces of artifices of composition, it is impossible to decide whether in this instance the whole is fiction, or whether a real fact which happened at Bethany has served as basis to the rumours which were spread about it. It must be acknowledged, however, that the way John narrates the incident differs widely from those descriptions of miracles, the offspring of the popular imagination, which fill the synoptics. Let us add that John is the only evangelist who has a precise knowledge of the relations of Jesus with the family of Bethany, and that it is impossible to believe that a mere creation of the popular mind could exist in a collection of remembrances so entirely personal. “If one was raised from the dead, perhaps the living would repent,” was no doubt the remark made by the pious sisters. “No,” was the response of Jesus; “even though one rose from the dead, they would not be persuaded;” recalling next a story which was familiar to him—that of the pious beggar, covered with sores, who died and was carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom. “Even should Lazarus return,” he might have added, “they would not be persuaded.” Later on this subject was treated with singular levity. The hypothesis became a fact. People spoke of the resurrected Lazarus, and of the unpardonable obstinacy which could resist such testimony. The “sores” of Lazarus and the “leprosy” of Simon the leper were confounded, and it was admitted in one part of the tradition that Mary and Martha had a brother named Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. When we know that such inaccuracies, such cock-and-bull stories, form the gossip of an Eastern city, we cannot regard it as impossible that a rumour of that kind had spread to Jerusalem of the life of Jesus, and the consequences of which were fatal to him. Certain notable indications, in fact, lead us to the belief that some of the reports received from Bethany had the effect of hastening the death of Jesus. At times we are led to suppose that the family of Bethany were guilty of some indiscretions or plunged into an excess of zeal. It was probably the ardent desire of closing the mouth of those who vigorously denied the divine mission of their friend which carried these passionate persons beyond all reasonable limits. It must be

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remembered that in this impure and inanimate city of Jerusalem Jesus was not quite himself His conscience, through a fault of the people and not his own, had lost something of his primordial sincerity. Desperate and pressed to extremes, he no longer was master of himself. His mission had been imposed on him, and he pursued it fearlessly. Death would in a few days restore him his divine liberty, and wrench him away from the fatal necessities of a position which each day was becoming more exacting and more difficult to sustain. The contrast between his always increasing exaltation and the indifference of the Jews became more and more marked. The power of the State, at the same time, became more bitter against him. From the beginning of February to the commencement of March a council had been assembled by the chief priests, and in that council the question had been pointedly put, “Can Jesus and Judaism exist together?” To raise the question was to reserve it; and, without being a prophet, as thought by the evangelist, the high priest could easily pronounce his cruel axiom, “It is expedient that one man should die for the people.”

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“The high priest of that same year,” to use an expression of the fourth Gospel, which shows clearly the state of abasement to which the sovereign pontificate was reduced, was Joseph Kaïapha, appointed by Valerius Gratus, and entirely devoted to the Romans. From the time that Jerusalem had been under procurators, the office of high priest had been a temporary one; removals had taken place nearly every year. Kaïapha, however, held it longer than any one else. He had assumed his office in the year 25, and he did not lose it till the year 36. We know nothing of his character; but many circumstances lead to the belief that his power was only nominal. Another personage is always seen in conjunction with him, who appears to have exercised at the decisive moment we have now reached, a preponderating power. This personage was Hanan or Annas, son of Seth, and father-in-law of Kaïpha, who was formerly the high priest, and had in reality preserved amidst the numerous changes of the pontificate all the authority of the office. Hanan had received the high priesthood from the legate Quirinius, in the year 7 of our era. He lost his function in the year 14, on the accession of Tiberius; but he continued to be much respected. He was still called “high priest,” although he was out of office, and was consulted upon all important matters. During fifty years the pontificate continued in his family almost uninterruptedly; five of his sons successively sustained this dignity, without counting Kaïapha, who was his son-in-law. His was called the “priestly family,” as if the priesthood had become hereditary in it. The chief offices of the temple almost all devolved upon them. Another family, that of Boëthus, alternated, it is true, with that of Hanan’s in the pontificate. But the Boethusim, whose fortunes were of not very honourable origin, were much less esteemed by the pious middle class. Hanan was then in reality the chief of the sacerdotal party. Kaïapha did nothing without him; it was the custom to associate their names, and Hanan’s was always put first. It will be understood, in fact, that under this régime of an annual pontificate, changed according to the caprice of the procurators, an old high priest, who had preserved the secret of the traditions, who

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had seen many younger than himself succeed each other, and who had retained sufficient influence to get the office delegated to persons who were subordinate to him in family rank, must have been a very important personage. Like all the aristocracy of the temple, he was a Sadducee, “a sect,” says Josephus, “particularly severe in its judgments.” All his sons were moreover violent persecutors. One of them, named like his father, Hanan, caused James, the brother of the Lord, to be stoned, under circumstances not unlike those connected with the death of Jesus. The temper of the family was haughty, bold, and cruel; it had that particular kind of proud and sullen wickedness which characterises Jewish politicians. Thus, upon this Hanan and his family must rest the responsibility of all the acts which followed. It was Hanan (or if you like the party he represented) who killed Jesus. Hanan was the principal actor in the terrible drama, and far more than Kaïapha, far more than Pilate, ought to bear the weight of the maledictions of mankind.

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It is in the mouth of Kaïapha that the evangelist puts the decisive words which led to the sentence of death being passed on Jesus. It was supposed that the high priest possessed a certain gift of prophecy; his words thus became an oracle full of profound meaning to the Christian community. But such a sentence, whoever he might be that pronounced it, expressed the feeling of the whole sacerdotal party. This party was much opposed to popular seditions. It sought to put down religious enthusiasts, rightly foreseeing that by their excited preachings they would lead to the total ruin of the nation. Although the excitement created by Jesus had nothing temporal about it, the priests saw, as an ultimate consequence of this agitation, an aggravation of the Roman yoke and the overturning of the temple, the source of their riches and honours. Certainly the causes which, thirty-seven years after, were to effect the ruin of Jerusalem, did not proceed from infant Christianity. We cannot, say, however, that the motive alleged in this circumstance by the priests was so improbable that we must necessarily regard it as insincere. In a general sense, Jesus, if he had succeeded, would have really effected the ruin of the Jewish nation. According to the principles universally admitted by all ancient polity, Hanan and Kaïapha were right in saying, “Better the death of one man than the ruin of a people!” In our opinion this reasoning is detestable. But his reasoning has been that of conservative parties from the commencement of all human society. The “party of order” (I use this expression in its mean and narrow sense) has ever been the same. Deeming the highest duty of government to be the prevention of popular disturbances, it believes it performs an act of patriotism in preventing, by judicial murder, the tumultuous effusion of blood. Little thoughtful of the future, it does not dream that by declaring war against all innovations, it incurs the risk of crushing ideas destined one day to triumph. The death of Jesus was one of the thousand illustrations of this policy. The movement he directed was entirely spiritual, but it was still a movement; hence the men of order, persuaded that it was essential for humanity not to be disturbed, felt themselves bound to prevent the new movement from extending itself. Never was seen a more striking example of how much such conduct defeats its own object. Left alone, Jesus would have exhausted himself in a desperate struggle with the impossible. The unintelligent hate of his enemies determined the success of his work, and sealed his divinity.

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The death of Jesus was thus resolved upon in the month of February or March. But he escaped yet for a short time. He withdrew to a town called Ephraim or Ephron, in the direction of Bethel, a short day’s journey from Jerusalem near the border of the desert. He spent a few days there with his disciples, allowing the storm to pass over. But the order to arrest him as soon as he appeared at Jerusalem was given. The solemnity of the Passover was drawing nigh, and it was thought that Jesus, according to his custom, would come to celebrate it at Jerusalem.

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CHAPTER XXIII. LAST WEEK OF JESUS.

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JESUS set out in fact, in the train of his disciples, to see again, and for the last time, the unbelieving city. The hopes of his followers were more and more exalted. All believed that in his going up to Jerusalem, the kingdom of God was about to be manifested there. The impiety of men was at its height, and this was regarded as a great sign that the consummation was near. The belief in this was such that they already disputed for precedence in the kingdom. This was, it is said, the moment chosen by Salome to demand on behalf of her sons the two seats on the right and left of the Son of man. The master, for his part, was beset by grave thoughts. Sometimes he allowed a gloomy resentment against his enemies to appear; he related the parable of a nobleman, who went to take possession of a kingdom in a far country; but hardly had he set out when his fellow-citizens wished to rid themselves of him. The king returned, and commanded that those who had conspired against him should be brought before him, and he had them all put to death. At other times he peremptorily destroyed the illusions of the disciples. As they walked along the stony roads to the north of Jerusalem, Jesus pensively preceded the group of his companions. All regarded him in silence, experiencing a sentiment of fear, and not daring to interrogate him. He had already spoken to them on various occasions of his future sufferings, and they had listened reluctantly. Jesus at length spoke out, and, no longer concealing from them his presentiments, discoursed on his approaching end. There was great sadness in the whole band. The disciples were expecting soon to see the sign appear in the clouds. The inaugural cry of the kingdom of God, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” resounded already in joyous accents through the company of Jesus. The sanguinary prospect troubled them. At each step of the fatal road, the kingdom of God became nearer or more remote in the mirage of their dreams. For himself, he was confirmed in the idea that he was about to die, but that his death would save the world. The misunderstanding between him and his disciples became more intense at each moment. The custom was to go Jerusalem several days before the Passover, in order to prepare for the feast. Jesus was the last to arrive, and at one time his enemies believed they were frustrated in the hope that they had formed of seizing him. The sixth day before the feast (Saturday, 8th of Nisan, the 28th of March) he at length reached Bethany. He entered, according to his custom, the house of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, or of Simon the leper, thence they gave him a grand reception. There was a dinner at Simon the leper’s, at which many persons assembled, attracted by the desire of seeing him, and also, it is said, of seeing Lazarus. Simon the leper, who was seated at the table, passed already, perhaps, in the eyes of many, as the person who had been resurrected, and attracted much attention. Martha, as was her wont, served. It seems that they sought, by an increased show of respect, to overcome the coolness of the public, and to assert strongly the high dignity of the guest whom they received. Mary, in order to give to the feast a greater appearance of festivity,

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entered during the dinner, carrying a vase of perfume, which she poured upon the feet of Jesus. She afterwards broke the vase, following an ancient custom of breaking the vessel that had been used in the entertainment of a stranger of distinction. Finally, pushing the evidences of her cult to a point hitherto unheard of, she prostrated herself, and wiped with her long hair the feet of the master. The house was filled with the odour of the perfume, to the great delight of every one except the avaricious Judas of Kerioth. If we consider the economical habits of the community, this was certainly prodigality. The greedy treasurer reckoned up immediately how much the perfume might have been sold for, and what it would have realised for the poor-box. This not very affectionate feeling, which seemed to place something above him, dissatisfied Jesus. He loved honours, for honours furthered his aim and established his title of Son of David. So, when they spoke to him of the poor, he replied somewhat sharply, “Ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.” And, rising to the occasion, he promised immortality to the woman who in this critical moment gave him a token of love. The next day (Sunday, 9th of Nizan) Jesus descended from Bethany to Jerusalem. When, at a bend of the road, upon the summit of the Mount of Olives, he saw the city spread out before him, it is said he wept over it, and addressed to it a last appeal. At the base of the mountain, a few steps from the gate, on entering the adjoining portion of the eastern wall of the city, which was called Bethphage, on account, no doubt, of the fig-trees with which it was planted, Jesus had once more a moment of human satisfaction. His arrival was noised abroad. The Galileans who had came to the feast were highly elated, and prepared a little triumph for him. An ass was brought to him, followed, according to custom, by its colt. The Galileans spread their finest garments upon the back of this humble animal as saddle-cloths, and seated him thereon. Others, however, spread their garments upon the road, and strewed it with green branches. The multitude which preceded and followed him, carrying palms, cried, “Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!” Some persons even gave him the title of king of Israel. “Master, rebuke thy disciples,” said the Pharisees to him. “If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out,” replied Jesus, and he entered into the city. The Jerusalemites, who hardly knew him, asked who he was. “It is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth, in Galilee,” was the reply. Jerusalem was a city of about 50,000 souls. A trifling event, like the entrance of a stranger, however little celebrated, or the arrival of a band of provincials, or a movement of people to the avenues of the city, could not fail, under ordinary circumstances, to be quickly noised about. But at the time of the feast the confusion was extreme. Jerusalem on these occasions was taken possession of by strangers. Again, it was amongst the latter that the excitement appears to have been most lively. Some Greek-speaking proselytes, who had come to the feast, were piqued with curiosity, and wished to see Jesus. They addressed themselves to his disciples; but we do not know much of the result of the interview. Jesus, according to his custom, went to pass the night at his beloved village of Bethany. The three following days (Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday) he descended regularly to Jerusalem; after the

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setting of the sun he reascended either to Bethany or to the farms on the western side of the Mount of Olives, where he had many friends.

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A deep melancholy appears during these last days to have filled his soul, which was generally so gay and so serene. All the narratives agree in attributing to him before his arrest that he had a short experience of doubt and trouble; a kind of anticipated agony. According to some, he cried out suddenly, “Now is my soul troubled. O Father, save me from this hour.” It was believed that a voice from heaven was heard at this moment: others said that an angel came to console him. According to one widely-spread version this occurred to him in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus, it was said, went about a stone’s throw from his sleeping disciples, taking with him only Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, then fell on his face and prayed. His soul was sad almost to death; a terrible anguish pressed upon him; but resignation to the divine will sustained him. This scene, owing to the instinctive art which regulated the compilation of the synoptics, and often led them in the arrangement of the narrative to study adaptability and effect, has been given as occurring on the last night of the life of Jesus, and at the precise moment of his arrest. If such a version be the true one, we should scarcely understand why John, who had been the intimate witness of so touching an episode, should not mention it to his disciples, and that the compiler of the fourth Gospel should not allude to it in the very circumstantial narrative which he has furnished of the evening of the Thursday. That which is certain is that, during his last days, the enormous weight of the mission he had undertaken pressed cruelly upon Jesus. Human nature asserted itself for a time. Perhaps he began to hesitate about his work. Terror and doubt seized upon him, and threw him into a state of exhaustion worse than death. The man who sacrifices his repose, and the legitimate rewards of life, to a great idea, always experiences a moment of sad revulsion when the image of death presents itself to him for the first time, and seeks to persuade him that everything is vanity. Perhaps some of those touching reminiscences which the strongest souls retain, and which at times pierce like a sword, seized upon him at this moment. Did he recall the clear fountains of Galilee, where he might have refreshed himself; the vine and the fig-tree under which he sat down, and the young maidens who, perhaps, might have consented to love him? Did he curse the hard destiny which had denied him the joys conceded to all others? Did he regret his too lofty nature, and (a victim of his greatness) did he grieve that he had not remained a simple artizan of Nazareth? We do not know, for all these internal troubles were evidently to his disciples a sealed letter. They understood nothing of them, supplying by simple conjectures that which, in the great soul of their Master, was obscure to them. It is certain, at least, that his divine nature soon regained its supremacy. He might still have avoided death; but he would not. Love for his work prevailed. He elected to drink the cup even to the dregs. Henceforth in fact we find Jesus entirely himself, wholly unclouded. The subtleties of the polemic, the credulity of the thaumaturgist and of the exorcist, are forgotten. There remains only the incomparable hero of the Passion, the founder of the rights of free conscience, and the perfect model which all suffering souls will contemplate in order to fortify and console themselves.

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The triumph of Bethphage, that audacious act of the provincials in celebrating at the very gates of Jerusalem the advent of their Messiah-King, completed the exasperation of the Pharisees and the aristocracy of the temple. A new council was held on the Wednesday (12th of Nisan) at the house of Joseph Kaïapha. The immediate arrest of Jesus was resolved upon. A great idea of order and of conservative policy presided over all their plans. The question was how to avoid a scene. As the feast of the Passover, which commenced that year on the Friday evening, was a time of bustle and excitement, it was resolved to anticipate it. Jesus was popular; they feared an outbreak. Although it was customary to relieve the solemnities in which the whole nation joined by the execution of individual rebels to the priestly authorities—a species of religious murder designed to inculcate on the people a religious terror—it was, however, arranged that such executions should not fall upon the holy days. The arrest was therefore fixed for the next day, Thursday. It was resolved, further, not to seize him in the temple, where he came every day, but to observe his habits, in order to capture him in some retired place. The agents of the priests sounded his disciples, hoping to obtain some information by playing upon their weakness or their simplicity. They found what they sought in Judas of Kerioth. This wretched creature, from motives impossible to explain, betrayed his Master, gave all the particulars necessary, and even undertook himself (although such an excess of baseness is hardly credible) to conduct the force which was to make the arrest. The recollection of horror which the folly or the wickedness of this man has left in the Christian tradition must have been the cause of some exaggeration on this point. Judas up to this time had been a disciple like the others; he had even the title of apostle; he had driven out demons. Legend, which always employs highly coloured language, will not admit in the supper-room more than eleven saints and one reprobate. Reality does not proceed by such absolute categories. Avarice, which the synoptics give as the motive of the crime in question, does not suffice to explain it. It would be singular if a man who kept the purse, and who knew what he would lose by the death of his chief, were to exchange the profits of his occupation for a very small sum of money. Had the self-love of Judas been wounded by the rebuff he received at the dinner at Bethany? Even that would not suffice to explain his conduct. The fourth evangelist would like to make him out a thief, an unbeliever from the beginning, for which, however, there is no justification. We would prefer to attribute it to some feeling of jealousy, or to some intestine dissension. The peculiar hatred which is manifested towards Judas in the gospel attributed to John confirms this hypothesis. Less pure in heart than the others, Judas had imbibed, without knowing it, the narrow-mindedness of his office. By a caprice very common in active life he had come to regard the interests of the purse as superior even to those of the work for which it was destined. The administrator had overcome the apostle. The murmurings which escaped him at Bethany seem to suggest that sometimes he considered that the Master cost his spiritual family too much. No doubt this mean economy had been the occasion of many other collisions in the little society. Without denying that Judas of Kerioth may have contributed to the arrest of his Master, we yet believe that the curses with which he is loaded are somewhat unjust. There was, perhaps, in what

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he did more awkwardness than perversity. The moral conscience of the man of the people is quick and correct, but unstable and inconsequent. It cannot resist the impulse of the moment. The secret societies of the republican party were characterised by much earnestness and sincerity, and yet their denouncers were very numerous. A trifling spite sufficed to convert a partisan into a traitor. But, if the foolish desire for a few pieces of silver turned the head of poor Judas, he does not seem to have lost the moral sentiment completely, since, on seeing the consequences of his fault, he repented, and, it is said, killed himself.

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Each minute, at this crisis, was solemn, and counted more than whole ages in the history of humanity. We have reached Thursday, 13th of Nisan (2nd April). The evening of the next day was the beginning of the festival of the Passover, begun by the feast at which the Paschal lamb was eaten. The feast continued for seven days, during which unleavened bread was eaten. The first and the last of these seven days were of a peculiarly solemn character. The disciples were already occupied with preparations for the feast. As for Jesus, we are led to believe that he was cognisant of the treachery of Judas, and that he was suspicious of the fate that awaited him. In the evening he took with his disciples his last repast. It was not the ritual feast of the Passover, as was afterwards supposed, owing to an error of a day in reckoning; but for the primitive church this supper of the Thursday was the true Passover, the seal of the new covenant. Each disciple connected with it his most cherished recollections, and a multitude of touching traits of the Master which each one preserved were associated with this repast, which became the cornerstone of Christian piety, and the starting-point of the most important institutions. Doubtless the tender love which filled the heart of Jesus for the little church which surrounded him overflowed at this moment. His serene and strong soul became gay under the weight of the gloomy preoccupations that beset him. He had a word for each of his friends; John and Peter especially were the objects of tender marks of attachment. John reclined on the divan, by the side of Jesus, with his head resting upon the breast of the Master. Towards the end of the repast, the secret which weighed upon the heart of Jesus nearly escaped him: he said, “Verily I say unto you that one of you shall betray me.” This was for these simple men a moment of anguish; they looked at each other, and each questioned himself. Judas was present; perhaps Jesus, who had had for some time reasons to distrust him, sought by this remark to draw from his looks or from his embarrassed manner the avowal of his fault. But the unfaithful disciple did not lose countenance; he even dared, it is said, to ask with the others, “Master, is it I ?”

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Meanwhile, the good and upright soul of Peter was in torture. He made a sign to John to endeavour to ascertain of whom the Master was speaking. John, who could converse with Jesus without being heard, asked him the meaning of this enigma. Jesus, having only suspicions, did not wish to give any name: he only told John to observe him to whom he was going to offer the unleavened bread. At the same time he soaked a mouthful and offered it to Judas. John and Peter alone were cognisant of the fact. Jesus addressed to Judas some words containing a bitter reproach,

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which were not understood by those present. They thought that Jesus was simply giving him orders for the morrow’s feast, and he left the room.

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At the time this repast struck no one; and apart from the apprehensions which the Master confided to his disciples, who only half understood them, nothing extraordinary took place. But after the death of Jesus they attached to this evening a singularly solemn meaning, and the imagination of believers spread over it a colouring of sweet mysticism. The last hours of a dear friend are those we best remember. By an inevitable illusion, we attribute to the conversations we have then had with him a sense that death only gives to them; we concentrate into a few hours the memories of many years. The majority of the disciples did not after the supper of which we have just spoken see their Master again. It was the farewell banquet. In this repast, as well as in many others, Jesus practised his mysterious rite of the breaking of bread. As it was believed from the earliest years of the Church that the repast in question took place on the day of the Passover, and was the Paschal feast, the idea naturally arose that the Eucharistic institution was established at this supreme moment. Starting from the hypothesis that Jesus knew in advance the precise moment of his death, the disciples were led to suppose that he reserved for his last hours a number of important acts. As, moreover, one of the fundamental ideas of the first Christians was that the death of Jesus had been a sacrifice, replacing all those of the ancient Law, the “Last Supper,” which was supposed to have taken place, once for all, on the eve of the Passion, became the chief sacrifice, the act which constituted the new alliance, the sign of the blood shed for the salvation of all. The bread and wine, placed in juxtaposition with death itself, were thus the image of the new testament that Jesus had sealed with his sufferings, the commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ until his advent. Very early this mystery was incorporated into a small sacramental narrative, which we possess under four forms, very similar to one another. The fourth Evangelist, preoccupied with the Eucharistic ideas, and who narrates the Last Supper with so much prolixity, connecting it with so many circumstances and discourses, does not mention this narrative. This is a proof that he did not regard the Eucharist as a peculiarity of the Lord’s Supper. To the fourth Evangelist the rite of the Last Supper was the washing of feet. It is probable that in certain primitive Christian families this latter rite obtained an importance which it has since lost. No doubt Jesus, on some occasions, had practised it to give his disciples an example of brotherly humility. It was connected with the eve of his death, in consequence of the tendency to group around the Last Supper all the great moral and ritual recommendations of Jesus. A high sentiment of love, of concord, of charity, and of mutual deference, animated, moreover, the remembrances which were believed to surround the last hours of Jesus. It is always the unity of his Church, constituted by him or by his Spirit, which is the essence of the symbols and of the

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discourses which Christian tradition referred to this sacred moment. “A new commandment I give unto you,” said he, “ that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. These things I command you, that ye love one another.” At this last sacred moment several rivalries and struggles for precedence again took place. Jesus remarked that if he, the Master, had been in the midst of his disciples as their servant, how much more ought they to submit themselves to one another. According to some, in drinking the wine, he said, “I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.” According to others, he promised them soon a celestial feast, at which they would be seated on thrones at his side. It seems that, towards the close of the evening, the presentiments of Jesus took hold of the disciples. All felt that a very serious danger threatened the Master, and that they were verging on a crisis. At one time Jesus thought of precautions, and spoke of swords. There were two in the company. “It is enough,” said he. He did not, however, follow out this idea; he saw clearly that timid provincials could not stand up before the armed force of the great powers of Jerusalem. Cephas, full of zeal and self-confidence, swore that he would go with him to prison and to death. Jesus, with his usual astuteness, expressed doubts concerning him. According to a tradition, which probably originated with Peter himself, Jesus gave him till cock-crowing. Like Peter, they all swore that they would not yield.

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CHAPTER XXIV. ARREST AND TRIAL OF JESUS. IT was quite dark when they left the room. Jesus, as was his wont, passed through the valley of Kedron; and, accompanied by his disciples, went to the garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives. He sat down there. Overawing his friends by his great superiority, he watched and prayed. They were sleeping near him, when suddenly an armed troop appeared bearing lighted torches. It was the guards of the temple, armed with staves, a kind of brigade of police under the control of the priests; they were supported by a detachment of Roman soldiers with their swords; the order for the arrest emanated from the high priest and the Sanhedrim. Judas, knowing the habits of Jesus, had indicated this place as that where he might most easily be surprised. According to the unanimous tradition of the earliest times, Judas accompanied the detachment himself; according to some, he carried his hateful conduct even to the length of betraying him with a kiss. Be that as it may, certain it is that there was some show of resistance on the part of the disciples. One of them (Peter, according to eye-witnesses) drew his sword, and wounded one of the servants of the high priest, named Malchus, on the ear. Jesus put a stop to this resistance, and surrendered himself to the soldiers. Weak and incapable of acting with effect, especially against authorities with so much prestige, the disciples took to flight and became dispersed. Peter and John alone did not lose sight of their Master. Another unknown young man (probably Mark), wrapped in a light garment, followed him. The authorities sought to arrest him, but the young man fled, leaving his tunic in the hands of the guards. 227

The course which the priests had resolved to pursue in regard to Jesus was quite in conformity with the established law. The procedure against the “corrupter” (mésith), who sought to attaint the purity of religion, is explained in the Talmud, with details the naïve impudence of which provokes a smile. A judicial ambush is therein erected into an essential part of the examination of criminals. When a man was accused of being a “corrupter,” two witnesses were suborned who were concealed behind a partition. It was arranged to bring the accused into a contiguous room, where he could be heard by these two witnesses without his perceiving them. Two candles were lighted near him, in order that it might be satisfactorily proved that the witnesses “saw him.” He was then made to repeat his blasphemy; next, urged to retract it. If he persisted, the witnesses who had heard him conducted him to the tribunal, and he was stoned to death. The Talmud adds that this was the manner in which they treated Jesus; that he was condemned on the faith of two witnesses who had been suborned, and that the crime of “corruption” is, moreover, the only one for which the witnesses are thus prepared. In fact, the disciples of Jesus inform us that the crime with which their Master was charged was that of “corruption;” and, apart from some minutiæ, the offspring of the rabbinical imagination,

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the narrative of the Gospels corresponds exactly with the procedure described by the Talmud. The plan of the enemies of Jesus was to convict him, by the testimony of witnesses and by his own avowals, of blasphemy and of outrage against the Mosaic religion, to condemn him to death according to law, and then to get the condemnation sanctioned by Pilate. The priestly authority, as we have already seen, was in reality entirely in the hands of Hanan. The order for the arrest in all probability emanated from him. It was to the residence of this powerful personage that Jesus was first taken. Hanan questioned him in regard to his doctrine and his disciples. Jesus, with justifiable pride, declined to enter into long explanations. He referred Hanan to his teachings, which had been public; he maintained that he had never held any secret doctrine; and requested the ex high priest to interrogate those who had listened to him. This was a perfectly natural response; but the idolatrous respect which surrounded the old priest made it appear audacious; and one of those present replied to it, it is said, by a blow. Peter and John had followed their Master to the residence of Hanan. John, who was known in the house, was admitted without difficulty; but Peter was stopped at the entrance, and John was obliged to beg the porter to let him pass. The night was cold. Peter remained in the antechamber, and approached a brazier, around which the servants were warming themselves. He was soon recognised as a disciple of the accused. The unfortunate man, betrayed by his Galilean accent, and pursued by questions from the servants, one of whom was a kinsman of Malchus and had seen him at Gethsemane, denied thrice that he had ever had the slightest connection with Jesus. He imagined that Jesus could not hear him, and never dreamt that this dissimulated cowardice was exceedingly dishonourable. But his better nature soon revealed to him the fault he had committed. A fortuitous circumstance, the crowing of the cock, recalled to him a remark that Jesus had made. Touched to the heart, he went out and wept bitterly.

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Hanan, although the real author of the judicial murder about to be committed, had not power to pronounce sentence upon Jesus, so he sent him to his son-in-law, Kaïapha, who bore the official title. This man, the blind instrument of his father-in-law, naturally ratified everything required of him by Hanan. The Sanhedrim was assembled at his house. The inquiry commenced; and several witnesses, well instructed beforehand, according to the inquisitorial process described in the Talmud, appeared before the tribunal. The fatal sentence which Jesus had really uttered, “I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days,” was cited by two witnesses. To blaspheme the temple of God was, according to the Jewish law, equivalent to blaspheming God Himself. Jesus remained silent, and refused to explain the incriminating speech. If we may believe one version, the high priest then adjured him to say if he were the Messiah; Jesus confessed it, and proclaimed before the assembly the near approach of his heavenly reign. The courage of Jesus, who had resolved to die, did not require this. It is more probable that here, as when before Hanan, he remained silent. This was in general, during his last moments, his rule of conduct. The sentence was determined on; and they only sought for pretexts. Jesus perceived this, and did not undertake a useless defence. From the orthodox Judaism point of view, he was truly a blasphemer, a destroyer of the established

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worship, and these crimes were punishable by the law with death. With one voice, the assembly declared him guilty of a capital crime. The members of the council, who had a secret penchant for him, were absent or did not vote. The usual frivolity of old-established aristocracies did not permit the judges to reflect long upon the consequences of the sentence they had rendered. Human life was at that time very lightly sacrificed; the members of the Sanhedrim could not, of course, dream that their sons would have to render account to an angry posterity for the sentence pronounced with such flippant disdain. The Sanhedrim had not the right to execute a sentence of death. But in the confusion of powers which then prevailed in Judæa, Jesus was, from that moment, none the less condemned. He remained the rest of the night exposed to the wicked treatment of an infamous pack of servants, who spared him no affront. In the morning the chief priests and the elders again assembled. The question was, how to get Pilate to ratify the condemnation pronounced by the Sanhedrim, whose powers, since the occupation of the Romans, were no longer sufficient. The procurator was not invested, like the imperial legate, with the power of life and death. But Jesus was not a Roman citizen: it only required the authorisation of the governor in order that the sentence pronounced against him should take its course. As always happens when a political people subjects a nation amongst which the civil and the religious laws are confounded, the Romans had been led to give to the Jewish law a sort of official support. The Roman law was not applicable to Jews. The latter remained under the canonical law which we find recorded in the Talmud, just as the Arabs in Algeria are still governed by the code of Islamism. Although neutral in religion, the Romans thus very often sanctioned penalties inflicted for religious faults. The situation was nearly that of the sacred cities of India under the English dominion, or rather that which would be the state of Damascus if to-morrow Syria were conquered by a European nation. Josephus pretends, though the assertion may be doubted, that if a Roman ventured beyond the pillars which bore inscriptions forbidding Pagans to advance, the Romans themselves would have delivered him to the Jews to be put to death.

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The agents of the priests therefore bound Jesus and led him to the judgment-hall, which was the former palace of Herod, adjoining the Tower of Antonia. It was the morning of the day on which the Paschal lamb was to be eaten (Friday the 14th of Nisan, our 3rd of April). The Jews would have been defiled by entering the judgment-hall, and would not have been able to share in the sacred feast, and therefore remained without. Pilate, apprised of their presence, ascended the bima or tribunal, situated in the open air, at the place named Gabbatha, or in Greek, Lithostrotos, on account of the pavement which covered the ground. Hardly had he been informed of the accusation before he manifested his annoyance at being mixed up in the affair. He then shut himself up in the judgment-hall with Jesus. There a conversation took place, the precise details of which are lost, no witness having been able to repeat it to the disciples, but the tenor of which appears to have been happily conjectured by the fourth Evangelist.

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His narrative, at least, is in perfect accord with what history teaches us of the respective positions of the two interlocutors.

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The procurator, Pontius, surnamed Pilate, doubtless on account of the pilum or javelin of honour with which he or one of his ancestors was decorated, had hitherto had no relation with the new sect. Indifferent to the internal quarrels of the Jews, he only saw in all these sectarian movements the effects of a diseased imagination and disordered brain. In general, he did not like the Jews. The Jews, on their part, detested him still more. They considered him harsh, scornful, and passionate, and accused him of improbable crimes. Jerusalem, the centre of a great national fermentation, was a very seditious city, and an insupportable abode for a foreigner. The enthusiasts pretended that it was a fixed design of the new procurator to abolish the Jewish law. Their narrow fanaticism, their religious hatreds, shocked that broad sentiment of justice and of civil government which the humblest Roman carried everywhere with him. All the acts of Pilate which are known to us attest him to have been a good administrator. In the earlier period of the exercise of his charge, he had had difficulties with those subject to him which he had solved in a very brutal manner; but it seems that on the whole he was right. The Jews must have appeared to him a very backward people; he doubtless judged them as a liberal prefect formerly judged the Bas-Bretons, who rebelled for such a simple matter as a new road, or the establishment of a school. In his best projects for the good of the country, notably in those relating to public works, he had encountered an impassable obstacle in the Law. The Law narrowed life to such a point that it was opposed to all change and to all amelioration. The Roman structures, even the most useful ones, were, on the part of zealous Jews, objects of great antipathy. Two votive escutcheons with inscriptions, which Pilate had set up at his residence, which was near the sacred precincts, provoked a still more violent storm. Pilate at first cared little for these susceptibilities; and he thus was soon seen engaged in sanguinary repressions, which afterwards culminated in his removal. The experience of so many conflicts had rendered him very prudent in his relations with an intractable people, who avenged themselves upon their governors by compelling the latter to use towards them rigorous severities. The procurator, with extreme displeasure, saw himself led to play a cruel part in this new affair, by a law he hated. He knew that religious fanaticism, when it has obtained some power from civil governments, is afterwards the first to throw the responsibility upon the latter, almost accusing them of being the author of their own excesses. What could be more unjust? for the true culprit is, in such cases, the instigator! Pilate, then, would have liked to save Jesus. Perhaps the calm and dignified attitude of the accused made an impression upon him. According to a tradition, Jesus found a supporter in the procurator’s own wife. She may have seen the gentle Galilean from some window of the palace, which overlooked the courts of the temple. Perhaps she had seen him again in her dreams; and the blood of this beautiful young man, which was about to be spilt, had given her nightmare. Certain it is that Jesus found Pilate prepossessed in his favour. The governor questioned him kindly, with the desire of finding out by what means he could send him away pardoned.

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The title of “King of the Jews,” which Jesus had never taken upon himself, but which his enemies represented as the sum and substance of his acts and pretensions, was naturally that by which they might be able to excite the suspicions of the Roman authority. He was accused of sedition, and of being guilty of treason against the government. Nothing could be more unjust; for Jesus had always recognised the Roman empire as the established power. But conservative religious bodies are not accustomed to shrink from calumny. In spite of all his explanations they drew certain conclusions from his teaching; they made him out to be a disciple of Judas the Gaulonite; they pretended that he forbade the payment of tribute to Cæsar. Pilate asked him if he was really the King of the Jews. Jesus did not dissimulate his belief. But the great ambiguity of speech which had been the source of his strength, and which, after his death, was to establish his kingship, did not serve him on this occasion. An idealist, that is to say, not distinguishing the spirit from the substance, Jesus, whose words, to use the image of the Apocalypse, were as a two-edged sword, never completely satisfied the powers of earth. If we may believe John, he did avow his royalty, but coupled it with this profound sentence: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Then he explained the nature of his kingdom, which consisted entirely in the possession and proclamation of truth. Pilate knew nothing of this grand idealism. Jesus doubtless appeared to him as being an inoffensive dreamer. The total absence of religious and philosophical proselytism among the Romans of this epoch made them regard devotion to truth as a chimera. Such discussions annoyed them, and appeared to them devoid of meaning. Not perceiving the element of danger to the empire that lay hidden in these new speculations, they had no reason to employ violence against them. All their displeasure fell upon those who asked them to inflict punishment for vain subtleties. Twenty years after, Gallio still followed the same course towards the Jews. Until the fall of Jerusalem, the rule which the Romans adopted in administration was to remain completely indifferent to the quarrels those sectarians had among themselves. An expedient suggested itself to the mind of the governor by which he could reconcile his own feelings with the demands of the fanatical people, whose resentment he had already so often felt. It was the custom to deliver a prisoner to the people at the time of the Passover. Pilate, knowing that Jesus had only been arrested in consequence of the jealousy of the priests, tried to obtain for him the benefit of this custom. He appeared again upon the bima, and proposed to the multitude to release the “King of the Jews.” The proposition, made in these terms, though ironical, was characterised by a degree of liberality. The priests saw the danger of it. They acted promptly, and, in order to combat the proposition of Pilate, they suggested to the crowd the name of a prisoner who enjoyed great popularity in Jerusalem. By a singular coincidence he also was called Jesus, and bore the surname of Bar-Abba, or Bar-Rabban. He was a well-known personage, and had been arrested for being mixed up in a disturbance which had been accompanied by murder. A general clamour was raised, “Not this man; but Jesus Bar-Rabban;” and Pilate was obliged to release Jesus Bar-Rabban.

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His embarrassment increased. He feared that too much indulgence to a prisoner, to whom was given the title of “King of the Jews,” might compromise him. Fanaticism, moreover, constrains all powers to make terms with it. Pilate felt himself obliged to make some concession; but still hesitating to shed blood, in order to satisfy men whom he detested, wished to turn the thing into a jest. Affecting to laugh at the pompous title they had given to Jesus, he caused him to be scourged. Flagellation was the usual preliminary of crucifixion. Perhaps Pilate wished it to be believed that this sentence had already been pronounced, hoping that the preliminary would suffice. Then took place, according to all the narratives, a revolting scene. The soldiers put a scarlet robe on the back of Jesus, a crown of thorny branches upon his head, and a reed in his hand. Thus attired, he was led to the tribunal in front of the people. The soldiers defiled before him, striking him in turn, and knelt to him, saying, “Hail! King of the Jews,” Others, it is said, spit upon him, and bruised his head with the reed. It is difficult to understand that Roman dignity could lend itself to acts so shameful. True, Pilate, in the capacity of procurator, had scarcely any but auxiliary troops under his command. Roman citizens, as the legionaries were, would not have stooped to such indignities. Did Pilate think by this display to shield himself from responsibility? Did he hope to turn aside the blow which threatened Jesus by conceding something to the hatred of the Jews, and by substituting for the tragic denouement a grotesque termination, whence would seem to follow that the affair merited no other issue? If such were his idea, it did not succeed. The tumult increased, and became an actual riot. The cry “Crucify him! Crucify him!” resounded on all sides. The priests, assuming a tone of more and more urgency, declared the law to be in peril if the corrupter were not punished with death. Pilate saw clearly that in order to save Jesus he would have to put down a furious riot. He still tried, however, to gain time. He returned to the judgment-hall, and ascertained from what country Jesus came, seeking a pretext to free him from adjudicating. According to one tradition, he even sent Jesus to Antipas, who it is said was then at Jerusalem. Jesus encouraged but little these benevolent efforts; he maintained, as he had done at the house of Kaïapha, a grave and dignified silence which astonished Pilate. The cries from without became more and more menacing. The people had already begun to denounce the lack of zeal of the functionary who shielded an enemy of Cæsar. The greatest adversaries of the Roman rule were found to be transformed into loyal subjects of Tiberius, so as to have the right of accusing the too tolerant procurator of treason. “We have no king,” said they, “but Cæsar. If thou let this man go thou art not Cæsar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.” The feeble Pilate yielded; he foresaw the report that his enemies would send to Rome, in which they would accuse him of having favoured a rival of Tiberius. Already the Jews, in the matter of the votive escutcheons, had written to the emperor, and their action had been approved. He feared for his office. By a condescension, which was to hold up his name to the lash of history, he yielded, throwing, it is said, all the responsibility of what was about to happen upon the Jews. The latter, according to the Christians, fully accepted it by exclaiming, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

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Were these words really uttered? It is open to doubt. They nevertheless are the expression of a profound historical truth. Considering the attitude which the Romans had taken up in Judæa, Pilate could scarcely have acted otherwise than he did. How many sentences of death dictated by religious intolerance have forced the hand of the civil power! The king of Spain, who, in order to please a fanatical clergy, delivered hundreds of his subjects to the stake, was more blamable than Pilate, for he was the representative of a more absolute power than were the Romans at Jerusalem. When the civil power becomes persecuting or meddlesome at the solicitation of the priesthood, it demonstrates its weakness. But let the government that is without sin in this respect throw the first stone at Pilate. The “secular arm,” behind which clerical cruelty shelters itself, is not the culprit. No one is justified in saying that he has a horror of blood when he causes it to be shed by his servants.

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It was, then, neither Tiberius nor Pilate who condemned Jesus. It was the old Jewish party; it was the Mosaic Law. According to our modern ideas, there is no transmission of moral demerit from father to son; each one has to account to human or divine justice for that which he himself has done. Consequently, every Jew who suffers to-day for the murder of Jesus has a right to complain, for he might have been a Simon the Cyrenean, or at least not have been one of those who cried “Crucify him!” But nations, like individuals, have their responsibilities. Now, if ever a crime was the crime of a nation, it was the death of Jesus. This death was “legal” in the sense that it was primarily caused by a law which was the very soul of the nation. The Mosaic Law, it is true, in its modern yet accepted form, pronounced the penalty of death against all attempts to change the established worship. Now, there is no doubt that Jesus attacked this worship, and hoped to destroy it. The Jews expressed this to Pilate with truthful simplicity: “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die; because he has made himself the Son of God.” The law was detestable, but it was the law of ancient ferocity; and the hero who attempted to abrogate it had first of all to endure its penalty. Alas! it has taken more than eighteen hundred years for the blood that he shed to bear its fruits. For ages tortures and death have been inflicted in the name of Jesus on thinkers as noble as himself. Even to-day, in countries which call themselves Christian, penalties are pronounced for religious derelictions. Jesus is not responsible for these errors. He could not foresee that people with mistaken ideas would one day imagine him to be a frightful Moloch, greedy of burnt victims. Christianity has been intolerant, but intolerance is not essentially a Christian monopoly. It is Jewish, in the sense that it was Judaism which first raised the theory of the absolute in religion, and laid down the principle that every innovator, even if he brings miracles in support of his doctrine, ought without trial to be stoned. The Pagan world has as undoubtedly also had its religious violences. But if it had had this law, how would it have become Christian? The Pentateuch has thus been in the world the first code of religious terrorism. Judaism has given the example of an immutable dogma armed with the sword. If, instead of pursuing the Jews with a blind hatred, Christianity had abolished the order of things which killed its founder, how much more consistent would it not have been—how much better would it not have deserved of the human race!

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CHAPTER XXV. DEATH OF JESUS.

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ALTHOUGH the real motive for the death of Jesus was entirely religious, his enemies had succeeded, in the judgment-hall, in representing him as guilty of treason against the state; they could not have obtained from the sceptical Pilate a condemnation simply on the ground of heterodoxy. Following up this idea, the priests demanded, through the people, the crucifixion of Jesus. This mode of punishment was not of Jewish origin. If the condemnation of Jesus had been purely Mosaic, he would have been stoned. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment. reserved for slaves, and for cases in which it was wished to add to death the aggravation of ignominy. In applying it to Jesus, they treated him as they treated highway robbers, brigands, bandits, or those enemies of inferior rank to whom the Romans did not grant the honour of death by the sword. It was the chimerical “King of the Jews,” not the heterodox dogmatist, who was punished. Following out the same idea, the execution was left to the Romans. At this epoch we know that, amongst the Romans, the soldiers performed, at least in cases of political condemnations, the office of executioners. Jesus was therefore delivered to a cohort of auxiliary troops commanded by a centurion, and all the odious accessories connected with executions, introduced by the cruel customs of the new conquerors, were practised upon him. It was about noon. They re-clothed him with the garments which they had removed on arraigning him before the tribunal, and, as the cohort had already in reserve two thieves who were to be executed, the three convicts were placed together, and the procession set out for the place of execution. This was a locality called Golgotha, situated outside Jerusalem, but near the walls of the city. The name Golgotha signifies a skull; it seems to correspond to our word Chaumont, and probably designated a bare hill, having the form of a bald skulL Where this hill was situated is not exactly known. Certainly it was on the north or north-west of the city, on the high irregular plain which extends between the walls and the two valleys of Kedron and Hinnom—a rather unattractive region, and rendered still more repulsive by the objectionable circumstances that always characterise the neighbourhood of a great city. It is difficult to identify Golgotha with the spot that, since Constantine, has been venerated by all Christendom. This spot is too near the interior of the city, and we are led to believe that, in the time of Jesus, it was comprised within the circuit of the walls.

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Any one condemned to the cross was forced himself to carry the instrument of his execution. But Jesus, physically weaker than his two companions, was not able to carry his. The troop met a certain Simon of Cyrene, who was returning from the country, and the soldiers, with the offhand procedure of foreign garrisons, compelled him to carry the fatal tree. In so doing they perhaps exercised a recognised right to enforce labour, the Romans not being allowed to carry the infamous wood. It seems that Simon was afterwards of the Christian community. His two sons, Alexander

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and Rufus, were well known in it. He related perhaps more than one circumstance of which he had been witness. No disciple was at this moment near Jesus.

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The place of execution was at length reached. According to Jewish usage, the victims were offered a strong aromatic wine, an intoxicating drink, which, from a feeling of pity, was given to the condemned to stupefy him. It appears that the women of Jerusalem often brought this kind of stupefying wine to the unfortunates who were being led to execution; when there was none presented by the latter, it was purchased at the expense of the public treasury. Jesus, after having touched the rim of the cup with his lips, refused to drink. This sad consolation of common sufferers did not accord with his exalted nature. He preferred to quit life with perfect clearness of mind, and to await in full consciousness the death he had willed and brought upon himself. He was then divested of his garments, and fastened to the cross. The cross was composed of two beams, tied in the form of the letter T. It was so little raised that the feet of the condemned almost touched the earth. They commenced by securing it; they next fastened the sufferer to it by driving nails into his hands; the feet were often nailed, occasionally only bound with cords. A piece of wood was fastened to the shaft of the cross, near the centre, and passed between the legs of the condemned, who rested on it. Failing this, the hands would have been torn, and the body would have sunk down. At other times a small horizontal rest was fixed at the elevation of the feet, and supported them. Jesus experienced these horrors in all their atrocity. A burning thirst, one of the tortures of crucifixion, consumed him. He asked to drink. Near him there was a cup full of the ordinary drink of the Roman soldiers, a mixture of vinegar and water, called posca. The soldiers had to carry with them their posca on all their expeditions, amongst which executions were reckoned. A soldier dipped a sponge in this mixture, put it on the end of a reed, and raised it to the lips of Jesus, who sucked it. Two thieves were crucified, one on each side. The executioners, to whom were usually left the small effects of the victims, drew lots for his garments, and, sitting at the foot of the cross, guarded him. According to one tradition, Jesus uttered this sentence, which was in his heart, if not upon his lips: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” According to the Roman custom, a writing was affixed to the head of the cross, bearing in three languages — Hebrew, Greek, and Latin — the words: “THE KING OF THE JEWS.” There was in this inscription something painful and insulting to the nation. Those who passed by and read it were offended. The priests complained to Pilate that he ought to have made use of an inscription which implied simply that Jesus had called himself King of the Jews. But Pilate, already tired of the whole affair, refused to change what had been written.

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The disciples of Jesus had fled. John, nevertheless, declares himself to have been present, and to have remained standing at the foot of the cross during the whole time. It may be affirmed, with more certainty, that the devoted women of Galilee, who had followed Jesus to Jerusalem and continued to tend him, did not abandon him. Mary Cleophas, Mary Magdalen, Joanna, wife of Khouza, Salome, and others, stood off at a certain distance, never losing sight of him. If we must

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believe John, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was also at the foot of the cross, and Jesus, seeing his mother and his beloved disciple together, said to the one, “Behold my mother!” and to the other, “Behold thy son!” But we do not understand how the synoptics, who name the other women, should have omitted her whose presence was so striking a feature. Perhaps even the extreme elevation of the character of Jesus does not render such personal emotion probable, at the moment when, solely preoccupied by his work, he no longer existed except for humanity.

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Apart from this small group of women, whose presence consoled him, Jesus had before him only the spectacle of the baseness or stupidity of humanity. The passers-by insulted him. He heard around him foolish scoffs, and his greatest cries of pain turned into odious jests: “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.” “He saved others,” they said again; “himself he cannot save. If he be the king of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him! Ah, thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself.” Some, vaguely acquainted with his apocalyptic ideas, thought they heard him call Elias, and said, “Let us see whether Elias will come to save him.” It appears that the two crucified thieves at his side also insulted him. The sky was dark; and the earth, as in all the environs of Jerusalem, dry and gloomy. For a moment, according to certain narratives, his heart failed him; a cloud hid from him the face of his Father; he experienced an agony of despair a thousand times more acute than all his tortures. He saw only the ingratitude of men. Repenting perhaps in suffering for a vile race, he exclaimed: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” But his divine instinct still sustained him. In proportion as the life of the body eked out, his soul became clear, returning by degrees to its celestial origin. The object of his mission returned: he saw in his death the salvation of the world; he lost sight of the hideous spectacle spread at his feet, and, irrevocably united to his Father, he began upon the gibbet the divine life which was to enter into the heart of humanity for all eternity. The peculiar atrocity of crucifixion was that one could live three or four days in this horrible state upon the instrument of torture. The bleeding from the hands soon stopped, and was not fatal. The real cause of death was the unnatural position of the body, which brought on a frightful disturbance of the circulation, terrible pains in the head and heart, and, finally, rigidity of the limbs. Victims with strong constitutions died simply of hunger. The original idea of this cruel punishment was not directly to kill the culprit by positive injuries, but to expose the slave, nailed by the hand of which he had neglected to make good use, and to let him rot on the wood. The delicate organisation of Jesus preserved him from this slow agony. Everything tends to show that the instantaneous rupture of a vessel in the heart killed him, at the end of three hours. A few moments before giving up the ghost his voice was still strong. Suddenly he uttered a terrible cry, which some heard as, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit!” but which others, more intent on the accomplishment of prophecies, render, “It is finished!” His head fell upon his breast, and he expired.

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Rest now in thy glory, noble founder. Thy work is completed; thy divinity is established. Fear no more to see the edifice of thy efforts crumble through a flaw. Henceforth, stripped of all frailty, thou shalt aid, by the exaltation of thy divine peace, the infinite fruits of thy acts. At the cost of a few hours of suffering, which have not even tinged thy great soul, thou hast purchased the most complete immortality. During thousands of years, the world will extol thee. Ensign of our contradictions, thou wilt be the standard around which will be fought the fiercest battles. A thousand times more living, a thousand times more loved, since thy death than during the days of thy pilgrimage here below, thou wilt become so completely the corner-stone of humanity that to tear thy name from this world would be to shake it to its foundations. Between thee and God, men will no longer distinguish. Complete vanquisher of death, take possession of thy kingdom, whither shall follow thee, by the royal road thou hast traced, ages of adorers.

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CHAPTER XXVI. JESUS IN THE TOMB. IT was about three o'clock in the afternoon, according to our custom of reckoning, when Jesus expired. A Jewish law forbade a corpse suspended on the cross to be left beyond the evening of the day of the execution. It is not probable that in the executions performed by the Romans this rule was observed. But as the next day was the Sabbath, and a Sabbath of peculiar solemnity, the Jews expressed to the Roman authorities their desire that this holy day should not be profaned by such a spectacle. Their request was granted; orders were given to hasten the death of the three condemned ones, and to remove them from the cross. The soldiers executed this order by applying to the two thieves a second punishment much more speedy than that of the cross, the crurifragium, breaking of the legs, the usual punishment of slaves and of prisoners of war. As to Jesus, they found him dead, and did not think it necessary to break his legs. But one of them, to remove all doubt as to the real death of the third victim, and to complete it, if any breath remained in him, pierced his side with a spear. They thought they saw water and blood flow, which was regarded as a sign of the cessation of life.

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The fourth Evangelist, who here represents the Apostle John as having been an eye-witness, insists strongly on this detail. It is evident, in fact, that doubts arose as to the reality of the death of Jesus. A few hours of suspension on the cross appeared to persons accustomed to see crucifixions as entirely insufficient to lead to such a result. They cited many instances of persons crucified, who, removed in time, had been brought to life again by energetic treatment. Origen, later on, thought it needful to invoke miracle in order to explain so sudden an end. The same astonishment is discovered in the narrative of Mark. To speak truly, the best guarantee that the historian possesses upon a point of this nature is the suspicious hatred of the enemies of Jesus. It is very doubtful whether the Jews were at that time preoccupied with the fear that Jesus might be thought to be resuscitated; but, in any case, they must have made sure that he was really dead. Whatever may have been, at certain periods, the neglect of the ancients in all that appertained to legal proof and the strict conduct of affairs, we cannot but believe that for once those interested had taken, on so important a point to them, some precautions in this respect. According to the Roman custom, the corpse of Jesus ought to have remained suspended in order to become the prey of birds. According to the Jewish law, it would, being removed in the evening, have been deposited in the place of infamy set apart for the burial of those who were executed. If Jesus’ disciples had consisted only of his poor Galileans, timid and without influence, the second course would have been adopted. But we have seen that, in spite of his small success at Jerusalem, Jesus had gained the sympathy of some people of consideration who expected the kingdom of God, and who, without avowing themselves his disciples, had for him a strong attachment. One of these,

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Joseph, of the small town of Arimathea (Ha-ramathaim), went in the evening to ask the body from the procurator. Joseph was a man rich, honourable, and a member of the Sanhedrim. Roman law, at this period, commanded, moreover, the delivering up of the body of the person executed to those who claimed it. Pilate, who was ignorant of the circumstance of the crurifragium, was astonished that Jesus was so soon dead, and summoned the centurion who had superintended the execution to know how this was. Pilate granted to Joseph the object of his request. The body probably had already been removed from the cross. They delivered it to Joseph, that he might do with it as he pleased. Another secret friend, Nicodemus, whom we have already seen employing his influence more than once in favour of Jesus, came forward at this moment. He arrived bearing an ample provision of the materials necessary for embalming. Joseph and Nicodemus interred Jesus according to the Jewish custom—that is to say, they wrapped him in a sheet with myrrh and aloes. The Galilean women were present, and no doubt accompanied the scene with piercing cries and tears. It was late, and all this was done in great haste. The place had not yet been chosen where the body would be finally deposited. The carrying of the body, moreover, might have been delayed to a late hour, and have involved a violation of the Sabbath; the disciples still conscientiously observed the prescriptions of the Jewish law. A temporary interment was hence decided upon. There was near at hand, in the garden, a tomb recently dug out in the rock, which had never been used. It belonged, probably, to one of the believers. The funeral caves, when they were destined for a single body, were composed of a small chamber, at the bottom of which the place for the body was marked by a trough or couch let into the wall, and surmounted by an arch. As these caves were dug out of the sides of sloping rocks, they were entered by the floor; the door was shut by a stone very difficult to move. Jesus was deposited in the cave, and the stone was rolled to the door, as it was intended to return in order to give him a more complete burial. But, the next day being a solemn Sabbath, the labour was postponed till the day following.

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The women retired after having carefully noticed how the body was laid. They employed the hours of the evening which remained to them in making new preparations for the embalming. On the Saturday all rested. On the Sunday morning, the women, Mary Magdalen the first, came very early to the tomb. The stone was displaced from the opening, and the body was no longer in the place where they had put it. At the same time, the strangest rumours were spread in the Christian community. The cry, “He is risen!” spread amongst the disciples like lightning. Love caused it to find ready credence everywhere. What had taken place? In treating of the history of the apostles we shall have to examine this point and to investigate the origin of the legends as touching the resurrection. For the historian, the life of Jesus finishes with his last sigh. But such was the impression he had left in the hearts of his disciples and of a few devoted females, that during some weeks more it was as if he were living and consoling them. Had his body been taken away? Did enthusiasm, always credulous in certain

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circumstances, create afterwards the group of narratives by which it was sought to establish faith in the resurrection? In the absence of opposing documents this can never be ascertained. Let us say, however, that the strong imagination of Mary Magdalen played in this circumstance an important part. Divine power of love! Sacred moments in which the passion of one possessed gave to the world a resuscitated God!

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CHAPTER XXVII. FATE OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS.

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ACCORDING to the calculation which we have adopted, the death of Jesus took place in the year 33 of our era. It could not, at all events, be either anterior to the year 29, the preaching of John and Jesus having commenced in the year 28, or posterior to the year 35, as in the year 36, and probably before the Passover, Pilate and Kaïapha both lost their offices. The death of Jesus, moreover, had no connexion whatever with these two removals. In his retirement., Pilate probably never dreamt for a moment of the forgotten episode which was to transmit his pitiful renown to the most distant posterity. As to Kaïapha, he was succeeded by Jonathan, his brother-in-law, son of the same Hanan who had played the principal part in the trial of Jesus. The Sadducean family of Hanan retained the pontificate a long time, and, more powerful than ever, continued to wage against the disciples and the family of Jesus the implacable war which they had commenced against the Founder. Christianity, which owed to him the definitive act of its foundation, owed to him also its first martyrs. Hanan was looked upon as one of the happiest men of his age. The actual person guilty of the death of Jesus ended his life overwhelmed with honours and consideration, without ever doubting for an instant that he had rendered a great service to the nation. His sons continued to reign around the temple, and, kept down with difficulty by the procurators, they ofttimes dispensed with the consent of the latter in order to gratify their haughty and violent instincts. Antipas and Herodias soon disappeared also from the political arena. Herod Agrippa having been raised to the dignity of king by Caligula, the jealous Herodias swore that she too would be queen. Pressed incessantly by this ambitious woman, who treated him as a coward, because he suffered a superior in his family, Antipas overcame his natural indolence, and went to Rome in order to solicit the title which his nephew had just obtained (the year 39 of our era). But the affair turned out very badly. Injured in the eyes of the emperor by Herod Agrippa, Antipas was removed, and spent the rest of his life in exile at Lyons and in Spain. Herodias followed him in his misfortunes. A hundred years, at least, were to elapse before the name of their obscure subject (who had become God) should appear in these remote countries to inscribe upon their tombs the murder of John the Baptist. As to the wretched Judas of Kerioth, terrible legends were current about his death. It was maintained that he had bought a field in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem with the price of his perfidy. There was, indeed, on the south of Mount Zion, a place named Hakeldama (the field of blood). It was alleged that this was the property acquired by the traitor. According to one tradition he killed himself. According to another, he had a fall in his field, which caused his bowels to gush out. According to others, he died of a kind of dropsy, which, being accompanied by repulsive circumstances, was regarded as a chastisement of heaven. The desire of making out Judas to be another Absalom, and of showing in him the accomplishment of the menaces which the Psalmist

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pronounces against the perfidious friend, may have given rise to these legends. Perhaps, in the retirement of his field of Hakeldama, Judas led a quiet and obscure life; while his former friends prepared the conquest of the world, and spread the report of his infamy. Perhaps, also, the terrible hatred which was concentrated on his head drove him to violent acts, in which were seen the finger of heaven. The time of the great Christian revenge was, moreover, far distant. The new sect had nothing to do with the catastrophe which Judaism was soon to experience. The synagogue did not understand till much later to what it exposed itself in practising laws of intolerance. The empire was certainly still further from suspecting that its future destroyer had been born. For nearly three hundred years it pursued its path without suspecting that in its bosom principles were growing which were destined to subject humanity to a complete transformation. At once theocratic and democratic, the idea thrown by Jesus into the world was, together with the invasion of the Germans, the most active cause of the dissolution of the work of the Cæsars. On the one hand, the right of all men to participate in the kingdom of God was proclaimed. On the other, religion was henceforth separated in principle from the state. The rights of conscience, outside of political law, resulted in the constitution of a new power,—the “spiritual power.” This power has more than once belied its origin. For ages the bishops have been princes, and the Pope has been a king. The pretended empire of souls has shown itself at various conjunctures as a frightful tyranny, employing the rack and the stake in order to maintain itself. But the day will come when the separation will bear its fruits, when the domain of things spiritual will cease to be called a “power,” and will be denominated a “liberty.” Proceeding from the bold affirmation of a man of the people, formed in the presence of the people, beloved and admired first by the people, Christianity was stamped by an original character which will never be effaced. It was the first triumph of revolution, the victory of the popular sentiment, the advent of the simple in heart, the inauguration of the beautiful as understood by the people. Jesus thus, in the aristocratic societies of antiquity, opened the breach through which all will pass. The civil power, in fact, although innocent of the death of Jesus (it only countersigned the sentence, and even in spite of itself), ought to bear a great share of the responsibility. In presiding at the scene of Calvary, the state gave itself a serious blow. A legend full of all kinds of irreverence prevailed, and became known to everybody—a legend in which the constituted authorities played a hateful part, in which it was the accused that was right, and in which the judges and the guards were leagued against the truth. Seditious in the highest degree, the history of the Passion, spread by a thousand popular images, represented the Roman eagles as sanctioning the most iniquitous of executions, soldiers executing it, and a prefect commanding it. What a blow for all established powers! They have never entirely recovered from it. How can they assume infallibility in respect to poor men, when they have on their conscience the great contumely of Gethsemane?

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CHAPTER XXVIII. ESSENTIAL CHARACTER OF THE WORK OF JESUS.

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JESUS, it is seen, never extended his action beyond the Jewish circle. Although his sympathy for outcasts of heterodoxy led him to admit Pagans into the kingdom of God, although he had more than once resided in a Pagan country, and although once or twice we surprise him in kindly relations with unbelievers, it may be said that his life was passed entirely in the small world in which he was born. In Greek or Roman countries he was never heard of; his name only appears in profane authors of a hundred years later, and then in an indirect manner, in connection with seditious movements provoked by his doctrine, or persecutions of which his disciples were the object. Even on the heart of Judaism Jesus made no very durable impression. Philo, who died about the year 50, knew nothing of him Josephus, born in the year 37, and writing at the close of the century, mentions his execution in a few lines, as an event of secondary importance, while in the enumeration of the sects of his time he omits the Christians altogether. Even the Mishna affords no trace of the new school. The passages in the two Gemaras in which the founder of Christianity is named, do not carry us back beyond the fourth or fifth century. The essential work of Jesus was to form around him a circle of disciples, whom he inspired with boundless affection, and in whose breasts he deposited the germ of his doctrine. To have made himself beloved, “to the extent that after his death they ceased not to love him,” was the great work of Jesus, and that which most struck his contemporaries. His doctrine was a thing so little dogmatic that he neither thought of writing it nor of having it written. Men did not become his disciples by believing this or that, but by attaching themselves to his person and by loving him. A few sentences easily revoked from the memory, and especially his type of character, and the impression it had left, were what remained of him. Jesus was not a founder of dogmas, or a deviser of symbols; he introduced into the world a new spirit. The least Christianised of men were, on the one hand, the doctors of the Greek Church, who, from the fourth century, began to entangle Christianity in a labyrinth of puerile metaphysical discussions, and, on the other, the scholastics of the Latin Middle Ages, who wished to draw from the Gospel the thousands of articles of a colossal system. To adhere to Jesus with the kingdom of God in prospect was what at first entitled one to be called a Christian. It will now be understood why, by an exceptional destiny, pure Christianity still presents, after eighteen centuries, the character of a universal and eternal religion. In truth it is because the religion of Jesus is, in some respects, the final religion. The product of a perfectly spontaneous movement of souls, disengaged at its birth from all dogmatic restraints, having struggled three hundred years for liberty of conscience, Christianity, in spite of the catastrophes which have followed it, reaps still the fruits of its excellent origin. To renew itself it has only to return to the Gospel. The kingdom of God, such as we conceive it, differs materially from the supernatural apparition that early Christians hoped to see appear in the clouds. But the sentiment which Jesus introduced into the

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world is really ours. His perfect idealism is the highest rule of a pure and virtuous life. He created a heaven of pure souls, where are to be found what we seek in vain for on earth,—the perfect nobility of the children of God, absolute holiness, total abstraction from the pollutions of the world; in fine, liberty, which society eschews as an impossibility, and which can only find full scope in the domain of mind. The great Master of those who take refuge in this ideal kingdom of God is still Jesus. He was the first to proclaim the sovereignty of the mind; the first to say, at least through his acts, “My kingdom is not of this world.” The foundation of true religion is verily his work. Since him, it only remains to fructify and develop it. “Christianity” has thus become almost synonymous with “religion.” All that one may attempt, outside this grand and noble Christian tradition, is futile. Jesus founded the religion of humanity, just as Socrates founded philosophy, and Aristotle science. There was philosophy before Socrates, and science before Aristotle. But since the times of Socrates and Aristotle philosophy and science have made immense progress; yet it has all been reared upon the foundations they laid down. Similarly, before Jesus religion had passed through many revolutions; since Jesus it has achieved great conquests; yet we have not advanced, and never will improve upon the essential principle Jesus created; he fixed for ever the idea of pure worship. The religion of Jesus in this sense is not limited. The Church has had its epochs and its phases; it has enveloped itself in creeds which have lasted and can only last for a time: Jesus, on the other hand, has founded absolute religion, which excludes nothing, determines nothing unless it be sentiment. His creeds are not fixed dogmas, but ideas susceptible of indefinite interpretations. We should seek in vain for a theological proposition in the Gospel. All professions of faith are travesties of the idea of Jesus, just as the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, in proclaiming Aristotle the only master of a completed science, perverted the teachings of Aristotle. Aristotle, if he had taken part in the debates of the schools, would have repudiated this narrow doctrine; he would have allied himself to the party of progressive science as against the routine which shielded itself under his authority; he would have applauded his opponents. Similarly, if Jesus were to return among us, he would recognise as disciples, not those who pretend to embody his teachings in a few catechismal phrases, but those who labour as he laboured. The eternal glory in all great things is to lay the first stone. It may be that in modern “Physics” and “Meteorology” we may not discover a word of the treatises of Aristotle which bear these titles; but Aristotle remains no less the founder of natural science. Whatever may be the transformations of dogma, Jesus will ever be the creator of the pure spirit of religion; the Sermon on the Mount will never be surpassed. No matter what revolution takes place, nothing will prevent us attaching ourselves in religion to the grand intellectual and moral line at the head of which is enshrined the name of Jesus. In this sense we are Christians, even when we separate ourselves on almost all points from the Christian tradition which has preceded us. And this great foundation was indeed the personal work of Jesus. To make himself adored to this degree, he must have been adorable. Love is only kindled by an object worthy of it, and we should know nothing of Jesus if it were not for the passion he inspired in those around him, which

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obliges us still to affirm that he was great and pure. The faith, the enthusiasm, the constancy of the first Christian generation is only explicable on the supposition that at its inception there existed a man of transcendent greatness. In view of the marvellous creations of the ages of faith two equally fatal impressions to good historical criticism spring up in the mind. In one view we are led to regard these creations as too impersonal; we impute to collective action that which has often been the work of a single powerful will. In another, we refuse to see men like ourselves in the authors of these extraordinary movements which have decided the fate of humanity. Let us take a broader view of the powers which nature conceals in her bosom. Our civilisations, governed by minute restrictions, cannot give us any idea of the power of man at periods in which the originality of each one had a far freer development. Let us imagine a recluse, dwelling in the mountains near our capital, coming out from time to time in order to present himself at the palaces of sovereigns, brushing the sentinels aside, and, with an imperious tone, announcing to kings the approach of revolutions of which he had been the promoter. The bare idea provokes a smile. Yet such was Elisha; Elisha the Tishbite, in our days, would not be able to pass the gate of the Tuileries. The preaching of Jesus, and his free activity in Galilee, do not deviate less completely from the social conditions to which we are accustomed. Free from our polished conventionalities, exempt from the uniform education which refines us, but which so greatly dwarfs our individuality, these mighty souls carried a surprising energy into action. They appear to us like the giants of a heroic age, who could not have been real. This is a profound error! These men were our brothers; they were of our stature, felt and thought as we do. But the breath of God was free in them; with us, it is restrained by the iron bonds of a mean society, and condemned to an irremediable mediocrity. Let us place, then, at the highest summit of human greatness the person of Jesus. Let us not be led astray by sneers in the presence of a legend which keeps us always in a superhuman world. The life of Francis d’Assisi is, too, only a tissue of miracles. Has any one ever doubted, though, of his existence, and of the part he played? Let us say no more that the glory of founding Christianity must be attributed to the multitude of the first Christians, and not to him whom legend has deified. The inequality of men is much more marked in the East than with us. It is no rarity to see spring up there, in the midst of a general atmosphere of wickedness, characters whose greatness astonishes us. So far from Jesus having been made by his disciples, he appeared in everything superior to them. The latter, St. Paul and St. John excepted, were men without invention or genius. St. Paul himself bears no comparison with Jesus, and as to St. John, he has done little more in his Apocalypse than to breathe the poetry of Jesus. Hence the immense superiority of the Gospels among the writings of the New Testament. Hence the painful lowering of sentiment we experience in passing from the history of Jesus to that of the apostles. The evangelists themselves, who have transmitted to us the image of Jesus, are so much beneath him of whom they speak that they constantly disfigure him, not being able to attain to his height. Their writings are full of errors and contradictions. We feel in each line a discourse of divine beauty, told by narrators who do not understand it, and who substitute their own ideas for those they have only half grasped. On the whole, the character of

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Jesus, far from having been embellished by his biographers, has been marred by them. Criticism, in order to find what he was, needs to discard a series of errors, which prove the mediocre minds of the disciples. The latter painted him as they understood him, and often, in thinking to exalt him, they have debased him. I know that our modern ideas have been offended more than once in this legend, conceived by another race, under another sky, and in the midst of other social wants. There are virtues which, in some respects, are more conformable to our taste. The upright and gentle Marcus Aurelius, the humble and tender Spinoza, not having believed in miracles, were exempt from some errors that Jesus shared. Spinoza, in his profound obscurity, had an advantage which Jesus did not seek. By our extreme delicacy in the use of means of conviction, by our absolute sincerity and our disinterested love of the pure idea, we have founded—all we, who have devoted our lives to science—a new ideal of morality. But the judgment of general history ought not to be restricted to considerations of personal merit. Marcus Aurelius and his noble masters have left no durable impress on the world. Marcus Aurelius left behind him delightful books, an execrable son, and a decaying nation. Jesus remains an inexhaustible principle of moral regeneration for humanity. Philosophy does not suffice for the multitude. They must have sanctity. An Apollonius of Tyana with his miraculous legend, is therefore more successful than a Socrates with his cold reason. “Socrates,” it was said, “leaves men on the earth, Apollonius transports them to heaven; Socrates is but a sage, Apollonius is a god.” Religion, so far, has not existed without a share of asceticism, of piety, and of the marvellous. When it was wished, after the Antonines, to make a religion of philosophy, it was requisite to transform the philosophers into saints, to write the “Edifying Life” of Pythagoras and of Plotinus, to attribute to them a legend, virtues of abstinence, contemplation and supernatural powers, without which neither credence nor authority were found in that age. Preserve us, then, from mutilating history in order to satisfy our petty susceptibilities! Which of us, pigmies as we are, could do what the extravagant Francis d’Assisi, or the hysterical Saint Theresa, has done? Let medicine have names to express these grand errors of human nature; let it maintain that genius is a disease of the brain; let it see in a certain delicacy of morality the commencement of consumption; let it class enthusiasm and love amongst the nervous accidents—it matters little. The terms healthy and diseased are entirely relative. Who would not prefer to be diseased like Pascal, rather than healthy like the common herd? The narrow ideas which are spread in our times respecting madness, mislead our historical judgments in the most serious manner in questions of this kind. A state in which a man says things of which he is not conscious, in which thought is produced without the summons and control of the will, exposes him to being confined as a lunatic. Formerly this was called prophecy and inspiration. The most beautiful things in the world are done in a state of fever; every great creation involves a breach of equilibrium; child-birth is, by a law of nature, a violent process.

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We acknowledge, indeed, that Christianity is too complex to have been the work of a single man. In one sense, entire humanity has co-operated therein. There is no one so shut in as not to receive some influence from without. History is full of singular synchronisms, which cause, without any communication with each other, very remote portions of the human species to arrive at the same time at almost identical ideas and imaginations. In the thirteenth century, the Latins, the Greeks, the Syrians, the Jews, and the Mussulmans adopted scholasticism, and very nearly the same scholasticism prevailed from York to Samarcand; in the fourteenth century every one in Italy, Persia, and India yielded to the taste for mystical allegory; in the sixteenth, art was developed in a very similar manner in Italy, and at the court of the Great Moguls, without St. Thomas, Barhebræus, the Rabbis of Narbonne, or the Motécallémin of Bagdad having known each other, without Dante and Petrarch having seen any sofi, without any pupil of the schools of Perouse or of Florence having been at Delhi. We should say there are great moral influences running through the world like epidemics, without distinction of frontier and of race. The interchange of ideas in the human species does not take place only by books or by direct instruction. Jesus was ignorant of the very name of Buddha, of Zoroaster, and of Plato; he had read no Greek book, no Buddhist Soutra, nevertheless there was in him more than one element, which, without his suspecting it, came from Buddhism, Parseeism, or from the Greek wisdom. All this was done through secret channels and by that kind of sympathy which exists among the various portions of humanity. The great man, on the one hand, receives everything from his age; on the other, he governs his age. To show that the religion founded by Jesus was the natural consequence of that which had preceded does not diminish its excellence, but only proves that it had a reason for its existence, that it was legitimate—that is to say, conformable to the instinct and wants of the heart in a given age. Is it more just to say that Jesus was wholly indebted to Judaism, and that his greatness is only that of the Jewish people? No one is more disposed than myself to place high this unrivalled people, whose particular heritage seems to have been to contain amongst them the extremes of good and evil. Jesus doubtless sprang from Judaism; but he proceeded from it as Socrates did from the schools of the Sophists, as Luther proceeded from the Middle Ages, as Lamennais from Catholicism, as Rousseau from the eighteenth century. A man belongs to his age and race even when he reacts against his age and race. Far from continuing Judaism, Jesus represents the rupture with the Jewish spirit. The supposition that his idea in this respect could lead to equivocation is disproved by the general direction of Christianity after him. The general tendency of Christianity has been to separate itself more and more from Judaism. Its perfection depends on its returning to Jesus, but certainly not in returning to Judaism. The great originality of the founder remains then unchallenged; his glory does not admit any legitimate sharer. Doubtless, circumstances much aided the success of this marvellous revolution; but circumstances only second endeavours as to what is just and true. Each branch of the development of humanity, art, poetry, religion, encounters, in crossing the ages, a privileged epoch, in which it attains perfection by a sort of spontaneous instinct, and without effort. No labour of reflection would succeed in

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producing afterwards the masterpieces which nature creates at those moments by inspired geniuses. What the golden age of Greece was for art and profane literature, the age of Jesus was for religion. Jewish society exhibited the most extraordinary moral and intellectual state which the human species has ever passed through. It was truly one of those divine hours in which the sublime is produced by combinations of a thousand hidden forces, in which great souls find a flood of admiration and sympathy to sustain them. The world, delivered from the very narrow tyranny of small municipal republics, enjoyed great liberty. Roman despotism did not make itself felt in a disastrous manner until much later, and it was, moreover, always less oppressive in those distant provinces than in the centre of the empire. Our petty preventive interferences (far more destructive than death to spiritual things) did not exist. Jesus, during three years, could lead a life which, in our societies, would have brought him twenty times before the magistrates. Our laws upon the illegal exercise of medicine would alone have sufficed to cut short his career. The unbelieving dynasty of the Herods, on the other hand, occupied itself little with religious movements; under the Asmoneans, Jesus would probably have been arrested at his first step. An innovator, in such a state of society, only risked death, and death is a gain to those who labour for the future. Imagine Jesus reduced to bear the burden of his divinity until his sixtieth or seventieth year, losing his celestial fire, wearing out little by little under the burden of an unparalleled mission! Everything favours those who have a special destiny; they become glorious by a sort of invincible impulse and command of fate. This sublime person, who each day still presides over the destiny of the world, may be called divine, not in the sense that Jesus has absorbed all the divine, but in the sense that Jesus is the person who has impelled his fellow-men to make the greatest step towards the divine. Humanity in its totality presents an assemblage of low beings, selfish, superior to the animal only in the single particular that its selfishness is more reflective. Still, from the midst of this uniform depravity, pillars rise towards the sky, and testify to a nobler destiny. Jesus is the highest of these pillars that show to man whence he comes, and whither he ought to tend. In him was concentrated all that is good and elevated in our nature. He was not without sin; he had to conquer the same passions that we have to combat; no angel of God comforted him, except it was his good conscience; no Satan tempted him, more than each one bears in his heart. In the same way that many of his great qualities are lost to us, in consequence of the lack of intelligence of his disciples, it is also probable that many of his faults have been concealed. But never has any one made the interests of humanity predominate to the same extent in his life over the littlenesses of self-love. Unreservedly devoted to his idea, he subordinated everything to it to such a degree that, towards the end of his life, the universe existed no longer for him. It was by this transport of heroic will that he conquered heaven. There never was a man—Sakya Mouni alone excepted—who so completely trampled under foot family, the pleasures of this world, and all temporal care. He lived only for his Father and the divine mission with which he believed himself charged. As to us, eternal children, condemned to impotence, who labour without reaping, and who will never witness the fruit of that which we have sown, let us bow before these demi-gods. They did

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that which we cannot do—create, affirm, act. Will great originality be borne again, or will the world henceforth content itself by following the paths opened by the bold original minds of antiquity? We do not know. In any case, Jesus will pot be surpassed. His worship will constantly renew itself, his history will provoke endless pious tears, his sufferings will subdue the stoutest hearts; all ages will proclaim that, among the sons of men, no one has been born who is greater than Jesus. 266

END OF THE LIFE OF JESUS.

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APPENDIX. OF THE USE IT IS PROPER TO MAKE OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL IN WRITING THE LIFE OF JESUS. THE greatest difficulty which presents itself to the historian of Jesus is the value of the sources upon which such a history rests. On the one hand, what is the value of the Gospels called synoptic? On the other, what use is to be made of the fourth Gospel in writing the life of Jesus? On the first point all those who occupy themselves with these studies, according to the critical method, are thoroughly in accord. The synoptics represent the tradition, often legendary, of the two or three first Christian generations in regard to the person of Jesus. This permits of much uncertainty in the application, and necessitates the continual employment in the narrative of the formulas: “Some have said this,” “Others have related that,” &c. But that suffices to inform us as to the general character of the founder, the charm and the principal features of his teaching, and even as regards the most important circumstances of his life. The writers of the life of Jesus, who confine themselves to the employment of the synoptics, do not differ more from one another than the narrators of the life of Mahomet who have made use of the hadith. The biographers of the Arab prophet may take different views of the value of such and such a document. But, on the whole, they are all agreed as to the value of the hadith. They all, according to their manner, class them along with those legendary and traditional documents, but not as precise documents of history properly speaking.

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Upon the second point, I desire to say, in regard to the employment it is fitting to make of the fourth Gospel, that there is disagreement. I have, with many reserves and precautions, made use of this document. In the opinion of excellent judges, I ought not to have made any use of it, with the exception of chapters xvii. and xix., which contain the narrative of the Passion. Almost all the enlightened criticisms which I have received apropos of my work are in accord on that point. I am not surprised at this: for I could not be ignorant of the somewhat contrary opinion as to the historic value of the fourth Gospel which obtains in the liberal schools of theology. Objections coming from men so eminent rendered it imperative that I should submit my opinion to the test of a new examination. Putting to one side the question as to knowing who wrote the fourth Gospel, I set myself to follow that Gospel through, paragraph by paragraph, as if it had come to me as a manuscript newly discovered, without the name of the author. Let us divest ourselves of every preconceived idea, and let us endeavour to render an account of the impressions produced on us by that singular writing. § 1. The opening verses (i. 1-14) raise within us at once the gravest suspicions. This introduction transports us into the very heart of apostolic theology, presents no resemblance to the synoptics, puts forth ideas assuredly very different from those of Jesus and of his true disciples. At the outset this prologue warns as that the work in question cannot be a simple history, transparent and

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impersonal like the narrative of Mark, for example; that the author has a theology; that he wishes to prove a thesis, to wit, that Jesus is the divine logos. We are hence admonished to take great precautions. Is it necessary, nevertheless, in regard to this first page, to reject the book in its entirety, and to perceive an imposture in the 14th verse, in which the author declares he has been a witness of the events which compose the life of Jesus?

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That would be, in my opinion, a premature conclusion. A work full of theological ideas may embrace valuable historical information. Were not the synoptics written with the constant preoccupation of demonstrating that Jesus realised all the Messianic prophecies? Because of this, are we to give up searching in their accounts for a historical basis? The theory of the logos, which is so strongly developed in our Gospel, is not a reason for rejecting it at the middle or close of the second century. The belief that Jesus was the logos of the Alexandrian theology must have been early put forward, and that in a most logical manner. Happily, the founder of Christianity had no idea of that kind. But, from the year 68, it was already called “The Word of God.” Apollos, who was from Alexandria, and who appears to have resembled Philo, passes already (about the year 57) for a new preacher, holding peculiar doctrines. These ideas are in perfect accord with the state of mind in which the Christian community found itself, when people despaired of seeing Jesus appear soon in the clouds as the Son of Man. A change of the same kind appears to have been wrought in the opinions of St. Paul. We knew the difference there is between the first epistles of that Apostle and the last. The hope, for example, of the immediate coming of Christ, which pervades the two epistles to the Thessalonians, disappears towards the end of the life of St. Paul. The Apostle then turns his attention towards another order of invention. The doctrine of the epistle to the Colossians has a great resemblance to that of the fourth Gospel, Jesus being represented in the said epistle as the image of the in, visible God, the first-born of every creature, by whom every-thing has been created, who was before all things, and through whom everything subsists, in whom the plenitude of the Divinity corporeally dwells. Is there not here the “Word” of Philo? I know there are those who reject the authenticity of the epistle to the Colossians, but for reasons, in my opinion, altogether insufficient. These changes of theories, or rather of style, amongst the men of those times, men who were filled with ardent passion, are, within certain limits, matters quite admissible. Why should not the crisis which was produced in the soul of St. Paul not be produced in other apostles, men in the last years of the first century? When the “kingdom of God,” as it is described in the synoptics and the apocalypse, had become a chimera, people took refuge in metaphysics. The theory of the logos was the consequence of the disappointment of the first Christian generation. People carried into the ideal that which they hoped to see realised in the order of things. Each delay that was put on the coming of Jesus was one step more towards his deification; and this is so true that it was exactly at the hour when the last Millenarian dream vanished that the divinity of Jesus was proclaimed in an absolute manner. § 2. Let us return to our subject. According to consecrated usage the evangelist commences his narrative with the mission of John the Baptist. That which he says of the relations of John with

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Jesus is similar in many points to the tradition of the synoptics; in other points the divergence is considerable. The theory, soon held so dear by all the Christians, according to which John proclaimed the divine mission of Jesus, is greatly exaggerated by our author. Things are better managed in the synoptics, where John entertains to the end doubts as to the character of Jesus, and sends to him messengers to question him. The narrative of the fourth Gospel implies a perfectly prearranged plan, and confirms us in the idea that we have divined the prologue, to wit, that the author sought rather to prove than to record. We shall discover presently, however, that the author, though differing much from the synoptics, possesses many traditions in common with them. He cites the same prophecies; like them he believes in a dove which should descend upon the head of Jesus immediately after baptism. But his narrative is less ingenuous, more advanced, more ripe, if I may so speak. One single detail staggers me; this is v. 28, which fixes the place with precision. Admit that the designation Bethania is inexact (Bethania was not known along those coasts, and the Greek interpreters have arbitrarily substituted Bethabara for it), what does it matter? A theologian having nothing Jewish about him, nor possessing any recollections direct or indirect of Palestine, a pure theorist like him who composed the prologue, would not have put in that detail. What did this topographical detail matter to a sectary of Asia Minor or of Alexandria? If the author inserted it, it was because he had a substantial reason for so doing, either in the documents he possessed or in some recollections. Already, then, we are led to think that our theologian is indeed able to inform us of things in regard to the life of Jesus of which the synoptics knew nothing. Nothing, certainly, proves ocular testimony. But it must at least be supposed that the author had other sources of information from those which we have, and that to us it may well have the value of an original. 271

§ 3. Beginning with v. 35 we read about a series of conversions of apostles, associated together in a manner not very natural, and which do not correspond with the accounts of the synoptics. Can it he maintained that the accounts of these last have here a historical superiority? No. The conversions of the apostles recorded in the synoptics are all cast in the same mould; one perceives that a legendary and idyllic type is being indistinctly applied to all narratives of this species. The short narratives of the fourth Gospel have more character and angles less polished. They much resemble badly edited recollections of one of the apostles. I know that the narratives of simple-minded people and of children always enter much into details. I do not insist upon the minutiæ of v. 39. But wherefore that idea of connecting the first conversion of disciples with the sojourn of Jesus near John the Baptist? Whence come these so precise particulars about Philip, about the father of Andrew and Peter, and, above all, about Nathaniel? This latter personage belongs to our Gospel. I cannot hold the latter as inventions which were concocted a hundred years after Jesus and far away from Palestine, together with the so precise details which are reported of him. If he is a symbolical personage, why are we troubled with being told that he was of Cana of Galilee, a city that our evangelist appeared to be particularly well acquainted with? Why should anyone have invented all this? There is no dogmatic intention implied, if it be not in v. 51, which is put in the mouth of Jesus. Above all, there is no symbolical intention. I believe in intentions of this kind when they are

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indicated, and, if 1 might say so, underlined by the author. I do not believe in them when the mystic allusion is not self-indicative. The allegorical exegete does not speak in half sentences; he presents his argument and insists upon it with complacency. I say as much also of the sacramental numbers. The adversaries of the fourth Gospel have remarked that the miracles it records are seven in number. If the author himself had selected this number it would be a serious matter, and would prove his motives. The author did not count them; he must only have taken them up at random. 272

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The discussion on this point is somewhat favourable to our text. Verses 35 to 51 have a more historic turn than the corresponding passages in the synoptics. It seems that the fourth evangelist was better acquainted than the other narrators of the life of Jesus with that which concerned the vocation of the apostle; I admit that it was the school of John the Baptist from which Jesus attached to himself the first disciples, whose names remain celebrated; I opine that the principal apostles were disciples of John the Baptist before they became disciples of Jesus, and this affirms the importance which the whole of the first Christian generation accorded to John the Baptist. If this importance, as is argued by the learned Hollandic school, was in part factitious, and conceived almost wholly to sustain the rôle of Jesus as respects an incontestable authority, why was John the Baptist chosen, a man who was not held in great repute except by the Christian family? The truth, in my opinion, is, that John the Baptist was not only for the disciples of Jesus a simple guarantee, but was also for them a first master, with whom they indissolubly connected the recollection of the very beginnings of the mission of Jesus. A fact of greater importance is that the baptism conserved by Christianity as the necessary introduction to a new life is a mark of the origin which still attests, in a visible fashion, that Christianity was at first a detached branch of the school of John the Baptist. The fourth Gospel should then be limited to the first chapter, which must be defined as “a fragment made up of traditions or of recollections hastily written, and occupied with a theology far removed from the primitive Christian spirit; a chapter of legendary biography, in which the author permits the introduction of traditional data, which he often transforms, but invents nothing.” If the question is one of à priori biography, it is indeed rather in the synoptics that I find a biography of that sort. It is the synoptics which make Jesus to be born at Bethlehem, which make him go into Egypt, which lead the Magi to him, &c., for the necessities of the cause. It is Luke who creates or admits personages who perhaps never existed. The Messianic prophets, in particular, prepossessed our author less than the synoptics, and occasioned in him fewer fabulous recitals. In other terms, we already reach, in that which concerns the fourth Gospel, the distinction between the narrative basis and the doctrinal basis. In the first, Jesus appears to us as a powerful being, superior in certain points to the Jesus of the synoptics; but the second is a great distance from the actual discourses of Jesus, such as the synoptics, particularly Matthew, have preserved to us. A circumstance, moreover, strikes us from this moment. The author wishes it to be accepted that the two first disciples of Jesus were Andrew and another disciple. Andrew very soon attracts Peter, his brother, who thus finds himself put a little into the shade. The second disciple is not

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named. But, in comparing this passage with others we encounter later on, we are induced to think that the other unnamed disciple is none other than the author of the Gospel, or at least one who wishes to pass himself off for the author. In the last chapters of the book, in fact, we shall see the author speaking with a certain mystery of himself, and, what is most remarkable, affecting always to place himself before Peter, even when recognising the hierarchical superiority of the latter. Let us observe also that in the synoptics the vocation of John is closely associated with that of Peter; but in the Acts John is continually represented as the companion of Peter. A double difficulty is hence presented to us. For, if the unnamed disciple is really John, the son of Zebedee, one is led to think that John, the son of Zebedee, is the author of our Gospel. To suppose that an impostor, in wishing to make believe that the author is John, had had the intention of not naming John and of designating him in an enigmatical fashion, would be to impute to him a ridiculous artifice. On the other hand, are we to understand that, if the real author of our Gospel commenced by being a disciple of John the Baptist, he speaks of the latter in a fashion so little historical, that the synoptic Gospels on this point are superior to his narrative?

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§ 4. Paragraph ii. 1-12 is a miraculous recital like so many others to be found in the synoptics. There is in the structure of the narrative a little more of mise-en-scène, something less ingenuous; nevertheless, there is nothing in the groundwork which departs from the general colouring of the tradition. The synoptics do not speak of this miracle; but it is quite natural that, in the rich marvellous legend which circulated, some were acquainted with one detail, others with another. The allegorical explanation, based principally upon verse 10, and according to which water and wine were to be the old and the new alliance, imputes to the author, in my opinion, a thought which he did not possess. Verse 11 proves that, in the eyes of the latter, the whole narrative has but one aim—to manifest the power of Jesus. The mention of the little town of Cana, and of the sojourn the mother of Jesus made there, is not forgotten. If the miracle of the water being changed into wine had been invented by the author of the fourth Gospel, as is supposed by the adversaries of the historic value of the said Gospel, why introduce this detail? Verses 11 and 12 furnish a connected train of facts. What importance would such topographical circumstances have to Hellenist Christians of the second century? The apocryphal Gospels do not proceed in this manner. They are vague, destitute of local colouring, constructed by people who had no regard for Palestine. Let us add, moreover, that our evangelist always speaks of Cana of Galilee, a wholly obscure small town. How was it possible to create with an after-stroke a celebrity for that small borough, of which assuredly the semignostic Christians of Asia Minor had but faint recollections? § 5. That which follows verse 13 is of high interest, and constitutes a decisive triumph for our Gospel. According to the synoptics, Jesus, from the commencement of his public life, only made one visit to Jerusalem. The sojourn of Jesus in that city lasted only a few days, at the end of which he was put to death. That admits of enormous difficulties which I do not repeat here, having touched on them in the “Life of Jesus.” A few weeks (if we suppose that the intention of the synoptics goes the length of attributing this stay to the interval which supervened between his triumphal entry and

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his death) would not have sufficed for all that Jesus ought to do at Jerusalem. Many circumstances placed by the synoptics in Galilee, above all the wranglings with the Pharisees, have but little meaning outside of Jerusalem. All the events which follow the death of Jesus go to prove that his sect had taken deep root at Jerusalem. If the things took place there which Matthew and Mark would have us believe did, Christianity was in an especial manner developed in Galilee. Mere sojourners for a few days would not have chosen Jerusalem for their capital. St. Paul entertains not one souvenir of Galilee: for him the new religion was born at Jerusalem. The fourth Gospel, which admits that Jesus made many journeys to and long sojourns in the capital, appears then much nearer the truth. Luke, in this instance, seems to be in secret harmony with our author, or rather gravitates between the two opposing systems. This is very important, for we shall reveal soon other circumstances where Luke sails along with the author of the fourth Gospel, and seems to have had a knowledge of the same traditions. But there is yet something more striking. The first circumstance of the sojourns of Jesus at Jerusalem reported by our evangelist is likewise reported by the synoptics, and placed by them almost on the eve of the death of Jesus; this is the driving of the merchants out of the temple. Is it to a Galilean that, on the morrow of his arrival at Jerusalem, we can attribute with any show of likelihood such an act, which, however, might have had some reality, since it is reported in each of the four texts ? In the chronological arrangement of the narrative, the advantage belongs entirely to our author. It is evident that the synoptics accumulated during the last days circumstances which were furnished to them by tradition, and that they did not know where to place them.

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We must now touch upon a question which it is time to clear up. We have already found that our evangelist possessed many traditions in common with the synoptics (the part played by John the Baptist, the dove at the baptism, the etymology of the name Cephas, the names of at least three of the apostles, the merchants who were driven from the temple). Does our evangelist imbibe this from the synoptics? No: for he presents these same circumstances with two important differences. Whence, then, did he get these narratives in common? Evidently from tradition, or from recollections. But what does this import, except that the author has sketched for us an original version of the life of Jesus, that this life ought to be put at the very outset upon the same footing as the other biographies of Jesus, but afterwards to be decided in detail by motives of preference? An inventor à priori of a life of Jesus would have nothing in common with the synoptics, or would paraphrase them as is done in the apocrypha. The symbolical and dogmatic intention would have been in that case much more sensible. In the whole of his writings there would then have been reason and intention. There would not have been that sort of indifferent and disinterested circumstances which abound in our narrative. There is nothing which resembles the biography of an æon; it is not thus that the Hindoo writes his lives of Krishna, or recounts the incarnations of Vishnu. An example of this species of composition, in the first centuries of our era, is the Pista Sophia attributed to Valentinus. In the latter there is nothing real: all is truly symbolical and ideal. The same remark applies to “The Gospel of Nicodemus,” which is an artificial composition, founded entirely on metaphors. In our text,

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which possesses similar amplification, there is a lacuna, and, if it were imperative to find analogous amplifications amongst the canonical Gospels, it would be in the synoptics rather than in our Gospel that we should have to seek for them. § 6. There follows another incident, the relation of which to the synoptics is no less remarkable. The latter, or at least Matthew and Mark, report, apropos of the proceedings of Jesus and of his agony on Golgotha, a phrase that Jesus would have given expression to, and which would have been one of the principal causes of his condemnation: “Destroy this temple and I will build it up again in three days.” The synoptics do not say that Jesus had uttered these words: on the contrary, they treat that as false testimony. Our evangelist records that Jesus did in fact give utterance to this incriminating expression. Did he take this sentence from the synoptics? It is hardly probable: for he gives a different version of it, and even an allegorical explanation of which the synoptics are not cognisant. It seems, then, that here he adhered to an original tradition, one more original even than that of the synoptics, since the latter do not cite directly the expression of Jesus, and only report an echo of it. True it is that, in placing this sentence two years before the death of Jesus, the compiler of the fourth Gospel yields to an idea which does not seem to be the most happy. 277

Observe the Jewish historical characteristic in v. 20; it is a good enough counterfeit and accords sufficiently well with Josephus. § 7. The verses ii. 23-25 are rather unfavourable to our text; they are sluggish, cold and tiresome; they smell of the apologist and the polemic. They prove a premeditated compilation, and are much posterior to that of the synoptics. § 8. Let us look now at the episode of Nicodemus (iii. 1-21). I naturally sacrifice the whole of the conversation of Jesus with that Pharisee. It is a fragment of apostolic, not evangelic, theology. Such a conversation could only have been reported by Jesus or Nicodemus. Both hypotheses are equally improbable. Moreover, on leaving v. 12 the author forgets the personage he has introduced into the scene, and launches into a general explanation which is addressed exclusively to the Jews. It is here that we detect one of the essential characteristics of our author: his liking for theological conversations, his tendency to attach to such conversations, incidents more or less historic. Fragments of this sort teach us nothing more regarding the doctrine of Jesus than the dialogues of Plato do regarding the thoughts of Socrates. They are imaginary, not traditional compositions. We can only compare them with the harangues that the ancient historians make no scruple of imputing to their heroes. These discourses are far removed both from the style and the ideas of Jesus; on the contrary, they present a similitude corresponding exactly with the theology of the prologue (i. 1-14), where the author speaks in his own name. Is the circumstance to which the author attaches this conversation historical, or is it his own invention? It is difficult to say. I incline, however, to the former; for the fact is reported further on (xix. 39), and Nicodemus is mentioned elsewhere (vii. 50 and following). I am constrained to believe that Jesus in reality had relations with a person of consideration of that

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name, and that the author of our Gospel, who knew that, has chosen Nicodemus, like as Plato has chosen Phaeton or Alcibiades as interlocutors in one of his great theoretical dialogues. 278

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§ 9. The v. 22 and following up to v. 2 of chapter iv., transport us, in my opinion, into real history. They show us anew Jesus near John the Baptist, but on this occasion surrounded with a group of disciples. Jesus, like John, baptizes, attracts the multitude more than the latter, and has greater success than he. The disciples, like their master, baptize, and a jealousy, to which the chiefs of the sect rise superior, is kindled between the two schools. This is most remarkable; for the synoptics contain nothing of the kind. As for me, I regard this episode as exceedingly probable. What in certain details it possesses of the inexplicable is far from invalidating the historical value of the ensemble. It contains things which we can only half understand, but which fit in well with the hypothesis of writings of personal recollections, intended for a limited circle. Such obscurities, on the contrary, are not to be explained in a work composed with the single aim of making certain ideas prevail. Those ideas enter everywhere. There could not have been so many singular incidents and without apparent signification. The topography, moreover, is here most precise (v. 22, 23). We do not know, it is true, where Latim was, but Λινών is a significant hint. It is the word Ænawan, the Chaldean plural of Aïn or Æn, “fountain.” How can you account for some Hellenic sectaries being able to divine this? They could not be the name of any locality, or they would have stood for one which was well known, or they would have coined an impossible word in its relationship to the Semitic etymology. The sentiment of v. 24 has likewise justness and precision. The connection between v. 25 and that which precedes and follows, which is not very apparent, dispels the idea of a fictitious composition. We should say that here we have notes which have been badly edited, old recollsctions loosely put together, yet at times possessing great lucidity. What could be more artless than the thought at v. 26, and repeated at v. 1 of chapter iv.? Verses 27-36 are quite of another character. The author trips again in his discourse, to which it is impossible to attribute any claim to authenticity. But verse 1 of chapter iv. possesses anew rare transparency, while as to verse v. 2 it is important. The author, in a sort of repenting himself of what he has written, and believing that no evil consequences will be deduced from his narrative, instead of erasing it, inserts a parenthesis which is in flagrant contradiction with that which precedes. He no longer assumes that Jesus has baptized; he pretends that it was only his disciples who baptized. We hold that v. 2 was added later. The fact will always remain that the passage iii. 22 and following is in no wise a fragment of à priori theology, since, on the contrary, the à priori theologian takes up the pen at v. 2 to contradict this passage and to free it from that which might have proved embarrassing. § 10. We now come to the interview of Jesus with the Samaritan woman and the mission to the Samaritans (iv. 1-42). Luke knew of this mission, which probably was real. Here, however, the theory of those who do see in out Gospel only a series of fictions is destined to lead to an exposition of principles worthy of being studied. The details of the dialogue are evidently fictitious. On the

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other hand, the topography of v. 3-6 is satisfactory. Only a Palestine Jew who had often passed the entrance to the Valley of Sichem could have written that. Verses 5, 6 are not exact, but the tradition which is there mentioned may have come from Gen. xxxiii. 19; xlviii. 22; Josh. xxiv. 32. The author seems to make a play on words (Sichar for Sichem), by which the Jews believed they cast bitter raillery upon the Samaritans. I do not think that people were so very solicitous at Ephesus about the hatred which divided the Jews from the Samaritans, and of the mutual interdict which existed between them (v. 9). The allusions which people pretend to see in the verses 16-18 to the religious history of Samaria appears to me to be forced, and v. 22 is important. It cuts asunder the admirable sentence, “Woman, believe me, the time is come . . .” and expresses a wholly opposed sentiment. It would seem that there is here an analogous correction at v. 2 of the same chapter, where either the author or one of his disciples corrects an idea which he found dangerous or too bold. In any case, this verse is profoundly imbued with Jewish prejudices. It is beyond my comprehension, if it was written about the year 130 or 150 in the circle of Christianity the most removed from Judaism. V. 35 is exactly in the style of the synoptics and is the actual words of Jesus. The sentence is a splendid relic (v. 21-23, when 22 is omitted). There is no rigorous authenticity for such sentences. How is it to be admitted that Jesus or the Samaritan woman related the conversation they had had together? The Oriental manner of narration is essentially anecdotic, everything with them resolves itself into precise and palpable facts. General phrases, with us expressing a tendency or general state, are to them unknown. There is thus here an anecdote which we can no more admit than all the other anecdotes of history. But the anecdote often contains a truth. If Jesus never pronounced that Divine sentence, the sentence is none the less his—the sentence would not have existed apart from him. I am aware that in the synoptics there often occur principles wholly opposed to one another, circumstances in which Jesus treats the Jews with great severity. But there are likewise some others in which the broad spirit that pervades this chapter of John is to be found. Discrimination is imperative. It is in these last passages that I discover the true thought of Jesus. The others are, in my opinion, blemishes and lapses, proceeding from disciples only moderately capable of comprehending their master and of extracting his thought. § 11. Verses 43-45 of chapter iv. contain something which astonishes. The author pretends that it was at Jerusalem, at the time of the feasts, that Jesus made his great demonstrations. It seems that there, this was a habit of his. But that which proves that such a habit, although erroneous, was connected with recollections is that it is supported (v. 44) by a saying of Jesus which is also reported in the synoptics and which has a high character of authenticity. § 12. Ver. 46 of ch. iv., which recalls the small town of Cana, is not to be explained in a composition fictitious and uniquely dogmatic. Thus (v. 46-54) there is a miracle of healing, strongly resembling those which abound in the synoptics and which with some variations respond to the one which is recorded at Matt. viii. 5 and following, and at Luke vii. 1 and following. This is very

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remarkable, for it proves that the author does not invent his miracles to please, and that in recounting them he follows a tradition. To sum up, in regard to the seven miracles mentioned there are only two the marriage feast at Cana and the resurrection of Lazarus) of which there is no trace in the synoptics. The five others are to be found there with some differences of detail. § 13. Chapter v. constitutes a fragment apart. Here the processes of the author are nakedly exhibited. He recounts a miracle which is attested to have taken place at Jerusalem with some dramatic details calculated to render the prodigy more striking, and he seizes this occasion for making a long and dogmatic discourse against the Jews. Does the author invent the miracle or does he take it from tradition? If he invents it, we must admit that he had lived at Jerusalem, for he knows the city well (v. 2 and following). It is not a question of Bethesda; yet, to have invented this name and the circumstances relating to it, the author of the fourth Gospel must have known Hebrew, which is a thing the adversaries of our Gospel do not admit. It is more probable that he made the tradition the basis of his account. This account presents, in fact, notable parallelisms to Mark. A part of the Christian community then attributed miracles to Jesus which were attested to have taken place at Jerusalem. This is a very serious matter. That Jesus had acquired great renown in thaumaturgy in a country simple, rustic, and favourably disposed like Galilee, is quite natural. Even had he not in a single instance connived at the execution of marvellous acts, these acts would have taken place in spite of him. His thaumaturgic reputation would have spread independently of all co-operation on his part and of his knowledge. The miracle explains itself before a benevolent public; in such a case it is in reality the public which creates it. But before an evil-disposed public the matter is wholly different. The latter has been clearly seen in the recrudescence of miracles which took place in Italy five or six years ago. The miracles which were produced in the Roman States succeeded; those, on the other hand, which ventured to make their appearance in the Italian provinces were immediately subjected to an inquest and quickly arrested. Those whom it was pretended had been cured avowed that they had never been sick. The thaumaturgists themselves, on being interrogated, declared that they knew nothing of them, but, seeing that the rumours of their miracles were so widespread, they believed they were able to work them. In other words, for a miracle to succeed there is need of a little complaisance. The bystanders not assisting in them, it was necessary for the participants to lend a hand. In like manner, if Jesus performed miracles at Jerusalem we arrive at suppositions which are to us very shocking. Let us reserve our judgment, for we shall soon have to treat of a Jerusalemitish miracle, in other respects more important than the one now in question, and much more intimately connected with the essential events in the life of Jesus § 14. Chapter vi. 1-14. The Galilean miracle, moreover, is still nevertheless identical with one of those which are reported by the synoptics; we refer to the multiplication of loaves. It is clear that this is one of those miracles which was attributed to him in his lifetime. It is a miracle to which a real circumstance gives colour. There is nothing more easy than to instil such an illusion into consciences at once credulous, artless, and sympathetic. “While we were with him, we had neither

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hunger nor thirst:” this very simple utterance becomes a marvellous fact, which is retold with all sorts of additions. The narrative in our text, as always, aims at a little more effect than in the synoptics. In this sense it is of an inferior quality. But the part which the Apostle Philip plays in it is to be noted. Philip is particularly acquainted with the author of our Gospel (compare i. 43 and following: xii. 21, and following). Now, Philip resided at Hierapolis, in Asia Minor, where Papias knew his sons. All this may be readily enough reconciled. We can assume that the author took this miracle from the synoptics, or from an analogous source, and appropriated it in his own way. But why does the detail which he has added to it harmonise so well with that which we have from other sources, if this detail did not come from a direct tradition?

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§ 15. By means of evidently artificial connections, which prove clearly that all these recollections (if recollection it be) were written afterwards, the author introduces a strange series of miracles and visions (vi. 16, and following). During a tempest, Jesus appeared on the waves, seeming to be walking on the sea: the barque itself is miraculously transported. This miracle is also found in the synoptics. Here, then, we are yet dealing with tradition, and not with individual fantasy. Verse 23 fixes the localities, establishes a connection between this miracle and that of the multiplication of the loaves, and seems to prove that these miraculous accounts ought to be put in the class of miracles which have a historical basis. The prodigy which we are now discussing probably corresponds with some hallucination which the companions of Jesus entertained in regard to the lake, and in virtue of which they, in a moment of danger, believed they saw their master come to their rescue. The idea into which they had easily drifted, that his body was impalpable like that of a spirit, gave credence to this. We shall soon find (chap. xxi.) another tradition which is founded on analogous fancies. § 16. The two miracles which precede serve to lead up to a most important sermon, which Jesus is alleged to have delivered in the synagogue of Capemaum. This sermon was evidently related to a collection of symbols which were very familiar to the oldest Christian community—symbols in which Christ was presented as the bread of believers. I have already said that, in our Gospel, the discourses of Christ are almost all fictitious works, and the one in question may certainly be one of the number. I would, if put to it, own that this fragment possesses more importance in regard to the history of the eucharistic ideas of the first century than the statement even of the sentiments of Jesus. Nevertheless, I believe that our Gospel furnishes us here again with a gleam of light. According to the synoptics, the institution of the eucharist does not ascend beyond the last soiree of Jesus. It is clear that very far back this was believed in, whilst it was the doctrine of St. Paul. But to admit this to be true, it is necessary to suppose that Jesus knew absolutely the day when he would die, a supposition which we cannot accept. The usages which gave rise to the eucharist ascend, then, beyond the last supper, and I believe that our Gospel is completely within the truth, in omitting the sacramental account of the soiree of the Friday, and in disseminating eucharistic ideas in the course

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even of the life of Jesus. That which is essential in the eucharistic account is at bottom only the reproduction of what took place at every Jewish repast. It was not once, but a hundred times, that Jesus had blessed the bread, broken and distributed it, and also blessed the cup. I by no means pretend that the words which are attributed to Jesus are textual. But the precise details furnished by verses 60, and following, 68, 70-71, have an original character. Later on we will again take notice of the personal hatred entertained by our author against Judas of Kerioth. The synoptics, certainly, have no affection for the latter. But the hatred of the fourth narrator is more premeditated, more personal; it comes out in two Or three places previous to the account of the betrayal: it seeks to accumulate upon the head of the culprit wrongs of which the other evangelists make no mention. § 17. Ver. 1-10 of ch. vii. are a small historical treasure. The wicked sulky humour of the brothers of Jesus, the precautions which the latter is obliged to take, are therein expressed with admirable ingenuousness. It is here that the dogmatic and symbolical explanation is completely at fault. What a dogmatic or symbolic intention to find in that short passage, which is calculated rather to give rise to the objection that has served the requirements of the apologetic Christian! Why should an author whose unique device had been Scribitur ad probandum have imagined such a fantastic detail? No, no, here we can say boldly, Scribitur ad narrandum. It is hence an original souvenir, come whence it might and from whose pen soever it had proceeded. Why say after this that the personages of our Gospel are certain types, certain characters, and not historic beings of flesh and bones? In fact, it is rather the synoptics which have an idyllic and a legendary turn; compared with them the fourth Gospel possesses the requisites of history, and a narrative which aims at being correct.

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§ 18. Now comes a dispute (vii. 11, and following) between Jesus and the Jews, to which I attach little value. Scenes of this description are hence very numerous. Our author’s species of imagination imposes itself very strongly on all that he recounts; with him such pictures must be moderately true in the colouring. The discourses put in the mouth of Jesus are conformable with the ordinary style of our author. The intervention of Nicodemus (v. 50 and following) may alone in all this possess a historic value. Verse 52 is open to objections. This verse, they say, contains an error which neither John nor even a Jew could have committed. Could the author be ignorant of the fact that Jonas and Nahum were born in Galilee? Yes, certainly, he might not know it, or, at least, he might not think of it. The historical and exegetical knowledge of the evangelists, and in general the authors of the New Testament, Saint Paul excepted, was very incomplete. In any case they wrote from memory, and were not careful as to being exact. § 19. The account of the woman taken in adultery gives room for great critical doubts. This passage is wanting in the best manuscripts; I believe, however, that it constituted part of the primitive text. The topographical data of verses 1 and 2 are correct. There is nothing in the fragment which harmonises with the style of the fourth Gospel. I think it is by reason of a misplaced scruple which originated in the minds of some false rigorists as to the apparent moral laxity of the episode, that

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would make one cut away these lines which, in view of their beauty, might be saved by attaching them to other parts of the gospel texts. In any case, if the detail of the adulterous woman did not at first form a part of the fourth Gospel, it is surely of evangelical tradition. Luke was acquainted with it, though in a different form. Papias seems to have read a similar account in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. The sentence “Let anyone amongst you who is without sin” . . . is so perfectly in accord with the spirit of Jesus, corresponds so well with other sentiments of the synoptics, that we are quite entitled to consider it as being authentic to the same extent as sentences of the synoptics. At all events, we can much more readily comprehend why such a passage may have been abridged instead of added to.

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§ 20. The theological disputes which fill up the rest of chap. viii. are without any value in the life of Jesus. The author evidently attributed his own ideas to Jesus, without either supporting them by any proof, or by any direct hearsay. How, it might be said, could an immediate disciple or a traditionist directly associated with an apostle, thus alter the words of the master? But Plato was an immediate disciple of Socrates, and he, nevertheless, made no scruple of attributing to him fictitious discourses. The “Phædon” contains historical information of the strictest verity, and discourses which have no authenticity. The tradition of facts is much easier preserved than that of discourses. An active Christian school, pervading rapidly the circle of ideas, succeeded in fifty or sixty years in totally modifying the image which had been made of Jesus, whilst it was much better able than all the others to recall certain peculiarities and the general contexture of the biographies of the reformer. The simple and gentle Christian families of Batanea, amongst whom was formed the collection of Δόγια,—small committees, which were very pure and very honest, of ebionine (the poor of God), remained most faithful to the teachings of Jesus, having piously guarded the depôt of his words, forming a little world in which there was little movement of ideas—could have at once very well preserved the timbre of the master’s voice, and be very bad authorities as to the biographical circumstances for which they cared little. The distinction which we here indicate is reproduced, moreover, in that which concerns the first Gospel. This evangelist is surely the one who gives us the best rendering of the discourses of Jesus, and yet is, as to facts, more inexact than the second. It is in vain that unity of authorship is alleged by some for the fourth Gospel. This unity I indeed recognise: but a composition compiled by a single hand may yet embrace data of very unequal value. The life of Mahomet, by Ibn-Hescham, is perfectly uniform, and yet this Life contains things which we can admit, others which we cannot. § 21. Chapters ix. and x. up to verse 21 of the latter form a paragraph commencing with a new Jerusalem miracle, that of the man being born blind, where the intention of heightening the demonstrative force of the prodigy is made to be felt in a more fatiguing manner than in anywhere else. We nevertheless discern a somewhat precise knowledge of the topography of Jerusalem (v. 7): the explanation of ειλοως is rather good. It is impossible to pretend that this miracle was evolved from the symbolical imagination of our author; for it is also found in Mark (viii. 22, and following), with a coincidence which bears a minute and bizarre characteristic (comp. John ix. 6 and Mark viii.

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23). In the discussions and discourses which follow, I acknowledge that it would be dangerous to seek an echo in the mind of Jesus. An essential characteristic of our author, which is henceforward conspicuous, is his habit of taking a miracle as a point of departure for long demonstrations. His miracles are reasoned and explained miracles. This is not the case with the synoptics. The theurgy of the latter is perfectly artless: they never retrace their steps in order to draw marvellous conclusions upon what they have related. The theurgy of the fourth Gospel, on the contrary, is reflective, set forth with all the artifices of exposition whose aim is conviction, and exploited in favour of certain sermons in which the author makes the account of his prodigies to follow. If our Gospel was limited to such fragments, the opinion which sees in it a simple thesis of theology would be perfectly established. § 22. But it is far from being limited to this. Beginning with verse 22 of chap. x. we enter into topographical details of rigorous precision, which are hardly applicable if it is maintained that in no degree does our Gospel embrace the Palestinian tradition. I sacrifice the whole of the dispute contained in verses 24-39. The journey to Perea indicated at verse 40 appears, on the contrary, to be historical. The synoptics are cognisant of this journey, to which they attach the divers incidents of Jericho.

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§ 23. We reach now a most important passage (xi. 1-45). It relates to a miracle, but a miracle which trenches upon others, and is produced under circumstances entirely different. All the other miracles are represented as having been attended with some éclat and as wrought upon obscure individuals who never again figure in evangelical history. In this instance the miracle takes place in the centre of a well-known family, and in which the author of our Gospel in particular, if he is sincere, appears to have participated. The other miracles are little aside gyrations, designed to prove by their number the divine mission of the master, but, taken by themselves, of no consequence, since in no single case are we told what took place; nor does one amongst them form an integral part of the life of Jesus. They can be treated en bloc, as I have done in my work, without shaking the edifice or breaking the continuity of events. The miracle in question here, on the contrary, is deeply concerned in the account of the last weeks of Jesus, such as we find them in our Gospel. Now we shall see that it is precisely on account of that record of these last weeks that our text possesses an incontestable superiority. This miracle makes then by itself a class apart; at first glance it seems as if it ought to be reckoned among the events in the life of Jesus. It is not the minute detail of the account which strikes me. The two other Jerusalem miracles of Jesus, of which the author of the fourth Gospel speaks, are recounted in similar fashion. If the whole of the circumstances of the resurrection of Lazarus had been the product of the imagination of the narrator, it would have proved that all these circumstances had been combined with the view (a constant habit that we have remarked in our author) that the principal fact should not remain less exceptional in evangelical history.

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The miracle of Bethany is to the Galilean miracles what the stigmata of Francis d’Assisi were to the miracles of the same saint. M. Karl Hase has composed an exquisite Life of Christ in the shades, without insisting particularly upon any of these latter; but he saw clearly that it would not have been a sincere biography if he had not descanted upon the stigmata; he has devoted to these a long chapter, giving place to all sorts of conjectures and suppositions.

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Amongst the miracles which are spread over the four compilations of the Life of Jesus, a distinction makes itself felt. Some are pure and simple legendary creations. There is nothing in the real life of Jesus which has a place in them. They are the fruit of that labour of imagination which is produced around all popular celebrities. Others have had actual facts for their foundation. Legend has not arbitrarily attributed to Jesus the healing of those possessed of devils. Doubtless, Jesus more than once was believed to make such cures. The multiplication of loaves, many cures of sickness, perhaps certain apparitions, ought to be put in the same category. These are not miracles hatched out of pure imagination, they are miracles conceived àpropos of real incidents, exaggerated and transformed. Let us absolutely discard an idea which is very widespread, that no eye-witness reports miracles. The author of the last chapter of the Acts is surely an ocular witness of the life of St. Paul. Now this writer records miracles which have taken place before him. But what am I saying? St. Paul himself speaks to us of his miracles and founds upon them the truth of his preaching. Certain miracles were permanent in the Church, and were in some sort common property. “Why,” said they, “challenge ocular testimony when people recount things which have never been heard or seen?” But then the tres socii did not know of Francis d’Assisi, for they record a multitude of things which they could not have seen or heard. In what category must we place the miracle which we are now discussing? Did some actual fact, which had been exaggerated and embellished, give rise to it? Or, again, does it possess reality of any sort? Is it a pure legend, an invention of the narrator? What complicates the difficulty is that the third Gospel, that of Luke, presents to us here consonances which are most peculiar. Luke, in fact, knew Martha and Mary; he knew at the same time they did not hail from Galilee; in fine, he knew them in a light which was strongly analogous to that under which these two personages figure in the fourth Gospel. Martha, in the latter text, plays the rôle of a servant, διηχόνει, Mary, the rôle of a forward, ardent personage. We know the admirable little episode which Luke has extracted thence. But, if we compare the passages in Luke and in the fourth Gospel, it is clearly the fourth Gospel which plays here the original part; not that Luke, or whoever the author of the third Gospel may be, may have read the fourth, but in the sense in which we find in the fourth Gospel the data which explain the legendary anecdote of the third. Was the third Gospel also cognisant of Lazarus? After having for a long time refused to admit this, I have arrived at the belief that this is very probable. Yes, I now think that the Lazarus of the parable of the rich man is but a transformation of our resurgent one. Let it not be said that in thus being metamorphosed it has been much changed in the process. In this respect everything is possible, since the repast of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, who play a great part in the fourth Gospel and who are placed by the synoptics in the house of

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Simon the Leper, becomes in the third Gospel a repast at the house of Simon the Pharisee, where there figures a fisherwoman who, like Mary in our Gospel, anoints the feet of Jesus and wipes them with her hair. What thread holds together this inextricable labyrinth of broken and patched-up legends? For my part, I admit the family of Bethany to have had a real existence, and to have given rise in certain branches of the Christian tradition to a cycle of legends One of these données legendaires was that Jesus had called back to life the head even of the family. Certainly, such an “on dit” may have originated after the death of Jesus. I do not, however, regard as impossible that one real fact in his life may not have given it birth. The silence of the synoptics in regard to the Bethany episode does not greatly astonish me. The synoptics were very badly informed as to all that which immediately preceded the last weeks of Jesus. It was not only the Bethany incident which was lacking to them, but also the whole period of the life of Jesus to which this incident relates. We are here brought back once more to that fundamental point, that of knowing which of the two accounts is the true one, the one which makes Galilee the theatre of all the activity of Jesus, or the one which makes Jesus pass a part of his life at Jerusalem. I know what has been attempted here by means of symbolical explanation. The miracle of Bethany, according to the learned and profound defenders of this system, signifies that Jesus is to believers in a spiritual sense the resurrection and the life. Lazarus is the poor man, the ebion resurrected by Christ from his state of spiritual death. It was on account of this, the sense of a popular reawakening which came to perplex them, that the official classes decided on making Jesus perish. This is the theory upon which the best theologians that the Church has possessed in our days repose. In my opinion it is an erroneous one. That our Gospel is dogmatic I recognise, but it is by no means allegorical. The really allegorical writings of the first centuries, the Apocalypse, the Pastor of Hermas, the Pista Sophia, possess quite a different charm. At bottom of all this symbolism is the companion of the mysticism of M. Strauss; the expedients of theologians at their wit’s end, seeking by means of allegory, mysticism, and symbolism to escape from their dilemma. For us, who are seeking only for pure historic truth without a shade of either theological or political arrière pensée, we have more scope. For us, all this is not mythical, all this is not symbolical, all this is sectarian and popular history. It must necessarily provoke grave distrust, but no party offers fitting explanations.

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Divers examples are pleaded. The Alexandrian school, such as we know it through the writings of Philo, exercised unquestionably a strong influence upon the theology of the apostolic century. Now, do we not see this school press its taste for symbolism to the verge of folly? The whole of the Old Testament became in its hands only a pretext for subtle allegories. Are not the Talmud and the Midraschim full of pretended historical teachings which have been stripped of all truth, and which can only be explained by religious tenets or by the desire of originating arguments in support of a thesis? But this is not the case with the fourth Gospel. The principles of criticism which it is proper to apply to the Talmud and the Midraschim, cannot be transferred to a composition altogether at variance with the likings of the Palestinian Jews. Philo discerns allegories in the ancient texts;

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he does not invent allegorical texts. An old sacred book exists; the plain interpretation of this text embarrasses or is insufficient; we seek in it its hidden and mysterious meaning; examples such as these abound. But when we write an extended historical narrative with the arrière pensée of concealing in it symbolical finesse which was only to be discovered seventeen hundred years later, this is what is but seldom seen. It is the partisans of the allegorical explanation who, in this case, play the part of Alexandrians. It is they who, embarrassed by the fourth Gospel, treat it just as Philo treated Genesis, just as the Jewish and Christian tradition has treated the Canticle of Canticles. For us simple historians who admit first of all (1) That the question here is only one of legends, in parts true, in parts false, like all legends; (2) that the reality which served as a basis for these legends was beautiful, splendid, touching and delicious, but, like all things human, greatly marred by weaknesses which would disgust us if we saw them—for us, I say, there are no difficulties of this kind. There are texts, and the question is to extract the largest amount of historic truth possible, that is all.

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Another very delicate question presents itself here. In the miracles of the second class, in those which owe their origin to a real fact in the life of Jesus, is there not mixed up with these sometimes a little complaisance? I believe so, or at least I declare that if this were not so, nascent Christianity has been an event absolutely without parallel. This event has been the greatest and the most beautiful amongst facts of the same species; but it has not escaped the common laws which must govern the facts of religious history. There does not exist a single great religious creation which does not embrace a little of that which would now be denominated—fraud. The ancient religions were full of it. Few of the institutions of the past have a greater right to be recognised by us than the oracle of Delphi, seeing that that oracle eminently contributed to save Greece, the mother of all science and of all art. The enlightened patriotism of Pythia was not more than once or twice found at fault She was ever the mouthpiece of the sages who were endowed with the justest sentiment of Greek interests. These sages, who have founded civilisation, made no scruple about consulting this virgin, who was reputed to be inspired by the gods. Moses, if the traditions we have regarding him contain anything historical, made use of natural events, such as tempests and fortuitous plagues, to further his designs and his policy. All the ancient legislators gave their laws as if inspired by a god. All the prophets, without any scruple, made it appear as if their sublime invectives were prompted by the Eternal. Buddhism, which is full of such high religious sentiment, saw permanent miracles, which could not be produced of themselves. The most artless country of Europe, the Tyrol, is the country of the stigmatics, the fashion of which is only possible by means of a little trickery. The history of the Church, so respectable in its way, is full of false relics and false miracles. Was there ever a religious movement more ingenuous than that of Francis d’Assisi? And yet the whole history of the stigmata is inexplicable without some connivance on the part of the intimate companions of the saint. “People do not prepare,” I have been told, “sophistical miracles, when people believe they everywhere are truth.” This is an error. It is when people believe in miracles that they are drawn

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away, without doubting in them, to augment their number. We can with difficulty, with our consciences clear and precise, figure to ourselves the bizarre illusions by which these obscure but powerful consciences, playing with the supernatural, if I might say so, would glide incessantly from credulity to complaisance, and from complaisance to credulity. What can be more striking than the mania spread at certain epochs of attributing to the ancient sages the apocryphal books? The apocrypha of the Old Testament, the writings of the hermetic cycle, the innumerable pseudo-epigraphic productions of India, responded to a great elevation of religious sentiments. People believed they were doing honour to the old sages in attributing to them these productions; people became their collaborators without thinking that the day would come when that would be denominated a fraud. The authors of the Middle Age legends, magnifying in cold blood upon their desks the miracles of their saints, would also be surprised in hearing themselves called impostors. The eighteenth century would describe all religious history as imposture. The critic of our times has totally discarded that explanation. The term is certainly improper; but to what extent have the most beautiful souls of the past not aided in their own illusions, or in those of which they have been the object, is what a reflective age can no longer comprehend. For one to understand this thoroughly one must have been in the East. In the East passion is the soul of everything and credulity has no limits. We can never get at the bottom of the mind of an Oriental; because this bottom often does not exist for himself. Passion on one side, credulity on the other, make imposture. So no great movement is produced in this country without some fraud. We no longer know how to desire or to hate; cunning finds no longer a place in our society, for she has no longer an object. But exaltation is a passion which does not accommodate itself to this reserve, this indifference to consequences which is the basis of our sincerity. When absolute natures will embrace a thesis after the Oriental manner, they are no longer restrainable, and nothing, the day even when illusion becomes necessary, is too dear to them. Is that the fault of sincerity? Not at all; it is because conviction is most keenly felt by such spirits, because they are incapable of returning upon themselves, that they have few scruples. To call this deceit is inexact; it is precisely the force with which they embrace their idea which extinguishes in them every other thought, for the end appears so absolutely good to them that everything which can serve it seems in their view legitimate. Fanaticism is always sincere in respect of its thesis, but an impostor in respect of the choice of methods of demonstration. If the public do not at first accept the reason which it believes to be good, that is to say, its affirmations, it has recourse to reasons which it knows to be bad. With it to believe is everything: the motives which induce belief are of but little importance. Who among us would accept the responsibility for all the arguments through which was wrought the conversion of the barbarians? In our days people only employ fraudulent devices when they are aware of the falsity of that which is maintained. Formerly, the employment of these means presupposed a profound conviction, and was allied to the highest moral elevation. Our method of criticism is different. It professes to expose falsehood and to discover the truth through the network of deceptions and illusions of every sort which envelop history; while in face of such facts we experience a sentiment of repugnance. But do not let us

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impose our delicate scruples upon those whose duty it has been to direct poor humanity. Between the general truth of a principle and the truth of a meagre fact the man of faith never hesitates. We had, at the time of the coronation of Charles X., the most authentic proofs of the destruction of the ampulla. The ampulla was found again, inasmuch as it was necessary. On the one side, there was the salvation of royalty, so at least it was believed; on the other, the question of the authenticity of some drops of oil; no good royalist hesitated.

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To summarise amongst the miracles which the Gospels attribute to Jesus, there are some purely legendary. But there were probably some of them in which he consented to play a part. Let us put to one side the fourth Gospel. The Gospel of Mark, the most original of the synoptics, is the life of an exorcist and thaumaturgist. Some details, as in Luke viii. 45, 46, are not less sad than those which, in the episode of Lazarus, lead the theologians to exclaim in a loud voice against the myths and symbols. I do not hold to the reality of the miracle in question. The hypothesis which I propose in the present edition reduces everything to a misapprehension. I desire solely to show that this fantastic episode of the fourth Gospel is not a decisive objection against the historic value of the said Gospel. In each part of the “Life of Jesus,” on which we are now about to enter, the fourth Gospel contains many special points of information, which are infinitely superior to any in the synoptics. Now it is singular that the account of the resurrection of Lazarus is joined to these last pages by hooks so slender that, if we were to reject it as being imaginary, the whole edifice of the last weeks of the “Life of Jesus,” which are so solid in our Gospel, would crumble at a stroke. § 24. Verses 46-54 of chapter xi. introduce us to a first secret council held by the Jews, in order to put Jesus to death, as a direct consequence of the miracle of Bethany. People might say that this bond was an artificial one. Bat why? Does not our narrator more nearly approach probability than the synoptics, which make the conspiracy against Jesus begin only two or three days before his death? The whole account we have just examined is otherwise very natural; it is terminated by a circumstance which was not surely invented—the flight of Jesus to Ephraim or Ephron. What allegorical meaning is to be found in that? Is it not evident that our author possessed data totally unknown to the synoptics, which latter, caring little about composing a regular biography, compressed into a few days the last six months of the life of Jesus? Verses 55, 56 present a chronological arrangement which is very satisfactory. § 25. Again (xii. 1 and following) is an episode common to all the narratives, except to Luke, who has, in this instance, arranged his facts in a wholly different fashion; we mean the feast of Bethany. We have seen in the “six days” of verse xii. 1 a symbolical reason. I mean the intention of making the day of the unction coincide with the 10th of Nisan, the day on which the paschal lambs should have been selected (Exodus xii. 3, 6) The latter is much less clearly indicated. At chapter xix. v. 36, where we can penetrate the design of assimilating Jesus to the paschal lamb, the

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author is much more explicit. As regards the incidents of the feast, is it from pure fancy that our author here enters into details which were unknown to Matthew and to Mark? I do not think so. It is that he was better acquainted with them. The woman who is not named in the synoptics is Mary of Bethany. The disciple who makes the observation is Judas, and the name of this disciple immediately leads the narrator into lively personal abuse (v. 6). This v. 6 breathes strongly the hatred of two co-disciples whc have lived long together, who are deeply embittered against one another, and who have followed opposite paths. And this Μάρθα διηχόνει explains so fully an episode of Luke! And the hair used to wipe the feet of Jesus, is it not also found in Luke! All leads to the belief that we here hit upon an original source, which serves as a key to the other less skilfully constructed narratives. I do not deny the strangeness of verses 1, 2, 9-11, 17, 18, which return three times to the resurrection of Lazarus and improve upon xi. 45 and following. On the contrary, I see nothing at all unlikely in the design imputed to the family of Bethany of awakening the indifference of the Jerusalemites by exterior demonstrations which were unknown to the simple Galilean. It must not be said such and such suppositions are false, because they are shocking and pitiful. If people were to see the obverse of the greatest events which take place in this world, of those which enchant us, of those amidst which we live, nothing would be accomplished. Let us remark, moreover, that the actors here are women who have imbibed that unequalled love which Jesus knew how to inspire around him; women who believed they were living in the bosom of the marvellous, who felt convinced that Jesus had done innumerable prodigies, and who were placed face to face with incredulous people, who railed at him whom they loved. If a scruple could have arisen in their soul, the recollection of other miracles of Jesus would have silenced it. Suppose that a legitimist dame was reduced to the extremity of assisting heaven to save Joas? Would she hesitate? Passion imputes always to God anger and selfishness; it enters into the councils of God, makes him speak, urges him to act. People are sure of being in the right; they make use of God in advocating their cause, in supplementing the zeal which he does not evince. § 26. The account of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem (xii. 12 and following) is conformable with the synoptics. Yet that which astonishes us here is the imperturbable appeal to the miracle of Bethany (v. 17, 18). It was on account of that miracle that the Pharisees decided on the death of Jesus; it was that miracle which made the Jerusalemites think; it was that miracle which was the cause of the triumph of Bethphage. I should like to put the whole of this to the account of an author of the year 150, who was ignorant of the real character and the artless innocence of the Galilean movement. But first let us guard against believing that innocence and conscientious illusion were likewise excluded. It is in the fugitive sensations of the soul of the woman of the East that we must here seek for analogies. Passion, ingenuousness, abandon, tenderness, perfidy, poetry and crime, frivolity and depth, sincerity and deceit, alternate in these sorts of natures, and baffle any absolute estimation. The critic ought in such circumstances to steer clear of every exclusive system. The mythical explanation is often true; but for all that the historical explanation ought not to be banished. Now look at verses xii. 20 and following, which contain an undoubted historical secret.

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First, it is the obscure and isolated episode of the Hellenes which is addressed to Philip. Remark the part played by this apostle; our Gospel is the only one which knows anything of it. Remark, especially, how the whole of this passage is exempt from any dogmatical or symbolical design. To say that these Greeks are reasonable beings, like Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, is most gratuitous. The discourses which they hold (v. 23 et seq.) have no relation to them. The aphorism in v. 25 is again met with in the synoptics; it is evidently authentic. Our author does not copy it from the synoptics. Again, even when he makes Jesus speak, the author of the fourth Gospel now and then follows a tradition.

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§ 27. Verses 27 et seq. possess much importance; Jesus is troubled. He prays his Father “to deliver him from this hour.” Then he resigns himself. A voice makes itself heard from heaven, or better, according to other accounts, an angel speaks to Jesus. What does this episode import? There is no doubt that it is the parallel of the agony of Gethsemane, which, to be sure, is omitted by our author at the place where it should have been found—after the Last Supper. Remark the incident of the apparition of an angel, which Luke alone knew of. There is one more feature to add to the series of those agreements between the third Gospel and the fourth, which constitute for evangelical criticism a fact of so great importance. But the existence of two versions so different from an incident which happened during the last days of Jesus, which is certainly historic, constitute a fact much more decisive still. Which merits here the preference? The fourth Gospel, in my opinion. First, the narrative of this Gospel is less dramatic, less skilfully adjusted and constructed, less beautiful, I admit. In the second place, the moment where the fourth Gospel introduces the episode in question is much more convenient. The synoptics report the scene of Gethsemane, along with other solemn circumstances, as taking place on the last evening of Jesus, in consequence of the tendency we have of accumulating our recollections upon the last hours of a beloved person. These circumstances placed thus have, moreover, more effect. But, to admit the order of the synoptics, we must suppose that Jesus knew with certainty the day on which he should die. We thus generally find the synoptics yielding oftentimes to the desire for an arrangement which shall proceed with a certain art. Art divine, whence has emerged the most beautiful popular poem that has ever been written—the Passion But undoubtedly in such a case the historical critic will always prefer the version which is least dramatic. It is this principle which makes us place Matthew after Mark, and Luke after Matthew, when the question is one of determining the historical value of a synoptical account. § 28. We have now reached the last evening (chapter xiii). The farewell repast is recounted, as in the synoptics, at great length. But the surprising thing is that the capital circumstance of this repast, as reported in the synoptics, is omitted. There is not a word about the establishment of the Lord’s Supper, which holds such an important position in the preoccupations of our author (chap. vi.). And this is as though the narration took here a reflective turn (v. 1), as though the author insists upon the tender and mystic signification of the last feast. What does that silence mean? Here, as in

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the episode of Gethsemane, I see in such an omission an idea of superiority on the part of the fourth Gospel. To pretend that Jesus reserved for the Friday evening so important a ritual institution is to believe in a sort of miracle, to suppose that he was certain to die the next day. Although Jesus (it is permissible to believe) might have presentiments, we cannot, apart from the supernatural, admit such distinctness in his previsions. I hence think that it was by means of a displacement, very easy to explain, that the disciples centred all their eucharistic remembrances upon the Last Supper. Jesus on this occasion, as he had done many times before, practised the habitual Jewish rite at table, in attaching to it the mystical sense when it was convenient, and, as the last supper could be better recalled to mind than others, people fell into accord in referring to it this fundamental usage. The authority of St. Paul, which is here in accord with the synoptics, possesses no preeminence, seeing that he had not been present at the repast; it proves only that which no one can doubt, that a great part of tradition fixed the establishment of the sacred memorial on the eve of his death. This tradition answers to the generally accepted tradition that on the said evening Jesus substituted a new Eastern for the Jewish Passover; it supports another opinion of the synoptics, which is contradicted by the fourth Gospel, to wit, that Jesus made with his disciples the paschal feast, and died, consequently, on the morrow of the day when people eat the paschal lamb. What is very remarkable is, that the fourth Gospel, in place of the eucharist, gives another rite, the washing of feet, as having been the proper institution of the last supper. Doubtless, our evangelist has for once yielded to the natural tendency of reporting on the last evening the solemn acts in the life of Jesus. The hatred of our author against Judas unmasks itself more and more, because of a strong prepossession which made him speak of this unhappy man, even when he is not directly in evidence (verses 2, 10, 11, 18). In the account of the announcement that Jesus had committed treason, the great superiority of our text again reveals itself. The same anecdote is to be found in the synoptics, but is presented in an improbable and contradictory manner. In the synoptics Jesus is represented as designating the traitor in indirect language, and yet the expressions he makes use of become known to all. Our fourth Gospel explains clearly this little misapprehension. According to it, Jesus privately confided his presentiment to a disciple who lay upon his bosom, who, in turn, communicated to Peter what Jesus had said to him. In regard to the others present, Jesus shrouds himself in mystery, and no one has any suspicion of what has passed between him and Judas. The little details of the account, the broken bread, the glimpse which verse 29 gives us of the inner life of the sect, are also characterised by justness, and when we see the author saying quite clearly, “I was there,” one is inclined to think that he speaks the truth. Allegory is essentially cold and stiff. The persons in it are of brass, and are moved simultaneously. It is not so with our author. That which is striking in his narrative is its life, its realism. We perceive a passionate man, who is jealous because he loves much, and susceptible, a man who resembles the Orientals of our days. Fictitious compositions never possess this personal trait; there is something vague and awkward which always betrays their origin.

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§ 29. Now follow long discourses which possess a certain beauty, but which, there can be no doubt, contain nothing traditional. These are fragments of theology and rhetoric, having no analogy to the discourses of Jesus in the synoptic Gospels, and to which we must not attribute any more historical reality than to the discourses which Plato puts into the mouth of his master at the moment of dying. Nothing must be concluded hence as to the value of the context. The discourses inserted by Sallust and Titus Livy in their histories are assuredly fictions; but are we to conclude from this that the basis of these histories is fictitious ) It is probable, moreover, that in these homilies attributed to Jesus there is one feature which is of historic value, Thus, the promise of the Holy Spirit (xiv. 16 et seq. 26; xv. 26; xvi. 7, 13), which Mark and Matthew do not give in a direct form, are found in Luke (xxiv. 49), and correspond with a statement in Acts (ii.) which must have had some reality. In any case, this idea of a spirit which Jesus will send from the bosom of his Father, when he shall have quitted the earth, is another instance of agreement with Luke (Acts i. and ii.). The idea of the Holy Spirit concerned as Mediator (Paraclete) is also found, especially in Luke (xii. 11, 12; comp. Matthew x. 20; Mark xiii. 11). The scheme of the Ascension, explained by Luke, finds its obscure germ in our author (xvi. 7). § 30. After the Supper our evangelist, like the synoptics, conducts Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane (chap. xviii.). The topography of v. 1 is exact. Τõνχέδρον may be an inadvertence of the copyist, or, if we might say so, of the editor, of him who prepared the narrative for the public. The same error is to be found in the Septuagint (2 Sam. xv. 23). The Codex Sinaïticus bears τοῦχέδρου. The true reading τοῦχέδρόυ would appear strange to people who did not know Greek. I have elsewhere already explained the omission of the agony at this particular moment, an omission in which I see an argument in favour of the account of the fourth Gospel. The arrest of Jesus is also much better told. The incident of the kissing of Judas, so touching, so beautiful, but which has a legendary odour, is passed over in silence. Jesus names himself and frees himself. This is, indeed, a very useless miracle (v. 6); but the incident of Jesus requesting of them to let the disciples go away which acompanied it (v. 8) is plausible. It is quite possible that the latter may have been at first arrested with their master. Faithful to his habits of precision—whether real or apparent—our author knew the names of the two persons who were for the moment engaged in a struggle, from which resulted a slight effusion of blood. But here follows the proof the most sensible which our author possesses on the Passion—evidence much more original than that of the other evangelists. He alone causes Jesus to be conducted to Annas or Hanan, the father-in-law of Kaïaphas. Josephus confirms the correctness of this account, and Luke seems here again to gather a sort of echo of our Gospel. Hanan had for a long time been deposed from the Pontificate; but, during the remainder of his long life, he in reality retained the power, which he exercised under the names of his son and sons-in-law, who

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were successively raised to the sacerdotal sovereignty. This circumstance, which the two first synoptics, very poorly informed as to matters at Jerusalem, cast no doubt upon, is a trait de lumière. How could a sectary of the second century, writing in Egypt or Asia Minor, have known this? The too oft repeated opinion that our author knew nothing of Jerusalem or of matters Jewish appears to me to be utterly destitute of foundation. § 32. The recital of the denials of Peter possesses the same superiority. The whole episode, in our author, is more circumstantial and better explained. The details of v. 16 contain a marvellous amount of truth. Far from seeing in them an improbability, I discover in them a mark of simplicity, resembling that of a provincial who boasts of having influence in a minister’s office because he is acquainted with a doorkeeper or a domestic. Will it also be maintained that there is here some mystic allegory? A rhetorician coming a long time after the events, and composing his work from accepted texts, would not have written like that. Look at the synoptics: everything is ingeniously combined for the sake of effect. Certainly a multitude of the details of the fourth Gospel smell also of an artificial arrangement, but others seem indeed only to be there because they are true, being so many accidents and sharp angles.

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§ 33. We come now to Pilate. The incident of v. 28 has all the appearance of truth. Our author is at variance with the synoptics as to the day on which Jesus died. According to him it was on the day on which the paschal Iamb was eaten, the 14th of Nisan; according to the synoptics it was the day following. The error in the synoptics might be quite naturally explained by the desire which people had to make of the last supper the paschal feast, so as to give it more solemnity and to furnish a motive for the celebration of the Jewish Passover. True, it may also be said that the fourth Gospel has placed the death on the day on which the paschal lamb was eaten, so as to inculcate the idea that Jesus himself was the veritable paschal lamb, an idea which he in one place avows (xix. 36), and which, perhaps, is to be met with in other passages (xii. 1, xix. 29). That which, however, clearly proves that the synoptics here do violence to historical reality is that they add a circumstance drawn from the ordinary ceremony of the Passover, and not certainly from a positive tradition. I refer to the singing of psalms. Certain incidents reported by the synoptics—the fact, for example, of Simon of Cyrene returning from his labours in the fields—presuppose thus that the crucifixion took place before the commencement of the sacred period. Finally, it cannot be conceived that the Jews should provoke an execution, or even that the Romans should bring about one, on a day so solemn. § 34. I abandon the conversations of Pilate and Jesus, composed evidently from mere conjecture, yet with an exact enough sentiment as regards the situation of the two persons. The question in v. 9 has, however, its echo in Luke, and, as usual, that insignificant detail becomes in the third Gospel wholly legendary. The topography and the Hebrew are good counterfeits. The whole scene presents great historical exactness, even though the language imputed to the personages is in the narrator’s style. What concerns Barabbas, however, is, in the synoptics, more satisfactory. Our author doubtless

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is mistaken in making of this man a thief. The synoptics are much nearer probability in representing him to be a personage beloved by the people and arrested for causing a riot. As regards the flagellation, Mark and Matthew contain also a little shade more of information. In their account we see better that flagellation was a simple preliminary of crucifixion, ordained by common law. The author of the fourth Gospel does not seem to doubt that flagellation presupposed an irrevocable condemnation. Once more, he proceeds in perfect accord with Luke (xxiii. 16), and like the latter seeks in everything which concerns Pilate to exculpate the Roman authority and to inculpate the Jews.

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§ 35. The minute details of the seamless coat furnish also an argument against our author. It might be said that his false conception of it arose from his having eagerly seized the parallelism of the passage in Psalm xxii. which he cites. We have an example of the same kind of error in Matt. xxi. 2-5. Perhaps also the seamless vestment of the high priest (Josephus, Ant. III. vii. 4) has something to do with all this. We touch now upon the greatest objection against the veracity of our author. Matthew and Mark make only the Galilean women, the inseparable companions of Jesus, assist at the crucifixion. Luke adds to those women all the people of the acquaintance of Jesus (πάντ ες οιγνοστοι αὐτῷ), an addition which is at variance with the two first Gospels, and with what Justin tells us of the defection amongst the disciples (οι γνὸρι μοιαὐτοῦ παντες) after the crucifixion. At all events, in the three first Gospels, this group of the faithful kept at a distance from the cross, and did not hold converse with Jesus. Our Gospel adds three essential details. 1st. Mary, the mother of Jesus, assisted at the crucifixion. 2nd. John also assisted at it. 3rd. They all stood at the foot of the cross; Jesus conversed with them, and confided the care of his mother to his favourite disciple. This is most singular. “The mother of the sons of Zebedee,” or Salome, whom Matthew and Mark place amongst the faithful women, is deprived of these honours in the recital which is alleged to have been written by her son. The attributing of the name of Mary to the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is also a most singular thing. Here I am wholly with the synoptics. “That the knowledge of the touching presence of Mary near the cross, and the filial functions which Jesus entrusted to John,” says M. Strauss, “should be forgotten, is that which is indeed less easy of comprehension than it is to comprehend why all this should have been invented by the circle from which the fourth Gospel emanated. Is it to be thought that it was a circle in which the Apostle John enjoyed especial veneration, the proof of which we see in the care with which our Gospel chooses him from amongst the three most esteemed confidants of Jesus, in order to make of him the one apostle well-beloved? henceforth, is it possible to find anything which puts the seal to this predilection in a more striking manner than the solemn declaration of Jesus, who, by a last act of his will, bequeaths to John his mother, as the most precious legacy, substituted him thus in his place, and made him ‘Vicar of Christ,’ without thinking whether it was natural to ask this, both in respect of Mary and of the apostle well-beloved, and whether it was possible when they were far removed from the side of Jesus at that supreme moment?”

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This is very happily put. It completely proves that our author had more than one arrière pensée, that he had not the sincerity and the absolute naïvete of Matthew and Mark. But it is, at the same time, the most apparent indication of the origin of the work we are discussing. In comparing this passage with others where the privileges “of the disciple whom Jesus loved” are mentioned, there can be no doubt as to the Christian family whence this book originated. This does not prove, however, that an immediate disciple of Jesus wrote it; yet it proves that he who held the pen believed, or wished it to be believed, that he recorded the recollections of an immediate disciple of Jesus, and that his intention was to exalt the prerogative of that disciple, and show that he had been what neither James nor Peter had been—a true brother, a spiritual brother of Jesus. In any case, this new accord which we have found between our text and the Gospel is very remarkable. The words of Luke, in fact (xxiii. 49), do not exactly exclude Mary from the foot of the cross, and the author of the Acts, who is in truth the same person as the author of the third Gospel, places Mary amongst the disciples at Jerusalem a few days after the death of Jesus. But this is of small historical value, for the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts (at least of the first chapters of the latter work) is the least authoritative traditionist of all the New Testament. Still, it establishes more and more this fact, in my eyes a very serious one, that the Johannine tradition was not an isolated accident in the primitive Church, that many traditions belonging to the school of John had become known or were common to other Christian churches, even before the compilation of the fourth Gospel, or at least independently of it. For to suppose that the author of the fourth Gospel had the Gospel of Luke under his eyes when composing his work, is what appears to me most improbable. § 37. Our text recovers its superiority in that which concerns the potion offered on the cross. This circumstance, with respect to which Matthew and Mark express themselves with obscurity, which in Luke is entirely transformed (xxiii. 36), finds here its true explanation. It is Jesus himself who, burning with thirst, asks for something to drink. A soldier offers him, on a sponge, a little acidulated water. This is very natural and most consistent with ancient usage. It’s presented neither in derision nor to aggravate his sufferings, as the synoptics would have us believe. It is a humane action on the part of the soldier.

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§ 38. Our Gospel omits the earthquake and the phenomena which the most widely circulated legend would have it believed accompanied the last supper of Jesus. § 39. The episode of the crurifragium (the breaking of Jesus’ legs) and the lance thrust, which are peculiar to our Gospel, is certainly possible. The ancient Jewish and Roman customs, contained in v. 31, are exact. The crurifragium was indeed a Roman punishment. As to the medicine spoken of in v. 34, it is attributable to several sources. But, even though our author should give proof here of an imperfect physiology, no inference can be drawn from this. I am aware that the lance thrust may have been invented to accord with Zechariah xii. 10, comp. Apoc. i. 7. I recognise that the à priori symbolical explanation was very well adapted to the circumstance that Jesus was not subjected

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to the crurifragium. The author wishes to assimilate Jesus to the paschal lamb, and it suits his thesis very well indeed that the bones of Jesus were not broken. Nor was he perhaps displeased that a little hyssop should have been introduced. As for the water and the blood which flowed from his side, it is equally easy to discover their dogmatic value. Is it to be said that the author of the fourth Gospel invented these details? I can very well understand people who reason thus: Jesus, as Messiah, was to be born at Bethlehem; the writings, most improbable in other respects, which make his parents go to Bethlehem on the eve of his birth, belong to fiction. But can it also be said that it was written beforehand that not a bone of Jesus was to be broken, and that water and blood should flow from his side? Is it not admissible that such circumstances really happened, circumstances that the subtle mind of the disciples would instantly remark, and whence appeared profound providential combinations? I know of nothing more instructive in this respect than in the comparison of that which concerns the potion offered to Jesus before the crucifixion in Mark (xv. 23) and in Matthew (xxvii. 34). Mark here, as almost always, is the most original. According to his account, Jesus is offered, as was customary, an aromatic wine, to render him insensible. There is nothing Messiani about that. According to Matthew, the aromatic wine was compounded of gall and vinegar. In this manner was brought about a pretended fulfilment of the 22nd verse of Psalm lxix. Here then is one instance where we can attach to a fact a process of transformation. If we had only the narrative of Matthew, we would be authorised in believing that that circumstance was of pure invention, that it was created to obtain the realisation of a passage alleged to have reference to the Messiah. But the account of Mark indeed proves that there was in this instance an actual fact, and that it has been warped to suit the requirements of the Messianic interpretation. § 40. At the burial, Nicodemus, a personage peculiar to our Gospel, reappears. It must be observed that this personage plays no part in the early apostolic history. Moreover, as regards the Twelve Apostles, seven or eight of them disappeared completely after the death of Jesus. It seems that there were near Jesus groups which looked upon him in very different lights, and some of which do not figure in the history of the Church. The author of the teachings which form the basis of our Gospel has been able to recognise friends of Jesus who are not mentioned in the synoptics, who lived in a less extended world. The evangelical personnel was very different in the different Christian families. James, brother of the Lord, a man in St. Paul’s eyes of the first importance, plays only a very secondary part in the eyes of the synoptics and of our author. Mary Magdalene, who, according to the four texts, played a capital part in the resurrection, is not included by St. Paul in the number of the persons to whom Jesus showed himself, and after that solemn hour she is no more heard of It was the same in the case of Babism. In the accounts which we possess of the origins of that religion, and which are in complete accord, the personnel differs quite sensibly. Each witness has observed the fact from his own point of view, and has attributed a special importance to such of the founders as were known to him. Observe a new textual coincidence between Luke (xx3 53) and John (xix. 41).

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§ 41. An important fact arises from the discussion which have just instituted. Our Gospel, disagreeing very considerably with the synoptics up to the last week of Jesus, is throughout the whole account of the Passion in general accord with them. We cannot say, however, that it has borrowed from them, for, on the contrary, it sails perfectly dear of them, it has not copied any of their expressions. If the author of the fourth Gospel had read some account of the synoptic tradition, which is very possible, it must at least be said that he did not have it before him when he wrote. What is to be concluded hence? That he had a tradition of his own, a tradition similar to that of the synoptics, although between the two we have only intrinsic reasons to guide us in forming a decision. A fictitious narrative, a sort of à priori gospel, written in the second century, would not have had that character. Like as with the apocryphas, the author has copied the synoptics, but has amplified them to suit his own tastes. The position of the Johannine writer is that of an author who was not ignorant of what had already been written on the subject he was treating, who approved many of the things which had been said, but who believed himself to be possessed of superior information, and advanced the latter without disturbing himself about others. This may be compared to what we know of the Gospel of Marcion. Marcion wrote a gospel under similar conditions to those which had been attributed to the author of the fourth Gospel. But observe the difference: Marcion had a sort of agreement or had an extract made setting forth certain views. A composition of the same description as that imputed to the author of our gospel, if that author lived in the second century and wrote with the end in view that is alleged of him, is absolutely without precedent. That is neither the eclectic method and conciliation of Tatian and of Marcion, nor the amplification pasticcio of the apocryphal Gospels, nor the wholly arbitrary reverie, without historical basis, of the Pista Sophia. To get rid of certain dogmatic difficulties, one falls into verbal historical difficulties which are destitute of meaning. § 42. The agreement of our Gospel with the synoptics, which strikes one in the narrative of the Passion, is hardly discernible, at least in Matthew, in that of the resurrection and what follows. But here again I think our author much more near the truth. According to it, Mary Magdalene alone goes first to the tomb; alone, she is the first messenger of the resurrection, which accords with the finale of the Gospel of Mark (xvi. 9, et seq.). On the news brought by Mary Magdalene, Peter and John go to the tomb; another most remarkable consonance, even in the expression and the little details, with Luke (xxiv. 1, 2, 12, 24) and with the finale of Mark, preserved in the manuscript L and in the margin of the Philoxenian version. The two first evangelists do not speak of a visit of the apostles to the tomb. A decisive authority gives here the advantage to the tradition of Luke and of the Johannine writer; we refer to St. Paul. According to the first epistle to the Corinthians, he writes about the year 57, and surely a good while before the Gospels of Luke and John the first apparition of the resurrected Jesus was seen by Cephas. True, this assertion of Paul coincides better with the account of Luke, who does not mention Peter, than with the account of the fourth Gospel, according to which the well-beloved apostle should have accompanied Peter. But the first chapters of the Acts constantly present Peter and John to us as inseparable companions. It is probable that

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at this decisive moment they were together, that they were together when they were informed of the event, and that they ran together. The finale of Mark in the manuscript L makes use of a more vague formula: οι περὶ τον Πέτρου.

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The ingenuous personal characteristics which are presented here in the narrative of our author are almost sign-manuals. The determined adversaries of the authenticity of the fourth Gospel impose on themselves a difficult task in forcing themselves to see in these characteristics the artifices of a forger. The design of the author to place himself alongside or before Peter in important circumstances (i. 35, et seq.; xiii. 23, et seq.; xviii. 15, et seq.) is altogether remarkable. If one would give to it the meaning desired, one would say that the compilation of these passages could be but little posterior to the death of John. The account of the first goings and comings of Sunday morning, which are somewhat confused in the synoptics, is in our author perfectly distinct. Yes, here the tradition is original, the disjointed members of which have been arranged in the three synoptics in three different manners, but wholly inferior, in point of likelihood, to the scheme of the fourth Gospel. Remark, that at the decisive moment on Sunday morning, the disciple alleged to be the author does not attribute to himself any particular vision. A forger, writing without regard to tradition for the purpose of creating the chief of a school, would not have committed the blunder, in the midst of a rolling fire of apparitions, with which latter every tradition of these first days was full, of attributing it to a favourite disciple, just as it has been done in the case of James. Note again a coincidence between Luke (xxiv. 4) and John (xx. 12, 13). Matthew and Mark have only an angel at this moment. Verse v. 9 is un trait de lumiere. The synoptics are here destitute of all credulity, when they pretend that Jesus had predicted his resurrection. § 43. The apparition which follows, in our author—we mean the one which takes place before the apostles assemble on Sunday evening—coincides well with the account of Paul. But it is with Luke that the agreements here become striking and decisive. Not only does the apparition take place on the same date in presence of the same people, but also the words pronounced by Jesus are the same; the circumstance of Jesus showing his feet and his hands is lightly transposed, but it is recognisable as a part of the other, whilst it is wanting in the two first synoptics. The Gospel of the Hebrews marches here in accord with the third and fourth Gospels. “But why,” it might be said, “hold to the narrative of an eyewitness, a narrative which embraces manifest impossibilities? He who does not admit the miracle, and admits the authenticity of the fourth Gospel, is he not forced to regard as an imposture the so formal assurance of verses 30, 31?” Certainly not. St. Paul also affirms that he saw Jesus, and yet we do not reject either the authenticity of the first chapter to the Corinthians or the veracity of St. Paul. § 44. A peculiarity of our Gospel is that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit occurs on the very evening of the resurrection (xx. 22). Luke (Acts ii. et seq.) places this event after the ascension. It

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is nevertheless remarkable that the verse John xx. 22 has its parallel in Luke xxiv. 49. Only the contour of the passage in Luke is made to be undecided, so as not to contradict the account of the Acts (ii. 1 et seq.). Here again, the third and fourth Gospels communicate with one another through a kind of secret channel. § 45. Like all critics, I make the compilation of the fourth Gospel terminate at the end of chapter xx. Chapter xxi. is an addition, but an addition nearly contemporaneous, either by the author himself or by one of his disciples. The chapter contains the account of a new apparition of the resurrected Jesus. Here again important coincidences with the third Gospel are to be remarked (comp. John xxi. 12, 13 with Luke xxiv. 41-43), not to mention certain resemblances to the Gospel to the Hebrews. 46. Details somewhat obscure follow (15 et seq.), in which we have a more lively sensation than anywhere else of the imprint of the school of John. The perpetual preoccupation of the relations of John and Peter reappear. The aim of all this resembles a series of private letters which are only understood by him who has written them or by the initiated. The allusion to the death of Peter, the amicable and fraternal sentiment of rivalry between the two apostles, the belief, emitted with reserve, that John should not die before seeing the apparition of Jesus—all this appears sincere. The exaggeration of bad style, in v. 25, is not felt to be inconsistent in a composition so inferior, in the literary sense, to the synoptics. This verse is lacking, moreover, in the Codex Sinaïticus. Verse 24, finally, seems a signature. The words, “And we know that his witness is true,” are an addition of the disciples, or rather induce the belief that the last editors utilised notes or recollections of the apostle. These protestations of veracity are found in almost similar terms in two writings which are by the same hand as our Gospel.

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§ 47. So, in the account of the life beyond the tomb of Jesus, the fourth Gospel retains its superiority. This superiority is to be especially recognised in portions taken generally. In the Gospels of Luke and Mark (xvi. 9-20) the life of Jesus resurrected has the appearance of enduring only for a day. In Matthew it seems to have been short. In the Acts (chapter i.) it endures forty days. In the three synoptics and in the Acts it terminates by an adieu or by an ascension to Heaven. Matters are arranged in a less convenient form in the fourth Gospel. The life beyond the tomb has no fixed limits; it is prolonged somehow indefinitely. Elsewhere I have demonstrated the superiority of this system. It suffices for the present to remember that it responds much better to the important passage of St. Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 5-8. What is the result of this long analysis? Firstly, that considered by itself the narrative of the material circumstances of the life of Jesus, as furnished by the fourth Gospel, is superior in point of probability to the narrative of the synoptics. Secondly, that, on the other hand, the discourses which the fourth Gospel impute to Jesus have in general no character of authenticity. Thirdly, that the author has a tradition of the life of Jesus very different from that of the synoptics, except as concerns the last days. Fourthly, that this tradition, however, was pretty well spread; for Luke, who does not belong to the school whence emerged our Gospel, has an idea more or less vague of many

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of the facts which were known to our author, and of which Matthew and Mark knew nothing. Fifthly, that the work is less beautiful than the synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Mark being the masterpieces of spontaneous art, Luke presenting an admirable combination of ingenuous art and of reflection, whilst the fourth Gospel presents only a series of notes, very badly arranged, in which legend and tradition, reflection and naïveté se fondent mal. Sixthly, that the author of the fourth Gospel, whoever he may be, has written to raise the authority of one of the apostles, in order to show that this apostle had played a part, in circumstances where he is not mentioned in the other narratives, in order to prove that he knew things which the other disciples knew not. Seventhly, that the author of the fourth Gospel wrote at a time when Christianity was more advanced than the synoptics, and with a more exalted idea of the divine rôle of Jesus, the figure of Jesus being with him more rugged, more heretical, like that of an Æon or a divine hypostasis who operates through his own will. Eighthly, that if the material teachings are more exact than those of the synoptics, its historic colouring is much less so, insomuch that, in order to seize the general physiognomy of Jesus, the synoptic Gospels, despite their lacunes and their errors, are still the veritable guides.

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Naturally, these reasons in favour of the fourth Gospel would be singularly confirmed if it could be established that the author of this Gospel is the apostle John, son of Zebedee. But the present is a research of a different order. Our aim has been to examine the fourth Gospel by itself, independently of its author. This question of the authorship of the fourth Gospel is assuredly the most singular that there is in literary history. I know of no question of criticism in which contrary appearances are so evenly balanced and which hold the mind more completely in suspense. It is clear at first that the author wishes to pass himself off as an ocular witness of evangelical facts (i. 14, xix. 35), and for the friend preferred by Jesus (xiii. 22 et seq., xix. 26 et seq., compared with xxi. 24). It will serve no purpose to say that chap. xxi. is an addition, since this addition is by the author himself or by his school. In two other places, moreover (i. 35 et seq., xviii. 15 et seq.), one sees clearly that the author loves to speak of himself in covered language. One of two things must be true; either the author of the fourth Gospel is a disciple of Jesus, an intimate disciple, and belonging to the oldest epoch; or else the author has employed, in order to give himself authority, an artifice which he has pursued from the commencement of the book to the end, the tendency being to make believe that he was a witness as well situated as it was possible to be to render a true account of the facts. Who is the disciple whose authority the author thus seeks to make prevail? The title indicates it; it is “John.” There is not the least reason to suppose it may have been added in opposition to the intentions of the real author. It was certainly written at the head of our Gospel at the end of the second century. On the other hand, evangelical history only presents, outside of John the Baptist, a single personage of the name of John. It is necessary then to choose between the hypotheses; either we must acknowledge John, son of Zebedee, as the author of the fourth Gospel, or regard that Gospel as an apocryphal writing composed by some individual who wished to pass it off as a

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work of John, son of Zebedee. The question at issue here is not in fact one of legends, the work of multitudes, for which no person is responsible. A man who, in order to give credence to that which he records, deceives the public not only in regard to his name, but also as to the value of his testimony, is not a writer of legends, he is an impostor. Such a biography as that of Francis d’Assisi, written one or two hundred years posterior to that extraordinary man, may recount shoals of miracles created by tradition, without ceasing, for all that, to be one of the most candid and most innocent men of the world. But if this biography were to say, “I was his companion, he preferred me to any other, everything I am about to tell you is true, for I have seen it,” without contradicting the proper qualification, then it is quite another thing. That fault is not, moreover, the only one which the author may have committed. We have three epistles which in like manner bear the name of John. If there is one thing in the domain of criticism which is probable, it is that the first at least of these epistles is by the same author as the fourth Gospel. One might almost denominate it as a detached chapter. The vocabulary of the two writings is identical. Now the language of the works of the New Testament is so poor in expression and so little varied that such inductions can be drawn with an almost absolute certainty. The author of this epistle, like the author of the Gospel, gives himself out as an eyewitness (1 John i. 1, et seq., iv. 14) of evangelical history. He represents himself as a person well-known, and enjoying high consideration in the Church. At first glance, it seems that the most natural hypothesis is to admit that the whole of these writings are indeed the work of John, son of Zebedee.

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Let us hasten to add, nevertheless, that critics of the first order have not without grave reason rejected the authenticity of the fourth Gospel. The work is too rarely cited in the most ancient Christian literature; its authority only commences to be known much later. Nothing could less resemble than this Gospel that which might be expected from John, an old fisher on the Lake of Gennesareth. The Greek in which it is written is not in any sense the Palestinian Greek with which we are acquainted in the other books of the New Testament. The ideas, in particular, are of an entirely different order. Here we are in full Philonian and almost Gnostic metaphysics. The discourses of Jesus as they are reported by this pretended witness, this confidential friend, are false, often flat, nay impossible. In a word, the Apocalypse is also given out as the work of John, not, it is true, in the quality of Apostle, but by one who, in the churches of Asia, arrogates to himself such a preeminence, and who, with but little effort, can be identified with the Apostle John. Now, when we compare the style and the thoughts of the author of the Apocalypse with the style and the thoughts of the author of the fourth Gospel and the first Johannine epistle, we find the most striking discordance. How are we to get out of that labyrinth of singular contradictions and of inextricable difficulties? For my part I see but one way. It is to hold that the fourth Gospel is, indeed, in a sense χατὰΙοάνοην, that it was not written by John himself, that it was for a long time esoteric and secret in one of the schools which adhered to John. To penetrate into the mystery of this school, to learn

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how the writing in question was put forth, is simply impossible. Can the notes or data left by the Apostle be used as a basis for the text which we have? Has a secretary, nurtured by the reading of Philo, and possessing a style of his own, given to the narratives and letters of his master a turn which without this they could never have had? Have we not here something analogous to the letters of Saint Catherine of Sienna, revised by her secretary, or to those revelations of Catherine Emmerich, of which we can say equally that they are by Catherine, and that they are by Bretano, the ideas of Catherine having traversed the style of Bretano? Have not some purely semi-Gnostics, at the close of the life of the Apostle, seized his pen, and, under the pretext of aiding him in writing his recollections and of assisting him in his correspondence, incorporated their ideas, and favourite expressions, covering themselves with his authority. Who is that Presbyteros Johannes, a sort of double of the Apostle, whose tomb is pointed out by the side of John’s? Is he a different personage from the Apostle? Is he the Apostle himself whose long life was for many years the foundation of the hopes of believers? I have elsewhere touched upon these questions. I shall often return to them again. I have had but one aim in this: that in recurring so often in the “Life of Jesus” to the fourth Gospel, in order to establish the thread of my narrative, I have had strong reasons, even in the case of the said Gospel, for not holding it to be the work of the Apostle John.

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Indexes Index of Scripture References Genesis 33:19 48:22 Exodus 12:3 12:6 Joshua 24:32 2 Samuel 15:23 Psalms 22:1-31 69:22 Proverbs 19:17 Isaiah 52:13-15 53:1-12 Zechariah 12:10 Matthew 5:3-10 6:19-34 8:5 10:20 13:44-46 14:1-36 21:2-5 27:34 Mark 8:22 8:23 13:11 15:23 16:9 16:9-20 131 Luke 6:24 6:25 7:1 8:45 8:46 12:11 12:12 14:12-14 16:19-25 21:1-38 23:16 23:36 23:49 23:53 24:1 24:2 24:4 24:12 24:24 24:41-43 24:49 24:49 John 1:1-14 1:1-14 1:14 1:14 1:28 1:35 1:35 1:35 1:35-51 1:39 1:43 1:51 2:1-12 2:10 2:11 2:11 2:12 2:13 2:20 2:23-25 3:1-21 3:12 3:22 3:22 3:22-4:2 3:23 3:24 3:25 3:26 3:27-36 4:1 4:1 4:1-42 4:2 4:2 4:2 4:2 4:3-6 4:5 4:6 4:9 4:14 4:16-18 4:21-23 4:22 4:22 4:35 4:43-45 4:44 4:46 4:46-54 5:1-47 5:2 6:1-4 6:1-71 6:16 6:23 6:60 6:68 6:70-71 7:1-10 7:11 7:50 7:50 7:52 8:1 8:2 8:7-59 9:1-41 9:6 9:7 10:1-20 10:22 10:24-39 10:40 11:1-45 11:45 11:46-54 11:55 11:56 12:1 12:1 12:1 12:1 12:1 12:2 12:6 12:6 12:9-11 12:12 12:12 12:17 12:17 12:18 12:18 12:20 12:23 12:25 12:27-28 13:1-38 13:2 13:10 13:11 13:18 13:22 13:23 13:29 14:16 14:26 15:26 16:7 16:7 16:13 17:1-26 18:1 18:1-40 18:6 18:8 18:15 18:15 18:16 18:28 19:1-42 19:9 19:23 19:24 19:26 19:29 19:31 19:34 19:35 19:36 19:36 19:39 230


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19:41 20:9 20:12 20:13 20:22 20:22 20:30 20:31 21:1-25 21:1-25 21:1-25 21:1-25 21:12 21:13 21:15 21:21-23 21:24 21:24 21:25 Acts 1:1-4 1:1-8 2:1 2:1-47 2:1-47 2:1-47 1 Corinthians 15:5-8 1 John 1:1 Revelation 1:7

Index of Greek Words and Phrases • Ὁ Πρεσβύτερος: 1 • Δόγια: 1 • Λιν: 1 • Μάρθα διηχόνει: 1 • Ος Ενὸχ λεγει: 1 • Τõνχέδρον: 1 • διηχόνει: 1 • ειλοως: 1 • λόγια: 1 2 • λεχθέντα ἢ πραχθέντα: 1 • λεχθέυτα ἢ πραχθέυτα: 1 • οι γνὸρι μοιαὐτοῦ παντες: 1 • οι περὶ τον Πέτρου.: 1 • πάντ ες οιγνοστοι αὐτῷ: 1 • παρακλητος: 1 • συναδελφος: 1 • τοῦχέδρόυ: 1 • τοῦχέδρου: 1 • χατὰΙοάνοην: 1

Index of Latin Words and Phrases •Dies iræ, dies illa!: 1

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•Est Deus in nobis.: 1 •In ictu oculi!: 1 •Scribitur ad narrandum: 1 •Scribitur ad probandum: 1 •convicium : 1 •crurifragium: 1 2 3 •crurifragium : 1 2 •petitio principii: 1 2 •quondam: 1 •sursum corda: 1

Index of French Words and Phrases •éclat: 1 2 •Chaumont: 1 •Rue de Rivoli: 1 •arrière pensée: 1 2 3 4 •belles lettres: 1 •depôt: 1 •données legendaires: 1 •en bloc: 1 •ensemble: 1 •finesse: 1 •mélange: 1 •matériel: 1 •mise-en-scène: 1 2 •naïveté se fondent mal: 1 •on dit: 1 •par excellence: 1 2 •personnel: 1 2 •points d’appui: 1 •régime: 1 •raison d’être: 1 •resumé: 1 •souvenirs: 1 •timbre: 1 •trait de lumière: 1 •un trait de lumiere: 1 •universelle consolation: 1

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Index of Pages of the Print Edition i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xx xxi xxii xxiii xxiv xxv xxvi xxvii xxviii xxix xxx xxxi xxxii xxxiii xxxiv xxxv xxxvi xxxvii xxxviii xxxix xl xli xlii xliii xliv xlv xlvi xlvii xlviii xlix l li lii liii liv lv lvi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316

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About The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book II. The Apostles. by Ernest Renan Title: URL: Author(s): Publisher: Publication History: Rights: Date Created: CCEL Subjects: LC Call no: LC Subjects:

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book II. The Apostles. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/renan/apostles.html Renan, Joseph Ernest (1823-1892). Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library London: Mathieson & Company: 1890 (?) Copyright Christian Classics Ethereal Library 2005-05-20 All; History BR165.R42 V.2 Christianity History By period Early and medieval

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book II. The Apostles.

Ernest Renan

Table of Contents About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. ii Title Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 1 Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 2 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 5 Chapter I. Formation of Beliefs Relative to the Resurrection of Jesus—The Apparitions at Jerusalem.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 28 Chapter II. Departure of the Disciples from Jerusalem—Second Galilean Life of Jesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 36 Chapter III. Return of the Apostles to Jerusalem.—End of the Period of Apparitions.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 42 Chapter IV. Descent of the Holy Spirit.—Ecstatical and Prophetical Phenomena.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 46 Chapter V. First Church of Jerusalem; It Is Entirely Cenobitical.. . . . . . . p. 52 Chapter VI. The Conversion of Hellenistic Jews and of Proselytes.. . . . . p. 61 Chapter VII. The Church Considered as an Association of Poor People.—Institution of the Diaconate, Deaconesses, and Widows.. . . . . p. 65 Chapter VIII. First Persecution.—Death of Stephen.—Destruction of the First Church of Jerusalem.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 72 Chapter IX. First Missions.—Philip the Deacon.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 77 Chapter X. Conversion of St. Paul.—Ridiculous to Put Paul’s Conversion A.D. 38—Aretas Settles the Date as about 34.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 81 Chapter XI. Peace and Interior Developments of the Church of Judea.. . . . p. 89 Chapter XII. Foundation of the Church of Antioch.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 97 Chapter XIII. The Idea of an Apostolate to the Gentiles.—Saint Barnabas.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 102 Chapter XIV. Persecution by Herod Agrippa the First.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 106 Chapter XV. Movements Parallel to Christianity, or Imitated from It.—Simon of Gitton.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 112 Chapter XVI. General Progress of Christian Missions.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 117 Chapter XVII. State of the World at the Middle of the First Century.. . . . . p. 125 Chapter XVIII. Religious Legislation at This Period.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 138 Chapter XIX. The Future of Missions.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 144 Indexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 152 Index of Scripture References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 152 Latin Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 152 iii


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Index of Pages of the Print Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 153

iv


THE HISTORY OF THE


BOOK II. THE APOSTLES.

BY


London:

MATHIESON & COMPANY 25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE E.C.

Ernest Renan


Ernest Renan

CONTENTS. CHAP.

A.D.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION. CRITICISM OF ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS. I.

Formation of Beliefs 33 Relative to the Resurrection of Jesus.—The Apparitions at Jerusalem

1

II.

Departure of the 33 Disciples from Jerusalem.—Second Galilean Life of Jesus

15

III.

Return of the Apostles 33-34 t o Jerusalem.—End of the Period of Apparitions

25

IV.

Descent of the Holy 34 Spirit.—Ecstatical and Prophetical Phenomena

31

V.

First

Church of 35 Jerusalem; it is e n t i r e l y cenobitical

41

VI.

The Conversion of 36 Hellenistic Jews and of Proselytes

55

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VII.

The

C h u r c h 36 Considered as an Association of P o o r People—Institution of the Diaconate, Deaconesses, and Widows

62

VIII.

F

i r s t 36-37 Persecution.—Death o f Stephen.—Destruction of the First Church of Jerusalem

74

IX.

F i r s t 38 Missions.—Philip, the Deacon

62

X.

Conversion of St. 38 Paul.—Ridiculous to put Paul’s Conversion A.D. 38.—Aretas settles the date as about 34

89

XI.

Peace and Interior 38-41 Developments of the Church of Judea

103

XII.

Foundation of the 41 Church of Antioch

117

XIII.

The

Idea of an 42-44 Apostolate to the Gentiles.—Saint Barnabas

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XIV.

Persecution by Herod 44 Agrippa the First

131

XV.

Movements Parallel to 45 Christianity, or imitated from it.—Simon of Gitton

141

XVI.

General Progress of 45 Christian Missions

149

XVII.

State of the World at 45 the Middle of the First Century

163

XVIII.

Religious legislation at 45 this period

184

XIX.

The Future of Missions 45

193

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INTRODUCTION. CRITICISM OF ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS. THE first book of our history of the Origins of Christianity has traced the story as far as the death and burial of Jesus. We must now resume the narrative at the point where we left it—to wit, Saturday, 4th April, 33. This will be for some time yet a continuation, in some sort, of the Life of Jesus. Next, after the months of joyous rapture, during which the great Founder laid the foundation of a new order for humanity, these last years were the most decisive in the history of the world. It is still Jesus, some sparks of whose sacred fire have been deposited in the hearts of a few friends who created institutions of the greatest originality, moves, transforms souls, imprints upon everything his divine seal. We have to show how, under this ever active and victorious influence over death, the faith of the resurrection, the influence of the holy Spirit, the gift of tongues, and the power of the Church, established themselves. We shall describe the organization of the Church at Jerusalem, its first trials, its first conquests, the earliest missions which it despatched. We shall follow Christianity in its rapid progress in Syria, as far as Antioch, where was formed a second capital, more important in a sense than that of Jerusalem, which it was destined to supplant. In this new centre, where the converted Pagans constituted the majority, we shall see Christianity separating itself definitely from Judaism, and receiving a name of its own; we shall see especially the birth of the grand idea of distant missions, destined to carry the name of Jesus into the world of the Gentiles. We shall pause at the important moment when Paul, Barnabas, and John Mark set out for the execution of this great design. There we shall interrupt our narrative, and cast a glance at the world which those daring missionaries undertook to convert. We shall endeavour to give an account of the intellectual, political, religious, and social condition of the Roman Empire about the year 45, the probable date of the departure of Saint Paul upon his first mission. ii

Such is the subject-matter of this second book, which we have entitled, THE APOSTLES, for the reason that it expounds the period of common action during which the small family created by Jesus acted in concert, and was grouped morally around a single point—Jerusalem. Our next work, the third, will take us out of this company, and we shall be devoted almost exclusively to the man who, more than any other, represents conquering and travelling Christianity—Saint Paul. Although, from a certain epoch, he called himself an apostle, Paul had not the same right to the title as the Twelve; he is a workman of the second hour, and almost an intruder. The state in which historical documents have reached us are at this stage-misleading. As we know infinitely more of the history of St. Paul than that of the Twelve, as we possess his authentic writings and original memoirs detailing minutely certain periods of his life, we assign to him an importance of the first order, almost exceeding that of Jesus. This is an error. Paul was a great man: in the foundation of Christianity he played a most important part. Still, we must not compare him with Jesus, nor even

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with any of the immediate disciples of the latter. Paul never saw Jesus, nor did he ever taste the ambrosia of the Galilean preaching. Hence, the most commonplace man who had had his part of the celestial manna, was from that very circumstance superior to him who had only had an after-taste. Nothing can be more false than an opinion which has become fashionable in these days, that Paul was really the founder of Christianity. The real founder of Christianity was Jesus. The first places, next to him, ought to be reserved to those grand and obscure companions of Jesus, to those faithful and zealous women, who believed in him despite his death. Paul was, in the first century, a kind of isolated phenomenon. He did not leave an organized school. On the contrary he left bitter opponents, who strove, after his death, to banish him from the Church and to place him, in a sort of way, on the same footing as Simon Magus. They tried to take away from him that which we regard as the peculiar work—the conversion of the Gentiles. The church of Corinth, which he himself had founded, claimed to owe its origin to him and to St. Peter. In the second century Papias and St. Justin never mention his name. It was later, when oral tradition came to be regarded as nothing, and when the Scriptures took the place of everything, that Paul assumed a leading part in Christian theology. Paul, it was true, had a theology. Peter and Mary Magdalene had none. Paul left behind him considerable works: none of the writings of the other apostles are to be compared with his, either in regard to their importance or authenticity. At first glance the documents for the period embraced in this volume are rare and altogether insufficent. The direct testimony is reduced to the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles—chapters, the historical value of which is open to serious objections. Yet, the light which these last chapters of the Gospels cast upon that obscure interval, especially the Epistles of St. Paul, dispels, to some extent, the darkness. An old writing serves to make known, first, the exact date at which it was composed, and, secondly, the period which preceded its composition. Every writing suggests, in fact, retrospective inductions as to the state of society which produced it. Composed, for the most part, between the years 53 and 62, the Epistles of St. Paul are replete with information concerning the early years of Christianity. Moreover, seeing that we are here speaking of great events without precise dates, the essential point is to show the conditions under which they formed themselves, On this subject I ought to remark once for all that the current date inscribed at the head of each chapter is never more than approximate. The chronology of these first years has but a very small number of fixed land-marks. Yet, thanks to the care which the editor of the Acts has taken, not to interrupt the succession of events; thanks to the Epistle to the Galatians, where are to be found some numerical indications of the greatest value; and to Josephus, who gives the dates of events of profane history connected with some facts concerning the apostles, we are able to create for the history of these last a very probable canvas upon which the chances of error are confined within very narrow limits.

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I shall again repeat at the beginning of this book what I have already said at the beginning of my Life of Jesus. In histories of that kind, where the general effect alone is certain, and where almost all the details lend themselves more or less to doubt, in consequence of the legendary character of the documents, hypothesis is essential. Upon periods of which we know nothing no hypothesis is possible. To endeavour to reproduce a group of ancient sculpture, which has certainly existed, but of which we possess only a few fragments, and concerning which we possess scarcely any written account, is an altogether arbitrary work. But to attempt to recompose the entire building of the Parthenon from what remains to us by the aid of the ancient text, availing ourselves of the drawing made in the seventeenth century of all the information possible; in one word, inspiring ourselves with the style of those inimitable fragments, trying to seize their soul and their life—what can be more legitimate? We need not boast of having found the ancient sculptor once more; but we have done what we could to approach him. Such a work is so much the more legitimate in history since language permits doubtful forms, which marble does not allow. There is oven nothing to prevent the reader from proposing a choice between diverse theories. The conscience of the writer may be easy since he has put forward as certain that which is certain, as probable that which is probable, as possible that which is possible. In those places where the footing between history and legend is uncertain, the general effect alone is all that need be sought after. Our third book, for which we shall have absolutely historical documents, where we shall have to paint characters of flesh and blood, and to speak of clearly defined facts, will offer a more definite story. It will be seen, however, that the character of that period is not known with greater certainty. Absolute facts speak more loudly than biographical details. We know very little of the incomparable artists who have created these masterpieces of Greek art. But these masterpieces tell us more about the personality of their authors and the public who appreciate them, than the most circumstantial narratives, and the most authentic texts could do. For the knowledge of the decisive events which happened in the first days after the death of Jesus the authorities are the last chapters of the Gospels containing the narratives of the appearance of the resuscitated Christ. I need not repeat here what I have said in the Introduction to my Life of Jesus as to the value of these documents. On that side we have happily a control which was too often wanting in the life of Jesus; I intend to imply an important passage of St. Paul (1 Cor. xv 5-8), which establishes: 1st the reality of the appearances; 2nd, the long duration of the apparitions as opposed to the narrative of the synoptical Gospels; 3rd, the variety of places in which the apparitions took place in contradiction to Mark and Luke. The study of this fundamental text, together with other reasons, confirms us in the views which we have enunciated as to the reciprocal relation of the Synoptics with the fourth Gospel. In all that concerns the narrative of the resurrection and the apparitions, the fourth Gospel maintains that superiority which it has for all the rest of the Life of Jesus. If we wish to find a consecutive logical narrative, which allows that which is hidden behind the allusions to be conjectured, it is there that we must look for it. I am approaching the most difficult of the questions connected with the origin of Christianity. “What is the historic value of

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the fourth Gospel?” The use which I have made of it in my Life of Jesus is the point to which enlightened critics have taken the most objection. Almost all the scholars who apply the rational method to the history of theology reject the fourth Gospel as apocryphal in every aspect. I have anew reflected much upon this problem, and I am unable sensibly to modify my first opinion. Only as I differ on this point from the general opinion I have thought it necessary to explain in detail the reasons for my persistency. I intend to make it the subject of an appendix at the end of a revised and corrected edition of the Life of Jesus which will shortly appear. The Acts of the Apostles are the most important document for the history which we are about to relate. I ought to explain myself hero as to the character of that work, its historical value, and the use which I have made of it.

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The one thing beyond question is that the Acts had the same author as the third Gospel, of which they are a continuation. It is not worth while to stop to prove this position, which, however, has never been disputed. The preface at the beginning of both writings, the dedication of both to Theophilus, the perfect similarity of style and of ideas furnish abundant demonstrations in this regard. A second proposition, which is not quite so self-evident, but which may be regarded as very probable is, that the author of the Acts was a disciple of Paul. who accompanied him during a great part of his journeyings. At the first glance this proposition appeared indubitable. In many places beginning with the 10th verse of chapter xvi., the author in his story makes use of the pronoun “we,” indicating thus that thenceforward he made one of the company of Paul. That appears to be beyond question. One issue only presents itself to destroy the force of this argument: it is that of supposing that the passages where the pronoun “we” appears have been copied by the last editor of the Acts from an earlier manuscript by, for example, Timothy, and that the editor, out of inadvertence, had omitted to substitute for “we” the name of the narrator. This explanation is scarcely admissible. Such an inadvertence might easily occur in a vulgar compilation. But the third Gospel and the Acts are compositions most carefully edited, composed with reflection, and even with art, written by the same hand, and according to a deliberate plan. The two books together form a whole of absolutely the same style, offering the same favourite locutions, and the same manner of quoting the Scripture. A blunder of editing so really shocking as that would be inexplicable. We are then forced invincibly to conclude that he who wrote the end of the work wrote the beginning also, and that the narrator of all is he who wrote “we” in the passages mentioned. This becomes still more striking, if we note in what circumstances the narrator thus puts himself in company with Paul. The use of “we” begins at the moment when Paul goes into Macedonia for the first time (xvi. 10). It ceases at the moment when Paul leaves Philippi, It is renewed when Paul, visiting Macedonia for the last time, again goes by way of Philippi (xx. 5-6.) Thenceforward the narrator never again separates himself from Paul until the end. If we further remark that the chapters in which the narrator accompanies the apostle have a specially precise character, it is impossible 8


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to believe that the narrator could have been a Macedonian, or rather a man of Philippi, who went before Paul to Troas during his second mission, who remained at Philippi after the departure of the apostle, and who at the last passage of the apostle through that city (third mission) joined him, not again to leave him. Can it be understood that an editor, writing at a distance, could thus have allowed himself to be ruled by the remembrance of another? Such memories would spoil the unity of the whole, The narrator who says “we” would have his own style; his special expressions; he would be more Paulinian than the editor himself. Now that is not so: the work is perfectly homogeneous. There will, perhaps, be some surprise that a thesis so evident should have been contradicted. But criticism of the writings of the New Testament shows that many things which appear to be perfectly clear are, upon examination, full of uncertainty. In the matter of style, thoughts, and doctrines, the Acts are scarcely what might be expected from a disciple of Paul. They in no way resemble his epistles. There is not a trace of the lofty doctrines which constitute the originality of the Apostle of the Gentiles. The temperament of Paul is that of a stiff and self-contained Protestant; the author of the Acts gives us the impression of a good Catholic, docile, optimist, calling every priest a “holy father,” every bishop “a great bishop,” ready to swallow any fiction, rather than believe that these holy fathers and great bishops quarrel amongst themselves and often make rude war. Whilst professing a great admiration for Paul, the author of the Acts avoids giving him the title of apostle, and is anxious that the initiative of the conversion of the Gentiles should belong to Peter. We should say, in short, that he is a disciple of Peter, rather than of Paul. We shall soon show that, in two or three circumstances, his principles of conciliation have led him gravely to falsify the biography of Paul; he makes mistakes and omissions of things which are very strange in a disciple of this last. He does not mention a single one of his epistles; he keeps back, in the most surprising fashion, explanations of the first importance. Even in the part, where he must have been the companion of Paul, he is sometimes singularly dry, ill-informed and dull. In short, the softness and vagueness of some of his narratives, the conventionality which may be discerned in them, suggest to us a writer who had no personal communication with the apostles, and who wrote between the years 100 and 120. Must we insist upon these objections? I think not, and I persist in believing that the last editor of the Acts is really the disciple of Paul who says “we” in the last chapters. All the difficulties, insoluble though they may appear, should be, if not set on one side, at least held in suspense by an argument as decisive as that which results from this word “we.” We may add, that by attributing the Acts to a companion of Paul, two important peculiarities are explained: on the one hand, the disproportion of the work of which more than three-fifths are consecrated to Paul; on the other, the disproportion which may be remarked, even in the biography of Paul himself, whose first mission is dispatched with great brevity, whilst certain parts of the second and third missions, especially his last journey, are told with minute details. A man altogether a stranger to the apostolic history, would not have exhibited these inequalities. His work would have been better planned as a whole. That which distinguishes history composed from documents, from history written wholly or in part 9


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by an actor in it, is exactly this disproportion: The historian of the closet takes for his framework the events themselves; the author of memoirs takes his recollections for his framework, or, at least, his personal relations. An ecclesiastical historian, a sort of Eusebius, writing about the year 120, would have bequeathed to us a book very differently distributed after chapter xiii. The bizarre fashion in which the Acts at this time leaves the orbit in which they had revolved until then can, to my thinking, be explained only by the peculiar situation of the author and by his relations with Paul. This result will be naturally confirmed if we find amongst the known fellow labourers of Paul the name of the author to whom tradition attributes our writing.

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This is in effect what took place. Manuscripts and tradition assign as the author of the third Gospel a certain Lucas or Lucanus. From what has been said it is evident that if Lucas be really the author of the third Gospel, he is also the author of the Acts. Now we find this Lucas mentioned precisely as the companion of Paul in the Epistle to the Colossians (iv. 14); in that to Philemon (24), and in the II Timothy (iv. 11.) This last Epistle is of more than doubtful authenticity. The Epistle to the Colossians and to Philemon on their side, although very probably authentic, are not, however, the most undoubted of Paul’s Epistles. But those writings are, in any ease, of the first century, and suffice to prove that there was a Luke amongst the disciples of Paul. The fabricator of the Epistles to Timothy, in short, is certainly not the author of those to the Colossians and to Philemon (supposing, contrary to our opinion, that these last are apocryphal). To admit that a forger should have attributed an imaginary companion to Paul is to suppose something very improbable. But assuredly different forgers would not have pitched upon the same name. Two circumstances give to this reasoning a peculiar force. The first is that the name of Luke, or Lucanus, is an uncommon one amongst the early Christians; the second that the Luke of the Epistles had no other celebrity. To write a celebrated name at the top of a document, as is done in the second Epistle of Peter, and very probably in Paul’s Epistles to Titus and Timothy, was in no way contrary to the habits of the time. But to write at the top of such a document a false name, otherwise obscure, is not to be believed. Was it the intention of the forger to throw over his book the authority of Paul? If it were, why did he not take the name of Paul himself? or at least the name of Timothy or Titus, disciples of the Apostle of the Gentiles, who were much bettor known? Luke scarcely had a place in tradition, legend, or history. The three passages of the Epistles above mentioned are not sufficient to make his name a generally accepted guarantee. The Epistles to Timothy were probably written after the Acts. The mention of Luke in the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon are equivalent to one only, the two documents being really but one. We think, therefore, that the author of the Acts was really Luke, the disciple of Paul. The very name of Luke, or Lucanus, and the profession of physician, which the disciple of Paul thus named exercised, answer completely to the indications which the two books furnish as to their

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author. We have shown in effect that the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts was probably from Philippi, a Roman colony, where Latin was the prevailing language. Further, the author of the Gospel and of the Acts knew little of Judaism and the affairs of Palestine; he scarcely knew Hebrew. He is abreast of the ideas of the Pagan world, and he writes Greek with tolerable correctness. The work was composed far from Judea for the use of people who knew little of its geography, who cared nothing for either profound Rabbinical learning’s or for Hebrew names. The dominant idea of the author is, that if the people had been free to follow their inclinations they would have embraced the faith of Jesus, and that it was the Jewish aristocracy who prevented them. The word Jew is always used by him in a bad sense, and as synonymous with enemy of Christians. On the other hand he shows himself very favourable to the Samaritan heretics. What date may we give to the composition of this important document? Luke appears for the first time in company with Paul on the occasion of the first journey of the apostle to Macedonia, about the year 52. Suppose that lie was then 25 years of age; there is nothing unnatural in supposing him to have lived to the year 100. The narrative of the Acts stops at the year 63. But the edition of the Acts being evidently later than that of the third Gospel, and the date of that third Gospel being fixed with sufficient precision in the years which followed the destruction of Jerusalem (70), we cannot dream of placing the production of the Acts earlier than 71 or 72.

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If it were certain that the Acts were composed immediately after the Gospel we might stop at this point. But doubt is permissible. Some facts lead to the belief that a considerable interval passed between the composition of the third Gospel and that of the Acts. Thus there is a singular contradiction between the last chapters of the Gospel and the first of the Acts. According to the former account the ascension took place on the very day of the resurrection; according to the Acts it took place only after forty days. It is clear that the second version presents the legend to us in a more advanced form—a form which was adopted when the need was felt for creating a place for the various apparitions, and for giving to the life beyond the tomb of Jesus a complete and logical frame-work. We are even tempted to suppose that the new fashion of conceiving things was not told to the author or did not come into his head except in the interval between the composition of the two works. In any case it is very remarkable that the author finds himself compelled to add new circumstances to his first account and to extend it. If his first book were still in his hands why did he not make the additions to his first account which, separated as they are, look so awkward? That, however, is not decisive, and a grave circumstance leads to the belief that Luke conceived at the same time the plan of both. That is the preface placed at the head of the Gospel, which appears common to the two books. The contradiction we have pointed out may perhaps be explained by the little rare which was taken to present an accurate account of the way in which the time was spent. This it is which makes all the accounts of the life of Jesus after his resurrection in complete disagreement as to the duration of that life. So little care was taken to be historical that the same narrator made no scruple about proposing two irreconcilable systems in succession. The three

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accounts of the conversion of Paul in the Acts present also little differences, which prove simply that the author did not trouble himself much about the exactness of the details.

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It appears then that we shall be very near the truth in supposing that the Acts were written about the year 80. The spirit of the book, in fact, corresponds completely with the age of the first Flavians. The author carefully avoids all that can wound the Romans. He loves to show how favourable the Roman authorities were to the new sect; how they sometimes even embraced it; how they at least defended it against the Jews; how greatly superior is imperial justice to the passions of the local powers. He insists especially on the advantages which Paul owed to his rights as a Roman citizen. He abruptly cuts his narrative short at the moment of the arrival of Paul at Rome, perhaps in order to avoid the necessity of relating the cruelties of Nero towards the Christians. The contrast with the Apocalypse is striking. The Apocalypse, written in the year 68, is full of the memory of the iniquities of Nero; a horrible hatred of Rome overspreads it. Here we see a mild man, who lives in a period of calm. After about the year 70 until the last years of the first century, the situation was not altogether unpleasant for the Christians. Personages of the Flavian family attached themselves to Christianity. Who knows if Luke did not know Flavius Clemens, if he were not of his familia, if the Acts were not written for that powerful personage, whose official position required caution? Some indications have led to the belief that this book was composed at Rome. One might have said indeed that the principles of the Roman Church weighed upon the author. That Church, from the earliest ages, had the political and hierarchical character which has always distinguished it. The good Luke could enter into that spirit. His ideas of ecclesiastical authority are very advanced: we see the form of the episcopate sprouting. He writes history in that tone of an apologist at any cost which is that of the official historians of the court of Rome. He acts as an ultramontane historian of Clement XIV would act; praising at the same time the Pope and the Jesuits, and seeking to persuade by a narrative full of compunction that both sides in that debate observed the rules of charity. In two hundred years it will also be settled that Cardinal Antonelli and Mgr de Merode loved each other like two brothers. The author of the Acts was, but with a simplicity which will not again be equalled, the first of those complacent narrators, sanctimoniously satisfied, determined to believe that everything goes on in the Church in an evangelic fashion. Too loyal to condemn his master Paul, too orthodox not to share the official opinion which prevailed, he smoothed over differences of doctrine, to allow only the common end to be seen—that end which all these great founders pursued in effect by paths so opposed and through rivalries so energetic. We can understand how a man who has placed himself intentionally in such a disposition of mind, is the least capable in the world of representing things as they really happened. Historical fidelity is a matter of indifference to him; edification is all he cares for. Luke scarcely conceals this; he writes in order that Theophilus may recognise the truth of what the catechists have taught

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him. There was then already a recognised system of ecclesiastical history, which was officially taught, and the framework of which, as well as that of the Gospel history itself, was probably already settled. The dominant character of the Acts, like that of the third Gospel, is a tender piety, a lively sympathy with the Gentiles, a conciliatory spirit, an extreme pro. occupation with the supernatural, love for the humble and lowly, a grand democratic sentiment, or rather the persuasion that the people are naturally Christian, that it is the great who prevent them from following their good instincts, an exalted idea of the power of the Church and of its heads, a remarkable taste for community of life. The system of composition is the same in both books, so that we are with respect to the history of the apostles on the same footing as we should be with regard to the Gospel history if we had one single text only, the Gospel of Luke. The disadvantages of such a situation are manifest. The life of Jesus, as related by the third evangelist alone, would be extremely defective and incomplete. We know it, because so far as the life of Jesus is concerned, comparison is possible. Together with Luke we possess (without speaking of the fourth Gospel) Matthew and Mark, who, as compared with Luke, are in part, at least, original. We can lay a finger on the violent proceedings by means of which Luke dislocates or mixes up anecdotes, on the way in which he modifies the colour of certain facts according to his personal views, of the pious legends which he adds to the most authentic traditions. Is it not evident that if we could make such a comparison of the Acts, we should find faults of a precisely similar description? The first chapters of the Acts would even appear, without doubt, inferior to the third Gospel, for these chapters were probably composed with fewer and less universally accepted documents.

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A fundamental distinction, in fact, is here necessary. From the point of view of historical value, the book of the Acts divides itself into two parts; one, including the first twelve chapters, and relating the principal facts of the history of the primitive Church; the other containing the remaining sixteen chapters, all devoted to the missions of St. Paul. That second part includes in itself two distinct kinds of narrative; those on the one hand, of which the narrator gives himself out as eye-witness; on the other, those in which he relates only what he has been told. It is clear that oven in the last case his authority is great. Often the conversations of Paul have furnished his information. Towards the end, moreover, the narrative assumes an astonishing character of precision. The last pages of the Acts are the only completely historical pages which we possess of the origins of Christianity. The first, on the contrary, are those which are most open to attack of all the New Testament. It is especially in the first years that the author obeyed impulses like those which preoccupied him in the composition of his gospel, and even more deceptive. His system of forty days; his account of the ascensions, closing by a species of final carrying off, theatrical solemnity; the strange life of Jesus; his manner of relating the descent of the Holy Ghost, and the miraculous preachings; his mode of understanding the gift of tongues, so different from that of St. Paul, unveil the preoccupation of a period relatively low when the legend is very ripe, rounded as it were in all parts. Everything is done with him with a strange setting and a great display of the marvellous. It 13


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must be remembered that the author wrote half a century after the events, far from the country where they happened, concerning incidents which neither he nor his master had seen, according to traditions in part fabulous or transmogrified. Not merely is Luke of another generation than the first founders of Christianity, but he is of another world; he is Hellenist with but very little of the Jew, almost a stranger to Jerusalem and the secrets of the Jewish life; he has not touched the primitive Christian society; he has scarcely known its last representatives. We see in the miracles, which he relates, rather inventions a priori than transformed facts; the miracles of Peter and Paul form two series, which answer each other. His persons resemble each other. Peter differs in nothing from Paul, nor Paul from Peter. The discourses, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes, though admirably appropriate to the circumstances, are all in the same style, and belong to the author rather than to those to whom he attributes them. We even find impossibilities. The Acts, in a word, are a dogmatic history, arranged to support the orthodox doctrine of the time, or to inculcate the ideas which seemed most agreeable to the piety of the author. Let us add that it could be no otherwise. The origin of every religion is known only by the narratives of the faithful. It is only scepticism which writes history ad narrandum. These are not simple suspicions, conjectures of a criticism defiant to excess. They are solid inductions; every time that we are permitted to examine the narrative of the Acts, we find it incorrect and unsystematic. The examination of the Gospels, which can be done only by comparison with the Synoptics, we can make with the help of the Epistles of Paul, especially of the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians. It is clear that where the Acts and the Epistles clash, the preference ought always to be given to the Epistles—texts of an absolute authenticity, more ancient, of a complete sincerity, and free from legends. In history documents have the more authority the less they possess of historical form. The authority of all the chronicles must yield to that of an inscription, of a medal, of a map, of an authentic letter. From this point of view, the letters of certain authors, or of certain dates, are the basis of all the history of the origins of Christianity. Without them, it might be said that doubt would attach to them, and would ruin, from top to bottom, even the life of Jesus itself. Now, in two very important particulars, the Epistles put in a striking light the private tendencies of the author of the Acts, and his desire to efface all trace of the divisions which existed between Paul and the Apostles of Jerusalem. And first, the author of the Acts says that Paul, after the incident at Damascus (ix, 19 et seq., xxii, 17 et seq.), having come to Jerusalem at a period when his conversion was hardly known; that he was presented to the Apostles; that he lived with the Apostles and the faithful on a footing of the greatest cordiality; that he disputed publicly with the Hellenist Jews; that a plot of theirs, and a celestial revelation, brought about his departure from Jerusalem. Now Paul tells us that things came about very differently. To prove that he owed nothing to the Twelve, and that he received his doctrine and his mission from Jesus, he asserts (Gal. i., 11 et seq.), that after his conversion he avoided taking counsel with anyone whatever, or going to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before him; that he went of his own accord, and without commission from anyone, to preach in 14


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Hauran; that three years later, it is true, he accomplished the journey to Jerusalem to make acquaintance with Peter; that he stayed there fifteen days with him; but that he saw no other apostle unless it were James, the Lord’s brother, so that his face was unknown to the churches of Judea. The effort to soften down the asperities of the rude apostle by presenting him as a follow worker with the Twelve, labouring at Jerusalem in concert with them, evidently appears hero. Jerusalem is made his capital and point of departure; it is desired that his doctrine shall be so identified with that of the apostles, that he might in some sort replace them in the preaching; his first apostolate is reduced to the synagogues of Damascus; he is described as having been disciple and auditor, which he certainly never was; the time between his conversion and his first journey to Jerusalem is materially abridged; his stay in that city is prolonged; he is described as preaching there to the general satisfaction; as having lived intimately with all the apostles, although he himself says that he saw only two; the brethren of Jerusalem are described as watching over him, whilst Paul declares that his face was unknown to them. The desire to make of Paul an assiduous visitor to Jerusalem, which has led our author to advance and to prolong his first stay in that city after his conversion, appears to have induced him to ascribe to the apostle one journey too many. According to him Paul came to Jerusalem with Barnabas, bearing the offering of the faithful during the famine of the year 44 (Acts xi. 30, xii. 25). Now Paul declares expressly that between the journey which took place three years after his conversion and the journey about the business of the circumcision, he did not go to Jerusalem (Gal. i. and ii.) In other words, Paul formally excludes the idea of any journey between Acts ix. 26 and Acts xv. 2. If we were to deny, against all reason, the identity of the journey related Acts xv. 2, et seq. we should not obtain the smallest contradiction. “After three years,” says St. Paul, “I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter . . . Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas.” It has been doubted whether these fourteen years date from the conversion, or the journey which followed three years after that event. Let us take the first hypothesis, which is the most favourable to those who would defend the account in the Acts. There would then be eleven years, at least, according to St. Paul, between his first and his second journey to Jerusalem; now. surely there were not eleven years between what is told Acts ix. 26 et seq. and what is told Acts xi, 30! And if against all probability that hypothesis is maintained, we find ourselves in the presence of another impossibility. In fact, what is told in Acts xi. 30 is contemporaneous with the death of James the son of Zebedee, which furnishes the only date fixed by the Acts of the Apostles, since it proceded by very little the death of Herod Agrippa I. which happened in the year 44. The second journey of Paul having taken place at least fourteen years after his conversion, if Paul had really made that journey in the year 44, the conversion would have taken place in the year 30, which is absurd. It is, therefore, impossible to maintain for the journey related Acts xi. 30 and xii. 35 any reality. These comings and goings appear to have been related by our author in a very inexact fashion. In comparing Acts xvii. 14-16; xviii. 5, with I. Thess. iii. 1-2, we find another disagreement. But seeing that does not concern matters of dogma, we need not speak of it here. 15


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That which is most important about our present subject which furnishes thin critical ray of light for the difficult question of the historical value of the Acts is a comparision of the passages relative to the business of the circumcision in the Acts (chap. xv.) and in the Epistle to Galatians (chap. ii). According to the Acts the brethren in Judea being come to Antioch and having maintained the necessity of circumcision for the converted Pagans, a deputation, composed of Paul, Barnabas and many others was sent from Antioch to Jerusalem to consult the apostles and the elders in this question. They were received with much warmth by the whole community; a great assembly took place. Dissension scarcely showed itself, checked as it was under the effusions of a common charity and the happiness of finding themselves together. Peter announces the opinion which he had expected to find in the mouth of Paul, that converted Pagans do not become subject to the law of Moses. James appends to that only a very slight restriction. Paul does not speak, and, to say the truth, is under no necessity of speaking, since his doctrine is put into the mouth of Peter. The opinion of the brethren of Judea is supported by none. A solemn decree is formulated by the advice of James. This decree is signified to the churches by deputies specially appointed. Let us now compare the account of Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians. Paul’s version is that the journey to Jerusalem which he undertook on that occasion was the effect of a spontaneous movement, and even the result of a revolution. Arrived at Jerusalem, he communicates his gospel to those whom it concerned; he has, in particular, interviews with those who appear to be considerable personages. They do not offer him a single criticism; they communicate nothing to him; they only ask that he should remember the poor of Jerusalem. If Titus, who accompanied him, consented to allow himself to be circumcised it is “because of false brethren unawares brought in.” Paul makes this passing concession to them, but he does not submit himself to them. As to men of importance (Paul speaks of them only with a shade of bitterness and irony), they have taught him nothing new. More, Peter, having come later to Antioch, Paul “withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.” First, in effect, Peter ate with all indiscriminately. The emissaries of James having arrived, Peter hides himself and avoids the uncircumcised. “Seeing that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel,” Paul apostrophises Peter before them all, and reproaches him bitterly with his conduct. The difference is palpable. On the one hand a solemn agreement, on the other anger ill-restrained, extreme susceptibilities. On the one side a sort of council; on the other nothing resembling it. On one side a formal decree issued by a recognized authority; on the other different opinions, which remain in existence without any reciprocal yielding, save for form’s sake. It is useless to say which version merits the preference. The account in the Acts is scarcely probable, since according to this account the council was occasioned by a dispute of which no trace is to be found when the council has met. The two orators expressed themselves in a sense altogether different from that which we

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know to have been otherwise their usual part. The decree which the council is said to have decided upon is assuredly a fiction. If this decree of which James would have settled the terms had been really promulgated, why those terrors of the good and timid Peter? Why did he hide himself? He and the Christian community of Antioch were acting in the fullest conformity with the decree the terms of which had been settled by James himself. The business of the circumcision occurred about the year 51. Some years afterwards, about the year 56, the quarrel which the decree ought to have ended is more lively than ever. The Church of Galatia is troubled by new envoys from the Church of Jerusalem. Paul answered this new attack of his enemies by his thundering epistle. If the decree mentioned in Acts xv. had had any real existence, Paul had a very simple means of silencing debate—he had only to quote it. Now all that he says supposes the non-existence of this decree. In 57, Paul, writing to the Corinthians, ignores the same decree, and even violates its prescriptions. The decree orders abstinence from meats offered to idols. Paul, however, is of opinion that those meats may be eaten if no one is scandalized thereby, but they ought to be abstained from in cases where scandal would arise. In 58, then, about the time of the last journey of Paul to Jerusalem, James is more obstinate than ever. One of the characteristic features of the Acts—a feature which proves plainly that the author proposes to himself less to prevent historical truth and even to satisfy logic, than to edify pious readers—is the circumstance that the question of the admission of the uncircumcised is always settled, yet is always open. It is settled at first by the baptism of the eunuch of Queen Candace, then by the baptism of the centurion Cornelius, both miraculously ordained; then by the foundation of the church of Antioch (xi. 19, et. seq.) then by the pretended Council of Jerusalem, which does not prevent that; on the last pages of the book (xxi. 20-21.) the question is still in suspense. To tell the truth it has always remained in that state. The two fractions of the nascent Christianity never agreed upon it. One of them, however, that which clung to the practices of Judaism remained infertile, and faded into obscurity. Paul was so far from being accepted by all that after his death a part of Christendom anathematized him, and pursued him with calumnies. In our third book we shall have to deal in detail with the question which lies at the root of all those curious incidents. Here we have desired to give only some examples of the manner in which the author of the Acts understands history, of his system of conciliation, of his preconceived ideas. Must we conclude from them that the first chapters of the Acts are devoid of authority, as some celebrated critics think, that fiction so far enters as to create both pieces and persons, such as the eunuch of Candace, the centurion Cornelius, and even the deacon Stephen and the pious Tabitha? I think by no means. It is probable that the author of the Acts has not invented the persons, but is a skilful advocate, who writes to prove his case, and who makes the most of the facts which have come to his knowledge to support his favourite theories, which are the legitimacy of the calling of the Gentiles, and the divine institution of the hierarchy. Such a document must be used with great caution, but to reject it absolutely is as uncritical as to follow it blindly. Some paragraphs, besides, even in the first part, have a universally recognised value, and represent authentic memoirs extracted

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by the last editor. Chapter xii., in particular, is excellent matter, and may have been the work of John-Mark.

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It may be seen in what distress we should be if the only documentary authorities we have for this history were a legendary book like this. Happily, we have others which refer directly to the period which will be the subject of our third book, and which shed a great light upon this. These are the Epistles of St. Paul. The Epistles to the Galatians especially is a veritable treasury, the basis of the chronology of this age, the key which opens everything, the testimony which ought to re-assure the most sceptical as to the reality of matters concerning which they might doubt. I beg, serious readers who may be tempted to regard me as too bold or too credulous, to read again the two first chatters of that remarkable document. They are certainly the two most important chapters for the study of nascent Christianity. The Epistles of St. Paul have, in fact, an unequalled advantage in that history: their absolute authenticity. No doubt has ever been raised by serious criticism as to the authenticity of the Epistle to the Galatians. of the two Epistles to the Corinthians, of the Epistle to the Romans. The reasons for which the two Epistles to the Thessalonians and that to the Philippians, have been attacked are valueless. At the beginning of our third volume we shall have to discuss the more specious, although indecisive, objections which have been raised against the Epistle to the Colossians, and the note to Philemon; the special problem presented by the Epistle to the Ephesians; the strong reasons, finally, which point to the rejection of the two Epistles to Timothy, and that to Titus. The epistles of which we shall have to make use in this volume are those whose authenticity is indisputable; for, at least, the inductions which we shall draw from the others are independent of the question of whether they have or have not been dictated by St. Paul. It is not necessary to refer in this place to the rules of criticism which have been followed in the composition of this work; that has already been done in the introduction to the Life of Jesus. The first twelve chapters of the Acts are in effect a document analogous to the synoptical Gospels, and require to be treated in the same fashion. Documents of this kind, half historical, half legendary, can never be regarded as wholly legend or wholly history. Almost everything in them is false in detail, nevertheless it may enclose some precious truths. To translate these narratives pure and simple is not to write history. These narratives are, in fact, often contradicted by other and more authentic texts. In consequence, even when there is only one text, one is always constrained to fear that if there had been others there would have been the same contradictions. For the Life of Jesus the narrative of Luke is continually controlled and corrected by the two other synoptical Gospels and by the fourth. Is it not probable, I repeat, that if we had for the Acts the analogue of the Synoptics and of the fourth Gospel, the Acts would be corrected on a host of points where we have now only their testimony? In our third book, where we shall be in clear and definite history, and where we shall have in our hands original and often biographical information, we shall be guided by other rules. When St. Paul himself tells us the story of some episode of his life which he had no interest

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in presenting in any particular light, it is clear that all that we need do is to insert his very words, word for word, in our narrative, according to the method of Tillemont. But when we are concerned with a narrator preoccupied with a system, writing as the advocate of certain ideas, editing after this infantine fashion, with vague and soft outlines, colours absolute, and strongly marked such as legend always offers, the duty of the critic is not to stick close to the text; his duty is to discover what truth the text may embody, without ever being too certain of having found it. To debar criticism from such interpretations would be as unreasonable as to command an astronomer to concern himself only with the apparent state of the heavens. Does not astronomy, on the contrary, consist in rectifying the parallax caused by the position of the observer, and to construct a real and veracious chart instead of a deceptive apparent one? How besides can it be pretended that documents should be followed to the letter when they are full of impossibilities? The first twelve chapters of the Acts are a tissue of miracles. Now it is an absolute rule of criticism to give no place in historical documents to miraculous circumstances. This is not the result of a metaphysical system, but simply a matter of observation. Facts of that kind can never be verified. All the pretended miracles that we can study closely resolve themselves either into illusions or impostures. If a single miracle were proved, we could hardly reject all those of ancient history in a mass, for after all, admitting that a great number of these last were false, it is still possible to believe that certain of them were true. But it is not thus. All discussable miracles fade away. May we not reasonably conclude from that fact that the miracles which are removed from us by centuries, and concerning which there is no way of establishing an exhaustive discussion, are also without reality? In other words, there is no miracle except when one believes it; the substance of the supernatural is faith. Catholicism itself, which pretends that the miraculous power is not yet extinct within its bosom, undergoes the power of this law. The miracles which it pretends to work happen only in places of its choice. When there is so simple a method of proving its authenticity, why not do so in open daylight? A miracle in Paris, under the eyes of competent and learned men, would put an end to all doubts. But alas! that is what never happens. Never has a miracle been wrought before the public whom it is desirable to convert, I would say before the incredulous. The condition of the miracle is the credulity of the witness. No miracle is performed before those who might discuss and criticise it. To that rule there is not a single exception. Cicero said, with his usual good sense and acuteness, “Since when has that secret force disappeared? Is it not since men have become less credulous?” “But,” it is said, “if it is impossible to prove that there has ever been a supernatural fact, it is equally impossible to prove that there has not been one. The positive savant who denies the supernatural proceeds then as gratuitously as the believer who admits it.” In no way. It is for him who affirms a proposition to prove it. He, before whom it is affirmed, has but one thing to do, to wait for the proof, and to yield if it is good. Supposing we had called upon Buffon to give a place in his Natural History to sirens and centaurs, Buffon would have answered, “Show me a specimen of these beings, and I will admit them; until you do, they do not exist for me”—“But prove that 19


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they do not exist?”—“It is for you to prove that they exist.” The burden of proof in science rests upon those, who make the assertion. Why do we not believe in angels or devils, although innumerable historic texts assume their existence? Because the existence of an angel or a devil has never yet been proved.

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To maintain the reality of the miracle appeal is made to the phenomena, which, it is said, could have been produced only by going beyond the laws of nature, the creation of man for example. “The creation of man,” it is said, “could have come about only by the direct intervention of the Deity; why should not that intervention be repeated at other decisive moments of the development of the universe?” I shall not insist upon the strange philosophy, and the paltry idea of the Divinity which such a method of reasoning involves, for history has its method, independent of all philosophy. Without entering, in the smallest degree, upon the province of theodicy, it is easy to show how defective such an argument is. It is equivalent to saying that everything which does not happen in the existing state of the world, everything which we cannot explain by the existing condition of science, is miraculous. But then the sun is a miracle, for science is far from having explained the sun; the conception of every man is a miracle, for philosophy is still silent on that point; conscience is a miracle, for it is an absolute mystery; every animal is a miracle, for the origin of life is a problem concerning which we have almost no information. If we say that all life, that every soul is in effect of a superior order in nature, we are simply playing upon words. We are anxious that this should be understood; but then there must be an explanation of the word miracle. Can that be a miracle which happens every day and every hour? Miracle is not the unexplained; it is a formal derogation in the name of a particular will of known laws. What we deny is the exceptional; those are the private interventions, like that of a clockmaker, who has made a clock, very well, it is true, but to which he is from time to time obliged to put his hand to supply the deficiencies of the wheel-work. That God permeates everything, especially everything that lives, is distinctly our theory; we only say that no special intervention of a supernatural force has ever been proved. We deny the reality of private supernaturalism until a demonstrated fact of this kind has been presented to us. To seek this fact before the creation of man; to fly beyond history to periods, where all verification is impossible, in order to escape from verifying historical miracles, is to take refuge behind a cloud, to prove one obscure thing by another still morn obscure, to dispute a known law, because of a fact of which we are not certain. Miracles are appealed to which took place before any witness existed, simply because it is impossible to quote one of which there is any credible witness. Without doubt, in distant ages, things happened in the universe, phenomena which offer themselves no more, at least upon the same scale in the actual state of things. But these phenomena may be explained by the date at which they have occurred. In the geological formation a great number of minerals and precious atones are found, which it would appear are no longer produced

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in nature. Nevertheless Messrs. Mitscherlich, Ebelman, de Sénarmont, Daubree have artificially recomposed the majority of these minerals and precious stones. If it is doubtful whether they will ever succeed in artificially producing life, it is because the artificial reproduction of the circumstances under which life commences (if it ever does commence) will be always out of the reach of humanity. How can we bring back a state of the planet which has disappeared for thousands of years? How are we to try an experiment which will occupy centuries? The diversity of the moans and the centuries of slow evolution—these are the things that are forgotten when we speak of the phenomena of old times, which do not happen to-day as miracles. In some celestial body at the present moment things are perhaps being done which have ceased upon this earth for an infinite period of time. Surely the formation of humanity is the most shocking and absurd thing in the world, if it is supposed to be sudden, instantaneous. It reverts to general analogies (without ceasing to be mysterious) if we see in it the result of a slow progress continued during incalculable periods. We must not apply the laws of maturity to embryonic life. The embryo develops all its organs one after another; the adult man, on the contrary, creates no more organs. He creates no more because he is no longer of an age to create; he does not even invent language because he is not called upon to invent it. But what is the use of meeting adversaries who continually evade the question? We ask for an authenticated historical miracle; we are told that there were such things before history existed. Assuredly, if a proof were required of the necessity for supernatural beliefs in certain states of the soul, it might be found in the fact that minds penetrating enough in every other respect have been able to rest the edifice of their faith on such a desperate argument. Others, abandoning miracles of the physical order, entrench themselves behind moral miracles, without which they maintain that these events cannot be explained. Certainly the formation of Christianity is the greatest event in the religious history of the world. But it is not a miracle for all that. Buddhism, Babism have had martyrs as numerous, as exalted, as resigned as Christianity. The miracles of the foundation of Islam are of a wholly different character, and I confess that they affect me little. It must, however, be remarked that the Mussulman doctors base upon the establishment of Islam, upon its diffusion as by a train of fire, upon its rapid conquests, upon the force which gives it everywhere an absolute reign, the same reasonings which the Christian apologists base upon the establishment of Christianity, and assert that they clearly behold there the finger of God. Let us allow, if it is desired, that the foundation of Christianity is a unique fact. Hellenism is another absolutely unique fact, understanding by that word the ideal perfection in literature, in art, in philosophy, which Greece has achieved. Greek art surpasses all other art, as Christianity surpasses all other religions, and the Acropolis at Athens—a collection of masterpieces by the side of which everything else is no bettor than clumsy fumbling, or more or less successful imitation—is perhaps that which in its way most successfully defies comparison. Hellenism, in other words, is as much a miracle of beauty as Christianity is a miracle of sanctity. A unique thing is not a miraculous thing. God is in varying degrees in all that is beautiful, good, and true. But he is never in one of his

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manifestations in so exclusive a fashion that the presence of his breath in a religious or a philosophical movement ought to be deemed a privilege or exception.

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I hope that the interval of two years and a half passed since the publication of the Life of Jesus will lead some of my readers to consider these problems with greater calmness. Religious controversy is always one of bad faith, without any intention or desire that it should be so. There is no independent discussion; no anxious seeking for the truth; it is the defence of a position already taken up to prove that the dissident is ignorant or dishonest. Calumnies, misinterpretations, falsifications of ideas and of texts, triumphant reasonings over things that an opponent has never said, cries of victory over mistakes which he has not made, nothing appears disloyal to the man who would hold in his hand the interests of absolute truth. I should have ignored history if I had not expected all that. I am cool enough to be almost insensible to it, and I have a sufficiently lively taste for matters of faith to be able to understand in a kindly spirit what there is that is often touching in the sentiment which inspired those who contradicted me. Often, in seeing so much simplicity, such a pious assurance, a wrath coming so frankly from good and pure souls, I have said, with John Huss, at the sight of an old woman who sweated under a faggot for his burning: Oh, sancta simplicitas! I have regretted certain emotions, which could only be profitless. According to the beautiful expression of the Scriptures, “God is not in the tempest.” Ah! without doubt, if this trouble led to the discovery of the truth, we should be consoled for many agitations. But it is not thus: truth does not exist for the passionate man. It is reserved for the minds of those who seek for it without prejudice, without persistent love, without lasting hatred, with an absolute liberty, and without any after intention of acting in the business of humanity. These problems are only some of the innumerable questions of which the world is full, and which the curious examine. No one is offended by the enunciation of a theoretical opinion. Those who hold to their faith as to a treasure have a very simple method of defending it—that of taking no note of works written in a sense different from their own. The timid do better not to read them. There are practical persons who, with regard to a work of science, ask what political party the author proposes to satisfy, and who are anxious that every poem should convey a moral lesson. Such persons do not admit that it is possible to write for something else besides a propaganda. The idea of art and of science aspiring only to find the true, and to realize the beautiful, outside of all politics, is to them incomprehensible. Between us and such persons misunderstandings are inevitable. “These people,” as the Greek philosopher said, “take back with their left hand what they give with their right.” A host of letters, dictated by a worthy sentiment, which I have received, may be summed up thus:—“What do you want? What end do you propose?” Good God! the same that every one proposes in writing history. If I had many lives at my disposal I would devote one to writing the history of Alexander, another to writing the history of Athens, a third, it may be, to writing a history of the French Revolution, or a history of the Order of St. Francis. What end should I propose to

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myself in writing those works? One only, to find the truth and to make it live, to work so that the great things of the past may be known with the greatest possible exactitude, and expounded in a manner worthy of them. The notion of overthrowing the faith of anyone is far removed from me. These works ought to be executed with a supreme indifference, as if one were writing for a deserted planet. Every concession to scruples of an inferior order is a failure in the worship of art and of truth. Who does not admit that the absence of the proselytising spirit is at once the quality and the defect of a work composed in this spirit? The first principle of the critical school in effect is that in matters of faith everyone admits what he wants to admit, and, as it were, makes the bed of his belief in proportion to his own stature. Why should we be so senseless as to mix ourselves up with what depends upon circumstances concerning which no one knows anything? If anyone accepts our principles, it is because he possesses the turn of mind and the necessary education for them; all our efforts would give neither, did one not already possess those qualities. Philosophy differs from faith, inasmuch as faith operates by itself, independently of the understanding that we have of the dogmas. We believe, on the contrary, that a truth has no value, save when it is reached by itself, when one sees the whole order of ideas to which it belongs. We do not force ourselves to silence such of our opinions as are not in harmony with the belief of a portion of our fellow-man; we make no sacrifice to the exigencies of divergent orthodoxies; but on the other hand we do not dream of attacking or provoking them; we act as though they did not exist. For myself, the day when I may be convicted of an effort to convert to my views a single adherent who did not come of himself would cause me the most acute pain. I should conclude from it, either that my mind had lost its freedom and calmness, or that something was oppressing me so that I could not content myself any longer with the free and joyous contemplation of the universe.

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If, moreover, my aim had been to make war upon established religions, I should have worked in another way, undertaking only to point out the impossibilities and the contradictions of the texts and dogmas held as sacred. That minute task has been done a thousand times, and done well. In 1856, I wrote as follows:—“I protest once for all against the false interpretation which would be put upon my labours, if the various essays upon the history of religions which I have or may publish in the future, be treated as polemical works. Looked at as such, I should be the first to admit that these essays were very weak. Controversy requires tactics to which I am a stranger; it is necessary to know the weak side of one’s adversary, to hold to it, never to touch doubtful questions, to avoid all concession, that is to say, to renounce the very essence of the scientific spirit. Such is not my method. The fundamental question upon which religious discussion must turn, that is to say, the question of revelation and of the supernatural, I never touch, not that that question may not be resolved for me with entire certainty, but because the discussion of such a question is not scientific, or rather because independent science supposes it to be resolved beforehand. Assuredly if I had any polemical or proselytising object in view, this would be a cardinal fault, it would be to transport into the region of delicate and obscure problems a question which is usually treated in the coarsest 23


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terms by controversialists and apologists. So far from regretting the advantages which I should thus give my opponent, I rejoice in them, if thereby I might convince the theologians that my writings are of another order than theirs, that in them they must look only for pure researches of study, open to attack as such, wherein an attempt is sometimes made to apply to the Jewish religion and to the Christian the principles of criticism which are followed in other branches of history and philology. I intend at no time to enter into the discussion of questions of pure theology any more than M.M. Burnouf, Creuzer, Guigniaut, and so many other critical historians of the religions of antiquity have thought themselves obliged to undertake the reputation of, or the apology for, the forms of worship with which they were occupied, The history of humanity is for me a vast whole, where everything is essentially unequal and diverse, but where everything of the same order arises from the same causes and obeys the same laws. These laws I inquire into with no other intention than that of discovering the exact tint of what really is. Nothing will make the change an obscure position, but one which is fruitful for science for the part of controversialist, an easy fact, inasmuch as it wins for the writer an assured favour amongst people who think it their duty to oppose war to war. In that polemic, the necessity for which I am far from disputing, but which is neither to my taste nor to my abilities, Voltaire is enough. One cannot be at the same time a good controversialist and a good historian. Voltaire, weak in scholarship; Voltaire, who appears so devoid of the sentiment of antiquity to us who are initiated into a better method; Voltaire is twenty times victorious over those who are even more innocent of criticism than he is himself. A new edition of the works of this great man would satisfy the want which appears to be felt at the present moment of answering the encroachments of theology; an answer bad in itself, but worthy of what it has to fight against; an old-fashioned answer to a science that is out of date. Let us do better, we who possess love of truth and a vast curiosity; let us leave these disputes to those whom they please; let us labour for the small number of those who march in the front rank of the human mind. Popularity, I know, belongs by preference to writers who, instead of pursuing the most elevated form of truth, apply themselves to struggling against the opinion of their times; but by a just revenge they have no value so soon as the opinion they have contested has ceased to exist. Those who refuted the magic and judicial astrology in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries, rendered an immense service to reason, yet their writings are unknown at the present day; their very victory has caused them to be forgotten. I intend to hold invariably to this rule of conduct—the only one worthy of a scholar. I know that the researches of religious history touch upon living questions which appear to demand a solution. Persons familiar with free speculation do not understand the calm deliberation of thought; practical minds grow impatient with science, which does not answer to their eagerness. Let us avoid these vain excitements. Let us avoid finding anything. Let us rest in our respective Churches, profiting by their daily worship and their tradition of virtue, participating in their good work, and rejoicing in the poetry of their past. Nor should their intolerance repel us, We may even forgive that intolerance, for it is like egotism, one of the necessities of human nature. To suppose that it will henceforward form now religious families, or that the proportion amongst those which now

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exist will ever greatly change is to go against all appearances. There will soon be great schism in the Catholic Church; the days of Avignon, of the anti-popes, of the Clementists and the Urbanists will probably return. The Catholic Church may have its fourteenth Century again, but, notwithstanding her divisions, she will still remain the Catholic Church. It is probable that within a hundred years the relations between the number of Protestants, of Catholics, and of Jews will not have sensibly changed. But a great alteration will be made, or, rather, will have become apparent to the eyes of all. Each of these religious families will have two sorts of faithful ones; some believing absolutely as in the Middle Ages; others sacrificing the letter and holding only to the spirit. This second fraction will grow in every communion, and as the spirit agrees as much as the letter divides, the spiritualists of each communion will have reached such a point of agreement that they will altogether neglect to amalgamate. Fanaticism will be lost in a general tolerance. Dogma will become a mysterious ark which no one will ever want to open. If the ark is empty, then what matters it. One single religion will, I fear, resist this dogmatic softening; that is Islamism. There are amongst certain Mussulmans of the old school and amongst certain eminent men in Constantinople, there are in Persia, especially, forms of a large and conciliatory spirit. If these good forms are suffocated by the fanaticism of the ulemas, Islamism will perish, for two things are evident: the first, that modern civilization does not desire that the ancient religions should die out altogether; the second is, that it will not allow itself to be hampered in its work by old religious institutions. These last have the choice between submission and death.

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As for pure religion, the pretension of which is not to be a sect or a Church apart, why should it submit to the inconveniences of a position of which it has none of the advantages? Why should it raise flag against flag when it knows that salvation is possible everywhere and to everybody; that it depends on the degree of nobility which each carries in himself? We can understand how Protestantism in the sixteenth century brought about an open rupture. Protestantism began with a very absolute faith. Far from corresponding to a weakening of dogmatism, the Reformation marked a renaissance of the most rigid Christian spirit. The movement of the nineteenth century, on the contrary, springs from a sentiment which is the very reverse of dogmatism; it arises not in sects or separate Churches, but in a general softening of all the Churches. The marked divisions increase the fanaticism of orthodoxy and provoke reactions. The Luthers and Calvins made the Caraffa, the Ghislieri, the Loyolas, the Philip II.’s. If our Church rejects them let us not recriminate; let us learn to appreciate the sweetness of modern manners, which has rendered those hatreds powerless; let us console ourselves by dreaming of that invisible Church which takes in the excommunicated saints, the best souls of every century. The banished of a Church are always its best men; they are in advance of their times; the heretic of to-day is the orthodox of to-morrow. What besides is the excommunication of men? Our Heavenly Father excommunicates only dry souls and narrow hearts. If the priest refuses to admit us to the cemetery, let us forbid our families to cry out. God is the Judge; the earth is a good mother who makes no differences; the corpse of a good man entering the unconsecrated corner carries consecration with it.

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Undoubtedly there are circumstances in which the application of these principles is difficult. The spirit breathes where it will; the spirit is liberty. Now it is to persons who are as it were chained to absolute faith I would speak; of men in holy orders or clothed with some ministerial authority. Even then a fine soul knows how to find the ways of issue. A worthy country priest, by his solitary studies and by the purity of his his, comes to see the impossibility of literal dogmatism; must he sadden those whom he has hitherto consoled by explaining to them simple changes which they cannot understand? God forbid! There are not two men in the world who have exactly the same duties. The good Bishop Colenso accomplished an act of honesty such as the Church has not seen since its origin, in writing his doubts as soon as they came to him. But the humble Catholic priest, in a country of narrow and timid minds, ought to hold his tongue. How many discreet tombs around our village churches hide in this way poetic reserves—angelic silences! Will those whose duty it has been to speak equal the merit of those secrets known to God alone? Theory is not practice. The ideal must remain the ideal; it must fear lest it soil itself by contact with reality. Thoughts which are good for those who are preserved by their nobility from all moral danger may not be, if they are, applied without their inconveniences for those who are surrounded with baseness. Great things are achieved only with ideas strictly defined; the man absolutely without prejudice would be powerless. Let us enjoy the liberty of the sons of God; but let us take care lest we become accomplices in the diminution of virtue which would menace society if Christianity were to grow weak. What should we be without it? What could replace the great schools of seriousness and respect, such as St. Sulpice, or the devoted ministry of the Sisters of Charity? How can we avoid being affrighted by the pettiness and the cold heartedness which have invaded the world? Our disagreement with persons who believe in positive religions is, after all, purely scientific; at heart we are with them! We have only one enemy who is theirs also—vulgar materialism, the baseness of the interested man.

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Peace then, in God’s name! Let the various orders of humanity live side by side, not falsifying their own intelligence in order to make reciprocal concessions which will lessen them, but in naturally supporting each other. Nothing ought to reign here below to the exclusion of its opposite. No one force ought to be able to suppress the others. The harmony of humanity results from the free emission of the most discordant notes. If orthodoxy should succeed in killing science we know what would happen. The Mussulman world of Spain died from having too conscientiously performed that task. If Rationalism wishes to govern the world without regard to the religious needs of the soul, the experience of the French Revolution is there to teach us the consequences of such a blunder. The instincts of art, carried to the highest point of refinement, but without honesty, made of the Italy of the Renaissance a den of thieves, an evil abode. Weariness, stupidity, mediocrity are the punishment of certain Protestant countries where, under the pretence of good sense and Christian spirit, art has been suppressed and science reduced to something paltry. Lucretius and St. Theresa, Aristophanes and Socrates, Voltaire and Francis of Assisi, Raphael and Vincent, St. Paul have an

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equal right to exist, and humanity would be the less if one of the elements which compose it were wanting. 1

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THE APOSTLES. CHAPTER I. FORMATION OF BELIEFS RELATIVE TO THE RESURRECT1ON OF JESUS—THE APPARITIONS AT JERUSALEM. JESUS, although speaking constantly of resurrection, of new life, never stated distinctly that he would rise again in the flesh. The disciples, in the hours immediately following his death, had not, in this respect, any settled expectations. The sentiments, in which they have so unaffectedly taken us into their confidence, implied even that they believed all was finished. They wept, and interred their friend, if not as they would at the death of a common person, at least as a person whose loss was irreparable. They were sad and cast down. The hope that they had cherished of seeing him realise the salvation of Israel is now proved to have been vanity. They were spoken of as men who had been robbed of a grand and dear illusion.

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But enthusiasm and love do not recognise conditions barren of results. They dallied with the impossible, and, rather than abdicate hope, they did violence to all reality. Several phrases of the Master, which were recalled, especially those in which he predicted his future advent, might be interpreted in the sense that he would leave the tomb. Such a belief was, besides, so natural that the faith of the disciples would have sufficed to create it in every part. The great prophets, Enoch and Elijah, had not tasted death. They began even is believe that the patriarchs and the men of the first order in the old law, were not really dead, and that their bodies were in their sepulchres at Hebron, alive and animated. It was to happen to Jesus, what had happened to all men who have captivated the attention of their fellow-men. The world, accustomed to attribute to them superhuman virtues, cannot admit that they would have to undergo the unjust, revolting and iniquitous law, to wit, a common death. At the moment when Mahomet expired, Omar issued from the tent, sabre in hand, and declared that he would strike off the head of anyone who dared to say that the prophet was no more. Death is a thing so absurd—when it strikes down a man of genius, or the large-hearted man—that people will not believe in the possibility of such an error in nature. Heroes do not die. Is not true existence that which is implanted in the hearts of those whom we love? This adored Master had filled for some years the little world which pressed around him with joy and with hope; would people consent to leave him to rot in the tomb? No; he had lived too much in those who surrounded him for people not to declare after his death that he still lived. The day which followed the burial of Jesus (Saturday, 15th April) was crowded with these thoughts. People were interdicted from all manner of manual labour, because of the Sabbath. But never was repose more fruitful. The Christian conscience had on that day but one object—the 28


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Master laid low in the tomb. The women, in particular, embalmed him in ointment with their most tender caresses. Not for a moment did their thoughts abandon that sweet friend, reposing in his myrrh, whom the wicked had killed! Ah! the angels are doubtless surrounding him, veiling their faces in his shroud! He, indeed, did say that he should die, that his death would be the salvation of the sinner, and that he should rise in the kingdom of his Father. Yes; he shall live again; God will not leave his Son to be a prey to hell; He will not suffer his chosen one to see corruption. What is this tombstone which weighs upon him? He will raise it up; he will reascend to the right hand of his Father, whence he descended. And we shall see him again; we shall hear his charming voice; we shall enjoy anew his conversations, and it is in vain that they have crucified him. The belief in the immortality of the soul, which, through the influence of the Grecian philosophy, has become a dogma of Christianity, readily permits of one resigning oneself to death, inasmuch as the dissolution of the body in that hypothesis was only a deliverance of the soul, freed henceforth from vexatious bonds, without which it can exist. But that theory of man, considered as a being composed of two substances, did not appear very clear to the Jews. To them the reign of God and the reign of Spirit consisted in a complete transformation of the world and in the annihilation of death. To acknowledge that death could be victorious over Jesus, over him who came to extinguish its empire, was the height of absurdity. The very idea that he could suffer had previously disgusted his disciples. The latter, then, had no choice between despair or heroic affirmation. A man of penetration might have announced on that Saturday that Jesus would rise again; the little Christian Society on that day wrought the veritable miracle; it resurrected Jesus in its heart, because of the intense love that it bore for him. It decided that Jesus had not died. The love of these passionate souls was, in truth, stronger than death; and, as the property of passion is to be communicative, to light like a torch a sentiment which resembles itself, and, consequently, to be indefinitely propagated; Jesus, in a sense, at the moment of which we speak, is already risen from the dead. Let but one material fact, insignificant itself, permit the belief that his body is no longer here below, and the dogma of the resurrection will be established for eternity.

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It was that which happened in the circumstances which, though part obscured, because of the incoherency of the traditions, and especially because of the contradictions which they presented, can, nevertheless, be grasped with a sufficient degree of probability. Early on Sunday morning, the Galilean women who on Friday evening had hastily embalmed the body, visited the tomb in which he had been temporarily deposited. These were Mary Magdalene, Mary Cleophas, Salome, Joanna, wife of Kouza, and others. They came, probably, each on her own account, for it is difficult to call in question the tradition of the three synoptical gospels, according to which several women came to the tomb; on the other hand, it is certain that in the two most authentic narratives which we possess of the resurrection, Mary Magdalene alone played a part. In any case she had, at that solemn moment, taken a part altogether out of line. It is she whom we

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must follow step by step, for she bore on that day, for an hour, all the burden of a Christian conscience; her testimony decided the faith of the future.

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Let us not forget that the vault in which the body of Jesus had been enclosed, was a vault which had been recently cut in the rock, and was situated in a garden near the place of execution. It had, for the latter reason been specially taken, seeing that it was late in the day and that they were desirous of not desecrating the Sabbath. The first gospel alone adds one circumstance, to wit, that the vault belonged to Joseph of Arimathæa. But, in general, the anecdotical circumstances annexed by the first gospel to the common fund of the tradition, are without any value, especially when the matter in hand is the last days of the life of Jesus. The same gospel mentions another detail which, in view of the silence of the others, has not any probability; we refer to the public seals and a guard being placed at the tomb. We must also remember that the mortuary vaults were low chambers, cut into an inclining rock, in which was contrived a vertical cutting. The door, ordinarily downwards, was closed by a very heavy stone, fitted into a groove. These chambers had not a lock and key, the weight of the stone was the sole safeguard that one had against thieves or profaners of tombs; it was likewise so arranged that, to remove it, either a machine or the combined efforts of several persons were required. All the traditions agree on that point, that the stone had been put at the mouth of the vault on the Friday evening. But when Mary Magdalene arrived on the Sunday morning, the stone was not in its place. The vault was open. The body was no longer there. In her mind the idea of the resurrection was as yet little developed. That which filled her soul was a tender regret and the desire to render funeral honours to the body of her divine friend. Her first sentiments, moreover, were those of surprise and of sadness. The disappearance of the cherished body had stripped her of the last joy upon which she had calculated. She could not touch him again with her hands! And what had become of him? The idea of a desecration was present to her and she was shocked at it. Perhaps, at the same time, a glimmer of hope crossed her mind. Without losing a moment, she ran to a house in which Peter and John were together. “They have taken away the body of our Master,” said she, “and I know not where they have laid him.”

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The two disciples got up hastily and ran with all their might to see. John, the younger, arrived first. He stooped down to look into the interior. Mary was right. The tomb was empty. The linen which had served to enshroud him was scattered about the sepulchre. They both entered, examined the linen, which was no doubt stained with blood, and remarked in particular the napkin, which had enveloped his head, rolled up in a corner apart. Peter and John returned home extremely perplexed. If they did not now pronounce the decisive words: “He is risen!” we may be sure that such a consequence was the irrevocable conclusion, and that the generating dogma of Christianity was already established. Peter and John departed from the garden; Mary remained alone at the mouth of the sepulchre. She wept profusely. One single thought engaged her: Where have they put the body? Her woman’s 30


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heart did not go beyond the desire of holding the well-beloved body again in her arms. Suddenly she heard a slight noise behind her. A man is standing near her. She thinks at first it is the gardener. “Sir,” said she, “if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” In response, she heard herself called by her name, “Mary!” It was the voice which had so often before thrilled her. It was the voice of Jesus. “Oh, my master!” she exclaimed. She made as if to touch him. A sort of instinctive movement induced her to kneel down and kiss his feet. The vision gently receded, and said to her: “Touch me not!” Gradually the shadow disappeared. But the miracle of love was accomplished. What Cephas was not able to do, Mary had done. She knew how to extract life, sweet and penetrating words, from the empty tomb. It was no longer a question of deducing consequences or of framing conjectures. Mary had seen and heard. The resurrection had its first immediate witness.

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Frantic with love, inebriated with joy, Mary returned to the city and said to the first disciples whom she met: “I have seen him; he has spoken to me.” Her greatly troubled imagination, her broken and incoherent discourse, made her to be taken by some as mad. Peter and John, in their turn, related what they had seen. Other disciples went to the tomb and saw likewise. The conviction reached by the whole of this first group was that Jesus had risen. Many doubts still existed. But the assurances of Mary, of Peter and of John, imposed upon the others. Subsequently, this was called “the vision of Peter.” Paul, in particular, does not speak of the vision of Mary, and awards all the honour of the first apparition to Peter. But that statement was very inexact. Peter only saw the empty sepulchre, the napkin and the winding sheet. Mary alone loved enough to dispense with nature and to have revived the phantom of the perfect master. In these sorts of marvellous crises, to see after others have seen—goes for nothing; all the merit consists in being the first to see; for others afterwards model their visions on the received type. It is the characteristic of good organisations to perceive the image promptly, accurately, and as if by a sort of innate sense of design. The glory, then, of the resurrection belongs to Mary Magdalene. Next to Jesus, it is Mary who has done the most for the establishment of Christianity. The image created by the delicate sensibility of Mary Magdalene hovers over the world still. Queen and patroness of idealists, Magdalene knew better than any other person how to verify her dream, how to impose upon all the holy vision of her passionate soul. Her great woman’s affirmation, “He is risen!” has been the basis of the faith of humanity. Begone hence, powerless reason! Seek not to apply cold analysis to this masterpiece of idealism and of love. If wisdom renounces the part of consoling that poor human race, betrayed by fate, let folly attempt the enterprise. Where is the sage who has given to the world so much joy as Mary Magdalene, the possessed of devils? The other women who had been to the tomb spread meanwhile the news abroad. They had not seen Jesus; but they spoke of a man in white, whom they had seen in the sepulchre, and who had said to them: “He is not here; return into Galilee; he will go before you there; there shall ye see him.” Perhaps it was these white linen clothes which had originated this hallucination. Perhaps, again, they saw nothing, and only commenced to speak of their vision when Mary Magdalene had 31


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related hers. Indeed, according to one of the most authentic texts, they kept silence for some time—a silence which was afterwards attributed to terror. However this may be, these recitals increased every hour, and underwent some singular transformations. The man in white became the angel of God; it was told that his garments shone like the snow; that his face seemed like lightning. Others spoke of two angels; one of whom appeared at the head, the other at the foot of the sepulchre. By evening, many, perhaps, already believed that the women had seen this angel descend from heaven, move away the stone, and Jesus issue forth with a great noise. Doubtless they varied in their depositions; suffering from the effect of the imagination of others, as is always the case with common people; they borrowed every embellishment, and thus participated in the creation of the legend which grew up around them and suited their ideas. The day was stormy and decisive. The little company was greatly dispersed. Some had already departed for Galilee; others hid themselves for fear. The deplorable scene of the Friday; the afflicting spectacle which they had had before their eyes, in seeing him of whom they had expected so much expire upon the gibbet, without his Father coming to deliver him, had, moreover, extinguished the faith of many. The news imparted by the women and Peter was received on every side with scarcely dissembled credulity. Of the diverse stories, some were believed; the women went hither and thither with singular and inconsistent stories, enriching them as they went. Statements, the most opposed, were put forth. Some still wept over the sad event of the day before; others were already triumphant; all were disposed to entertain the most extraordinary accounts. Nevertheless, the distrust which the excitement of Mary Magdalene inspired, the little authority which the women had, the incoherency of their narratives, produced grave doubts. People were living in the expectation of seeing new visions, and which could not fail but come. The state of the sect was altogether favourable to the propagation of strange rumours. If all the members of the little church had been assembled, the legendary creation would have been impossible; those who knew the secret of the disappearance of the body, would probably have reclaimed against the error. But in the confusion which prevailed, the door was opened for the most prolific misapprehensions. It is the characteristic of those states of the soul, in which originate ecstasy and apparitions, to be contagious. The history of all the great religious crises, proves that these sort of visions are infectious. In an assembly of persons, entertaining the same beliefs, it is sufficient for one member of the body to affirm having seen or heard something supernatural for others to see and to hear also. Amongst the persecuted Protestants, a report was spread that people had heard the angels singing psalms upon a recently destroyed temple: They all went there and heard the same psalm. In cases of this kind, it is the most excited who give law, and who regulate the temperature of the common atmosphere. The exaltation of a few is transmitted to all; no one desires to be left behind, or likes to confess that he is less favoured than the others. Those who see nothing, are carried away, and finish by believing either that they are less clear-sighted, or that they do not take proper account of their sensations. In any case, they take care not to avow it; they would be disturbers of the common joy, would cause sadness to others, and would be playing a disagreeable part. When, 32


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therefore, one apparition is brought forward in such assemblies, it is customary for everyone to see it, or believe he has seen it. It is necessary to remember, however, what was the degree of intellectual culture possessed by the disciples of Jesus. What is called a weak head, very often, is associated with infinite goodness of heart. The disciples believed in phantoms; they imagined themselves to be compassed about with miracles; they participated in nothing which had relation to the positive science of the times. This science existed amongst some hundreds of men, scattered over those countries alone where Grecian culture had penetrated. But the commonality, in every country, participated very little in it. Palestine was, in this respect, one of the most backward countries. The Galileans were the most ignorant people of Palestine, and the disciples of Jesus might be counted amongst the persons the most simple of Galilee. It was to this very simplicity that they were indebted for their heavenly election. Among such people, belief in marvellous deeds found the most extraordinary facilities for propagating itself. Once the opinion on the resurrection of Jesus had been noised abroad, numerous visions were sure to follow. And so in fact they did follow. On the same Sabbath day, at an advanced hour of the morning, when the tales of the women had already been circulated, two disciples, one of whom was named Cleopatros or Cleopas, set out on a short journey to a village named Emmaus, situated a short distance from Jerusalem. They talked together of recent events, and were filled with sadness On the way, an unknown companion joined them, and inquired as to the cause of their sorrow. “Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem?” said they, “And hast not known the things which are come to pass in these days?” And he said unto them, “What things?” And they said unto him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and besides all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre: and when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.” The unknown individual was a pious man, well versed in the Scriptures, citing Moses and the prophets. These three good people became friendly. Approaching Emmaus, the stranger was making as if he would continue his journey, the two disciples begged him to come and break bread with them. The day was far spent; the recollections of the two disciples became then more vivid. This hour of the evening for refreshments, was the one which they looked back to as being at once the most charming and most melancholy. How many times had they not seen, during that hour, their beloved Master forget the burden of the day, in the abandon of gay conversation, and enlivened by several sips of excellent wine, spoke to them of the fruit of the vine, which he would drink anew with them in the Kingdom of his Father. The gesture which he made in the breaking of bread, and in offering it to them, according to the custom of the heads of Jewish families, was deeply engraven on their memories. Filled with a tender sadness, they forgot the stranger: it was Jesus they saw holding the

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bread, then breaking and offering it to them. These recollections engrossed them to such an extent, that they scarcely perceived that their companion, anxious to continue his journey, had quitted them. And when they had awakened out of their reverie: “Did we not perceive,” they said, “something strange? Do you not remember how our hearts burned while he talked with us by the way? And the prophecies which he cited, proved clearly that Messiah must suffer before entering into his glory.” “Did you not recognize him at the breaking of bread?” “Yes: up to that time our eyes were closed; they were only opened when he vanished.” The conviction of the two disciples was that they had seen Jesus. They returned with all haste to Jerusalem. 12

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The main body of the disciples were, just at that moment, assembled at the house of Peter. Night had completely set in. Each was relating his impressions, and what he had seen and heard. The general belief already willed that Jesus had risen. At the entrance of the two disciples, the brethren hastened to speak to them of that which was called, “the vision of Peter.” They, on their side, told what had befallen them on the way to Emmaus, and how that they had recognized him in the breaking of bread. The imaginations of everyone became quite excited. The doors were shut; for they feared the Jews. Oriental cities are silent after sunset. The silence, hence, for some moments in the interior was frequently profound. Every slight sound which was accidentally produced was interpreted in the sense of the common expectation. Expectation, as is usual, was the progenitor of its object. During a moment of silence, a slight breath of wind passed over the face of the assembly. At these decisive times, a current of air, a creaking window, a casual murmur, suffices to fix the beliefs of people for centuries. At the same moment the breath of air was felt, they believed that they heard sounds. Some declared that they had seen the word schalom, “happiness” or “peace.” This was the ordinary salutation of Jesus, and the word by which he signalized his presence. It was impossible to doubt; Jesus was present; he was there, in the assembly. It was his dear voice; everyone recognized it. This idea was the more easily accepted, inasmuch as Jesus had said to them, that as often as they came together in his name, he would be in the midst of them. It was then an accepted fact, that on Sunday evening, Jesus had appeared before his assembled disciples. Some of them pretended to have distinguished the marks of the nails in his hands and his feet, and in his side the trace of the spear thrust. According to a widely-spread tradition, this was the self-same evening that he breathed upon his disciples the holy spirit. The idea, at least, that his breath had passed over them on re-assembling, was generally admitted. Such were the incidents of that day, which has decided the fate of humanity. The opinion that Jesus had risen was, on that day, established in an irrevocable manner. The sect, which was believed to be extinguished by the death of the Master, was, from that instant, assured of a great future. Some doubts were, nevertheless, ventilated. The apostle, Thomas, who was not present at the meeting on Sunday evening, avowed that he envied those who had seen the marks of the spear and of the nails. Eight days after, this envy, it is said, was allayed. But there has attached to him, in consequence, some slight blame and a mild reproach. By an instinctive feeling of exquisite justness,

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they understood that the ideal was not to be touched with hands, and that it must not be subjected to the test of experience. Noli, me tangere (touch me not) is the motto of all great affection. The sense of touch leaves nothing to faith; the eye, a purer and more noble organ than the hand, which nothing can sully, and by which nothing is sullied, became very soon a superfluous witness. A singular sentiment began to grow up; any hesitation was held to be a mark of disloyalty and lack of love; one was ashamed to remain behind hand, and one interdicted oneself from desiring to sec. The dictum: “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believed,” became the key-note of the situation. It was thought to be a thing so much more generous to believe without proof. The really sincere friends denied having seen any vision. Just as, in later times, Saint Louis refused to be a witness to an eucharistic miracle, so as not to detract from the merits of faith. From that time, credulity became a hideous emulation, and a kind of out-bidding one another. The merit consisted in believing without having seen; faith at any cost; gratuitous faith; the faith which went as far as folly—was exalted, as if it were the first of the gifts of the soul. The credo quia absurdum (I believe because I cannot understand) was established. The law of Christian dogmas was to be a strange progression, which no impossibility should be able to prevent. A sort of chivalrous sentiment prevented one from even looking back. The dogmas, the most dear to piety, those to which it was to attach itself with the most heedless frenzy, were the most repugnant to reason, in consequence of that touching idea, which the moral value of faith augments in proportion to the difficulty in believing, the reason of man not being compelled to prove any love when he admits that which is clear. The first days were hence a period of intense feverishness, in which the faithful, infatuated with one another, and imposing one’s fancies each upon the other, mutually carried away, and imparting to each other the most exalted notions. Visions were multiplied without number. The evening assemblies were the most common occasions when they were produced. When the doors were closed, and when each was beset with his fixed idea, the first who was believed to hear the sweet word, schalom, “salutation,” or “peace,” would give the signal. All would then listen, and would soon hear the very same thing. It was hence a great joy to those unsophisticated souls to know that Jesus was in the midst of them. Each tasted of the sweetness of that thought, and believed himself to be favoured with some inward colloquy. Other visions were noised abroad of a different description, and recalled those of the sojourners to Emmaus. During meal time, Jesus was seen to appear, taking the bread, blessing it, breaking it, and offering it to him who had been honoured with a vision of himself. In a few days, a whole string of stories, greatly differing in details, but inspired by the same spirit of love, and of absolute faith, was invented and spread abroad. It is the gravest of errors to suppose that legends require any length of time to be formed. Legend is sometimes born in a day. On Sunday evening (16 of Nisan, 5th April), the resurrection of Jesus was held to be a reality. Eight days after, the character of the life of the risen one, which had been conceived for him, was determined in regard at least to three essentials.

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CHAPTER II. DEPARTURE OF THE DISCIPLES FROM JERUSALEM—SECOND GALILEAN LIFE OF JESUS.

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THE most eager desire of those who have lost a dear friend, is to revisit the places where they have lived with them. It was, doubtless, this sentiment which, a few days after the events of the Passover, induced the disciples to return into Galilee. From the moment of the arrest of Jesus, and immediately after his death, it is probable that many of the disciples had already found their way to the northern provinces. At the time of the resurrection, a rumour was spread abroad, according to which, it was in Galilee that he would be seen again. Some of the women who had been to the sepulchre came back with the report that the angel had said to them that Jesus had already preceded them into Galilee. Others said that it was Jesus himself who had ordered them to go there. Now and then some people said that they themselves remembered that he had said so during his life time. What is certain is, that at the end of a few days, probably after the Paschal Feast of the Pass-over had been quite over, the disciples believed they had a command to return into their own country, and to it accordingly they returned. Perhaps the visions began to abate at Jerusalem. A species of melancholy seized them. The brief appearances of Jesus were not sufficient to compensate for the enormous void left by his absence. In a melancholy mood, they thought of the lake and of the beautiful mountains where they had received a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. The women, especially, wished, at any cost, to return to the country where they had enjoyed so much happiness. It must be observed that the order to depart cane especially from them. That odious city weighed them down. They longed to see once more the ground where they had possessed him whom they loved, well assured in advance of meeting him again there. The majority of the disciples then departed, full of joy and hope, perhaps in the company of the caravan, which took back the pilgrims from the Feast of the Passover. What they hoped to find in Galilee, were not only transient visions, but Jesus himself to continue with them, as he had done before his death. An intense expectation filled their souls. Was he going to restore the Kingdom of Israel, to found definitely the Kingdom of God, and, as was said, “Reveal his justice?” Everything was possible. They already called to mind the smiling landscapes where they had enjoyed his presence. Many believed that he had given to them a rendezvous upon a mountain, probably the same to which with them there clung so many sweet recollections. Never, it is certain, had there been a more pleasant journey. All their dreams of happiness were on the point of being realized. They were going to see him once more! And, in fact, they did see him again. Hardly restored to their harmless chimeras, they believed themselves to be in the midst of the Gospel dispensation period. It was now drawing near to the end of April. The ground is then strewn with red anemones, which were probably those “lilies of the fields” from which Jesus delighted to draw his similes. At each step, his words were brought to mind, adhering, as it were, to the thousand accidental objects 36


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they met by the way. Here was the tree, the flower, the seed, from which he had taken his parables; there was the hill on which he delivered his most touching discourses; here was the little ship from which he taught. It was like the recommencement of a beautiful dream. Like a vanished illusion which had reappeared. The enchantment seemed to revive. The sweet Galilean “Kingdom of God” had recovered its sway. The clear atmosphere, the mornings upon the shore or upon the mountain, the nights passed on the lakes watching the nets, all these returned again to them in distinct visions. They saw him everywhere where they had lived with him. Of course it was not the joy of the first enjoyment. Sometimes the lake had to them the appearance of being very solitary. But a great love is satisfied with little, if all of us, while we are alive, could surreptitiously, once a year, and during a moment long enough to exchange but a few words, behold again those loved ones whom we have lost—death would not be death! Such was the state of mind of this faithful band, in this short period when Christianity seemed to return for a moment to his cradle and bid to him an eternal adieu. The principal disciples, Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel, the sons of Zebedee, met again on the shores of the lake, and henceforth lived together; they had taken up again their former calling of fishermen, at Bethsaida or at Capernaum. The Galilean women were no doubt with them. They had insisted more than the others on that return, which was to them a heartfelt love. This was their last act in the establishment of Christianity. From that moment, they disappear. Faithful to their love, their wish was to quit no more the country in which they had tasted their greatest delight. They were quickly forgotten, and, as the Galilean Christianity possessed but little of futurity, the remembrance of them was completely lost in certain ramifications of the tradition. These touching demoniacs, these converted fisherwomen, these actual founders of Christianity, Mary Magdalene, Mary Cleophas, Joanna, Susanna, all passed into the condition of forgotten saints. St. Paul knew them not. The faith which they had created almost consigned them to oblivion. We must come down to the middle ages before we find justice done them; then, one of them, Mary Magdalene, takes her proper place in the Christian hierarchy. The visions, at first, on the lake appear to have been pretty frequent On board these crafts where they had come in contact with God, how many times had the disciples not seen again their Divine Friend? The simplest circumstances brought him back to them. Once they had toiled all night without taking a single fish; suddenly the nets were filled; this was a miracle. It appeared that some one from the land had said to them: “Cast your nets to the right.” Peter and John regarded one another. “It is the Lord,” said John. Peter, who was naked, covered himself hastily with his fisher’s coat, and cast himself into the sea, in order to go to the invisible councillor. At other times Jesus came and partook of their simple repasts. One day, when they had done fishing, they were surprised to find lighted coals, with fish placed upon them, and bread near by. A lively sense of their feasts of past times crossed their minds, since bread and fish had been always an essential part of their diet. Jesus was in the habit of offering these to them. After the meal they were persuaded that Jesus himself had sat by their side, and had presented to them those victuals which hail already become to them eucharistic and sacred, John and Peter were the ones who were specially favoured with 37


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those private conversations with the well-beloved phantom. One day, Peter, dreaming, perhaps (but what am I saying! their life on the shore was it not a perpetual dream?) believed that he heard Jesus ask him: “Lovest thou Me?” The question was repeated three times. Peter, wholly possessed by a tender and sad sentiment, imagined that he responded, “Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love thee,” and each time the apparition said: “Feed my sheep.” On another occasion Peter told John, in confidence, a strange dream. He had dreamt he had been walking with the Master, John was following a few steps behind. Jesus said to him, in terms most obscure, which seemed to announce to him a prison or a violent death, and repeated to him at different times: “Follow me.” Peter, thereupon, pointing his finger to John, who was following them, asked: “Lord, and this man?” “If I will,” said Jesus, “that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me.” After the execution of Peter, John remembered that dream, and saw in it a prediction of the manner of death his friend had died. He recounted it to his disciples; the latter believed to discover in it the assurance that their master would not die before the final advent of Jesus. These grand and melancholy dreams, these never ceasing conversations, broken off and recommenced with the death of the cherished one, occupied the days and months. The sympathy of Galilee for the prophet that the Hierosolymites of Jerusalem had put to death was re-awakened. More than five hundred persons were already devoted to the memory of Jesus. In default of the lost master, they obeyed the disciples, the most authoritative—Peter—in particular. One day, when following in the suite of their spiritual chiefs, the faithful Galileans had ascended one of those mountains whither Jesus had often conducted them, and they imagined that they saw him again. The atmosphere of these heights is full of strange mirages. The same vision which formerly had occurred to the most intimate disciples was once more produced. The whole assembly believed that they saw the divine spectre displayed in the clouds; all fell on their faces and worshipped. The sentiment which the clear horizon of those mountains inspires is the idea of the extent of the world, and the desire of conquering it. On one of the neighbouring peaks Satan, pointing out to Jesus with his finger the kingdoms of the world and all their glory, offered to give them to him, it is stated, if he would only fall down and worship him On this occasion, it was Jesus who, from the tops of these sacred summits, showed to his disciples the whole world, and assured them of the future. They descended from the mountain, persuaded that the son of God had given to them the command to convert the whole human race, and promised to be with them till the end of time. A strange ardour, a divine fire, pervaded them at the close of these conversations. They regarded themselves as the missionaries of the world, capable of performing supernatural deeds. St. Paul saw several of those who had assisted at that extraordinary scene. At the end of twenty-five years the impression they left was still as strong and as lively as on the first day. Nearly a year rolled on, during which they led this life, suspended between heaven and earth. The charm, far from diminishing, increased. It is a property of great and holy things, always to become grander and more pure of themselves. The sentiment in regard to a loved one who has been lost, is certainly keener at a distance of time, than on the morrow after the death. The greater the 38


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distance, the more the sentiment gains strength. The sorrow, which at first is a part of it and, in a sense, lessens it, is changed into a serene piety. The image of the defunct one is transfigured, idealized, becomes the soul of life, the principle of all action, the source of all joy, the oracle which is consulted, the consolation which is sought in moments of despondency. Death is a necessary, condition of every apotheosis. Jesus, so beloved during his life, was in this way more so after his last breath, or rather his last breath was the commencement of his actual life in the bosom of the church. He became the intimate friend, the confidant, the travelling companion, the one who, at the turning point of the route, joins you, follows you, sits down at table with you, and reveals himself at the moment of disappearance. The absolute lack of scientific exactitude in the minds of these new believers, made it that one could not weigh any question in regard to the nature of one’s existence. They represented him as impassible, endowed with a subtle body, passing through opaque walks, now visible, now invisible, but always living. Sometimes they imagined that his body was not composed of matter; that it was pure shadow or apparition. At other times there was attributed to him a material body, with flesh and bones; through a naïve scrupulousness, as though the hallucination had inclined to take precautions against himself, he was made to drink and eat; nay, it was maintained that some of them had touched his body gently with their hands. Their ideas on this point were extremely vague and uncertain. We have not until now dreamt of putting a frivolous question; at the same time the present is one not easily of solution. Whilst Jesus had risen in this real manner, that is to say, in the hearts of those who loved him; whilst the immovable conviction of the apostles was being formed, and the faith of the world prepared, in what place did the worms consume the inanimate body which on the Saturday evening had been deposited in the tomb? People ignore always this point, for, naturally, the Christian traditions can do nothing to clear up the subject. It is the spirit which quickeneth; the flesh is nothing. The resurrection was the triumph of the idea over the reality. Now that the idea had entered upon its immortality, what mattered the body? About the years 80 or 83, when the actual text of the first Gospel received its final additions, the Jews already had on this matter a settled opinion. If they are to be believed, the disciples might have come by night and stolen away his body. The Christian conscience was alarmed at this rumour, and in order to cut short such an objection, they invented the circumstance of the military guard, and of the seal put on the sepulchre. That circumstance, to be found only in the first gospel, mixed up with legends of doubtful authority, is wholly inadmissible. But the explanation of the Jews, although irrefutable, is far from being altogether satisfactory. It can hardly be admitted that those who had so firmly believed Jesus had risen from the dead, were the same persons who had taken away his body. Little accustomed as these men were to reflection, one can hardly imagine so singular an illusion. It must be remembered that the little church at that moment was completely dispersed. It had no expectation, no centralisation, no regular method of procedure. Beliefs sprang up on every hand, and were then amalgamated as best they might. The contradictions between the narratives, upon which we base the incidents of the Sabbath morning, prove that the rumours were spread through the most diverse channels, and that they did not care much about bringing them into accord.

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It is possible that the body may have been taken away by some of the disciples, and transported by them into Galilee. The others, who remained at Jerusalem, may not have been cognizant of the fact. On the other hand, the disciples, who may have carried the body into Galilee, could not at first have any knowledge of the stories which were current at Jerusalem, so that the belief in the resurrection may have been invented after they went away, and must, therefore, have surprised them. They did not reclaim, and, even had they done so, it would have unsettled nothing. When it is a question of miracles a tardy correction is not feared. No material difficulty ever impedes a sentiment from being developed and of creating the fictions it has need of. In the recent history of the miracle of Salette, the error was demonstrated by the clearest of evidence, but that did not hinder the belief from springing up, and the faith from spreading. It is allowable also to suppose that the disappearance of the body was the work of the Jews. Probably they thought by that to prevent the tumultuous scenes which might be enacted over the body of a man so popular as Jesus. Probably they wished to prevent people from making a noisy funeral display, or from raising a tomb to that just man. Finally, who knows that the disappearance of the corpse was not the work of the proprietor of the garden, or of the gardener. The proprietor, according to all accounts, was a stranger to the sect. His sepulchre was chosen because it was the nearest to Golgotha, and because they were pressed for time. Probably he was dissatisfied with the mode of taking possession of his property, and had the body removed. In good truth, the details reported in the fourth gospel, of the linen left in the sepulchre, and the napkin folded carefully away in the corner, does not accord with such an hypothesis. This last circumstance would lead one to suppose that a woman’s hand had crept in there. The five narratives of the visit of the women to the tomb are so confused and embarrassing, that it is certainly quite allowable for us to suppose that they contained some misapprehension. The female conscience, when dominated by passion, is capable of the most extravagant illusions. Often it becomes the abettor of its own dreams. To these sort of incidents, for the purpose of having them considered as marvellous, nobody deliberately deceives; but everybody, without thinking of it, is led to connive at them. Mary Magdalene, according to the language of the times, had been “possessed of seven devils.” In all this it is necessary to take account of the lack of the precision of mind of the women of the East, of their absolute want of education, and of the peculiar shade of their sincerity. Exalted conviction renders any return upon herself impossible. When the sky is seen everywhere, one is led to put oneself at times in the place of the sky.

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Let us draw a veil over these mysteries. In states nt religious crises, everything being regarded as divine, the greatest effects may be the results of the most trifling causes. If we were witnesses of the strange facts which are at the origin of all the works of faith, we should discover circumstances which to us would not appear proportioned to the importance of the results, and others which would make us smile. Our old cathedrals are reckoned among the most beautiful objects in the world; one cannot enter them without being in some sort inebriated with the infinite. Yet these splendid marvels are almost always the fruit of some little conceit. And what does it matter definitively. The result 40


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alone counts in such matters. Faith purifies all. The material incident which has induced belief in the resurrection was not the true cause of the resurrection. That which raised Jesus from the dead was love. That love was so powerful that a petty accident sufficed to erect the edifice of a universal faith. If Jesus had been less loved, if faith in the resurrection had had less reason for its establishment, these kind of accidents would have occurred in vain, nothing would have come out of them. A grain of sand causes the fall of a mountain, when the moment for the fall of the mountain has come. The greatest things proceed at once from the greatest and smallest causes. Great causes alone are real; little ones only serve to determine the production of an effect which has for a long time been in preparation. 25

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CHAPTER III. RETURN OF THE APOSTLES TO JERUSALEM.—END OF THE PERIOD OF APPARITIONS.

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THE apparitions, in the meanwhile, as happens always in movements of credulous enthusiasm, began to abate. Popular chimeras resemble contagious maladies; they grow stale quickly and change their form. The activity of these ardent souls had already turned in another direction. What they believed to have heard from the lips of the dear risen one, was the order to go forth and preach, and to convert the world. But where should they commence? Naturally, at Jerusalem. The return to Jerusalem was then resolved upon by those who at that time had the direction of the sect. As these journeys were ordinarily made by caravan at the time of the feasts, we now suppose with all manner of likelihood, that the return in question took place at the Feast of Tabernacles at the close of the year 33, or the Paschal Feast of the year 34. Galilee was thus abandoned by Christianity, and abandoned for ever. The little church which remained there continued, no doubt, to exist; but we hear it no more spoken of. It was probably broken up, like all the rest, by the frightful disaster which then overtook the country during the war of Vespasian; the wreck of the dispersed community sought refuge beyond Jordan. After the war it was not Christianity which was brought back into Galilee; it was Judaism. In the ii., iii., and iv. centuries, Galilee was a country wholly Jewish; the centre of Judaism, the country of the Talmud. Galilee thus counted but an hour in the history of Christianity; but it was the sacred hour, par excellence; it gave to the new religion that which has made it endure—its poetry, its penetrating charms. “The Gospel,” after the manner of the synoptics, was a Galilean work. But we shall attempt further on to show that “The Gospel” thus extended, has been the principal cause of the success of Christianity, and continues to be the surest guarantee of its future. It is probable that a fraction of the little school which surrounded Jesus in his last days remained at Jerusalem. At the moment of separation the belief in the resurrection was already established. That belief was thus developed from two points of view, each having a perceptibly different aspect; and such is, no doubt, the cause of the complete divergencies which are remarked in the narratives of the apparitions. Two traditions, the one Galilean, the other Hierosolymitish, were formed; according to the first, all the apparitions (except those of the first period) had taken place in Galilee; according to the second, all had taken place at Jerusalem. The accord of the two fractions of the little church on the fundamental dogma, naturally only served to confirm the common belief. They embraced each other effusively; they repeated with the same faith, “He is risen.” Perhaps the joy and the enthusiasm which were the consequences of this agreement, led to some other visions. It is about this period that we can place the vision of James, mentioned by Saint Paul. James was the brother, or at least, a relation of Jesus. We do not find that he had accompanied Jesus on his last sojourn to Jerusalem. He probably went there with the apostles, when the latter gritted Galilee. All the chief apostles had had their visions; it was hard that this “brother of the Lord,” 42


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should not also have his. It was, it seems, an eucharistic vision, that is to say, in which Jesus appeared taking and breaking the bread. Later, those portions of the Christian family who attached themselves to James, those that were called the Hebrews, changed this vision to the same day as the resurrection, and wanted it to be looked upon as the first of all.

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In fact, it is very remarkable that the family of Jesus, some of whose members during his life had been incredulous and hostile to his mission, constituted now a part of the Church, and held in it a very exalted position. One is led to suppose that the reconciliation took place during the sojourn of the apostles in Galilee. The celebrity which had attached itself to the name of their relative, those five thousand persons who believed in him, and were assured of having seen him after he had arisen, served to make an impression on their minds. From the time of the definite establishment of the apostles at Jerusalem, we find with them Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the brothers of Jesus. In what concerns Mary, it appears that John, thinking in this to obey a recommendation of the Master, had adopted and taken her to his own home. He perhaps took her back to Jerusalem. This woman, whose personal history and character have remained veiled in obscurity, assumed hence great importance. The words that the evangelist put into the mouth of some unknown women: “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the babes which thou has sucked,” began to be verified. It is probable that Mary survived her son a few years. As for the brothers of Jesus, their history is wrapped in obscurity. Jesus had several brothers and sisters. It seemed probable, however, that in the class of persons which were called “Brothers of the Lord,” there were included relations in the second degree. The question is only of moment so far as it concerns James. This James the Just, or “brother of the Lord,” whom we shall see playing a great part in the first thirty years of Christianity, was the James, the son of Alphæus, who appears to have been a cousin germain of Jesus, or a whole brother of Jesus? The data in respect of him are altogether uncertain and contradictory. What we do know of this James represents him to be such a different person from Jesus, that we refuse to believe that two men so dissimilar were born of the same mother. If Jesus was the true founder of Christianity, James was its most dangerous enemy; he nearly ruined everything by his narrow-mindedness. Later, it was certainly believed that James the Just was a whole brother of Jesus. But perhaps some confusion was mixed up with the subject. Be that as it may, the apostles henceforth separated no more, except to make temporary journeys. Jerusalem became their head-quarters; they seemed to be afraid to disperse, while certain acts served to reveal in them the prepossession of being opposed to return again into Galilee, which latter had dissolved its little society. An express order of Jesus is supposed to have interdicted their quitting Jerusalem, before, at least, the great manifestations which were to take place. Apparitions became more and more rare. They were spoken much less of, and people began to believe that they would not see the Master again until His grand appearance in the clouds. Peoples’ thoughts were turned with great force towards a promise which it was supposed Jesus had made. During his life-time, Jesus, it was said, had often spoken of the Holy Spirit, which was understood to mean a personification of divine wisdom. He had promised his disciples that the Spirit would nerve them 43


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in the combats that they would have to engage in, would be their inspirer in difficulties, and their advocate, if they had to speak in public. When the visions became rare, the brethren found compensation in this Spirit, which they looked upon as a consoler, as another self which Jesus had bequeathed to his friends. Sometimes it was supposed that Jesus suddenly presented himself in the midst of his disciples assembled, and breathed on them out of his own mouth a current of vivifying air. At other times the disappearance of Jesus was regarded as a premonition of the coming of the Spirit. It was believed that in the apparitions he had promised the descent of this Spirit. Many people established an intimate connection between this descent and the restoration of the kingdom of Israel. All the fervency of imagination which the sect had displayed in inventing the legend of Jesus risen again, was now about to be employed to create an assemblage of pious believers, in regard to the descent of the Spirit and its marvellous gilts. It seems, however, that a grand apparition of Jesus had taken place at Bethany or upon the Mount of Olives. Certain traditions annexed it to that vision of the final recommendations of Jesus, and the reiterated promise of the sending down of the Holy Spirit, the act which was to invest the disciples with the power of remitting sins. The features of these apparitions became more and more vague; they were confounded one with another; and people came not to think much about them. It was an accepted fact that Jesus was living; that he manifested himself by a number of apparitions, sufficient to prove his existence; that he would again be manifested in some partial visions, until the grand final revelation which would be the consummation of all. Thus, Saint Paul presents the vision he had on the way to Damascus, as of the same order as those we have just been speaking of. At all events, it was admitted. in an idealistic sense, that the Master was to be with his disciples and he would remain with them unto the end. In the first period the apparitions were very frequent. Jesus was conceived as dwelling permanently on the earth and fulfilling more or less the functions of terrestrial life. When the visions became rare, they were made to conform to another idea. Jesus was represented as having entered into his glory, and as being seated at the right hand of his Father. “He is ascended to Heaven,” it was said. This statement rested mainly on a vague conception of the idea, or on an induction. But it was converted by many into a material scene. It was desired that it should follow the last vision common to all the apostles, and in which he gave them his supreme recommendations. Jesus was received up into Heaven. Later, the scene was developed and became a complete legend. It was recounted that some heavenly messengers, agreeably to the divine manifestations, most brilliant, appeared at the moment when a cloud enveloped him, and consoled his disciples by the assurance of his return in the clouds, resembling wholly the scene of which they had just been witnesses. The death of Moses had been surrounded in the popular imagination with circumstances of the same kind. Perhaps they also called to mind the ascension of Elias. A tradition placed the locality of this scene near Bethany, upon the summit of the Mount of Olives. That quarter remained very dear to his disciples, doubtless because Jesus had lived there. The legend would make it appear that the disciples, after that marvellous scene, re-entered Jerusalem “with joy.” For ourselves, it is with sadness that we have to say to Jesus a final adieu.

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To have found him living again his shadow life, has been to us a great consolation. That second life of Jesus, a pale image of the first, is yet full of charm. Now, all scent of him is lost. Raised on a cloud to the right hand of his Father, he has left us with men, but, oh, Heaven! the fall is terrible! The reign of poetry is past. Mary Magdalene, retired to her native village, buried there her recollections. In consequence of that eternal injustice which ordains that man appropriates to himself alone the work in which woman has had as great a share as he, Cephas eclipsed her, and made her to be forgotten! No more sermons on the Mount; no more of the possessed of devils healed; no more courtesans touched; no more of those strange female fellow workers in the work of redemption whom Jesus had not repelled! God has verily disappeared. No; history of the church is to be most often henceforth the history of treasons to blot out the name of Jesus. But such as it is, that history is still a hymn to his glory. The wools and the image of the illustrious Nazarene shall remain in the midst of infinite miseries as a sublime ideal. We shall comprehend better how great it was when we have seen how little were his disciples.

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CHAPTER IV. DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT—ECSTATICAL, AND PROPHETICAL PHENOMENA. MEAN, narrow, ignorant, inexperienced they were, as completely so as it was possible to be. Their simplicity of mind was extreme; their credulity had no limits. But they had one quality: they loved their Master to foolishness. The recollection of Jesus was the only moving power of their lives; it was perpetually with them, and it was clear that they lived only for him, who, during two or three years, had so strangely attached and seduced them. For souls of a secondary standard, who cannot love God directly, that is to say, discover truth, create the beautiful, do right of themselves, salvation consists in loving some one in whom there shines a reflection of the true, the beautiful, and the good. The great majority of mankind require a worship of two degrees. The multitude of worshippers desire an intermediary between it and God.

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When a person has succeeded in attracting to himself, by an elevated moral bond, several other persons, when he dies, it always happens that the survivors, who, up to that time are often divided by rivalries and dissensions, beget a strong friendship the one for the other. A thousand cherished images of the past, which they regret, become to them a common treasure. There is .a manner of loving the dead, which consists in loving those with whom we have known him. We are anxious to meet one another, in order to re-call the happy times which are no more. A profound saying of Jesus is found then to be true to the letter: The dead one is present in the midst of those who are united again by his memory. The affection that the disciples had the one for the other, while Jesus was alive, was thus enhanced tenfold after his death. They formed a very small and very retired society, and lived exclusively by themselves. At Jerusalem they numbered about one-hundred-and-twenty. Their piety was active, and, as yet, completely restrained by the forms of Jewish piety. The temple was then the chief place of devotion. They worked, no doubt, for a living; but at that time, manual labour in Jewish society engaged very few. Everyone had a trade, but that trade by no means hindered a man from being educated and well-bred. With us, material wants are so difficult to satisfy, that the man living by his hands is obliged to work twelve or fifteen hours a day; the man of leisure alone can follow intellectual pursuits; the acquisition of instruction is a rare and costly affair. But in those old societies (of which the East of our days gives still an idea), in those climates, where nature is so prodigal to man and so little exacting, in the life of the labourer there was plenty of leisure. A sort of common instruction puts every man au courant of the ideas of the times. Mere food and clothing satisfied their wants; a few hours of moderate labour provided these. The rest was given up to day dreaming, and to passion. Passion had attained in the minds of those people a decree of energy which is to us inconceivable. The Jews of that time appear to us to be in truth possessed, each pursuing with a blind fatality the idea with which he had been seized. 46


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The dominant idea in the Christian community, at the moment at which we are now arrived, and when apparitions had ceased, was the coming of the Holy Spirit. People were believed to receive it in the form of a mysterious breath, which passed over the assembly. Mary pretended that it was the breath of Jesus himself. Every inward consolation, every bold movement, every flush of enthusiasm, every feeling of lively, and pleasant gaiety, which was experienced without knowing whence it came, was the work of the Spirit. These simple con-sciences referred, as usual, to some exterior cause the exquisite sentiments which were being created in them. It was in the assemblies, particularly, that these fantastic phenomena of illumination were produced. When all were assembled, and when they awaited in silence, inspiration from on high, a murmur, any noise whatever, was believed to be the coming of the Spirit. In the early times, it was the apparitions of Jesus which were produced in this manner. Now the turn of ideas had changed. It was the divine breath which passed over the little church, and filled it with a celestial effluvia. These beliefs were strengthened by notions drawn from the Old Testament. The prophetic spirit is represented in the Hebrew books as a breathing which penetrates man and inspires him. In the beautiful vision of Elijah, God passes by in the form of a gentle wind, which produces a slight rustling noise. This ancient imagery had handed down to later ages beliefs analogous to those of the Spiritualists of our days. In the ascension of Isaiah, the coming of the Spirit is accompanied by a certain rustling at the doors. More often, however, people regarded this coming as another baptism, to wit, the “baptism of the Spirit,” far superior to that of John. The hallucinations of touch being very frequent among persons so nervous and so excited, the least current of air, accompanied by a shuddering in the midst of the silence, was considered as the passage of the Spirit. One conceived that he felt it; soon everybody felt it; and the enthusiasm was communicated from one to another. The correspondence of these phenomena with those which are to be found amongst the visionaries of all times is easily apprehended. They are produced daily, partly under the influence of the Acts of the Apostles, in the English or American sects of Quakers, Jumpers, Shakers, Irvingites; amongst the Mormons; in the camp-meetings and revivals of America; we have seen them reproduced amongst ourselves in the sect called the Spiritualists. But an immense difference ought to be made between aberrations, which are without bounds, and without a future, and the illusions which have accompanied the establishment of a new religious code for humanity. Amongst all these “descents of the Spirit,” which appear to have been frequent enough, there was one which left a profound impression on the nascent Church. One day, when the brethren were assembled, a thunder-storm burst forth. A violent wind threw open the windows: the heavens were on fire. Thunderstorms, in these countries, are accompanied by prodigious sheets of lightning; the atmosphere is, as it were, everywhere furrowed with ridges of flame. Whether the electric fluid had penetrated the room itself, or whether a dazzling flash of lightning had suddenly illuminated the faces of all, everyone was convinced that the Spirit had entered, and that it had alighted on the head of each in the form of tongues of fire. It was a prevalent opinion in the theurgic schools of Syria, that the communication of the Spirit was produced by a divine fire, and under the form of a 47


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mysterious glare. People fancied themselves to be present at the splendours of Sinai, at a divine manifestation analogous to those of former days. The baptism of the Spirit thenceforth became also a baptism of fire. The baptism of the Spirit and of fire was opposed to, and greatly preferred to, the baptism of water, the only baptism which John had known. The baptism of fire, was only prepared on rare occasions. Thy apostles and the disciples of the first guest-chamber alone were reputed to have received it. But the idea that the Spirit had alighted on them in the form of jets of Ilene, resembling tongues of fire, gave rise to a series of singular ideas, which took a foremost place in the thought of the period. 35

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The tongue of the inspired man was supposed to receive a kind of sacrament. It was pretended that many prophets, before their mission, had been stammerers; that the Son of God had passed a coal over their lips, which purified them and conferred on them the gift of eloquence. In preaching, the man was supposed not to speak of his own volition. His tongue was considered as the organ of divinity which inspired it. These tongues of fire appeared a striking symbol. People were convinced that God desired to signify in this manner that he poured out upon the apostles his most precious gifts of eloquence, and of inspiration. But they did not stop there. Jerusalem was, like the majority of the large cities of the East, a city in which many languages were spoken. The diversity of tongues was one of the difficulties which one found there in the way of propagating a universal form of faith. One of the things, moreover, which alarmed the apostles, at the commencement of a ministry destined to embrace the world, was the number of languages which was spoken there: they were asking themselves incessantly how they could learn so many tongues. “The gift of tongues” became thus a marvellous privilege. It was believed that the preaching of the Gospel would clear away the obstacle which was created by the diversity of idioms. It was imagined that, in some solemn circumstances, the auditors had heard the apostle preaching each in his own tongue: in other words, that the apostolic preaching translated itself to each of the listeners. At other times, this was understood in a somewhat different manner. To the apostles was attributed the gift of knowing, by divine inspiration, all tongues, and of speaking them at will. There was in this a liberal idea; they meant to imply that the Gospel should have no language of its own; that it should be translatable into every tongue; and that the translation should be of the came value as the original. Such was not the sentiment of orthodox Judaism. Hebrew was for the Jews of Jerusalem the holy tongue; no language could be compared to it. Translations of the Bible were lightly esteemed, whilst the Hebrew text was scrupulously guarded. In translations, changes and modifications were permitted. The Jews of Egypt, and the Hellenists of Palestine, practised, it is true, a more tolerant system. They employed Greek in prayer, and perused constantly Greek translations of the Bible. But the first Christian idea was even broader. According to that idea the word of God has no language of its own: it is free and unhampered by idiomatic fetters; it is delivered to all spontaneously, and needs no interpreter. The facility with which Christianity was detached from the Semetic tongue which Jesus had spoken, the liberty which it left at first each nation to create its own liturgy, and its versions of the Bible in its natural tongue, served as a sort of emancipation of tongues. It was

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generally admitted that the Messiah would gather into one all tongues as well as all peoples. Common usage and the promiscuity of languages were the first steps towards that great era of universal pacification.

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For the rest, the gift of tongues soon underwent a considerable transformation, and resulted in more extraordinary effects. Brain excitement led to ecstacy and prophecy. In these ecstatic moments the faithful, impelled by the Spirit, uttered inarticulate and incoherent sounds, which were taken for the words of a foreign language, and which they innocently sought to interpret. At other times it was believed that the ecstatically possessed spoke new and hitherto unknown languages, or even the language of the angels. These extravagant scenes, which led to abuses, did not become habitual until a later period. Yet it is probable that from the earliest years of Christianity they were produced. The visions of the ancient prophets had often been accompanied by phenomena of nervous excitation. The dythyrambic state amongst the Greeks produced the same kind of occurrences; the Pythia used by preference foreign or obsolete words, which were called, as in the apostolic phenomena, glosses. Many of the passwords of primitive Christianity, which were properly bilingual, or formed by anagrams, such as Abba pater, anathema, maran-atha, were probably derived from these strange paroxysms, intermingled with sighs, stifled groans, ejaculations, prayers, and sudden transports, which were taken for prophecies. It resembled a vague music of the soul, uttered in indistinct sounds, and which the auditors sought to transform into images and determinate words, or rather as the prayers of the Spirit addressed to God, in a language known to God only, and which God knew how to interpret. No ecstatic person, in short, understood anything of what he uttered, and had not even any cognizance of it. People listened with eagerness and attributed to the incoherent utterances the thoughts which there and then occurred to them. Each referred to his own tongue and ingenuously sought to explain the unintelligible sounds by what little he actually knew of languages. In this they always more or less succeeded, the auditor filling in between the broken sentences the thoughts he had in mind. The history of fanatical sects is fruitful in instances of the same kmd. The preachers of the Cevennes displayed similar instances of “glossolaly.” The most striking instance, however, is that of the “readers” of Sweden, about the years 1841-43. Involuntary utterances, enunciations, having no meaning to those who uttered them, and accompanied by convulsions and fainting fits, were for a long time practised daily in that little sect. The thing became perfectly contagious, and occasioned a considerable popular movement. Amongst the Irvingites the phenomenon of tongues has been produced with features which reproduce in the most striking manner the stories of the Acts and of Saint Paul. Our own century has witnessed illusive scenes of the same kind, which we will not recount here; for it is always unjust to compare the inseparable credulity of a great religious movement with the credulity which results from dulness of intellect. These strange phenomena were sometimes produced out of doors. The ecstatic persons, at the very moment when they were a prey to their extravagant illuminations, had the hardihood to go

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out and show themselves to the multitude. They were taken for drunken persons. Although sober-minded in point of mysticism, Jesus had more than once presented in his own person the ordinary phenomena of the ecstatic state. The disciples, for two or three years, were beset with these ideas. Prophesying was frequent and considered as a gift analogous to that of tongues. Prayers, accompanied by convulsions, rhythmic modulations, mystic sighs, lyrical enthusiasm, songs with graceful attitudes, were a daily exercise. A rich vein of “canticles,” “psalms,” “hymns,” in imitation of those of the Old Testament, was thus found to be open to them. Sometimes the mouth and heart mutually accompanied one another; sometimes the heart sang alone, accompanied inwardly by grace. No language being able to render the new sensations which were produced, they indulged in an indistinct muttering, at once sublime and puerile, in which what one might call “the Christian language,” was wafted in a state of embryo. Christianity, not finding in the ancient languages an appropriate instrument for its needs, has shattered them. But whilst the new religion was forming a language suited to its use, centuries of obscure effort and, so to speak, of childish prattle, were required. The style of Saint Paul, and, in general, that of the authors of the New Testament, what is its characteristic, if it be not stifled, halting, informal, improvisation of the “glossolalist”? Language failed them. Like the prophets, they aped the a, a, a, of the infant. They did not know how to speak. The Greek and the Semetic tongues equally betrayed them. Hence that shocking violence which nascent Christianity inflicted on language. It might be compared to a stutterer, in whose mouth the tones being stifled, clash with and against each other, and terminate in a confused medley, but yet marvellously expressive. All this was very far from the sentiment of Jesus; but for minds penetrated with a belief in the supernatural, these phenomena possessed great importance. The gift of tongues, in particular, was considered as an essential sign of the new religion, and as a proof of its truth. In any case, there resulted from it much fruit for edification. Many Pagans were converted in this way. Up to the third century “glossolaly” was manifested in a manner analogous to that described by St. Paul, and was considered as a perpetual miracle. Many of the sublime words of Christianity are derived from these incoherent sighs. The general effect was touching and penetrating. Their manner of offering in common their inspirations and of handing them over to the community for interpretation established in time amongst the faithful a strong bond of fraternity. As in the case of all mvstics, the new sectaries led fasting and austere lives. Like the majority of Orientals, they ate little, which contributed to maintain them in a state of excitement. The sobriety of the Syrian, the cause of his physical weakness, keeps him in a perpetual state of fever and of nervous susceptibility. Our severe, continuous, intellectual efforts, are impossible under such a regimen. But this cerebal debility and muscular laxity, produces, apparently without cause, lively alternations of sorrow and joy, and puts the soul in constant relationship with God. That which was called “Godly sorrow” passed for a Heavenly gift. All the teachings of the Fathers concerning the

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life spiritual, such as John Climacus, as Basil, as Nilus, as Arsenius,—all the secrets of the grand art of the inward life, one of the most glorious creations of Christianity—were in germ in the peculiar state of mind which possessed, in their mouths of ecstatic expectation, those illustrious ancestors of all “The men of longings.” Their moral condition was peculiar; they lived in the supernatural. They acted only upon visions, dreams, and the most insignificant circumstances appeared to them to be admonitions from heaven. Under the name of gifts of the Holy Spirit were thus concealed the rarest and most exquisite effusions of soul, love, piety, respectful fears, objectless sighings, sudden languors, and spontaneous tenderness. All the good that is born in man, without man having any part in it, was attributed to a breathing from on high. Tears, above all, were regarded as a heavenly favour. This charming gift, the exclusive privilege of souls most good and most pure, was produced with infinite sweetness. We know what power, delicate natures, especially in women, find in the divine faculty of being able to weep much. It is to them prayer, and, assuredly, the most holy of prayers. We must come down quite to the middle ages to that piety, drenched with the tears of St. Bruno, St. Bernard and St. Francis de Assisi, to find again the chaste melancholy of those early days, when they truly sowed in tears in order that they might reap with joy. To weep became a pious act. Those who were not qualified to preach, work, speak languages, nor to perform miracles, wept. It might, indeed, be said that their souls were melted, and that they desired, in the absence of a language which would interpret their sentiments, to display themselves outwardly, by a vivid and brief expression of their whole inner being.

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CHAPTER V. FIRST CHURCH OF JERUSALEM; IT IS ENTIRELY CENOBITICAL. THE custom of living together, holding the same faith, and indulging the same expectation, necessarily produced many common habits. Very soon rules were framed, which made that primitive church resemble, to some extent, the establishments of the cenobitical life, rules with which Christianity subsequently became acquainted. Many of the precepts of Jesus conduced to this; the true ideal of evangelical life is a monastery, not a monastery enclosed with iron bars, a prison after the type of the Middle Ages, with the separation of the sexes, but an asylum in the midst of the world, a place set apart for spiritual life, a free association or little private confraternity, surrounded by a barrier, which may serve to ward off the cares which are prejudicial to the liberty of the Kingdom of God.

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All, then, lived in common, having but one heart and one mind. No one possessed anything which was his own. On becoming a disciple of Jesus, one sold one’s goods and made a gift of the proceeds to the society. The chiefs of the society then distributed the common possessions to each, according to his needs. They lived in the same quarter, They took their meals together, and continued to attach to them the mystic sense that Jesus had prescribed. They passed long hours in prayers. Their prayers were sometimes improvised aloud, but more often meditated in silence. Trances were frequent, and each one believed oneself to be constantly favoured with divine inspiration. The concord was perfect; no dogmatic quarrels, no disputes in regard to precedence. The tender recollection of Jesus effaced all dissensions. Joy, lively and deep-seated, was in every heart. Their morals were austere, but pervaded by a soft and tender sentiment. They assembled in houses to pray, and to devote themselves to ecstatic exercises. The recollection of these two or three first years remained and seemed to them like a terrestrial paradise, which Christianity will pursue henceforth in all its dreams and to which it will vainly endeavour to return. Who does not see, in fact, that such an organisation could only be applicable to a very small church? But, subsequently, the monastic life will resume on its own account that primitive ideal which the church universal will hardly dream of realising. That the author of the Acts, to whom we are indebted for the picture of this primitive Christianity at Jerusalem, has laid on his colours a little too thickly, and, in particular, exaggerated the community of goods which obtained in the sect, is certainly possible. The author of the Acts is the same as the author of the third gospel, who, in his life of Jesus, had the habit of adapting his facts to suit his theories, and with whom a tendency to the doctrine of ebonism, that is to say, of absolute poverty, is very perceptible. Nevertheless, the narrative of the Acts cannot here be destitute of some foundation. Although Jesus himself would not have given utterance to any of the communistic axioms which one reads in the third gospel, it is certain that a renunciation of worldly goods and 52


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of the giving of alms pushed to the length of self-despoilment, were perfectly conformable to the spirit of his preaching. The belief that the world is coming to an end has always produced a distaste for worldly goods, and a leaning to the communistic life. The narrative of the Acts is, however, perfectly conformable to that which we know of the origin of other ascetic religions—of Buddhism for example. These sorts of religion commence always with monastical life. Their first adepts are some species of mendicant monks. The layman does not appear in them until later, and when these religions have conquered entire societies, in which monastic life can only exist under exceptional circumstances. 43

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We admit, then, in the Church of Jerusalem a period of cenobitical life. Two centuries later Christianity produced still on the Pagans the effect of a communistic sect. It must be remembered that the Essenians or Therapeutians had already given the model of this species of life, which sprang very legitimately from Mosaism. The Mosaic code being essentially moral and not political, its natural product was a social Utopia (church, synagogue and convent) not a civil state, nation or city. Egypt had had for many centuries recluses, both male and female, maintained by the state, probably in fulfilment of charitable legacies, near the Serapeum at Memphis. It must especially be remembered that such a life in the East is by no means what it has been in our West. In the East, one can very well enjoy nature and existence without possessing anything. Man, in these countries, is always free, because he has few wants; the slavery of toil is there unknown. We readily admit that the communism of the primitive church was neither so rigorous nor so universal as the author of the Acts would have. What is certain is, that there was at Jerusalem a large community of poor, governed by the apostles, and to whom were sent gifts from every quarter of Christendom. This community was obliged, no doubt, to establish some rather seven rules, and some years later, it was even necessary, in order to enforce these rules, to employ terror. Some frightful legends were circulated, according to which the mere fact of having retained anything beyond that which one gave to the community, was looked upon as a capital crime and punished by death. The porticoes of the temple, especially the portico of Solomon, which looked down on the Valley of Cedron, was the place where the disciples usually met during the day. There they could recall the hours Jesus had spent in the same place. In the midst of the extreme activity which reigned all about the Temple, they were little noticed. The galleries, which formed a part of the edifice, were the resort of numerous schools and sects, the theatre of endless disputations. The faithful followers of Jesus were, however, regarded as extreme devotees; for they still, without scruple, observed the Jewish customs, praying at the appointed hours, and observing all the precepts of the Law. They were Jews, differing only from others in believing that the Messiah had already come. The common people who were not informed as to their concerns, and they were an immense majority, regarded them as a sect of Hasidim, or pious people. One needed not to be either a schismatic or a heretic, in order to affiliate oneself with them, any more than one need cease to be a Protestant in order to be a disciple of Spencer, or a Catholic, in order to belong to the sect of Saint Francis or of Saint Bruno. The people loved them, because of their piety, their simplicity, their 53


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kindly disposition. The aristocrats of the Temple looked upon them, no doubt, with displeasure. But the sect made little noise; it was tranquil, thanks to its obscurity.

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At eventide, the brethren returned to their quarters, and partook of the meal, being divided into groups, in sign of paternity, and in remembrance of Jesus, whom they always believed to be present in the midst of them. The one at the head of the table broke the bread, blessed the cup, and sent them round as a symbol of union in Jesus. The most common act of life became in this way the most sacred and the most holy. These meals en famille, which were always enjoyed by the Jews, were accompanied by prayers, pious raptures, and pervaded by a sweet cheerfulness. They believed themselves once more to be in the time when Jesus animated them by his presence: they imagined they saw him, and it was not long before the rumour went abroad that Jesus had said: “As often as ye break the bread, do it in remembrance of Me.” The bread itself became in some sort Jesus, conceived to be the only source of strength for those who had loved him, and who still lived by him. These repasts, which were always the chief symbol of Christianity, and the soul of its mysteries, took place at first every evening. Usage, however, soon restricted them to Sunday evenings. Later on, the mystic repast was changed to the morning. It is probable that at the period of the history which we have now reached, the holy day of each week was still, with the Christians, the Saturday. The apostles chosen by Jesus, and who were supposed to have received from him a special mandate to announce to the world the Kingdom of God, had, in the little community, an incontestable superiority. One of the first cares, as soon as they saw the sect settle quietly down at Jerusalem, was to fill the vacancy that Judas of Kerioth had left in its ranks. The opinion that the latter had betrayed his master, and had been the cause of his death, became more and more general. The legend was mixed up with him, and every day one heard of some new circumstance which enhanced the black-heartedness of his deed. He had bought a field near the old necropolis of Hakeldama, to the south of Jerusalem, and there he lived retired. Such was the state of artless excitation in which the little Church found itself, that, in order to replace him, it was resolved to have recourse to a vote of some sort. In general, in great religious agitations we decide upon this method of coming to a determination, since it is admitted on principle that nothing is fortuitous, that the question in point is the chief object of divine attention, and that God’s part in an action is so much the more greater in proportion as that of man’s is the more feeble. The sole condition was, that the candidate should be chosen from the groups of the oldest disciples, who had been witnesses of the whole series of events, from the time of the baptism of John. This reduced considerably the number of those eligible. Two only were found in the ranks, Joseph Bar-Saba, who bore the name of Justus, and Matthias. The lot fell upon Matthias, who was accounted as one of the Twelve. But this was the sole instance of such a replacing. The apostles were hitherto regarded as having been nominated, once for all, by Jesus, and not as having successors. The danger of a permanent college, reserving to itself all the life and the strength of the association, was, with extraordinary instinct, discarded for a time. The concentration of the Church into an oligarchy did not happen until later.

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For the rest, it is necessary to guard against the misunderstandings, which the name of “apostle” might provoke, and which it has not failed to occasion. From a very early period, people were led by some passages in the Gospel, and, above all, by the analogy of the life of Saint Paul, to regard the apostles as essentially wandering missionaries, distributing in a kind of way the world in advance, and traversing as conquerors all the kingdoms of the earth. A cycle of legends was founded upon that data, and imposed upon ecclesiastical history. Nothing could be more contrary to the truth. The body of Twelve lived, generally, permanently at Jerusalem. Till about the year 60 the apostles did not leave the holy city except upon temporary missions. This explains the obscurity in which the majority of the members of the central council remained. Very few of them had a rôle. This council was a kind of sacred college or senate, destined only to represent tradition, and a spirit of conservatism. It finished by being relieved of every active function, so that its members had nothing to do but to preach and pray; but as yet the brilliant feats of preaching had not fallen to their lot. Their names were hardly known outside Jerusalem, and about the year 70 or 80 the lists which were given of these chosen Twelve, agreed only in the principal names.

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The “brothers of the Lord” appear often by the side of the “apostles,” although they were distinct from them. Their authority, however, was equal to that of the apostles. Here two groups constituted, in the nascent Church, a sort of aristocracy, founded solely on the more or less intimate relations that their members had had with the Master. These were the men whom Paul denominated “the pillars” of the Church at Jerusalem. For the rest, we see that no distinctions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy yet existed. The title was nothing; the personal authority was everything. The principle of ecclesiastical celibacy was already established, but it required time to bring all these germs to their complete development. Peter and Philip were married, and had sons and daughters. The term used to designate the assembly of the faithful was the Hebrew Kahal, which was rendered by the essentially democratic word Ecclesia, which is the convocation of the people in the ancient Grecian cities, the summons to the Pnyx or the Agora. Commencing with the second or the third century before Jesus Christ, the words of the Athenian democracy became a sort of common law in Hellenic language; many of these terms, on account of their having been used in the Greek confraternities, entered into the Christian vocabulary. It was, in reality, the popular life, which; restrained for centuries, resumed its power under forms altogether different. The Primitive Church was, in its way, a little democracy. Even election by lot, a method an dear to the ancient Republics, had sometimes found its way into it. Less harsh, and less suspicious, however, than the ancient cities, the Church voluntarily delegated its authority. Like all theocratic societies, it inclined to abdicate its functions into the hands of a clergy, and it was easy to foresee that one or two centuries would not roll over before all this democracy would resolve itself into an oligarchy. The power which was ascribed to the Church assembled and to its chiefs was enormous. The Church conferred every mission, and was guided solely in its choice by the signs given by the

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Spirit. Its authority went as far as decreeing death. It is recorded that at the voice of Peter, several delinquents had fallen back and expired immediately. Saint Paul, a little later, was not afraid, in excommunicating a fornicator “to deliver him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor., v. vii.). Excommunication was held to be equivalent to a sentence of death. It was not doubted that any person whom the apostles or the elders of the Church had cut off from the body of the Saints, and delivered over to the power of evil, was not lost. Satan was considered as the author of diseases. To deliver over to him the corrupted member was to deliver over the latter to the natural executor of the sentence. A premature death was ordinarily held to be the result of these occult sentences, which, according to the expressive Hebrew phrase, “cut off a soul from Israel.” The apostles were believed to be invested with supernatural powers. In pronouncing such condemnations, they thought that their anathemas could not fail but be effectual. The terrible impression which their excommunications produced, and the hatred manifested by the brethren against all the members thus cut off, were sufficient, in fact, in many cases, to bring about death, or at least to compel the culprit to expatriate himself. The same terrible ambiguity was found in the ancient law. “Extirpation” implied at once death, expulsion from the community, exile, and a solitary and mysterious demise. So with the apostate, or blasphemer. To destroy his body in order to save his soul came to be looked on as legitimate. It must be remembered that we are treating of the times of zealots, who regarded it as an act of virtue to poignard anyone who failed to obey the Law; and it must not be forgotten that certain Christians were or had been zealots. Accounts like those of the death of Ananias and Saphira did not excite any scruple. The idea of the civil power was so foreign to all that world placed without the pale of the Roman law, people were so persuaded that the Church was a complete society, sufficient in itself, that no person saw, in a miracle leading to death or the mutilation of an individual, an outrage punishable by the civil law. Enthusiasm and faith covered all, excused everything. But the frightful danger which these theocratic maxims laid up in store for the future is readily perceived. The Church is armed with a sword; excommunication is a sentence of death. There was henceforth in the world a power outside that of the state, which disposed of the life of citizens. Certainly, if the Roman authority had limited itself to repressing amongst the Jews precepts so condemnatory, it would have been a thousand times in the right. Only, in its brutality, it confounded the most legitimate of liberties, that of worshipping in one’s own manner, with abuses which no society has ever been able to support with impunity. Peter had amongst the apostles a certain precedence, derived directly from his zeal and his activity. In these first years, he was hardly ever separate from John, son of Zebedee. They went almost always together, and their amity was doubtless the corner stone of the new faith. James, the brother of the Lord, almost equalled them in authority, at least amongst a fraction of the Church. In regard to certain intimate friends of Jesus, like the Galilean women, and the family of Bethany, we have already remarked that no more mention is made of them. Less solicitous of organizing and of establishing a society, the faithful companions of Jesus were content with loving in death

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him whom they had loved in life. Absorbed in their expectation, these noble women, who have formed the faith of the world, were almost unknown to the important men of Jerusalem. When they died, the most important elements of the history of nascent Christianity were put into the tomb with them. Only those who played active parts earned renown. Those who were content to love in secret, remained obscure but assuredly they chose the better part. 50

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It is needless to remark that this little group of simple people had no speculative theology. Jesus wisely kept himself far removed from all metaphysics. He had only one dogma, his own divine sonship and the divinity of his mission. The whole symbol of the primitive church might be embraced in one line: “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.” This belief rested upon a peremptory argument—the fact of the resurrection, of which the disciples claimed to be witnesses. In reality nobody (not even the Galilean women) said they had seen the resurrection. But the absence of the body and the apparitions which had followed, appeared to be equivalent to the fact itself. To attest the resurrection of Jesus was the task which all considered as being specially imposed upon them. It was, however, very soon put forth that the master had predicted this event. Different sayings of his were recalled, which were represented as having not been well understood, and in which was seen, on second thoughts, an announcement of the resurrection. The belief in the near glorious manifestation of Jesus was universal. The secret word which the brethren used amongst themselves, in order to be recognized and confirmed, was maran-atha, the “Lord is at hand.” They believed to remember a declaration of Jesus, according to which their preaching would not have time to go over all the cities of Israel, before that the Son of Man appeared in his majesty. In the meanwhile the risen Jesus had seated himself at the right hand of his Father. Here he is to remain until the solemn day on which he shall conic, seated upon the clouds, to judge the quick and the dead. The idea which they had of Jesus was the one which Jesus had given them of himself. Jesus had been “a prophet, mighty in deed and word,” a man chosen of God, having received a special mission on behalf of humanity, a mission which he had proved by his miracles, and especially by his resurrection. God had anointed him with the Holy Spirit and had clothed him with power; he passed his time in doing good, and in healing those who were under the power of the devil, for God was with him He is the Son of God; that is to say, a perfect man of God, a representation of God upon earth; he is the Messiah, the Saviour of Israel, announced by the prophets (Acts x. 38). The reading of the books of the Old Testament, especially of the Prophets and the Psalms, was habitual in the sect. They carried into that reading a fixed idea—that of discovering everywhere the type of Jesus. They were persuaded that the ancient Hebrew books were full of him, and from the very first years they formed a collection of texts drawn from the Prophets, the Psalms, and from certain apocryphal books, wherein they were convinced that the life of Jesus was predicted and described in advance. This method of arbitrary interpretation belonged at that time to all the Jewish schools. The Messianic missions were a sort of jeu d’esprit, analogous to the allusions which the ancient preachers made of passages of the Bible, diverted from their natural sense and accepted as the simple ornaments of sacred rhetoric. 57


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Jesus with his exquisite tact in religious matters had instituted no new ritual. The new sect had not yet any special ceremonies. The practices of piety were Jewish. The assemblies had, in a strict sense, nothing liturgic. They were the meetings of confraternities, at which prayers were offered up, devoted themselves to glossolaly or prophecy, and the reading of correspondence. There was nothing yet of sacerdotalism. There was no priest (cohen); the presbyter was the “elder,” nothing more. The only priest was Jesus: in another sense, all the faithful were priests. Fasting was considered a very meritorious practice. Baptism was the token of admission to the sect. The rite was the same as administered by John, but it was administered in the name of Jesus. Baptism was, however, considered an insufficient initiation. It had to be followed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which were effected by means of a prayer, offered up by the apostles, upon the head of the new convert, accompanied by the imposition of hands. This imposition of hands, already as familiar to Jesus, was the sacramental act par excellence. It conferred inspiration, universal illumination, the power to produce prodigies, prophesying, and the speaking of languages. It was what was called the Baptism of the Spirit. It was supposed to recall a saying of Jesus: “John baptised you with water, but as for you, you shall be baptised by the Spirit.” Gradually, all these ideas became amalgamated, and baptism was conferred “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” But it is not probable that this formula, in the early days in which we now are, was yet employed. We see the simplicity of this primitive Christian worship. Neither Jesus nor the apostles had invented it. Certain Jewish sects had adopted, before them, these grave and solemn ceremonies, which appeared to have come in part from Chaldea, where they are still practised with special liturgies by the Sabæans or Mendaïtes. The religion of Persia embraced also many rites of the same description.

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The beliefs in popular medicine, which constituted a part of the force of Jesus, were continued in his disciples. The power of healing was one of the marvellous gifts conferred by the Spirit. The first Christians, like almost all the Jews of the time, looked upon diseases as the punishment of a transgression, or the work of a malignant demon. The apostles passed, just as Jesus did, for powerful exorcists. People imagined that the anointings of oil administered by the apostles, with imposition of hands, and invocation of the name of Jesus, were all powerful to wash away the sins which were the cause of disease, and to heal the afflicted one. Oil has always been in the East the medicine par excellence. For the rest, the simple imposition of the hands of the apostles was reputed to have the same effect. This imposition was made by immediate contact. Nor is it impossible that, in certain cases, the heat of the hands, being communicated suddenly to the head, insured to the sick person a little relief. The sect being young and not numerous, the question of deaths was not taken into account until later on. The effect caused by the first demises which took place in the ranks of the brethren was strange. People were troubled by the manner of the deaths. It was asked whether they were less favoured than those who were reserved to see with their eyes the advent of the Son of Man. They

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came generally to consider the interval between death and the resurrection as a kind of blank in the consciousness of the defunct. The idea set forth in the Phædon, that the soul existed before and after death, that death was a boon, that it was the philosophical state par excellence, inasmuch as the soul was then free and disengaged; this idea, I say, was by no means settled in the minds of the first Christians. More often it would seem that man, to them, could not exist without the body. This conception endured for a long time, and was only given up when the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, in the sense of the Greek philosophy, made its entry into the Church, and united in itself so much good and bad with the Christian dogma of the resurrection and with the universal renovation. At the time of which we speak, belief in the resurrection almost alone prevailed. The funeral rite was undoubtedly the Jewish rite. No importance was attached to it; no inscription indicated the name of the dead. The great resurrection was near; the bodies of the faithful had only to make in the rock a very short sojourn. It did not require much persuasion to put people in accord on the question as to whether the resurrection was to be universal, that is to say, whether it would embrace the good and the bad, or whether it would apply to the elect only. One of the most remarkable phenomena of the new religion was the reappearance of prophecy. For a long time people had spoken but little of prophets in Israel. That particular species of inspiration seemed to revive in the little sect. The primitive Church had several prophets and prophetesses analogous to those of the Old Testament. The psalmists also reappeared. The model of our Christian psalms is without doubt given in the canticles which Luke loved to disseminate in his gospel, and which were copied from the canticles of the Old Testament. These psalms and prophesies are, as regards form, destitute of originality, but an admirable spirit of gentleness and of piety animates and pervades them. It is like a faint echo of the last productions of the sacred lyre of Israel. The Book of Psalms was in a measure the calyx from which the Christian bee sucked its first juice. The Pentateuch, on the contrary, was, as it would seem, little read and little studied; there was substituted for it allegories after the manner of the Jewish midraschim in which all the historic sense of the books was suppressed. The music which was sung to the new hymns was probably that species of sobbing, without distinct notes, which is still the music of the Greek Church, of the Maronites, and in general of the Christians of the East. It is less a musical modulation than a manner of forcing the voice and of emitting by the nose a sort of moaning in which all the inflexions follow each other with rapidity. That odd melopœia was executed standing, with the eyes fixed, the eyebrows crumpled, the brow knit, and with an appearance of effort. The word amen, in particular, was given out in a quivering, trembling voice. That word played a great part in the liturgy. In imitation of the Jews, the new adherents employed it to mark the assent of the multitude to the words of the prophet or the precentor. People, perhaps, already attributed to it some secret virtues and pronounced it with a certain emphasis. We do not know whether that primitive ecclesiastical song was accompanied by instruments. As to the inward chant, by which the faithful “made melody in their hearts,” and which was but the overflowing of those tender, ardent, pensive souls, it was doubtless executed like the catilenes of the Lollards of the middle ages, in medium voice. In general, it was joyousness which

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was poured out in these hymns. One of the maxims of the sages of the sect was: “Is any afflicted among you, let him pray. Is any merry, let him sing psalms” (James v. 13). Moreover, this Christian literature being destined purely for the edification of the assembled brethren, was not written down. To compose books was an idea which had occurred to nobody. Jesus had spoken; people remembered his words. Had he not promised that the generation to whom he had spoken should not pass away, until he appeared again?

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CHAPTER VI. THE CONVERSION OF HELLENISTIC JEWS AND OF PROSELYTES.

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TILL now, the Church of Jerusalem presents itself to the outside world as a little Galilean colony. The friends whom Jesus had made at Jerusalem, and in its environs, such as Lazarus, Martha, Mary of Bethany, Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus, had disappeared from the scene. The Galilean group, who pressed around the Twelve, alone remained compact and active. The preachings of these zealous disciples were incessant, and subsequently, after the destruction of Jerusalem, and far away from Judea, the sermons of the apostles were represented as public occasions, being delivered in presence of assembled multitudes. Such a construction appears to have been put upon a number of those convenient images of which legend is so prodigal. The authorities who had caused Jesus to be put to death would not have permitted the renewal of such scandals. The proselytism of the faithful was chiefly carried on by means of struggling conversions, in which the fervour of their souls was communicated to their neighbours. Their preachings under the porticoes of Solomon were addressed to circles, not at all numerous. But the effect of this was only the more profound. Their discourses consisted principally of quotations from the Old Testament, by which it was sought to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. The reasoning was at once subtle and feeble, but the entire exegesis of the Jews of that time was of the same kind, while the deductions which the doctors of the Mischna drew from the texts of the Bible were no more convincing. More feeble still was the proof invoked in support of their arguments, which was drawn from pretended prodigies. It was impossible to doubt that the apostles did not believe that they could work miracles. Miracles were regarded as the sign of every divine mission. Saint Paul, imbued with much of the spirit the most ripe of the first Christian school, believed he wrought them. It was held as certain that Jesus had performed them. It was but natural that the series of these divine manifestations should be continued. In fact, thaumaturgy was a privilege of the apostles until the end of the first century. The miracles of the apostles were of the same character as those of Jesus, and consisted principally, but not exclusively, in the healing of the sick, and in exorcising the possessed of devils. It was pretended that their shadows alone sufficed to operate these marvellous cures. These prodigies were accounted to be the regular gifts of the Holy Spirit, and held the same rank as the gifts of knowledge, preaching and prophesy. In the third century the Church believed itself still to be in possession of the same privileges, and to exercise as a sort of right the power of healing diseases, of casting out devils, and of predicting the future. Ignorance rendered everything possible in this respect. Do we not see in our day, honest men, who, however, lack scientific knowledge, deceived in an enduring manner by the chimeras of magnetism and other illusions? It is not by reason of innocent errors, or by the pitiful discourses we read in the Acts, by which we are to judge of the means of conversion which laid the foundations of Christianity. The real 61


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preaching was the private conversations of these good and sincere men; it was the reflection always noticeable in their discourses, of the words of Jesus; it was above all their piety, their gentleness. The attraction of communistic life carried with it also a great deal of force. Their houses were a sort of hospitals, in which all the poor and the forsaken found asylum and succour. One of the first to affiliate himself with the rising society was a Cypriote, named Joseph Hallevi, or the Levite. Like the others, he sold his land and carried the price of it to the feet of the Twelve. He was an intelligent man, with a devotion proof against everything, and a fluent speaker. The apostles attached him closely to themselves and called him Bar-naba, that is to say, “the son of prophesy,” or of “preaching.” He was accounted, in fact, of the number of the prophets, that is to say, of the inspired preachers. Later on we shall see him play a capital part. Next to Saint Paul, he was the most active missionary of the first century. A certain Mnason, his countryman, was converted about the same time. Cyprus possessed many Jews. Barnabas and Mnasou were undoubtedly Jewish by race. The intimate and prolonged relations of Barnabas with the Church at Jerusalem, induces the belief that Syro-Chaldaic was familiar to him.

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A conquest, almost as important as that of Barnabas was that of one John, who bore the Roman surname of Marcus. He was a cousin of Barnabas, and was circumcised. His mother, Mary, enjoyed an easy competency; she, was likewise converted, and her dwelling was more than once made the rendezvous of the apostles. These two conversions appear to have been the work of Peter. In any case, Peter was very intimate with mother and son; he regarded himself as at home in their house. Even admitting the hypothesis that John-Mark was not identical with the real or supposed author of the second Gospel, his rôle was, nevertheless, a very considerable one. Later, we shall see him accompanying Paul, Barnabas, and even Peter himself, in their apostolic journeys. The first flame was thus spread with great rapidity. The men, the most celebrated of the apostolic century, were almost all gained over to the cause in two or three years, by a sort of simultaneous attraction. It was a second Christian generation, similar to that which had been formed five or six years previously, upon the shores of Lake Tiberias. This second generation had not seen Jesus, and could not equal the first in authority. But it was destined to surpass it in activity and in its love for distant missions. One of the best known among the new converts was Stephen, who, before his conversion, appears to have been only a simple proselyte. He was a man full of ardour and of passion. His faith was of the most fervent, and he was considered to be favoured with all the gifts of the Spirit. Philip, who, like Stephen, was a zealous deacon and evangelist, attached himself to the community abort the sane time. He was often confounded with his namesake, the apostle. Finally, there were converted it this epoch, Andronicus and Junia, probably husband and wife, who, like Aquila and Priscilla, later on, were the model of an apostolic couple, devoted to all the duties of missionary work. They were of the blood of Israel, and were in the closest relations with the apostles.

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The new converts, when touched by grace, were all Jews by religion, but they belonged to two very different classes of Jews. The one class was the Hebrews; that is to say, the Jews of Palestine, speaking Hebrew or rather Armenian, reading the Bible in the Hebrew text; the other class was “Hellenists,” that is to say, Jews speaking Greek, and reading the Bible in Greek. These last were further sub-divided into two classes, the one being of Jewish blood, the other being proselytes, that is to say, people of non-Israelitish origin, allied in divers degrees to Judaism. These Hellenists, who almost all came from Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, or Cyrene, lived at Jerusalem in distinct quarters. They had their separate synagogues, and formed thus little communities apart. Jerusalem contained a great number of these special synagogues. It was in these that the words of Jesus found the soil prepared to receive it and to make it fructify. The primitive nucleus of the Church at Jerusalem had been composed wholly and exclusively of Hebrews; the Aramaic dialect, which was the language of Jesus, was alone known and employed there. But we see that from the second or third years after the death of Jesus, Greek was introduced into the little community, where it soon became dominant. In consequence of their daily relations with the new brethren, Peter, John, James, Jude, and in general the Galilean disciples, acquired the Greek with much more facility than if they had already known something of it. An incident, of which we are soon to speak, shows that this diversity of tongues caused at first some divisions in the community, and that the relations of the two factions were not of the most agreeable kind. After the destruction of Jerusalem, we shall see the “Hebrews,” retire to beyond Jordan, to the heights of Lake Tiberias, and form a separate Church, which had a separate destiny. But in the interval, between these two events, it does not appear that the diversity of languages was of any consequence in the Church. The Orientals have a great facility for learning languages; in the cities everybody invariably speaks two or three tongues. It is then probable that those of the Galilean apostles who played an active part, acquired the practise of speaking Greek; and came even to make use of it in preference to the Syro-Chaldaic, when the faithful, speaking Greek, became the much more numerous. The Palestinian dialect came, therefore, to be abandoned from the day in which people dreamed of a wide-spread propaganda. A provincial patois, which was rarely written, and which was not spoken beyond Syria, was as little adapted as could be to such an object. Greek, on the contrary, was necessarily imposed on Christianity. It was at the time the universal language, at least for the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. It was, in particular, the language of the Jews who were dispersed over the Roman empire. At that time, as in our day, the Jews adopted with great facility the tongues of the countries in which they resided. They did not pique themselves on purism; and this is the reason that the Greek of primitive Christianity is so bad. The Jews, even the most instructed, pronounced badly the classic tongue. Their sentences were always modelled upon the Syriac; they never got rid of the unwieldiness of the gross dialects which the Macedonian conquest had imported. The conversions to Christianity became soon much more numerous amongst the “Hellenists” than amongst the “Hebrews.” The old Jews at Jerusalem were but little drawn towards a sect of 63


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provincials, moderately advanced in the single science that a Pharisee appreciated—the science of the law. The position of the little Church in regard to Judaism was, as with Jesus himself, rather equivocal. But every religious or political party carries in itself a force that dominates it, and obliges it, despite itself, to revolve in its own orbit. The first Christians, whatever their apparent respect for Judaism was, were in reality only Jews by birth or by exterior customs. The true spirit of the sect came from another source. That which grew out of official Judaism was the Talmud; but Christianity has no affinity with the Talmudic school. This is why Christianity found special favour amongst the parties, the least Jewish belonging to Judaism. The rigid orthodoxists took to it but little; it was the new corners, people scarcely catechised, who had not been to any of the great schools, free from routine, and not initiated into the holy tongue, which lent an ear to the apostles and the disciples. Lightly considered by the aristocracy of Jerusalem, these parvenues of Judaism took in this way a sort of revenge. It is always the young and newly formed portions of a community that have the least respect for tradition, and who are the most carried away by novelties. In these classes so little subject to the doctors of the law, credulity was also, it seems, more naive and more complete. That which distinguished the Talmudic Jews was not credulity. The credulous Jew, the lover of the marvellous, whom the Latin satirists knew, was not the Jew of Jerusalem; he was the Hellenist Jew, at once very religious and little instructed, and, consequently, very superstitious. Neither the half-incredulous Sadducee, nor the rigorous Pharisee, could be much affected by the theurgy popular in the apostolic circle. But the Judæus Apella, at whom the epicurean Horace laughed, was easy to convince. Social questions, besides, interested particularly those not benefited by the wealth which the temple and the central institutions of the nation caused to flow into Jerusalem. Yet it was in allying itself to the desires so very analogous to what is now called “socialism” that the new sect laid the solid foundation upon which was to be reared the edifice of its future.

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CHAPTER VII. THE CHURCH CONSIDERED AS AN ASSOCIATION OF POOR PEOPLE.—INSTITUTION OF THE DIACONATE—DEACONESSES AND WIDOWS. A GENERAL truth is revealed to us in the comparative history of religions; to wit: all those which have had a beginning, and have not been contemporary with the origin of language itself, were established rather on account of social than theological reasons. This was assuredly the case with Buddhism. That which was the cause of the enormous success of that religion was not the nihilistic philosophy which served it as a basis; it was its social element. It was in proclaiming the abolition of castes, in establishing, to use his own words, “a law of grace for all,” that Cakya-Mouni and his disciples drew after them first India, then the greater part of Asia. Like Christianity, Buddhism was a movement proceeding from the common people. The great attraction which it had was the facility it afforded the disinherited classes to rehabilitate themselves by the profession of a religion which bettered their condition, and offered infinite resources of assistance and sympathy.

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The number of the poor, at the beginning of the first century of our era, was very considerable in Judea. The country is materially destitute of the resources which procure luxury. In these countries, where there is no industry, fortunes almost always originate either in richly endowed religious institutions, or in favours shown by She Government. The wealth of the temple had for a long time been the exclusive appanage of a limited number of nobles. The Asmoneans had formed around their dynasty a circle of rich families; the Herods augmented lunch the luxury and well-being of a certain class of society. But the true theocratic Jew, when turning his back on the Roman civilization, became only the poorer. There was formed a class of holy rocs, pious, fanatical, rigid observers of the Law, and outwardly altogether miserable. It was from this class that the sects and the fanatical parties, so numerous at this period, were recruited. The universal dream was the reign of the proletariat Jew, who remained faithful, and the humiliation of the rich, who were esteemed as renegades and traitors, given up to a profane life, and to a foreign civilization. Never did hatred equal that of these poor children of God against the splendid edifices which began to cover the country, and against the works of the Romans. Being obliged, so as not to die of hunger, to toil at these edifices, which appeared to them monuments of pride and of forbidden luxury, they believed themselves to be the victims of wicked, rich, corrupt men, and infidels, before the Law. We can conceive how, in such a social state, an association for mutual assistance would be eagerly welcomed. The small Christian Church must have seemed a paradise. This family of simple and united brethren drew associates from every quarter. In return for that which these brought, they obtained an assured future, the society of a congenial brotherhood, and precious hopes. The general custom, before entering the sect, was for each one to convert his fortune into specie. These fortunes ordinarily consisted of small rural, semi-barren properties, and difficult of cultivation. It had one

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advantage, especially for unmarried people; it enabled them to exchange these plots of land against funds sunk in an assurance society, with a view to the Kingdom of God. Even some married people came to the fore in that arrangement; and precautions were taken to insure that the associates brought all that they really possessed, and did not retain anything outside the common fund. Indeed, seeing that each one received out of the latter a share, not in proportion to what one put in, but in proportion to one’s needs, every reservation of property was actually a theft made upon the community. We see in such attempts at organisation on the part of the proletariat, a wonderful resemblance to certain Utopias, which have been introduced at a period not very distant from the present. Yet there is an important difference, arising out of the fact that the Christian communism had religion for a basis, whilst modern socialism has nothing of the kind. It is clear that an association in which the dividend was made in virtue of the needs of each person, and not by reason of the capital put in, could only rest upon a very exalted sentiment of self-abnegation, and upon an ardent faith in a religious ideal. Under such a social constitution, the administrative difficulties were necessarily very numerous, whatever might be the degree of fraternal feeling which prevailed. Between two factions of a community, whose language was not the same, misapprehensions were inevitable. It was difficult for well-descended Jews not to entertain some contempt for their co-religionists, who were less noble. In fact, it was not long before murmurs began to be heard. The “Hellenists,” who each day became more numerous, complained because their widows were not so well-treated at the distributions as those of the “Hebrews.” Till now, the apostles had presided over the affairs of the treasury. But in face of these protestations, they felt the necessity of delegating to others this part of their powers. They proposed to the community to confide these administrative cares to seven experienced and considerate men. The proposition was accepted. The seven chosen were Stephanas, or Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicholas. The last was from Antioch, and was a simple proselyte. Stephen was perhaps of the same condition. It appears that contrary to the method employed in the election of the apostle Matthiasit was decided not to choose the seven administrators from the group of primitive disciples, but from amongst the new converts, and especially from amongst the Hellenists. Every one of them, indeed, bore purely Greek names. Stephen was the most important of the seven, and, in a sense, their chief. The seven were presented to the apostles, who, in accordance with a rite already consecrated, prayed over them, while imposing their hands upon their heads. To the administrators thus designated were given the Syriac name of Schammaschin. They were also sometimes called “The Seven,” to distinguish them from “The Twelve.” Such, then, was the origin of the Diaconate, which is found to be the most ancient ecclesiastical function, the most ancient of sacred orders. Later, all the organised churches, in imitation of that of Jerusalem, had deacons. The growth of such an institution was marvellous. It placed the claims of the poor on an equality with religious services. It was a proclamation of the truth that social problems are the first which should occupy the attention of mankind. It was the foundation of political economy in the religious sense. The deacons were the first preachers of Christianity. We shall see presently what 66


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part they played as evangelists. As organisers, financiers, and administrators, they filled a yet more important part. These practical men, is constant contact with the poor, the sick, the women, went everywhere, observed everything, exhorted, and were most efficacious in converting people. They accomplished more than the apostles, who remained on their seats of honour at Jerusalem. They were the founders of Christianity, in respect of that which it possessed which was most solid and enduring.

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At an early period, women were admitted to this office. They were designated, as in our day, by the name of “sisters.” At first widows were selected; later, virgins were preferred. The tact which guided the primitive church in all this was admirable. These simple and good men, with the most profound skill, because it proceeded only from the heart, laid the basis of that grand Christian feature, par excellence—charity. They had no models of similar institutions to go upon. A vast ministry of benevolence and reciprocal succour, into which the two sexes threw their diverse talents and concentrated their efforts with a view to the alleviation of human misery, was the holy creation which resulted from the labour of these two or three first years—years the most fruitful in the history of Christianity. We feel that the thoughts of Jesus still lived in the bosoms of his disciples, and directed them, with marvellous lucidity, in all their acts. To be just, it is indeed to Jesus to whom must be referred the honour of that which the apostles did which was great. It is probable that, during his life, he had laid the basis of these establishments which were developed with such marvellous success immediately after his death. The women were naturally drawn towards a community in which the weak were surrounded by so many guarantees. Their position in the society was then humble and precarious; the widow in particular, despite several protective laws, was the most often abandoned to misery, and the least respected. Many of the doctors advocated the not giving of any religious education to women. The Talmud placed in the same category with the pests of the world the gossiping and inquisitive widow, who passed her life in chattering with her neighbours, and the virgin who wasted her time in praying. The new religion created for these disinherited unfortunates an honourable and sure asylum. Some women held most important places in the church, and their houses served as places for meeting. As for those women who had no houses, they were formed into a species of order, or feminine presbyterial body, which also comprised virgins, who played so capital a role in the collection of alms. Institutions, which are regarded as the later fruit of Christianity—congregations of women, nuns, and sisters of charity—were its first creations, the basis of its strength, the most perfect expression of its spirit. In particular, the grand idea of consecrating by a sort of religious character and of subjecting to a regular discipline the women who were not in the bonds of marriage, is wholly Christian. The term “widow” became synonymous with religious person, consecrated to God, and, by consequence, a “deaconess.” In those countries where the wife, at the age of twenty-four, is already faded, where there is no middle state between the infant and the old woman, it was a kind of new life, which was created for that portion of the human species, the most capable of devotion. 67


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The times of the Seleucidæ had been a terrible epoch for female depravity. Never were so many domestic dramas seen, or such a series of poisonings and adulteries. The sages of that time came to consider woman as a pest to humanity, as the origin of baseness, and of shame, as an evil genius, whose only object in life was to destroy every noble germ in the opposite sex. Christianity changed all this. At that age which seems to us still youth, but at which the life of Oriental woman is so gloomy, so fatally prone to evil suggestions, the widow could, by covering her head with a black shawl, become a respectable person, be worthily employed, a deaconess, the equal of men, the most highly esteemed. This position, so distressing for a childless widow, Christianity elevated, rendered it holy. The widow became almost the equal of the maiden. She was calogrie, “beautiful in old age, venerated, useful, treated as a mother.” These women, constantly going to and fro, were admirable missionaries of the new religion. Protestants are mistaken in carrying into the recognition of these facts our modern ideas of individuality. As a mere question of Christian history, socialism and cenobitism are its primitive features.

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The bishop and the priest, as we now know them, did not yet exist. Still, the pastoral ministry, that intimate familiarity of souls, not bound by ties of blood, had already been established. This latter has ever been the special gift of Jesus, and a kind of heritage from him. Jesus had often said, that to everyone he was more than a father and a mother, and that in order to follow him, it was necessary to forsake those the most dear to us. Christianity placed soma things above family; it instituted brotherhood, and spiritual marriage. The ancient form of marriage, which placed the wife unreservedly in the power of the husband, was pure slavery. The moral liberty of the woman began when the Church gave to her in Jesus a guide and a confidant, who should advise and console her, listen always to her, and on occasion, council resistance on her part. Woman needs to be governed, and is happy in so being; but it is necessary that she should love him who governs her. This is what neither ancient societies, nor Judaism, nor Islamism, have been able to do. Woman has never had, up to the present time, a religious conscience, a moral individuality, an opinion of her own, except in Christianity. Thanks to the bishops and monastic life, Radegonda could find means to escape from the arms of a barbarous husband. The life of the soul being all which is of account, it is just and reasonable that the pastor who knows how to make the divine chords of the heart vibrate, the secret counsellor who holds the key of consciences, should be more than father, more than husband. In a sense, Christianity was a re-action against the too narrow domestic economy of the Aryan race. The old Aryan societies did not only admit but few besides married men, but also interpreted marriage in the strictest sense. It was something analogous to an English family, a narrow, exclusive, contracted circle, an egotism of several, as withering for the soul, as the egotism of the individual. Christianity, with its divine conception of the liberty of the Kingdom of God, corrected these exaggerations. It first guarded itself against imposing upon everyone the duties of the generality of mankind. It discovered that family was not the sole thing in life, that the duty of reproducing the species did not devolve on everyone, and that there should be persons freed front these duties—duties undoubtedly sacred but not designed for all. 68


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The exception which Greek society made in favour of the hetærae, like Aspasia, and of the cortigiana, like Imperia, in consequence of the necessities of polite society, Christianity made for the priest, the nun and the deaconess, with a view to the general good. It recognised different classes in society. There are souls who find more sweetness in the love of five or six hundred people than in that of five or six; for such the ordinary conditions of family seem insufficient, cold and wearisome. Why extend to all, the exigences of our dull and mediocre societies? The temporal family suffices not for man. He requires brothers and sisters not of the flesh. By its hierarchy of different social functions, the primitive church appeared to conciliate these opposing requirements. We shall never comprehend how happy these people were, under these holy restrictions, which maintained liberty, without restraining it, rendering at once possible the pleasures of communistic life, and those of private life. It was altogether different from the hurly-burly of our modern societies, artificial, and without love, in which the sensitive soul is sometimes so cruelly isolated. In these little refuges, which are called churches, the atmosphere was genial and sweet. People lived together in the same faith and in the same hope. But it is clear also that these conditions would be inapplicable to a large society. When entire countries embraced Christianity, the rules of the first churches became a Utopian idea, and sought refuge in monasteries. The monastic life is, in this sense, but the continuation of the primitive churches. The convent is the necessary consequence of the Christian spirit. There is no perfect Christianity without the convent, seeing that the evangelical idea can be realized there only. 70

A large allowance of credit, ought certainly to be made to Judaism in these great creations. Each of the Jewish communities scattered along the coasts of the Mediterranean, was already a sort of church, possessing its funds for mutual succour. Almsgiving, always recommended by the sages, had become a precept: it was done in the Temple, and in the synagogues: it was regarded as the first duty of the proselyte. In all times Judaism has been distinguished by its care for its poor, and for the fraternal sentiment of charity which it inspires. There is a supreme injustice in opposing Christianity to Judaism by way of reproach, since all which Primitive Christianity possesses came bodily from Judaism. It is while thinking of the Roman world that one is struck by the miracles of charity and free association undertaken by the Church. Never did profane society, recognizing reason alone for its basis, produce such admirable results. The law of every profane, or, if I may say so, philosophical society, is liberty, sometimes equality; never fraternity. Charity, viewed from the point of right, has nothing about it obligatory; it concerns only individuals; it is even found to possess certain inconveniences, on which account it is distrusted. Every attempt to apply the public funds for the benefit of the poor savours of communism. When a man dies of hunger, when entire classes languish in misery, profane policy limits itself to finding out the cause of the misfortune. It points out at once that there can be no civil or political order without liberty; but the consequence of that liberty is that he who has nothing, and can earn nothing, must die of hunger. That is logical: but nothing can withstand the abuse of logic. The wants of the

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most numerous class always prevail in the long run. Institutions purely political and civil do not suffice; social and religious aspirations have also a right to a legitimate satisfaction. 71

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The glory of the Jewish people is that they have loudly proclaimed this principle, from which emanated the ruin of the ancient empires, but which will never be eradicated. The Jewish law is social and non-political; the prophets, the authors of the apocalypses, were the promoters of social revolutions. In the first half of the first century, in the presence of profane civilization, the Jews had but one idea, which was to refuse the benefits of the Roman law, that philosophical and Atheistic law, which placed everyone on an equality, and to proclaim the excellence of their theocratic law, which formed a religious and moral society. “The Law is Happiness”: this was the idea of all Jewish thinkers, such as Philo and Josephus. The laws of other peoples were designed that justice should have its course; it mattered little whether men were good or happy. The Jewish law took account of the minutest details of moral education. Christianity is due to the development of the same idea. Each church is a monastery, in which all possess equal rights, in which there ought to be neither poor nor wicked, in which, consequently, each watches over and commands each other. Primitive Christianity may be defined as a great association of poor people, a heroic struggle against egotism, based upon the idea that each has a right to no more than is necessary for him, that all superfluity belongs to those who have nothing. We can at once see that between such a spirit and the Roman spirit, would be established a war to the death, and that Christianity, on its part, will never attain to dominating over the world, except on the condition of making important modifications in its inherent tendencies and in its original programme. But the wants which it represents will always endure. The communistic life, commencing with the second half of the Middle Ages, having served for the abuses of an intolerant Church, the monastery having too often become but a feudal fief, or the barracks of a dangerous and fanatical military, the modern mind evinced a most bitter opposition in regard to cenobitism. But we forget that it was in the communistic life that the soul of man tasted its fullest joy. The canticle, “Behold, how good and joyful a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity,” has ceased to be our refrain. But when modern individualism shall have borne its latest fruits; when humanity, shrunken, saddened, and become impotent, will return to these grand institutions, and stern disciplines; when our pitiful bourgeois society—I speak unadvisedly, our world of pigmies—shall have been scourged with whips by the heroic and idealistic portions of mankind, then the communistic life will regain all its value. Many great things, science, for example, will be organized under a monastic form, with hereditary rights, but not those of blood. The importance which our century attributes to family will diminish. Egotism, the essential rule of civil society, will not be sufficient for great minds. All, proceeding from the most opposite points of view, will league themselves against vulgarity. We shall return again to the words of Jesus, and the ideas of the Middle Ages in regard to poverty. We will comprehend how that to possess anything could have been regarded as a mark of inferiority, and how that the founders of the mystic life could have disputed for centuries in order to discover whether Jesus owned even so much as the things which were necessary for his daily wants. These 70


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Franciscan subtleties will become once more great social problems. The splendid ideal, traced by the author of the Acts, will be inscribed as a prophetic revelation on the gates of the paradise of humanity. “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them, that the things which he possessed were his own, but they had all things in common, neither was there any of them that lacked; fur as many as were possessors of land or houses sold them, and brought the price of things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles feet, and distribution was made to every man according as he had need. And they, continuing with one daily accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.” (Acts ii., 44-47.) But let us not anticipate events. It was now about the year 36. Tiberius, at Caprea, has little idea of the enemy to the empire which is growing up. In two or three years the sect had made surprising progress. It numbered several thousand of the faithful. It was already easy to forsee that its conquests would be effected chiefly amongst the Hellenists and proselytes. The Galilean group which had listened to the master, though preserving always its precedence, seemed as if swamped by the floods of new corners speaking Greek. One could already perceive that the principal parts were to be played by the latter. At the time at which we are arrived, no Pagan, that is to say, no man without some anterior connection with Judaism, had entered into the Church. Proselytes, however, performed very important functions in it. The circle de provenance of the disciples had likewise largely extended; it is no longer a simple little college of Palestineans; we can count in it people from Cyprus, Antioch, and Cyrene, and from almost all the points of the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, where Jewish colonies had been established. Egypt alone was wanting in the primitive Church, and for a long time continued to be so. The Jews of that country were almost in a state of schism with Judea. They lived after their own fashion, which was superior in many respects to the life in Palestine, and scarcely felt the shock of the religious movements at Jerusalem

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CHAPTER VIII. FIRST PERSECUTION.—DEATH OF STEPHEN.—DESTRUCTION OF THE FIRST CHURCH OF JERUSALEM. IT was inevitable that the preachings of the new sect, although delivered with so much reserve, should revive the animosities which had accumulated against its founder, and eventually brought about his death. The Sadducee family of Hanan, who had caused the death of Jesus, was still reigning. Joseph Caiaphas occupied, up to 36, the sovereign Pontificate, the effective power of which he gave over to his father-in-law Hanan, and to his relatives, John and Alexander. These arrogant and pitiless men viewed with impatience a troop of good and holy people, without official title, winning the favour of the multitude. Once or twice, Peter, John, and the principal members of the apostolic college, were put in prison and condemned to flagellation. This was the chastisement inflicted on heretics. The authorization of the Romans was not necessary in order to apply it. As we might indeed suppose, these brutalities only served to inflame the ardour of the apostles. They came forth from the Sanhedrim where they had just undergone flagellation, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for him whom they loved. Eternal puerility of penal repressions applied to things of the soul! They were regarded, no doubt, as men of order, as models of prudence and wisdom; these blunderers, who seriously believed in the year 36, to gain the upper hand of Christianity by means of a few strokes of a whip!

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These outrages proceeded chiefly from the Sadducees, that is to say, from the upper clergy, who crowded the Temple and derived from it immense profits. We do not find that the Pharisees exhibited towards the sect the animosity they displayed to Jesus. The new believers were strict and pious people, somewhat resembling in their manner of life the Pharisees themselves. The rage which the latter manifested against the founder arose from the superiority of Jesus—a superiority which he was at no pains to dissimulate. His delicate railleries, his wit, his charm, his contempt for hypocrites, had kindled a ferocious hatred. The apostles, on the contrary, were devoid of wit; they never employed irony. The Pharisees were at times favourable to them; many Pharisees had even become Christians. The terrible anathemas of Jesus against Pharisaism had not yet been written, and the accounts of the words of the Master were neither general nor uniform. These first Christians were, besides, people so inoffensive, that many persons of the Jewish aristocracy, who did not exactly form part of the sect, were well disposed towards them. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who had known Jesus, remained no doubt with the Church in the bonds of brotherhood. The most celebrated Jewish doctor of the age, Rabbi Gamaliel the elder, grandson of Hillel, a man of broad and very tolerant ideas, spoke, it is said, in the Sanhedrim in favour of permitting gospel preaching. The author of the Acts credits him with some excellent reasoning, which ought to be the rule of conduct of governments, on all occasions when they find themselves confronted with novelties of an intellectual or moral order. “If this work is frivolous,” said he, “leave it alone, it will fall of itself; 72


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if it is serious, how dare you resist the work of God? In any case, you will not succeed in stopping it.” Gamaliel’s words were hardly listened to. Liberal minds in the midst of opposing fanaticisms have no chance of succeeding. A terrible commotion was produced by the deacon Stephen. His preaching had, as it would appear, great success. Multitudes flocked around him, and these gatherings resulted in acrimonious quarrels. It was chiefly Hellenists, or proselytes, habitues of the synagogue, called Libertini, people of Cyrene, of Alexandria, of Cilicia, of Ephesus, who took an active part in these disputes. Stephen passionately maintained that Jesus was the Messiah, that the priests had committed a crime in putting him to death, that the Jews were rebels, sons of rebels, people who rejected evidence. The authorities resolved to dispatch this audacious preacher. Several witnesses were suborned to seize upon some words in his discourses against Moses. Naturally they found that for which they sought. Stephen was arrested and led into the presence of the Sanhedrim. The sentence with which they reproached him was almost identical with the one which led to the condemnation of Jesus. They accused him of saying that Jesus of Nazareth would destroy the Temple and change the traditions attributed to Moses. It is quite possible, indeed, that Stephen had used such language. A Christian of that epoch could not have had the idea of speaking directly against the Law, inasmuch as all still observed it; as for traditions, however, Stephen might combat them as Jesus had himself done; nevertheless, these traditions were foolishly ascribed by the orthodox to Moses, and people attributed to them a value, equal to that of the written Law. Stephen defended himself by expounding the Christian thesis, with a wealth of citations from the written Law, from the Psalms, from the Prophets, and wound up by reproaching the members of the Sanhedrim with the murder of Jesus. “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart,” said he to them, “you will then ever resist the Holy Ghost as your fathers also have done. Which of the prophets have not your fathers prosecuted? They have slain those who announced the coming of the Just One, whom you have betrayed, and of whom you have been the murderers. This law that you have received from the mouth of angels you have not kept.” At these words a scream of rage interrupted him. Stephen, his excitement increasing more and more, fell into one of those transports of enthusiasm which were called the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. His eyes were fixed on high; he witnessed the glory of God and Jesus by the side of his Father, and cried out: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of God.” The whole assembly stopped their ears, and threw themselves upon him, gnashing their teeth. He was dragged outside the city and stoned. The witnesses, who, according to the law, had to cast the first stones, divested themselves of their garments and laid them at the feet of a young fanatic named Saul, or Paul, who was thinking with secret joy of the renown he was acquiring in participating in the death of a blasphemer. In all this there was an observance to the letter of the prescriptions of Deuteronomy, chapter xiii. But viewed from a civil law point, this tumultuous execution, carried out without the sanction of the Romans, was not regular. In the case of Jesus, we have seen that it was necessary to obtain the ratification of the Procurator. It may he that this ratification was obtained in the case of Stephen and that the execution did not follow his sentence quite so closely as the narrator of the Acts would 73


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have us believe. It may have happened also that the Roman authority was at this time somewhat relaxed. Pilate had been, or was about to be, suspended from his functions. The cause of this disgrace was simply the too great firmness which he had shown in his administration. Jewish fanaticism had rendered his life insupportable. Possibly he was tired of refusing the outrages these frantic people demanded of him, and the proud family of Hanan had reached the point that they no longer required the sanction of the Procurator to pronounce sentences of death. Lucius Vetellius (the father of him who was emperor) was then imperial legate at Syria. He sought to win the good graces of the population; and he restored to the Jews the pontificial vestments, which, since the time of Herod the Great, had been deposited in the tower of Antonia. Instead of sustaining the rigorous acts of Pilate, he lent an ear to the complaints of the natives and sent Pilate back to Rome, to answer the accusations of his subordinates (commencement of the year 36). The chief grievance of the latter was that the Procurator would not lend himself with sufficient complacency to their intolerant behests. Vitellius replaced him provisionally by his friend Marcellus, who was undoubtedly more careful not to displease the Jews, and, consequently, more willing to indulge them in their religious murders. The death of Liberius (16 March, 37) only encouraged Vitellius in this policy. The two first years of the reign of Caligula was an epoch of general relaxation of the Roman authority in Syria. The policy of that prince, before he lost his reason, was to restore to the peoples of the East their autonomy and their native chiefs. It was thus that he established the kingdoms or principalities of Comagene, of Herod Agrippa, of Soheym, of Cotys, of Polemon II., and permitted that of Harêth to aggrandise itself. When Pilate arrived at Rome, the new reign had already begun. It is probable that Caligula held him to be in the wrong, inasmuch as he confided the government of Jerusalem to a new functionary, Marcellus, who appears not to have excited, on the part of the Jews, the violent recriminations which overwhelmed poor Pilate with embarrassment, and filled him with disgust. At all events, that which is important to remark is, that in that epoch the persecutors of Christianity were not Romans; they were orthodox Jews. The Romans preserved in the midst of this fanaticism a principle of tolerance and of reason. If we can reproach the imperial authority with anything, it is with being too lenient, and with not having cut short with a stroke the civil consequences of a sanguinary law which visited with death religious derelictions. But as yet the Roman domination was not so complete as it became later; it was only a sort of protectorate or suzerainty. Its condescension even went the length of not putting the head of the emperor on the coins struck during the rule of procurators, so as not to shock Jewish ideas. Rome did not yet, in the East at least, seek to impose upon vanquished peoples her laws, her gods, her manners; she left them, outside the Roman laws, their local customs. Their semi-independence was simply a further indication of their inferiority. The imperial power in the East, at that epoch, resembled somewhat the Turkish authority, and the condition of the native population, that under the Rajahs. The notion of equal rights and equal protection for all did not exist. Each provincial group had its jurisdiction, just as at this day the various Christian Churches and the Jews have in the Ottoman Empire, In Turkey, a few years ago, the patriarchs of the different communities of Rajahs, provided that they

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had some sort of understanding with the Porte, were sovereigns as far as their subordinates were concerned, and could sentence them to the most cruel punishments. As Stephen’s death may have taken place at any time during the years 36, 37, 38, we cannot, therefore, affirm whether Caiaphas ought to be held responsible for it. Caiaphas was deposed by Lucius Vitellius, in the year 36, shortly after the time of Pilate; but the change was inconsiderable. He had for a successor his brother-in-law, Jonathan, son of Hanan. The latter, in turn, was succeeded by his brother Theophilus, son of Hanan, who continued the Pontificate in the house of Hanan till the year 42. Hanna was still alive, and, possessed of the real power, maintained in his family the principles of pride, severity, hatred against innovators which were, so to speak, hereditary.

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The death of Stephen produced a great impression. The proselytes solemnized his funeral with tears and groanings. The separation of the new secretaries from Judaism was not yet absolute. The proselytes and the Hellenists, leas strict in regard to orthodoxy than the pure Jews, considered that they ought to render public homage to a man who respected their constitution, and whose peculiar beliefs did not put him without the pale of the Law. Thus began the era of Christian martyrs. Martyrdom was not an entirely new thing. Not to mention John the Baptist and Jesus, Judaism at the time of Antiochus Epiphanus, had had its witnesses, faithful even to the death. But the series of courageous victims, beginning with Saint Stephen, has exercised a peculiar influence upon the history of the human mind. It introduced into the western world an element which it lacked, to wit, absolute and exclusive faith, the idea that there is but one good and true religion. In this sense, the martyrs began the era of intolerance. It may be avouched with great assurance, that he who can give his life for his faith would, if he were master, be intolerant. Christianity, when it had passed through three centuries of persecution, and became, in its turn, dominant, was more persecuting than any religion had ever been. When people have shed their blood for a cause they are too prone to shed the blood of others, so as to conserve the treasure they have gained.

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The murder of Stephen, moreover, was not an isolated event. Taking advantage of the weakness of the Roman functionaries, the Jews brought to bear upon the Church a real persecution. It seems that the vexations pressed chiefly on the Hellenists and the proselytes whose free behaviour exasperated the orthodox. The Church of Jerusalem, which though already strongly organized, was compelled to disperse. The apostles, according to a principle which seems to have seized strong hold of their minds, did not quit the city. It was probably so, too, with the whole purely Jewish group, those who were denominated the “Hebrews.” But the great community with its common table, its diaconal services, its varied exercises, ceased from that time, and was never re-formed upon its first model. It had endured for three or four years. It was for nascent Christianity an unequalled good fortune that its first attempts at association, essentially communistic, were so soon broken up. Essays of this kind engender such shocking abuses, that communistic establishments are condemned to crumble away in a very short time, or to ignore very soon the principle upon 75


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which they are founded. Thanks to the persecution of the year 37 the cenobitic Church of Jerusalem was saved from the test of time. It was nipped in the bud, before interior difficulties had undermined it. It remained like a splendid dream, the memory of which animated in their life of trial all those who had formed part of it, like an ideal to which Christianity incessantly aspires without ever succeeding in reaching its goal. Those who know what an inestimable treasure the memory of Menilmontant is to the members still alive of the St. Simonian Church, what friendship it creates between them, what joy kindles in their eyes, when they speak of it, will comprehend the powerful bond which was established between the new brethren, from the fact of having first loved and then suffered together. It is almost always a principle of great lives, that during several months they have realised God, and the recollection of this suffices to fill up the entire after-years with strength and sweetness.

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The leading part in the persecution we have just related belonged to that young Saul, whom we have above found abetting, as far as in him lay, the murder of Stephen. This hot-headed youth, furnished with a permission from the priests, entered houses suspected of harbouring Christians, laid violent hold on men and women and dragged them to prison, or before the tribunals. Saul boasted that there was no one of his generation so zealous as himself for the traditions. True it is, that often the gentleness and the resignation of his victims astonished him; he experienced a kind of remorse; he fancied he heard these pious women, whom, hoping for the Kingdom of God, he had cast into prison, saying during the night, in a sweet voice: “Why persecutest thou us?” The blood of Stephen, which had almost smothered him, sometimes troubled his vision. Many things that he had heard said of Jesus went to his heart. This superhuman being, in his ethereal life, whence he sometimes emerged, revealing himself in brief apparitions, haunted him like a spectre. But Saul shrunk with horror from such thoughts; he confirmed himself with a sort of frenzy in the faith of his traditions, and meditated new cruelties against those who attacked him. His name had become a terror to the faithful; they dreaded at his hands the most atrocious outrages, and the most sanguinary treacheries.

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CHAPTER IX. FIRST MISSIONS.—PHILIP THE DEACON.

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THE persecution of the year 37 had for its result, as is always the case, the spread of the doctrine which it was wished to arrest. Till now, the Christian preaching had not extended far beyond Jerusalem; no mission had been undertaken; enclosed within its exalted but narrow communison, the mother Church had spread no haloes around herself, or formed any branches. The dispersion of the little circle scattered the good seed to the four winds of heaven. The members of the Church of Jerusalem, driven violently from their quarters, spread themselves over every part of Judæ and Samaria, and preached everywhere the Kingdom of God. The deacons, in particular, freed from their administrative functions by the destruction of the community, became excellent evangelists. They constituted the young and active element of the sect, in contradistinction to the somewhat heavy element formed by the apostles, and the “Hebrews.” One single circumstance, that of language, would have sufficed to create in the latter an inferiority as regards preaching. They spoke, at least as their habitual tongue, a dialect which was not used by the Jews themselves more than a few leagues from Jerusalem. It was to the Hellenists that belonged all the honour of the great conquest, the account of which is to be now our main purpose. The scene of the first of these missions, which was soon to embrace the whole basin of the Mediterranean, was the region about Jerusalem, within a radius of two or three days’ journey. Philip, the Deacon, was the hero of this first holy expedition. He evangelized Samaria most successfully. The Samaritans were schismatics; but the young sect, following the example of the Master, was less susceptible than the rigorous Jews in regard to questions of orthodoxy. Jesus, it was said, had shown himself at different times to be quite favourable to the Samaritans. Philip appeared to have been one of the apostolical men most pre-occupied with theurgy. The accounts which relate to him transport us into a strange and fantastic world. The conversions which he made in Samaria, and in particular in the capital, Sebaste, are explained by prodigies. This country was itself wholly given up to superstitious ideas in regard to magic. In the year 36, that is to say, two or three years before the arrival of the Christian preachers, a fanatic had excited among the Samaritans quite a serious commotion by preaching the necessity of a return to primitive Mosaism, the sacred utensils of which he pretended to have found. A certain Simon, of the village of Gitta or Gitton, who obtained later a great reputation, began about that time to gain notoriety by means of his enchantments. One feels at seeing the gospel finding a preparation and a support in such chimeras. Quite a large multitude were baptized in the name of Jesus. Philip had the power of baptizing, but not that of conferring the Holy Ghost. That privilege was reserved to the apostles. When people learned at Jerusalem of the formation of a group of believers at Sebaste, it was resolved to send Peter and John to complete their initiation. The two apostles came, laid their hands on the new converts, prayed over their heads; the latter were immediately endowed with the marvellous 77


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powers attached to the conferring of the Holy Spirit. Miracles, prophecy, all the phenomena of illusionism were produced, and the Church of Sebaste had nothing in this respect to envy the Church of Jerusalem for. If the tradition about it is to be credited, Simon of Gitton found himself from that time in relations with the Christians. According to their accounts, he, being converted by the preaching and miracles of Philip, was baptized, and attached himself to this evangelist. Then when the apostles Peter and John had arrived, and when he saw the supernatural powers procured by the imposition of hands, he came, it is said, and offered them money, in order that they might impart to him the faculty of conferring the Holy Spirit. Peter is then reported to have made to him this admirable response: “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be bought! Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.”

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Whether these words were or were not pronounced, they seem to picture exactly the situation of Simon regard to the nascent sect. We shall see, in fact, that according to all appearances, Simon of Gitton was the chief of a religious movement, similar to that of Christianity, which might be regarded as a sort of Samaritan counterfeit of the work of Jesus. Had Simon already commenced to dogmatize and to perform prodigies when Philip arrived at Sebaste? Did he enter thereupon into relations with the Christian Church? Has the anecdote, which made of him the father of all “Simony,” any reality? Must it be admitted that the world one day saw face to face two thaumaturgists, one of which was a charlatan, the other the “corner-stone,” which has been made the base of the faith of humanity? Was a sorcerer able to counter-balance the destinies of Christianity? This is what, for lack of documentary evidence, we do not know; for the narrative of the Acts is here but a feeble authority; and, from the first century, Simon became for the Christian church a subject of legends. In history, the general idea alone is pure. It would be unjust to dwell on that, which is shocking in this sad page of the origin of Christianity. To vulgar auditors, the miracle proves the doctrine; to us, the doctrine makes us forget the miracle. When a belief has consoled and ameliorated humanity, it is excusable to employ proofs proportioned to the weakness of the public to which it is addressed. But when error after error has been proved, what excuse can be alleged? This is not a condemnation which we intend to pro. pounce against Simon of Gitton. We shall have to explain later on his doctrine, and the part he played which was only made manifest under the reign of Claudius. It is of moment only to remark here, that an important principle seems to have been introduced by him into the Christian theurgy. Compelled to admit that some impostors could also perform miracles, orthodox theology attributed these miracles to the Evil One. For the purpose of conserving some demonstrative value in prodigies, it was necessary to invent rules for distinguishing the true from the false miracles. In order to this, they descended to a species of ideas utterly childish. Peter and John, after confirming the Church of Sebaste, departed again for Jerusalem, evangelizing on their tray the villages of the country of Samaria. Philip the Deacon, continued his

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evangelizing journeys, directing his steps towards the south, into the ancient country of the Philistines. This country, since the advent of the Maccabees had been much encroached upon by the Jews; Judaism, however, had not succeeded in becoming dominant there. During this journey Philip accomplished a conversion which made some noise and which was much talked about because of a singular circumstance. One day, as he was journeying along the route, a very lonely route, from Jerusalem to Gaza, he encountered a rich traveller, evidently a foreigner, for he was riding in a chariot, which was a mode of locomotion that has at all times been unknown to the inhabitants of Syria and of Palestine. He was returning from Jerusalem, and, gravely seated, was reading the Bible in a loud voice, according to a custom quite common at that time. Philip, who in everything was believed to act on inspiration from on high, felt himself drawn towards the chariot. He came up alongside of it, and quietly entered into conversation with the opulent personage, offering to explain to him the passages, which the latter did not comprehend. This was a rare occasion for the evangelist to develop the Christian thesis upon the figures employed in the Old Testament. He proved that in the books of prophecy everything there related to Jesus; that Jesus was the solution of the great enigma; that it was of him in particular that the All-Seeing had spoken in this beautiful passage: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; as a lamb that is dumb before its shearers, he opened not his mouth.” The traveller listened, and at the first water to which they came he said: “Behold, here is water, why could I not be baptized.” The chariot was stopped: Philip and the traveller descended into the water, and the latter was baptized. Now this traveller was a powerful personage. He was a eunuch of the Candace of Ethiopia, her finance minister, the keeper of her treasures, who had come to worship at Jerusalem, and was now returning to Napata by the Egyptian route. Candace or Condaoce was the title of feminine royalty in Ethiopia, about the period of which we are now speaking. Judiasm had already penetrated into Nubia and Abyssinia; many of the natives had been converted, or at least were counted among those proselytes, who, without being circumcised, worshipped the one God. The eunuch probably be-longed to the latter class, a simple pious Pagan, like the centurion Cornelius who will figure presently in this history. In any case, it is impossible to suppose that he was completely initiated into Judaism. From this time we hear no more said about the eunuch. But Philip recounted the incident, and at a later period much importance was attached to it. When the question of admitting Pagans into the Christian Church became an affair of moment, there was found here a precedent of great weight. In all this affair, Philip was believed to have acted under divine inspiration. This baptism, administered by order of the Holy Spirit to a man scarcely a Jew. assuredly not circumcised, who had believed in Christianity, only for a few hours, possessed a high dogmatic value. It was an argument for those who thought that the doors of the new church should be open to all. Philip, after that adventure, betook himself to Ashdod or Azote. Such was the artless state of enthusiasm in which these missionaries lived, that at each step they believed they heard the voice of Heaven, and received directions from the Spirit. Each of their steps seemed to them to be regulated by a superior power, and when they went from one city to another, they thought they were obeying 79


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a supernatural inspiration. Sometimes they fancied they made ærial trips. Philip was in this respect one of the most privileged. It was, as he believed, on the indication of an angel, that he had come from Samaria to the place where he had encountered the eunuch; after the baptism of the latter he was persuaded that the Spirit had lifted him bodily, and transported him with one swoop to Azote. 88

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Azote and the Gaza route were the limits of the first evangelical preachings towards the south. Beyond were the desert and the nomadic life upon which Christianity has never taken much hold. From Azote, Philip the Deacon turned towards the north and evangelized all the coast as far as Cesarea. It is probable that the Church of Joppa and of Gydda, which we shall soon find flourishing, were founded by him. At Cesarea he settled and founded an important Church. We shall encounter him there again twenty years later. Cesarea was a new city and the most considerable of Judea. It had been built on the site of a Sidonian fortress, called Abdastartes or Shato’s Tower, by Herod the Great, who gave to it, in honour of Augustus, the name which its ruins bear still to-day. Cesarea was much the best part in all Palestine, and tended day by day to become its capital. Tired of living at Jerusalem, the Judean Procurators were soon to repair thence, to make it their permanent residence. It was principally peopled by Pagans; the Jews, however, were somewhat numerous there; cruel strifes had often taken place between the two classes of the population. The Greek language was alone spoken there, and the Jews themselves had come to recite certain parts of their liturgy in Greek. The austere Rabbis of Jerusalem regarded Cesarea as a dangerous and profane abode, and in which one became nearly a Pagan. From all the facts which have just been cited, this city will occupy an important place in the sequel of this history. It was in a kind of way the port of Christianity, the point by which the Church of Jerusalem communicated with all the Mediterranean. Many other missions, the history of which is unknown to us, were conducted simultaneously with that of Philip. The very rapidity with which this first preaching was done, was the reason of its success. In the year 38, five years after the death of Jesus, and probably one year after the death of Stephen, all this side of Jordan had heard the glad tidings from the mouths of missionaries hailing from Jerusalem. Galilee, on its part, guarded the holy seed and probably scattered it around her, although we know of no missions issuing from that quarter. Perhaps the city of Damascus, from the period at which we now are, had also some Christians, who received the faith from Galilean preachers.

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CHAPTER X. CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL.—RIDICULOUS TO PUT PAUL’S CONVERSION A.D. 38—ARETAS SETTLES THE DATE AS ABOUT 34. THE year 38 is marked in the history of the nascent Church by a much more important conquest. During that year we may safely place the conversion of that Saul whom we witnessed participating in the stoning of Stephen, and as a principal agent in the persecution of 37, but who now, by a mysterious act of grace, becomes the most ardent of the disciples of Jesus.

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Saul was born at Tarsus, in Cilicia, in the year 10 or 12 of our era. Following the custom of the times, his name was latinized into that of Paul; he did not, however, regularly adopt this last name until he became the apostle of the Gentiles. Paul was of the purest Jewish blood. His family, who probably hailed originally from the town of Gischala, in Galilee, pretended to belong to the tribe of Benjamin; while his father enjoyed the title of a Roman citizen, a title no doubt inherited from ancestors who had obtained that honour, either by purchase or by services rendered to the state. His grandfather may have obtained it for aid given to Pompey during the Roman conquest (63 B.C.) His family, like most of the good old Jewish houses, belonged to the sect of Pharisees. Paul was brought up according to the strictest principles of this sect, and though he afterwards repudiated its narrow dogmas, he always retained its exaltation, its asperity, and its ardent faith. During the epoch of Augustus, Tartus was a very flourishing city. The population, though composed chiefly of the Greek and Aramaic races, included, as was common in all the commercial towns, a large number of Jews. A taste for letters and the sciences was a marked characteristic of the place; and no city in the world, not even excepting Athens and Alexandria, had so many scientific institutions and schools. The number of learned men which Tarsus produced, or who prosecuted their studies there, was truly extraordinary; but it must not hence be imagined that Paul received a careful Greek education. The Jews rarely frequented the institutions of secular instruction. The most celebrated schools of Tarsus were those of rhetoric, where the Greek classics received the first attention. It seems hardly probable that a man who had taken even elementary lessons in grammar and rhetoric, could have written in the incorrect non-Hellenistic style of that of the Epistles of St. Paul. He talked constantly and even fluently in Greek, and wrote or rather dictated in that language; but his Greek was that of the Hellenistic Jews, bristling with Hebraisms and Syriacisms, scarcely intelligible to a lettered man of that period, and which can only be understood by trying to discover the Syriac turn of mind which influenced Paul, at the time he was dictating his epistles. He was himself cognizant of the vulgar and detective character of his style. Whenever it was possible he spoke Hebrew—that is to say, the Syro-Chaldaic of his time. It was in this language that he thought, it was in this language he was addressed by the mysterious voice on the way to Damascus.

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His doctrine, moreover, shows us no direct adaptation from Greek philosophy. The verse quoted from the Thais of Menander, which occurs in his writings, is one of those monostich-proverbs that were familiar to the public, and could easily have been quoted by one who was not acquainted with the original. Two other quotation—one from Epimenides, the other from Aratus—which appear under his name, though it is by no means certain that he used them, may also be understood as having been borrowed at second-hand. The literary training of Paul was almost exclusively Jewish, and it is in the Talmud rather than in the Greek classics that the analogies of his modes of thought must be sought. A few general ideas of popular philosophy, which one could learn without opening a single book of the philosophers, alone reached him. His manner of reasoning is most singular. He knew nothing certainly of the peripatetic logic. His syllogism is not that of Aristotle; on the contrary, his dialectics greatly resemble those of the Talmud. Paul, in general is carried away by words rather than by thought. When a word took possession of his mind it suggested a train of thought wholly irrelevant to the subject in hand. His transitions were sudden, his treatment disjointed, his periods frequently suspended. No writer could be more unequal. We would seek in vain throughout the realm of literature for a phenomenon as capricious as that of the sublime passage in the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, placed by the side of such feeble arguments, painful repetitions, and fastidious subtleties.

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His father at the outset intended that he should be a rabbi; and following the general custom, gave him a trade. Paul was an upholsterer, or rather a manufacturer of the heavy cloths of Cilicia, called Cilicium. At various times he had to work at this trade, having no patrimonial fortune. It seems quite certain that he had a sister, whose son lived at Jerusalem. As regards a brother and other relatives, who it is said embraced Christianity, the testimony is vague and uncertain. Refinement of manners being, according to the modern ideas of the middle-classes, in direct proportion to personal wealth, it might be imagined, from what has just been said that Paul was badly brought up and undistinguished amongst the proletariat. This idea would, however, be quite erroneous. His politeness, when he chose, was extreme, and his manners, exquisite. Despite the defects in his style, his letters show that he was a man of uncommon intelligence, who could find for the expression of his lofty sentiments, language of rare felicity; and no correspondence displays more careful attention, finer shades of meaning, and more charming hesitancy and timidity. Some of his pleasantries shock us. But what animation! What a fund of charming sayings! What simplicity! One can easily see that his character, when his passions did not make him irascible and fierce, was that of a polite, earnest, and affectionate man, susceptible at times, and a trifle jealous. Inferior as such men are in the eyes of the general public, they yet possess within small Churches, immense advantages, because of the attachments they inspire, their practical aptitude, and their skill in escaping from the greatest difficulties. Paul had a sickly appearance, which did not correspond with the greatness of his soul. He was uncomely, short, squat, and stooping, his broad shoulders awkwardly sustaining a little bald pate.

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His sallow countenance was half concealed in a thick beard; his nose was aquiline, his eyes piercing, while his black, heavy eye-brows met across his forehead. Nor was there anything imposing about his speech; his timid and embarassed air, and incorrect language, gave at first but a poor idea of his eloquence. He gloried, however, in his exterior defects, and even shrewdly extracted advantage from them. The Jewish rare possesses the peculiarity of presenting at once types of the greatest beauty, and of the most utter ugliness; but this Jewish ugliness is something quite unique. Some of the strange visages which at first excite a smile, assume, when lighted up by emotion, a rare brilliance and majesty. The temperament of Paul was not less peculiar than his exterior. His constitution was sickly, yet its singular endurance was tested by the way in which he supported an existence full of fatigues and sufferings. He makes constant allusions to his bodily weakness. He speaks of himself as a sick man, exhausted, and nigh unto death; add to this, that he was timid, without any appearance or prestige, without any of those personal advantages, calculated to produce an impression, so much so, that it was a marvel people were not repelled by such uninviting an exterior. Elsewhere, he mysteriously hints at a secret affliction, “a thorn in the flesh,” which he compares to a messenger of Satan sent, with God’s permission, to buffet him, “lest he should be exalted above measure.” Thrice he besought the Lord to deliver him, and thrice the Lord replied, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” This was evidently some bodily infirmity; for it is not to be supposed that he refers to the allurements of carnal delights, since he himself informs us in another place that he was insensible to these. It would seem he was never married: the thorough coldness of his temperament, the result of the intense ardour of his brain, manifests itself throughout his life, and he boasts of it with an assurance savouring of affectation, to an extent which is disagreeable.

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At an early age he came to Jerusalem, and entered, as it is said, the school of Gamaliel the Elder. This Gamaliel was the most cultured man in Jerusalem. As the name of Pharisee was applied to every prominent Jew who was not of a priestly family, Gamaliel was taken for a member of that sect. Yet he had none of its narrow and exclusive spirit. He was a liberal, intelligent man, acquainted with Greek, and understood the heathen. It is possible that the broad ideas professed by Paul after he received Christianity, were a reminiscence of the teachings of his first master; yet it must be admitted that at first he had not learned much moderation from him. Breathing the heated atmosphere of Jerusalem, he became an ardent fanatic. He was the leader of a young, unbending, and enthusiastic Pharisee party, which carried to extremes their keen attachment for the national traditions of the past. He had not known Jesus, and was not present at the bloody scene of Golgotha; but we have seen him take an active part in the murder of Stephen, and among the foremost of the persecutors of the Church. He breathed only threatenings and slaughter, and went up and down Jerusalem bearing a mandate which authorized and legalized all his brutalities. He went from synagogue to synagogue, compelling the more timid to deny the name of Jesus, and subjecting others to scourging or imprisonment. When the Church of Jerusalem was dispersed, his persecutions were extended to the neighbouring cities. Exasperated by the progress of the new faith, and learning that there was 83


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a group of the faithful at Damascus, he obtained from the high-priest Theophilus, son of Hanan, letters to the synagogue of that city, which conferred on him the power of arresting all evil-thinking persons, and of bringing them bound to Jerusalem.

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The confusion of Roman authority in Judea, explains these arbitrary vexations. The insane Caligula was in power, and the administrative service was everywhere distracted. Fanaticism had gained all that the civil power had lost. After the dismissal of Pilate, and the concessions made to the natives by Lucius Vitellius, the country was permitted to govern itself according to its own laws. A thousand local tyrannies profited by the weakness of an indifferent authority. In addition , Damascus had just passed into the hands of Hartat, or Hâreth, whose capital was at Petra. This bold and powerful prince, having beaten Herod Antipas, and withstood the Roman forces, commanded by the imperial legate, Lucius Vitellius, had been marvellously aided by fortune. The news of the death of Tiberius (16th March, 37), had suddenly arrested the march of Vitellius. Hâreth seized Damascus, and established there an ethnarch or governor. The Jews at the time of this new occupation formed a numerous party at Damascus, where they carried on an extensive system of proselytizing, especially among the females. It was thought advisable to seek to make them contented; and the best method of doing so was to grant concessions to their autonomy, and every concession was simply a permission to commit further religious violences. To punish and even kill those who did not think with them, was their idea of independence and liberty. Paul, in leaving Jerusalem, followed doubtless the usual road, and crossed the Jordan at the “Bridge of the Daughters of Jacob.” His mental excitement was now at its greatest height, and he was at times troubled and shaken in his faith. Passion is not a rule of faith. The passionate man flies from one extreme creed to another, but always retains the same impetuosity. Now, like all strong minds, Paul almost loved that which he hated. Was he sure, after all, that he was not thwarting the designs of God? Perhaps he remembered the calm, dispassionate views of his master Gamaliel. Often these ardent souls experienced terrible revulsions. He felt a liking for those whom ho had tortured. The more these excellent sectarians were known, the better they were liked; and none had greater opportunities of knowing them better than their persecutor. At times he fancied he saw the sweet face of the Master who inspired his disciples with no much patience, regarding him with an air of pity and tender reproach. He was also much impressed by the accounts of the apparitions of Jesus, describing him as an ariel being who was at times visible; for at the epochs and in the countries when and where there is a tendency to the marvellous, miraculous recitals influence equally each opposing party. The Mahommedans, for instance, are afraid of the miracles of Elias; and, like the Christians, pray to St. George and St. Anthony for supernatural cures. Having crossed Ithuria, and while in the great plain of Damascus, Paul, with several companions, all, as it appears, journeying on foot, approached the city, and had probably already reached the beautiful gardens which surrounded it The time was noon. The road from Jerusalem to Damascus has in nowise changed. It is the one, which, leaving Damascus in a south-westerly direction, crosses

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the beautiful plain watered by the streams flowing into the Abana and the Pharpar, and upon which are now marshalled the villages of Dareya, Kaukab, and Sasa. The exact locality of which we speak, which was the scene of one of the most important facts in the history of humanity, could not have been beyond Kaukab (four hours from Damascus). It is even probable that the point in question was much nearer the city, perhaps about Dareya (an hour and a half from Damascus), or between Dareya and Meidan. The great city lay before Paul, and the outlines of several of its edifices could be dimly traced through the thick foliage: behind him towered the majestic dome of Hermon, with its ridges of snow, making it resemble the bald head of an old man; upon his right were the Hauran, the two little parallel chains which enclose the lower course of the Pharpar, and the tumuli of the region of the lakes; and upon his left were the outer spurs of the Anti-Libanus stretching out to Mt Hermon. The impression produced by these richly-cultivated fields and beautiful orchards, separated from one another by trenches and laden with the most delicious fruits, is that of peace and happiness. Let one imagine to himself a shady road, passing through rich soil, crossed at intervals by irrigating canals, bordered by declivities and serpentining through forests of olives, walnuts, apricots, and prunes; trees draped by graceful festoons of vines; and then will be presented to the mind the image of the scene of that remarkable event which has exerted so great an influence upon the faith of the world. In the environs of Damascus one can scarcely believe oneself in the East; especially after leaving the arid and burning regions of the Gaulonitide and of Ithuria. It is joy indeed to meet once more the works of man and the blessings of Heaven. From the most remote antiquity until the present time this zone, which surrounds Damascus with freshness and health, has had but one name, has inspired but one dream,—that of the “Paradise of God.” if Paul experienced these terrible visions, it was because he carried them in his heart. Every step in his journey towards Damascus awakened in him painful perplexities. The odious part of executioner, which he was about to undertake, became insupportable. The houses which he saw through the trees were, perhaps, those of his victims. This thought beset him and delayed his steps; he did not wish to advance; he seemed to be resisting a mysterious impulse which pressed him forward. The fatigue of the journey, joined to this pre-occupation of mind, overwhelmed him. He had, it would seem, inflamed eyes, probably the beginning of ophthalmia. In these prolonged journeys, the last hours are the most trying. All the debilitating effects of the days just past accumulate, the nerves relax their power, and a re-action sets in. Perhaps, also, the sudden passage from the sun-smitten clam to the cool shades of the gardens enhanced his suffering condition and seriously excited the fanatical traveller. Dangerous fevers, accompanied by delirium, are quite sudden in these latitudes, and in a few minutes the victim is prostrated as by a thunder-stroke. When the crisis is over, the sufferer retains only the impression of a period of profound darkness, relieved at intervals by dashes of light in which he has seen images outlined against a dark background. It is quite certain that a sudden stroke instantly deprived Paul of his remaining consciousness, and threw him senseless on the ground. From the accounts which we have of this singular event, it is impossible to say whether any exterior fact led to the crisis to which Christianity owes its most

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ardent apostle. But in such cases, the exterior fact is of little importance. It was the state of St. Paul’s mind; it was his remorse on his approach to the city in which he was to commit the most signal of his misdeeds, which were the true causes of his conversion. For my part, I much prefer the hypothesis of an affair personal to Paul, and experienced by him alone. It is not, however, improbable that a thunder-storm suddenly burst forth. The flanks of Mount Hermon are the point of formation for thunder-showers which are unequalled in violence. The most unimpressionable person cannot observe without emotion these terrible hurricanes of fire. It ought to be remembered that in ancient times accidents from lightning were considered divine revelations; that with the ideas regarding providential interference then prevalent, nothing was fortuitous; and that every man was accustomed to view the natural phenomena around him as having a direct relation to himself. The Jews in particular always considered that thunder was the voice of God, and that lightning was the fire of God. Paul at this juncture was in a state of great excitement, and it was but natural that he should interpret as the voice of the storm the thoughts which were passing in his mind. That a delirious fever, resulting from a sun-stroke or an attack of ophthalmia, had suddenly seized him; that a flash of lightning blinded him for a time; that a peal of thunder had produced a cerebral commotion, temporarily depriving him of sight—it matters little. The recollections of the apostle on this point appear to be rather confused; he was persuaded that the incident was supernatural, and such a conviction would not permit him to entertain any clear consciousness of material circumstances. Such cerebral commotions produce sometimes a sort of retroactive effect, and completely perturb the recollections of the moments immediately preceding the crisis. Paul, moreover, elsewhere informs us that he was subject to visions; and a circumstance, insignificant as it might appear to others, was sufficient to make him beside himself. And what did he see, what did he hear, while he was a prey to these hallucinations? He saw the countenance which had haunted him for several days; he saw the phantom of which so much had been told. He saw Jesus himself, who spoke to him in Hebrew, saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? “Impetuous natures pass instantaneously from one extreme to the other. For them there exists solemn moments which change the course of a lifetime, which colder natures never experience. Reflective men do not change, but are transformed; ardent men, on the contrary, change and are not transformed. Dogmatism is a shirt of Nessus which they cannot tear off. They must have a pretext for loving and hating. Our western races alone have been able to produce those minds—large yet delicate, strong yet flexible—which no empty affirmation can mislead, no momentary illusion carry away. The East has never produced men of this stamp. Instantly, the most thrilling thoughts rushed in upon the soul of Paul. Awakened to the enormity of his conduct, he saw himself stained with the blood of Stephen, and this martyr appeared to him as his father, his initiator into the new faith. Touched to the quick, his sentiments experienced a revulsion as complete as it was sudden; still, all this was but a new phase of fanaticism. His sincerity and his need of an absolute faith

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precluded any middle course; it was already clear that he would one day exhibit in the cause of Jesus the same fiery zeal he had shown in persecuting him. 100

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With the assistance of his companions, who led him by the hand, Paul entered Damascus. His friends took him to the house of a certain Judas, who lived in the street called Straight, a grand colonnaded avenue over a mile long and a hundred feet broad, which crossed the city from east to west, and the line of which yet forms, with a few deviations, the principal artery of Damascus. The blindness and delirium had not yet subsided. For three days Paul, a prey to fever, neither ate nor drank. It is easy to imagine what passed during this crisis in that burning brain maddened by violent disease. Mention was made in his hearing of the Christians of Damascus, and in particular of a certain Ananias, who appeared to be the chief of the community. Paul had often heard of the miraculous powers of new believers over maladies, and he became impressed by the idea that the imposition of hands would cure him of his disease. His eyes all this time were highly inflamed, and in his delirious imaginings he thought he saw Ananias enter the room and make to him the sign familiar to Christians. From that moment he felt convinced he should owe his recovery to Ananias. The latter, informed of this, visited the sick man, spoke kindly, addressed him as his “brother,” and laid his hands upon his head; and from that hour peace returned to the soul of Paul. He believed himself cured; and as his ailment had been purely nervous, he was indeed cured. Little crusts or scales, it is said, fell from his eyes; he partook of food and recovered his strength. Almost immediately after this he was baptized. The doctrines of the Church were so simple that he had nothing new to learn, and became at once a Christian and a perfect one., And from whom else did he need instruction? Had not Jesus himself appeared to him? He too, like James and Peter, had had his vision of the risen Jesus. He had learned everything by direct revelation. Here the fierce and unconquerable nature of Paul was again made manifest. Smitten down on the public highway, he was willing to submit, but only to Jesus, to that Jesus who had left the right hand of the Father to convert and instruct him. Such was the foundation of his faith; and such will be the starting point of his pretensions. He will maintain that it was by design that he did not go to Jerusalem immediately after his conversion, and place himself in relations with those who had been apostles before him; he will main-tam that he has received a special revelation, for which he is indebted to no human agency; that, like the Twelve, he is an apostle by divine institution and by direct commission from Jesus; that his doctrine is the true one, although an angel from heaven should say to the contrary. An immense danger found entrance through this proud man into the little society of the poor in spirit who until now had constituted Christianity. It will be a real miracle if his violence and his inflexible personality do not overthrow everything. But at the same time his boldness, his initiative force, his prompt decision, will be precious elements when brought into contact with the narrow, timid, and indecisive spirit of the saints of Jerusalem! Certainly, if Christianity had remained confined to these good people, shut up in a conventicle of elect, leading a communistic life, it

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would, like Essenism, have faded away, leaving scarcely a trace behind. It is this ungovernable Paul who will secure its success, and who at the risk of every peril will boldly launch it on the high seas. By the side of the obedient faithful, accepting his creed from his superior without questioning him, there will be a Christian disengaged from all authority who will believe only from personal conviction. Protestantism thus existed five years after the death of Jesus, and St. Paul was its illustrious founder. Surely Jesus had not anticipated such disciples; and it was such as these who would most largely contribute to the vitality of his work and insure its eternity. 102

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Violent natures disposed to proselytism only change the object of their passion. As ardent for the new faith as he had been for the old, St. Paul, like Omar, dropped in one day his part of persecutor for that of apostle. He did not return to Jerusalem, where his position towards the Twelve would have been peculiar and delicate. He tarried at Damascus and in the Hauran for three years (38-41), preaching that Jesus was the Son of God. Herod Agrippa I. held the sovereignty of the Hauran and of the neighbouring countries; but his power was at several points superseded by that of a Nabatian king, Hâreth. The decay of the Roman power in Syria had delivered to the ambitious Arab the great and rich city of Damascus, besides a part of the countries beyond Jordan and Mount Hermon, then just being opened up to civilization. Another emir, Soheyn, perhaps a relative or lieutenant of Hâreth, had received from Caligula the command of Ithuria. It was in the midst of this great awakening of the Arab nation, upon this strange soil, where an energetic race manifested with great success its feverish activity, that Paul first displayed the ardour of his apostolic soul. Perhaps the material and so remarkable a movement which revolutionized the country was prejudicial to a theory and to a preaching wholly idealistic, and founded on a belief of a near approach of the end of the world. Indeed, there exists no traces of an Arabian Church founded by St. Paul. If the region of the Hauran became, towards the year 70, one of the most important centres of Christianity, it was owing to the emigration of Christians from Palestine; and it was the Ebonites, the enemies of St. Paul, who had in this region their principal establishment. At Damascus, where there were many Jews, the teachings of Paul received more attention. In the synagogues of that city he entered into warm arguments to prove that Jesus was the Christ. Great indeed was the astonishment of the faithful on beholding him who had persecuted their brethren at Jerusalem, and who had come to Damascus “to bring themselves bound unto the chief-priests,” now appearing as their chief defender. His audacity and personal peculiarities almost alarmed them. He was alone; he sought no counsel; he established no school; and the emotions he excited were those of curiosity rather than those of sympathy. The faithful felt that he was a brother, but a brother distinguished by singular peculiarities. They believed him to be incapable of treachery; but amiable and mediocre natures always experience sentiments of mistrust and alarm when brought in contact with powerful and original minds, who they know must one day supersede them.

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CHAPTER XI. PEACE AND INTERIOR DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHURCH OF JUDEA.

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FROM the year 38 to the year 44 no persecution seems to have been directed against the Church. The faithful were, no doubt, far more prudent than before the death of Stephen, and avoided speaking in public. Perhaps, too, the troubles of the Jews who, during all the second part of the reign of Caligula, were at variance with that prince, contributed to favour the nascent sect. The Jews, in fact, became active persecutors in proportion to the good understanding they maintained with the Romans. To buy or to recompense their tranquility, the latter were led to augment their privileges, and in particular the one to which they clung most closely—the right of killing persons whom they regarded as inimical to their law. But the period at which we have arrived was one of the most stormy in the turbulent history of this singular people. The antipathy which the Jews, in consequence of their moral superiority, their odd customs, as well as their harshness, excited in the populations among which they lived, was at its height, especially at Alexandria. This accumulated hatred, for its own satisfaction, took advantage of the coming to the imperial throne of one of the most dangerous lunatics that ever wore a crown. Caligula, at least after the malady which completed his mental derangement (October, 37), presented the frightful spectacle of a maniac governing the world endowed with the most enormous powers ever put into the hands of any man. The atrocious law of Cæsarism rendered such horrors possible, and left the governed without remedy. This lasted three years and three mouths. One cannot without shame set down in a serious history that which is now to follow. Before entering upon the recital of these saturnalia we cannot but exclaim with Suetonius: Reliqua ut de monstro narranda sunt.

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The most inoffensive pastime of this madman was the care of his own divinity. In order to do this he used a sort of bitter irony, a mixture of the serious and the comic (for the monster was not wanting in wit), a sort of profound derision of the human race. The enemies of the Jews were not slow to perceive the advantage they might gain from this mania. The religious abasement of the world was such that not a protest was heard against the sacrilege of the Cæsar; every cult hastened to bestow upon him the titles and the honours which it had reserved for its gods. It is to the eternal glory of the Jews that, amidst this ignoble idolatry, they uttered the cry of outraged conscience. The principle of intolerance which was in them, and which led them to so many cruel acts, exhibited here its bright side. Alone in affirming their religion to be the absolute religion, they would not bend to the odious caprice of the tyrant. This was the source of endless troubles for them. It needed only that there should be in a city some person discontented with the synagogue, spiteful, or simply mischievous, to bring about frightful consequences. At one time people would insist on erecting an altar to Caligula in the very place where the Jews could least of all suffer it? At another, a troupe of the rag-tags would collect, and cry out against the Jews for being the only people who refused 89


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to place the statue of the emperor in their houses of prayer. Anon, people would run to the synagogues and the oratories; they would install there the bust of Caligula; and the unfortunate Jews were placed in the alternative of either renouncing their religion, or be guilty of high treason. Thence followed frightful vexations.

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Such pleasantries had been several times repeated when a still more diabolical idea was suggested to the emperor. This was to place a colossal golden statue of himself in the sanctuary of the temple at Jerusalem, and to have the temple itself dedicated to his own divinity. This odious design very nearly hastened by thirty years the revolt and the ruin of the Jewish nation. The moderation of the imperial legate, Publius Petronius, and the intervention of King Herod Agrippa, a favourite of Caligula, averted the catastrophe. But until the moment in which the sword of Chæræa delivered the earth from the most execrable tyrant it had as yet endured, the Jews lived everywhere in terror. Philo has preserved for us the monstrous scene which occurred when the deputation of which he was the chief was admitted to see the emperor. Caligula received them during a visit he was paying to the villas of Mæcenas and of Lamia, near the sea, in the environs of Pozzuoli. On that day he was in a vein of gaiety. Helicon, his favourite joker, had been relating to him all sorts of buffooneries about the Jews. “Ah, then, it is you,” said he to them, with a bitter smile, and showing his teeth, “who alone will not recognize me for a god, and who prefer to adore one whose name you cannot even utter!” He accompanied these words with a horrible blasphemy. The Jews trembled; their Alexandrian enemies were the first to take up speech: “You would still more, O Sire, detest these people and all their nation, if you knew the aversion they have for you; for they alone have refused to offer sacrifices for your health when all the other peoples have done so!” At these words, the Jews exclaimed that it was a calumny, and that they had three times offered for the prosperity of the emperor the most solemn sacrifices their religion would allow. “Yes,” said Caligula, with comical seriousness, “you have sacrificed; so far, good; but it was not to me that you sacrificed. What advantage do I derive therefrom?” Thereupon, turning his back upon them, he strode through the apartments, giving orders for repairs, going up and down stairs incessantly. The unfortunate deputies, and among them Philo, eighty years of age, the most venerable man of the time, perhaps—Jesus being no longer living—followed him up and down, trembling and out of breath, the object of derision to the assembled company. Caligula turning suddenly, said to them: “By the by, why will you not eat pork?” The flatterers burst into laughter! some of the officers, in a severe tone, reminded them that in laughing immoderately they offended the majesty of the emperor. The Jews were stunned; one of them awkwardly said: “There are some persons who do not eat lamb.” “Ah!” said the emperor, “such people are right; lamb is insipid.” Some time after, he made a show of inquiring into their business; then, when they had just begun to inform him of it, he left them and went off to give orders about the decorations of a hall which he wanted to have adorned with specular stones. Returning, he affected an air of moderation, and asked the deputation if they had anything to add; and as the latter resumed their interrupted discourse, he turned his back upon them to go and see another hall which he was ornamenting with paintings. This game of tiger sporting

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with its prey lasted for hours. The Jews were expecting death; but at the last moment the monster withdrew his fangs. “Well,” said Caligula, while repassing “these folks are decidedly less guilty than pitiable for not believing in my divinity.” Thus could the gravest questions be treated under the horrible regime created by the baseness of the world, cherished by a soldiery and a populace about equally vile, and maintained by the dissoluteness of nearly all. We can easily understand how so painful a situation must have taken from the Jews of the time of Marullus much of that audacity which made them speak so boldly to Pilate. Already almost entirely detached from the temple, the Christians must have been much less alarmed than the Jews at the sacrilegious projects of Caligula. Their numbers were, moreover, too few for their existence to be known at Rome. The storm at the time of Caligula, like that which resulted in the taking of Jerusalem by Titus, passed over their heads, and was in many regards serviceable to them. Everything which weakened Jewish independence was favourable to them, since it was so much taken away from the power of a suspicious orthodoxy, which maintained its pretensions by severe penalties.

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This period of peace was fruitful in interior developments. The nascent church was divided into three provinces; Judea, Samaria, Galilee, to which Damascus was no doubt attached. The primacy of Jerusalem was uncontested. The church of this city, which had been dispersed after the death of Stephen, was quickly reconstituted. The apostles had never quitted the city. The brothers of the Lord continued to reside there, and to wield a great authority. It does not seem that this new church of Jerusalem was organized in so strict a manner as the first: the community of goods was not strictly re-established in it. But there was founded a large fund for the poor, to which was added the contributions sent by minor churches to the mother church, which latter was the origin and permanent source of their faith. Peter undertook frequent apostolical journeys in the environs of Jerusalem. He had always a great reputation as a thaumaturgist. At Lydda in particular he was reputed to have cured a paralytic named Æneas, a miracle which is said to have led to numerous conversions in the plain of Saron. From Lydda he repaired to Joppa, a city which appears to have been a centre for Christianity. Cities of workmen, of sailors, of poor people, where the orthodox Jews were not dominant, were those in which the new sect found people the best disposed towards them. Peter made a long sojourn at Joppa, at the house of a tanner named Simon, who dwelt near the sea. Working in leather was an industry regarded as unclean, according to the Mosaic code; it was not lawful to associate with those who carried it on, so that the curriers had to reside in a district by themselves. Peter, in selecting such a host, gave a proof of his indifference to Jewish prejudices, and worked for that ennoblement of petty callings which constitutes a grand feature of the Christian spirit. The organization of works of charity was soon actively entered upon. The church of Joppa possessed a woman most appropriately named in Aramaic, Tabitha (gazelle), and in Greek, Dorcas, who consecrated all her time to the poor. She was rich, it seems, and distributed her wealth in alms. This worthy lady had formed a society of pious widows, who passed their days with her in weaving 91


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clothes for the poor. As the schism between Christianity and Judaism was not yet consummated, it is probable that the Jews participated in the benefit of these acts of charity. The “saints and widows” were thus pious persons, doing good to all, a sort of friars and nuns, whom only the most austere devotees of a pedantic orthodoxy could suspect, fraticelli, loved by the people, devout, charitable, full of pity. The germ of those associations of women, which are one of the glories of Christianity, thus existed in the first churches of Judea. At Jaffa commenced those societies of veiled women, clothed in linen, who were destined to continue through centuries the tradition of charitable secrets. Tabitha was the mother of a family which will have no end as long as there are miseries to be relieved and feminine instincts to be gratified. It is related further on, that Peter raised her from the dead. Alas! death, however unmindful and revolting, in such a case, is inflexible. When the most exquisite soul has sped, the decree is irrevocable; the most excellent woman can no more respond to the invitation of the friendly voices which would fain recall her, than can the vulgar and frivolous. But ideas are not subject to the conditions of matter. Virtue and goodness escape the fangs of death. Tabitha had no need to be resuscitated. For the sake of a few days more of this sad life, why disturb her sweet and eternal repose? Let her sleep in peace; the day of the just will come!

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In these very mixed cities, the problem of the admission of Pagans to baptism was propounded with much persistency. Peter was strongly pre-occupied by it. One day while he was praying at Joppa, on the terrace of the tanner’s house, having before him the sea that was soon going to bear the new faith to all the empire, he had a prophetic ecstasy. Plunged into a state of reverie, he thought he experienced a sensation of hunger, and asked for something to eat. And while they were making it ready for him, he saw the heavens opened, and a cloth tied at the four corners descend. Looking inside the cloth he saw there all sorts of animals, and thought he heard a voice saying to him: “Kill and eat” On his objecting that many of these animals were impure, he was answered: “Call not that unclean which God has cleansed.” This, as it appears, was repeated three times. Peter was persuaded that these animals represented the mass of the Gentiles, which God himself had just rendered fit for the holy communion of the Kingdom of God. An occasion was soon presented for applying these principles. From Joppa, Peter went to Cesarea. There he came in contact with a centurion named Cornelius. The garrison of Cesarea was formed, at least in part, of one of those cohorts composed of Italian volunteers which were called Italicæ. The complete name which this term represented may have been cohors prima Augustus Italica civium Romamorum. Cornelius was a centurion of this cohort, consequently an Italian and a Roman citizen. He was a man of probity, who had long felt himself drawn towards the monotheistic worship of the Jews. He prayed; gave alms; practised, in a word, those precepts of natural religion which are taken for granted by Judaism; but he was not circumcised; he was not a proselyte in any sense whatever; he was a pious Pagan, an Israelite in heart, nothing more. His whole household and some soldiers of his command were, it is said, in the same state of mind. Cornelius applied for

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admission into the new Church. Peter, whose nature was open and benevolent, granted it to him, and the centurion was baptized.

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Perhaps Peter at first saw no difficulty in this; but on his return to Jerusalem he was severely reproached for it. He had openly violated the Law; he had gone amongst the uncircumcized and had eaten with them. The question was an important one; it was no other than whether the Law was abolished; whether it was permissible to violate it in proselytism; whether Gentiles could be freely received into the Church. Peter related in self defence the vision he had at Joppa. Subsequently the fact of the centurion served as an argument in the great question of the baptism of the uncircumcized. To give it more importance it was pretended that each phase of this important business had been marked by a revelation from heaven. It was related that after long prayers Cornelius had seen an angel who ordered him to go and inquire for Peter at Joppa; that the symbolical vision of Peter took place at the very hour of the arrival of the messengers from Cornelius; that, moreover, God himself had undertaken to legitimize all that had been done, seeing that the Holy Ghost had descended upon Cornelius, and upon his household the latter having spoken strange tongues and sung psalms after the fashion of the other believers. Was it natural to refuse baptism to persons who had received the Holy Ghost? The Church of Jerusalem was still exclusively composed of Jews and of proselytes. The Holy Ghost being shed upon the uncircumcized before baptism, appeared an extraordinary fact. It is probable that there existed thenceforward a party opposed in principle to the admission of Gentiles, and that all did not accept the explanations of Peter. The author of the Acts would have us believe that the approbation was unanimous. But in a few years we shall see the question revived with much greater intensity. This matter of the good centurion was, perhaps, like that of the Ethiopian eunuch, accepted as an exceptional case, justified by a revelation and an express order from God. Still the matter was far from being settled. This was the first controversy which had taken place in the bosom of the Church; the paradise of interior peace had lasted for six or seven years.

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About the year 40, the great question upon which depended all the future of Christianity appears thus to have been propounded. Peter and Philip took a very just view of what was the true solution, and baptized Pagans. It is difficult, no doubt, in the two accounts given us by the author of the Acts on this subject, and which are partly borrowed one from the other, not to recognize an argument. The author of the Acts belonged to a party of conciliation, favourable to the introduction of Pagans into the Church, and who was not willing to confess the violence of the divisions to which the affair gave rise. One feels strongly that in writing the account of the eunuch, of the centurion, and even of the conversion of the Samaritans, this author means not only to narrate facts, but also seeks special precedents for an opinion. On the other hand, we cannot admit that he invents the facts which he narrates. The conversions of the eunuch of Candace, and of the centurion Cornelius, are probably real facts, which are presented and transformed according to the needs of the thesis in view of which the book of the Acts was composed.

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Paul, who was destined, some ten or twelve years later, to give to this discussion so decisive a bearing, had not yet meddled with it. He was in the Hauran, or at Damascus, preaching, refuting the Jews, placing at the service of the new faith the same ardour he had shown in combatting it. The fanaticism, of which he had once been the instrument, was not long in pursuing him in turn. The Jews resolved to kill him. They obtained from the ethnarch, who governed Damascus in the name of Hâreth, an order to arrest him. Paul hid himself. It was known that he was to leave the city; the ethnarch, who wanted to please the Jews, placed detachments at the gates to seize his person; but the brethren secured his escape by night, letting him down in a basket from the window of a house which over-looked the ramparts. Having escaped this danger, Paul turned his eyes towards Jerusalem. He had been a Christian for three years, and had not yet seen the apostles. His stern, unyielding character, prone to isolation, had made him at first turn his back as it were upon the great family into which he had just entered in spite of himself, and prefer for his first apostolate a new country, in which he would find no colleague. There was awakened in him, how. ever, a desire to see Peter. He recognized his authority, and designated him, as every one did, by the name of Cephas, “the stone.” He repaired then to Jerusalem, taking the same road, whence he had come three years before in a state of mind so different. 113

His position at Jerusalem was extremely false and embarrassing. It had, no doubt, been understood there that the persecutor had become the most zealous of evangelists, and one of the first defenders of the faith which he had formerly sought to destroy. But there remained great prejudices against him. Many dreaded on his part some horrible plot. They had seen him so enraged, so cruel, so zealous in entering houses and tearing open family secrets in order to find victims, that he was believed capable of playing an odious farce in order to destroy those whom he hated. He resided, as it seems, in the house of Peter. Many disciples remained deaf to his advances, and shrank from him. Barnabas, a man of courage and will, took at this moment a decisive part. As a Cypriote and a new convert, he understood better than the Galilean disciples the position of Paul. He came to meet him, took him by the hand, introduced him to the most suspicious, and became his surety. By this sagacious and far-seeing act, Barnabas earned at the hands of the Christian worlds the highest degree of merit. It was he who appreciated Paul; it is to him that the Church owes the most extraordinary of her founders. The advantageous friendship of these two apostolic men, a friendship that no cloud ever tarnished, notwithstanding many differences in opinion, afterwards led to their association in the work of missions to the Gentiles. This grand association dates, in one sense, from Paul’s first sojourn at Jerusalem. Amongst the sources of the faith of the world, we must count the generous movement of Barnabas, who stretched out his hand to the suspected and forsaken Paul; the profound intuition which led him to discover the soul of an apostle under that downcast mien; the frankness with which be broke the ice and levelled the obstacles raised between the convert and his new brethren by the unfortunate antecedents of the former, and perhaps, also, by certain traits in his character. 94


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Paul, however, systematically avoided seeing the apostles. He himself says so, and he takes the trouble to affirm it with an oath; he saw only Peter, and James the brother of the Lord. His sojourn lasted but two weeks. It is certainly possible that at the time in which he wrote the Epistle to the Galatians (towards 56), Paul may have found himself constrained by the exigencies of the moment, to alter a little the nature of his relations with the apostles; to represent them as more harsh, more imperious, than they were in reality. Towards 56 the essential point for him to prove was that he had received nothing from Jerusalem—that he was in no wise the mandatory of the Council of the Twelve established in this city. His attitude at Jerusalem would have been the proud and lofty bearing of a master, who avoids relations with other masters in order not to have the air of subordinating himself to them, and not the humble and repentant mien of a sinner ashamed of the past, as the author of the Acts represents. We cannot believe that from the year 41 Paul was animated by this jealous care to preserve his own individuality, which he showed at a later day. The few interviews he had with the apostles, and the briefness of his sojourn at Jerusalem, arose probably from his embarrassment in the presence of people, whose nature was different from his own, and who were full of prejudices against him, rather than from a refined policy, which would have revealed to him fifteen years in advance the disadvantages there might be in his frequenting their society. In reality, that which must have erected a sort of wall between the apostles and Paul, was the difference of their character and of their education. The apostles were all Galileans; they had not been at the great Jewish school; they had seen Jesus; they remembered his words; they were good and pious folk, at times a little solemn and simple-hearted. Paul was a man of action, full of fire, only moderately mystical, enrolled, as by a superior power, in a sect which was not that of his first adoption. Revolt, protestation, were his habitual sentiments. His Jewish education was much superior to that of all his new brethren. But not having heard Jesus, not having been appointed by him, he was, according to Christian ideas, greatly inferior. Now Paul was not the man to accept a secondary place. His haughty temperament required a position for itself. It was probably about this time that there sprang up in him the singular idea that after all he had nothing to envy those who had known Jesus, and had been chosen by him, since he also had seen Jesus, and had received from Jesus a direct revelation and the commission of his apostleship. Even those who had been honoured by the personal appearance of the risen Christ were no better than he was. Although the last apostle, his vision had been none the less remarkable. It had taken place under circumstances which gave it a peculiar stamp of importance and of distinction. A signal error! The echo of the voice of Jesus was found in the discourses of the humblest of his disciples. With all his Jewish science, Paul could not make up for the immense disadvantage under which he was placed in consequence of his tardy initiation. The Christ whom he had seen on the road to Damascus was not, whatever he might say, the Christ of Galilee; it was the Christ of his imagination, of his own conception. Although he may have been most industrious in learning the words of the Master, it is clear that he was only a disciple at second-hand. If Paul had met Jesus 95


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during his life, it is doubtful whether he would have attached himself to him. His doctrine must be his own, not that of Jesus; the revelations of which he was so proud were the fruit of his own brain.

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These ideas, which he dared not as yet communicate, rendered his stay at Jerusalem disagreeable. At the end of a fortnight he took leave of Peter, and went away. He had seen so few people that he ventured to say that no one in the Churches of Judea knew him by sight, or knew aught of him, save by hearsay. At a subsequent period he attributed this sudden departure to a revelation. He related that being one day in the temple praying, he was in an ecstasy, and saw Jesus in person, and received from him the order to quit Jerusalem immediately, “because they were not inclined to receive his testimony.” As a compensation for these hard hearts, Jesus had promised him the Apostolate of distant nations, and an auditory who would listen more willingly to his words. Those who would fain hide the traces of the many ruptures caused by the coming of this intractable disciple into the church, pretended that Paul remained a long while at Jerusalem, living with the brethren on a footing of the most complete amity; but that, having begun to preach to the Hellenic Jews, he was nearly killed by them, so that the brethren had to protect him, and to send him safely to Cæsarea. It is probable, indeed, that from Jerusalem he did repair to Cæsarea. But he stayed there only a short time, and then set out to traverse Syria, and afterwards Cilicia. He was, no doubt, already preaching, but it was on his own account, and without any understanding with anybody. Tarsus, his native place, was his habitual sojourn during this period of his apostolic life, which we may reckon as having lasted about two years. It is possible that the Churches of Cilicia owed their origin to him. Still, the life of Paul was not at this epoch that which we see it to be subsequently. He did not assume the title of an apostle, which latter was then strictly reserved to the Twelve. It was only from the time of his association with Barnabas (in 45) that he entered upon that career of sacred peregrinations and preachings which were to make of him the typical travelling missionary.

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CHAPTER XII. FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH OF ANTIOCH. THE new faith was spread from place to place with marvellous rapidity. The members of the church of Jerusalem, who had been dispersed immediately after the death of Stephen, pushing their conquests along the coast of Phœnicia, reached Cyprus and Antioch. They were at first guided by the sole principle of preaching the Gospel to the Jews only.

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Antioch, “the metropolis of the East,” the third city of the world, was the centre of this Christian movement in northern Syria. It was a city with a population of more than 500,000 souls, almost as large as Paris before its recent extensions, and the residence of the Imperial Legate of Syria. Suddenly advanced to a high degree of splendour by the Seleucidæ, it reaped great benefit from the Roman occupation. In general, the Seleucidæ were in advance of the Romans in the taste for theatrical decorations, as applied to great cities. Temples, aqueducts, baths, basilicas, nothing was wanting at Antioch in what constituted a grand Syrian city of that period. The streets, flanked by colonnades, their cross-roads being decorated with statues, had more of symmetry and regularity than anywhere else. A Corso, ornamented with four rows of columns, forming two covered galleries, with a wide avenue in the midst, traversed the city from one side to the other, the length of which was thirty-six stadia (more than a league). But Antioch not only possessed immense edifices of public utility; it had also that which few of the Syrian cities possessed—the noblest specimens of Grecian art, beautiful statues, classical works of a delicacy of detail which the age was no longer capable of imitating. Antioch, from its foundation, had been wholly a Grecian city. The Macedonians of Antigone and Seleucus had brought with them into that country of the Lower Orontes their most lively recollections, their worship, and the names of their country. The Grecian mythology was there adopted as it were in a second home; they pretended to show in the country a crowd of “holy places” forming part of this mythology. The city was full of the worship of Apollo and of the nymphs. Daphne, an enchanting place two short hours from the city, reminded the conquerors of the pleasantest fictions. It was a sort of plagiarism, a counterfeit of the myths of the mother country, analogous to that which the primitive tribes carried with them in their travels—their mythical geography, their Berecyntha, their Arvanda, their Ida, their Olympus. These Greek fables was for them an antiquated religion, scarcely more serious than the Metamorphoses of Ovid. The ancient religions of the country, particularly that of Mount Cassius, contributed a little seriousness to it. But Syrian levity, Babylonian charlatanism, and all the impostures of Asia, mingling at this border of the two worlds, had made Antioch the capital of all lies, and the sink of every description of infamy. In fact, besides the Greek population, which in no part of the East (with the exception of Alexandria) was as numerous as here, Antioch counted amongst its population a considerable 97


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number of native Syrians, speaking Syriac. These natives were a low class, inhabiting the suburbs of the great city, and the populous villages which formed a vast suburb all around it—Charandama, Ghisira, Gandigura, and Apate (chiefly Syrian names). Marriages between the Syrians and the Greeks were common: Seleucus had made naturalization a legal obligation binding on every stranger establishing himself in the city, so that Antioch, at the end of three centuries and a half of its existence, became one of the places in the world where race was most blended with race. The degradation of the people was awful. The peculiarity of these centres of moral putrefaction is to reduce all the race of mankind to the same level. The depravity of certain Levantine cities, which are dominated by the spirit of intrigue and delivered up entirely to low cunning, can scarcely give us an idea of the degree of corruption reached by the human race at Antioch. It was an inconceivable medley of mountebanks, quacks, buffoons, magicians, miracle-mongers, sorcerers, false priests; a city of races, games, dances, processions, fetes, revels, of unbridled luxury, of all the follies of the East, of the most unhealthy superstitions and of the fanaticism of the orgy. By turns servile and ungrateful, cowardly and insolent, the people of Antioch were the perfect model of peoples devoted to Cæsarism, without fatherland, without nationality, without family honour, without a name to guard. The great Corso which traversed the city was like a theatre, where rolled, day after day, the waves of a trifling, light-headed, changeable, insurrection-loving populace—a populace sometimes witty, occupied with songs, parodies, squibs, impertinence of all kinds. The city was very literary, but literary only in the literature of rhetoricians. The sights were strange; there were some games in which bands of naked young girls took part, with nothing but a mere fillet around them; at the celebrated festival of Maiouma, troops of courtesans swam in public in basins filled with limpid water. It was like an intoxication, like a dream of Sardanapalus, where all the pleasures, all the debaucheries, not excluding, however, some of a most delicate kind, were unrolled pell-mell. The river of filth, which, making its exit by the mouth of the Orontes, was invading Rome, had here its principal source. Two hundred decurions were employed in regulating the religious ceremonies and celebrations. The municipality possessed great public domains, the rents of which the decemvirs divided amongst the poor citizens. Like all cities of pleasure, Antioch had a lowest class living on the public or on sordid gains. The beauty of works of art, and the infinite charm of nature, prevented this moral degradation from sinking entirely into hideousness and vulgarity. The site of Antioch is one of the most picturesque in the world. The city occupied the space between the Orontes and the slopes of Mount Silpius, one of the spurs of Mount Cassius. Nothing could equal the abundance and limpidness of the waters. The fortified portion, climbing up perpendicular rocks, by a master-piece of military architecture, enclosed the summit of the mountains, and formed, with the rocks at a tremendous height, an indented crown of marvellous effect. This disposition of ramparts, uniting the advantages of the ancient acropolis with those of the great walled cities, was in general preferred by the generals of Alexander, as one sees in the Pierian Seleucia, in Ephesus, in Smyrna, in Thessalonica. The result was astonishing perspectives. Antioch had within its walls mountains seven hundred feet in

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height, perpendicular rocks, torrents, precipices, deep ravines, cascades, inaccessible caves; and, in the midst of all these, delightful gardens. A thick wood of myrtles, of flowering box, of laurels, of evergreen plants —and of the richest green—rocks carpeted with pinks, with hyacinths, and cyclamens, gave to these wild heights the aspect of gardens suspended in the air. The variety of the flowers, the freshness of the turf, composed of an incredible number of delicate grasses, the beauty of the plane trees which border the Orontes, inspire the gaiety, the tinge of sweet odour, with which the fine genius of Chrysostom, Libanius, and Julian was, as it were, intoxicated. On the right bank of the river stretches a vast plain bounded on one side by the Amanus, and the oddly-shaped mountains of Pieria; on the other side by the plateaus of Cyrrhestica, behind which is concealed the dangerous neighbourhood of the Arab and the desert. The valley of the Orontes, which opens to the west, puts this interior basin into communication with the sea, or rather with the vast world, in the bosom of which the Mediterranean has constituted from all time a sort neutral highway and federal bond. 121

Amongst the different colonies which the liberal ordinances of the Seleucidæ had attracted to the capital of Syria, that of the Jews was one of the most numerous; it dated from the time of Seleucus Nicator, and enjoyed the same rights as the Greeks. Although the Jews had an ethnarch of their own, their relations with the Pagans were very frequent. Here, as at Alexandria, these relations often degenerated into quarrels and aggressions. On the other hand, they afforded a field for an active religious propagandism. The official polytheism becoming more and more insufficient to meet the wants of serious minds, the Grecian philosophy and Judaism attracted all those whom the vain pomps of Paganism could not satisfy. The number of proselytes was considerable. From the first days of Christianity, Antioch had furnished to the Church of Jerusalem one of its most influential members, viz. Nicholas, one of the deacons. There existed there promising germs, which only waited for a ray of grace to cause thorn to burst forth into bloom and to bear the most excellent fruits which had hitherto been produced. The Church of Antioch owed its foundation to some believers originally from Cyprus and Cyrene, who had already been much engaged in preaching. Up to this time they had only addressed themselves to the Jews. But in a city where pure Jews—Jews who were proselytes, “people fearing God”—or half-Jewish Pagans and pure Pagans, lived together, exclusive preaching restricted to a group of houses, became impossible. That feeling of religious aristocracy on which the Jews of Jerusalem so much prided themselves, did not exist in those large cities, where civilization was altogether of the profane sort, where the scope was greater, and where prejudices were less firmly rooted The Cypriot and Cyrenian missionaries were then constrained to depart from their rule. They preached to the Jews and to the Greeks indifferently.

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The dispositions of the Jewish and of the Pagan population appeared at this time to have been very unsatisfactory. But circumstances of another kind probably subserved the new ideas. The earthquake, which had done serious damage to the city on 23rd March, of the year 37, still occupied

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their minds. The whole city was talking about an impostor named Debborius, who pretended to be able to prevent the recurrence of such accidents by silly talismans. This sufficed to direct preoccupied minds towards supernatural matters. But, be this as it may, the success of the Christian preaching was great. A young, innovating, and ardent Church, full of the future, because it was composed of the most diverse elements, was quickly founded. All the gifts of the Holy Spirit were there poured out, and it was easy to perceive that this new church, emancipated from the strict Mosaism which erected an insuperable barrier around Jerusalem, would become the second cradle of Christianity. Assuredly, Jerusalem must remain for ever the capital of the Christian world; nevertheless, the point of departure of the Church of the Gentiles, the primordial focus of Christian missions, was, in truth, Antioch. It was there that for the first time, a Christian Church was established, freed from the bonds of Judaism; it was there that the great propaganda of the Apostolic age was established; it was there that St. Paul assumed a definite character. Antioch marks the second halting-place of the progress of Christianity and in respect of Christian nobility, neither Rome, nor Alexandria, nor Constantinople can be at all compared with it.

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The topography of ancient Antioch is so effaced that we should search in vain over its site, nearly destitute as it is of any vestiges of the antique, for the spot to which to attach such grand recollections. Here, as everywhere, Christianity was, doubtless, established in the poor quarters of the city and among the petty tradespeople. The basilica, which is called “the old” and “apostolic” in the fourth century, was situated in the street called Singon, near the Pantheon. But no one knows where this Pantheon was. Tradition and certain vague analogies would induce us to search the primitive Christian quarter near the gate, which even to-day is still called Paul’s gate, Bâb-bolos, and at the foot of the mountain, named by Procopius Stavrin, on which stands the south-east side of the ramparts of Antioch. It was one of the quarters of the town which least abounded in Pagan monuments. There, are still to be seen the remains of ancient sanctuaries dedicated to St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John. These appear to have been the quarter where Christianity was longest maintained after the Mohammedan conquest. There, too, as it appeared, was the quarter of “the saints,” in opposition to the profane Antioch. The rock is honey-combed, like a beehive, with grottoes which seem to have been used by the Anchorites. When one walks on these sharp-cut declivities, where, about the fourth century, the good Stylites, disciples at once of India and of Galilee, of Jesus and of Cakya-Mouni, disdainfully contemplated the voluptuous city from the summit of their pillar or from their flower-adorned cavern, it is probable that one is not far from the very spot where Peter and Paul dwelt. The Church of Antioch is the one whose history is most authentic, and least encumbered with fables. Christian tradition, in a city where Christianity was perpetuated with so much vigour, must possess some value. The prevailing language of the Church of Antioch was the Greek. It is, however, very probable that the suburbs where Syriac was spoken, furnished a great number of converts to the sect. Hence, Antioch already contained the germ of two rival, and, at a later, period, hostile Churches; the one speaking Greek, and now represented by the Syrian Greeks, whether orthodox or Catholics; the 100


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other, whose actual representatives are the Maronites, who previously spoke Syriac and guard it still as if it were a sacred tongue. The Maronites, who under their entirely modern Catholicism conceal a high antiquity, are probably the last descendants of those Syrians anterior to Seleucus, of those suburbans, pagani of Ghisra, Charandama, &c., who from the first ages became a separate church, were persecuted by the orthodox emperors as heretics, and escaped into the Libanus, where, from hatred of the Grecian Church and in consequence of deeper sympathies, they allied themselves with the Latins. As for the converted Jews at Antioch, they too were very numerous. But we are bound to believe that they accepted from the very first a fraternal alliance with the Gentiles. It was then on the shores of the Orontes that the religious fusion of races, dreamed of by Jesus, or to speak more fully, by six centuries of prophets, became a reality.

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CHAPTER XIII. THE IDEA OF AN APOSTOLATE TO THE GENTILES.—SAINT BARNABAS.

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GREAT was the excitement at Jerusalem when it was learned what had taken place at Antioch. Notwithstanding the kindly wishes of some of the principal members of the Church of Jerusalem, Peter in particular, the Apostolic College continued to be influenced by the meanest ideas. On every occasion when it was told that the glad tidings had been announced to the heathen, some of the elders manifested signs of disappointment. The man who at this time triumphed over this miserable jealously, and who prevented the narrow exclusiveness of the “Hebrews” from ruining the future of Christianity, was Barnabas. He was the most enlightened member of the Church at Jerusalem. He was the chief of the liberal party, which desired progress, and wished the Church to be open to all. He had already powerfully contributed towards removing the mistrust with which Paul was regarded; and he now, also, exercised a marked influence. Sent as a delegate of the apostolical body to Antioch, he inquired into and approved of all that had been done, and declared that the new Church had only to continue in the course upon which it had entered. Conversions were effected in great numbers. The vital and creative force of Christianity appeared to be centred at Antioch. Barnabas, whose zeal sought every occasion to display itself with the utmost vigour, remained there. Antioch thenceforth was his Church, and it was there that he exercised his most influential and important ministry. Christianity has always done injustice to this great man in not placing him in the first rank of her founders. Barnabas was the patron of all good and liberal ideas. His discriminating boldness often served to counterbalance the obstinacy of the narrow-minded Jews who formed the conservative party of Jerusalem. A magnificent idea sprung up in this noble heart at Antioch. Paul was at Tarsus in forced repose, which, to an active man like him, must have been perfect torture. His false position, his haughtiness, and his exaggerated pretensions, were sapping many of his other and better qualities. He was fretting himself, and remained almost useless. Barnabas knew how to apply to its true work that force which was wasting away in this unhealthy and dangerous solitude. For the second time, Barnabas held out the hand of friendship to Paul, and led this intractable character into the society of those brethren whom he wished to avoid. He went himself to Tarsus, sought him out, and brought him to Antioch. He did that which those obstinate old brethren of Jerusalem would never have brought themselves to do. To win over this great shrinking and susceptible soul; to accommodate oneself to the caprices and whims of a man full of ardour, and at the same time most personal; to take a secondary place to him, and forgetful of oneself, to prepare the field of operations for the most favourable display of his abilities—all this is certainly the very climax of virtue; and this is what Barnabas did for Paul. Most of the glory, which has accrued to the latter, is really due to the modest man, who excelled him in everything, brought his merits to light, prevented more than once his faults from

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resulting deplorably to himself and his cause, and the illiberal views of others from exciting him to revolt; and also prevented mean personalities from interfering with the work of God. During an entire year Barnabas and Paul worked together. This was a most brilliant, and, without doubt, the most happy year in the life of Paul. The prolific originality of these two great men raised the Church of Antioch to a degree of grandeur to which no Christian Church had previously attained. Few places in the world had experienced more intellectual activity than the capital of Syria. During the Roman epoch, as in our time, social and religious questions were brought to the surface principally at the centres of population. A sort of reaction against the general immorality, which made Antioch later, the special abode of Stylites and hermits, was already felt; and the true doctrine thus found in this city, more favourable conditions for success than it had yet met.

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An important circumstance proves, besides, that it was at Antioch that the sect for the first time felt the full consciousness of its existence; for it was in this city that it received a distinct name. Hitherto its adherents had called themselves “believers,” “the faithful,” “saints,” “brothers,” “the disciples;” but the sect had no public and official name. It was at Antioch that the title of Christianus was devised. The termination of the work is Latin, not Greek, which would indicate that it was selected by the Roman authority as a police designation, like Herodiani, Pompeiana, Cæsariani. In any event it is certain that such a name was formed by the heathen population. It included an error, for it implied that Christus, a translation of the Hebrew Maschiah (the Messiah), was a proper name. Not a few of those who were unfamiliar with Jewish or Christian ideas, were by this name led to believe that Christus or Chrestus was a sectarian leader yet living. The vulgar pronunciation of the name indeed was Chrestiani. The Jews did not adopt, in a regular manner, at least, the name given by the Romans to their schismatic co-religionist. They continued to call the new converts “Nazarenes” or “Nazorenes,” because no doubt they were accustomed to call Jesus Han-nasri or Han-nosri, “the Nazarene;” and even unto the present day, this name is still applied to them throughout the entire East.

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This was a most important moment. Solemn indeed is the hour when the new creation receives its name, for that name is the direct symbol of its existence. It is by its name that a being, individual or collective, really becomes itself, and is distinct from others. The formation of the word “Christian” marks thus the precise date of the separation from Judaism of the Church of Jesus. For a long time to come the two religions were still confounded; but this confusion could only take place in those countries where the spread of Christianity was slow and backward. The sect quickly accepted the appelation which was applied to it, and viewed it as a title of honour. It is really astonishing to reflect that ten years after the death of Jesus, his religion had already, in the capital of Syria, a name in the Greek and Latin tongues. Christianity was now completely weaned from its mother; the true sentiments of Jesus had triumphed over the indecision of his first disciples; the Church of Jerusalem was left behind; the Aramaic language, in which Jesus spoke, was unknown to a portion of his

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followers; Christianity spoke Greek, and was finally launched into that great vortex of the Greek and Roman world, whence it has never departed. The feverish activity of ideas manifested by this young Church must have been truly extraordinary. Great spiritual manifestations were frequent. All believed themselves to be inspired in various ways. Some were “prophets,” others “teachers.” Barnabas, as his name indicates, was no doubt among the prophets. Paul had no special title. Among the leaders of the Church at Antioch are also mentioned Simeon, surnamed Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, and Menahem, who had been the foster-brother of Herod Antipas, and was consequently rather old. All these personages were Jews. Among the converted heathen was, perhaps, already that Evhode, who, at a certain period, seems to have occupied the first place in the church of Antioch. Undoubtedly the heathen who heard the first preaching were slightly inferior, and did not shine in the public exercises of using unknown tongues, of preaching, and prophecy.

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In the midst of the congenial society of Antioch, Paul quickly adapted himself to the order of things. Later, he manifested opposition to the use of tongues, and it is probable that he never practised it; but he had many visions and immediate revelations. It was apparently at Antioch where occurred that ecstatic trance which he describes in these terms: “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body I cannot tell; or whether out of the body I cannot tell—God knoweth); such an one was caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell—God knoweth); how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” Paul, though in general, prudent and practical, shared the prevalent ideas of the day in regard to the supernatural. Like so many others, he believed that he was working miracles, like everybody; it was impossible that the gifts of the Holy Sprit, which were acknowledged to be the common right of the church, should be denied to him. But men permeated with so lively a faith could not content themselves with merely exuberant piety, so they panted soon for action. The idea of great missions, destined to convert the heathen, beginning in Asia Minor, seized hold of the public mind. Had such an idea been formed at Jerusalem, it could not have been realized, because the church there was without pecuniary resources. An extensive undertaking of propagandism requires a certain capital to work on. Now, the common treasury at Jerusalem was entirely devoted to the support of the poor, and was frequently insufficient for that purpose; and to save these noble mendicants from dying from hunger, it was necessary to obtain help from all quarters. Communism had created at Jerusalem an irremediable poverty and a total incapacity for great enterprises. The church at Antioch was exempt from such a calamity. The Jews in these profane cities had attained to affluence, and in some cases had accumulated vast fortunes. The faithful were wealthy when they entered the church. Antioch furnished the capital for the founding of Christianity, and it is easy to imagine the total difference in manner and spirit which this circumstance alone would create between the two churches. Jerusalem remained the

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city of the poor of God, of the ebionim, of those simple Galilean dreamers, intoxicated, as it were, with the expectation of the kingdom of Heaven. Antioch, almost a stranger to the words of Jesus, whom it had never heard, was the church of action and of progress. Antioch was the city of Paul; Jerusalem was the seat of the old apostolic college, wrapped up in its dreamy fantasies, and unequal to the new problems which were opening, but dazzled by its incomparable privileges, and rich in its unsurpassed events. A certain circumstance soon brought all these traits into bold relief. So great was the lack of forethought in this half-starved Church of Jerusalem, that the least accident threw the community into distress. Now, in a country destitute of economic organization, where commerce was but little developed, and where the sources of welfare were limited, famines were inevitable. A terrible famine occurred in the reign of Claudius, in the year 44. When its threatening symptoms became apparent, the elders of Jerusalem decided to seek succour from the members of the richer churches of Syria. An embassy of prophets was sent from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agab, who was in high repute for his prophetic powers, was suddenly inspired, and announced that the famine was now at hand. The faithful were deeply moved at the evils which menanced the mother Church, to which they still deemed themselves tributary. A collection was made, at which every one gave according to his means, and Barnabas was selected to carry the funds thus obtained to the brethren in Judea. Jerusalem for a long time remained the capital of Christianity. There were centred the objects peculiar to the faith, and there only were the apostles. But a great forward step had been taken. For several years there had been only one completely organised Church, that of Jerusalem—the absolute centre of the faith, the heart from which all life proceeded and to which it flowed back again; such was no longer the case. The Church at Antioch was now a perfect Church. It possessed all the hierarchy of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. It was the starting-point of the missions, and their head-quarters. It was a second capital, or rather a second heart, which had its own proper action, exercising its force and influence in every direction.

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It was now easy to forsee that the second capital must soon eclipse the first. The decay of the Church at Jerusalem was, indeed, rapid. It is natural that institutions founded on communism should enjoy at the beginning a period of brilliancy, for communism involves always high mental exaltation; but it is equally natural that such institutions should very quickly degenerate, because communism is contrary to the instincts of human nature. In his virtuous fits, man readily believes that he can entirely sacrifice his selfish instincts and his peculiar interests; but egotism has its revenge, by proving that absolute disinterestedness engenders evils more serious than those it is hoped to avoid by the renunciation of personal rights to property.

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CHAPTER XIV. PERSECUTION BY HEROD AGRIPPA THE FIRST. BARNABAS found the church of Jerusalem in great trouble. The year 44 was perilous to it. Besides the famine, the fires of persecution, which had been smothered since the death of Stephen, were rekindled.

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Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, had succeeded, since the year 41, in reconstructing the kingdom of his grandfather. Thanks to the favour of Caligula, he had reunited under his sway Batanea, Trachonitis a part of the Hauran, Abilene, Galilee, and the Perea. The ignoble part he played in the tragi-comedy which raised Claudius to the empire, completed his fortune. This vile Oriental, in return for the lessons of baseness and perfidy he had given at Rome, obtained for himself Samaria and Judea, and for his brother Herod, the kingdom of Chalcis. He had left at Rome the worst memories, and the cruelties of Caligula were in part attributed to his counsels. His army, and the Pagan cities of Sebaste and Cesarea, which he sacrificed to Jerusalem, were averse to him. But the Jews found him generous, munificient, and sympathetic. He sought to make himself popular with them, and pursued a policy quite different from that of Herod the Great. The latter was much more mindful of the Greek and Roman world than of the Jewish. Herod Agrippa, on the contrary, loved Jerusalem, rigorously observed the Jewish religion, affected scrupulousness, and never let a day pass without attending to his devotions. He went so far as to receive good naturedly the advice of the rigorists, and was at the pains to justify himself against their reproaches. He returned to the inhabitants of Jerusalem the tribute which each family owed him. The orthodox, in a word had in him a king after their own heart. It was inevitable that a prince of this character should persecute the Christians. Sincere or not, Herod Agrippa was, in the strictest sense of the word, a Jewish Sovereign. The house of Herod, as it became weaker, took to devotion. It held no longer to that broad profane idea of the founder of the dynasty, which sought to make the most diverse religions live together under the common empire of civilization. When Herod Agrippa, for the first time after he had become king, set foot in Alexandria, it was as a King of the Jews that he was received: it was this title which irritated the population and gave rise to endless buffooneries. Now what was a King of the Jews, if he did not become the guardians of the laws and the traditions, a sovereign theocrat and persecutor? From the time of Herod the Great, under whom fanaticism was entirely suppressed, until the breaking out of the war which led to the destruction of Jerusalem, there was thus a constantly increasing process of religious ardour. The death of Caligula (24th Jan., 41) had produced a reaction favourable to the Jews. Claudius was generally benevolent towards them, as a result of the favourable ear he lent to Herod Agrippa and Herod King of Chalcis. Not only did he decide in favour of the Jews of Alexandria in their quarrels with the inhabitants and allow them the right of choosing an ethnarch, 106


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but he published, it is said, an edict by which he granted to the Jews, throughout the whole empire, that which he had granted to those of Alexandria; that is to say, the freedom of living according to their own laws, on the sole condition of not abusing other worships. Some attempts at vexations, analagous to those which were inflicted under Caligula, were repressed. Jerusalem was greatly enlarged: the suburb of Bezetha was added to the city. The Roman authority scarcely made itself felt, although Vibius Marsus, a prudent man, of wide public experience, and of a very cultivated mind, who had succeeded Publius Petronius in the function of imperial legate of Syria, drew the attention of the authorities at Rome from time to time to the danger of these semi-independent Eastern Kingdoms. The species of feudality which, since the death of Tiberius, tended to establish itself in Syria and the neighbouring countries, was in fact an interruption in the imperial policy and had almost uniformly injurious results. The “Kings” coming to Rome were great personages, and exercised there a detestable influence. The corruption and abasement of the people, especially under Caligula, proceeded in great part from the spectacle furnished by these wretches, who were seen successively dragging their purple at the theatre, at the palace of the Cæsar, and in the prisons. So far as concerns the Jews, we have seen that autonomy meant intolerance. The Sovereign Pontificate quitted for a moment the family of Hanan, only to enter that of Boëthus, a family no less haughty and cruel. A sovereign anxious to please the Jews could not fail, but to grant them what they most desired; that is to say, severities against everything which diverged from rigorous orthodoxy. 134

Herod Agrippa, in fact, became towards the end of his reign a violent persecutor. Some time before the Passover of the year 44, he cut off the head of one of the principal members of the apostolical college, James, son of Zebedee, brother of John. The offence was not re-presented as a religious one; there was no inquisitorial trial before the Sanhedrim: the sentence, as in the case of John the Baptist, was pronounced by virtue of the arbitrary power of the sovereign. Encouraged by the good effect which this execution produced upon the Jews, Herod Agrippa was unwilling to stop upon so easy a road to popularity. It was the first days of the Feast of the Passover, which were ordinarily marked by redoubled fanaticism. Agrippa ordered the imprisonment of Peter in the Tower of Antonia, and sought to have him judged and put to death in the most ostentations manner before the multitude of people then assembled. A circumstance with which we are unacquainted, and which was regarded as miraculous, opened Peter’s prison. One evening, as many of the disciples were assembled in the house of Mary, mother of John-Mark, where Peter constantly resided, there was suddenly a knock heard at the door. The servant, named Rhoda, went to listen. She recognised Peter’s voice. Transported with delight, instead of opening the door she ran back to announce that Peter was there. They regarded her as mad. She avowed she spoke the truth. “It is his angel,” said some of them. The knocking was continued; it was indeed he. Their delight was infinite. Peter immediately announced his deliverance to James, brother of the Lord, and to the other disciples. It was believed that the angel of God had

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entered into the prison of the apostle and made the chains drop from his hands, and the bolts of the doors fall. Peter related, in fact, all that had passed while he was in a sort of ecstasy; that after he had passed the first and second guard, and gone through the iron gate which led into the city, the angel accompanied him the distance of a street, then quitted him; that then he came to himself and recognized the hand of God, who had sent a celestial messenger to deliver him. Agrippa survived these violences but a short time. In the course of the year 44, he went to Cesarea to celebrate games in honour of Claudius. The concourse of people was very great; and many from Tyre and Sidon, who had difficulties with him, came thither to sue for pardon. These festivals were very displeasing to the Jews, both because they took place in the city of Cæsarea, and because they were held in the theatre. Previously, on one occasion, the king having quitted Jerusalem under similar circumstances, a certain rabbi Simeon had proposed to declare him an alien to Judaism, and to exclude him from the temple. Herod Agrippa had carried his condescension so far as to place the rabbi beside him in the theatre in order to prove to him that nothing passed there contrary to the law, and thinking he had thus satisfied the most austere, he allowed himself to indulge his taste for profane pomps. The second day of the festival he entered the theatre very early in the morning, clothed in a tunic of silver fabric, of marvellous brilliancy. The effect of this tunic, glittering in the rays of the rising sun, was extraordinary. The Phœnicians who surrounded the king lavished upon him adulations borrowed from Paganism. “It is a god,” they cried, “and not a man.” The king did not testify his indignation, and did not blame this expression. He died five days afterwards; and Jews and Christians believed that he was struck dead for not having repelled with horror a blasphemous flattery. Christian tradition represents that he died of a vermicular malady, the punishment reserved for the enemies of God. The symptoms related by Josephus would lead rather to the belief that he was poisoned; and what is said in the Acts of the equivocal conduct of the Phoenicians, and of the care they took to gain over Blastus, valet of the king, would strengthen this hypothesis. The death of Herod Agrippa I. led to the end of all independence for Jerusalem. The administration by procurators was resumed, and this régime lasted until the great revolt. This was fortunate for Christianity; for it is very remarkable that this religion, which was des-tined to sustain subsequently so terrible a struggle against the Roman empire, grew up in the shadow of the Roman rule, under its protection. It was Rome, as we have already several times remarked, which hindered Judaism from giving itself up fully to its intolerant instincts, and stifling the free instincts which were stirred within its bosom. Every diminution of Jewish authority was a benefit to the nascent sect. Cuspius Fadus, the first of this new series of procurators, was another Pilate, full of firmness, or at least of good-will. But Claudius continued to show himself favourable to Jewish pretensions, chiefly at the instigation of the young Herod Agrippa, son of Herod Agrippa I., whom he kept near to his person, and whom he greatly loved. After the short administration of Cuspius Fadus, we find the functions of procurator confided to a Jew, to that Tiberius Alexander, nephew of Philo, and son of the alabarque of the Alexandrian Jews who attained to high position, and played a great part in 108


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the political affairs of that century. It is true that the Jews did not like him; and regarded him, not without reason, as an apostate.

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To put an end to these incessantly renewed disputes, recourse was had to an expedient based on sound principles. A sort of separation was made between the spiritual and temporal. The political power remained with the procurators; but Herod, king of Chalcis, brother of Agrippa I., was named prefect of the temple, guardian of the pontifical habits, treasurer of the sacred fund, and invested with the right of nominating the high-priests. At his death, in 48, Herod Agrippa II., son of Herod Agrippa I., succeeded his uncle in his offices, which he retained until the great war. Claudius, in all this, manifested the greatest kindness. The high Roman functionaries in Syria, although not so strongly disposed as the emperor to concessions, acted also with great moderation. The procurator, Ventidius Cumanus, carried condescension so far as to have a soldier beheaded in the midst of the Jews, drawn up in line, for having torn a copy of the Pentateuch. But all was in vain; Josephus, with good reason, dates from the administration of Cumanus the disorders which ended only with the destruction of Jerusalem. Christianity took no part in these troubles. But these troubles, like Christianity itself, were one of the symptoms of the extraordinary fever which devoured the Jewish people, and the Divine work which was being accomplished in its midst. Never had the Jewish faith made such progress. The temple of Jerusalem was one of the sanctuaries of the world, the reputation of which was most widely extended, and in which the offerings were the most liberal. Judaism had become the dominant religion of several portions of Syria. The Asmonean princes had forcibly converted entire populations to it (Idumeans, Itureans, &c.). There were many instances of circumcision having been imposed by force; the ardour for making proselytes was very great. Even the house of Herod aided powerfully the Jewish propaganda. In order to marry princesses of this family, whose wealth was immense, the princes of the little dynasties of Emese, of Pontus, and of Cilicia, vassals of the Romans, became Jews. Arabia and Ethiopia contained also a great number of converts. The royal families of Mesene and of Adiabene, tributaries of the Parthians, were gained over, especially by their women. It was generally admitted that happiness was found in the knowledge and practice of the Law. Even when circumcision was not practised, religion was more or less modified in the direction of Judaism; a sort of monotheism was becoming the general spirit of religion in Syria. At Damascus, a city which was in nowise of Israelitish origin, nearly all the women had adopted the Jewish religion. Behind the Pharisaical Judaism there was thus formed a sort of liberal Judaism containing some alloy, which did not know all the secrets of the sect, brought only its goodwill and kind heart, but which had a much greater future. The situation was, in some respects similar to that of Catholicism of to-day, where we see, on the one hand, narrow and haughty theologians, who, of themselves, would gain no more souls for Catholicism than the Pharisees gained for Judaism; on the other, pious laymen, in many instances heretics, without knowing it, but full of a touching zeal, rich in good works and in poetic sentiments, wholly occupied in dissimulating or in repairing by complaisant excuses the faults of their doctors. 109


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One of the most extraordinary examples of this pen-chant of religious souls towards Judaism was that given by the royal family of Adiabene, upon the Tiger. This house, Persian by origin and in manners, and in a measure acquainted with Greek culture, became wholly Jewish, and affected extreme devotion; for, as we have said, those proselytes were often more pious than Jews by birth. Izate, the head of the family, embraced Judaism through the preaching of a Jewish merchant named Ananias, who, having occasion to enter the seraglio of Abennerig, King of Mesene, to prosecute his pedlar business, had succeeded in converting all the women, and constituted himself their spiritual preceptor. The women put Izate into communication with him. Helen, his mother, had herself instructed in the true religion by another Jew. Izate, with the zeal of a new convert, desired forthwith to be circumcised. But his mother and Ananias earnestly dissuaded him against it. Ananias proved to him that the keeping of the commandments of God was more important than circumcision, and that one could be a good Jew without submitting to that ceremony. Tolerance such as this existed only in the case of a few of the more enlightened minds. Some time after, a Galilean Jew, named Eleazar, finding the King one day engaged in reading the Pentateuch, proved to him from texts that he could not observe the law without being circumcised. Izate was persuaded by him, and underwent the operation immediately. The conversion of Izate was followed by that of his brother Monobaze and almost the whole of his family. About the year 44, Helen established herself at Jerusalem, where she had erected for the royal house of Adiabene a palace and a family mausoleum, which still exists. She made herself to be beloved of the Jews by her affability and her alms. It was a source of great edification to see her, like a devout Jewess, frequenting the Temple, consulting the doctors, reading the Law, and instructing her sons in it. In the plague of the year 44, this holy woman was a god-send to the city. She bought a large quantity of wheat in Egypt, and dried figs in Cyprus. Izate, on his part, sent considerable sums to be distributed amongst the poor. The wealth of Adiabene was expended in part at Jerusalem. The son of Izate came there to learn the usages and the language of the Jews. The whole of this family was thus the resource of the city of mendicants. It acquired there a sort of citizenship; several of its members were found there at the time of the siege of Titus; others figure in the Talmudic writings, and are represented as models of piety and disinterestedness.

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It is in this way that the royal family of Adiabene belongs to the history of Christianity. Without in fact being Christian, as certain traditions would have it, this family represented, under various aspects, the promises of the Gentiles. In embracing Judaism, it obeyed a sentiment which was to eventuate in Christianizing the entire Pagan world. The true Israelites, according to God, were rather those foreigners animated by so profoundly sincere a religious sentiment than the malevolent and roguish Pharisee, to whom religion was but a pretext for hatred and disdain. These good proselytes, although they were truly saints, were by no means fanatics. They admitted that true religion could be practised under the empire of a code of civil laws the most unduly adverse. They separated completely religion from politics. The distinction between the seditious sectaries, who

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were savagely to defend Jerusalem, and the pacific devotees who on the first rumour of war were going to flee to the mountains, became more and more manifest.

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We see at least that the question of proselytes was put forward in a similar manner, both in Judaism and in Christianity. On both hands the necessity for enlarging the door of entrance was felt. For those who were thus situated, circumcision was a useless or noxious practice; the Mosaic rite was simply a sign of race, of no value except for the children of Abraham. Before becoming the universal religion, Judaism was compelled to reduce itself to a sort of deism, imposing only the duties of natural religion. There was thus a sublime mission to fulfil, and a part of Judaism in the first half of the first century lent itself to it in a very intelligent manner. On one side, Judaism was one of the innumerable forms of natural worship which filled the world, and the sanctity of which came only from what its ancestors had worshipped; on the other, Judaism was the absolute religion made for all and destined to be adopted by all. The frightful outbreak of fanaticism which gained the upper hand in Judea, and which brought about the war of extermination, cut short that future. It was Christianity which undertook the work which the Synagogue had not known how to accomplish. Leaving on one side all questions of ritual, Christianity continued the monotheistic propaganda of Judaism. That which made up the strength of Judaism amongst the women of Damascus; in the harem of Abennerig, with Helen, with so many pious proselytes, composed the force of Christianity in the entire world. In this sense the glory of Christianity is really confounded with that of Judaism. A generation of fanatics deprived this last of its reward and prevented it from gathering the harvest which it had sown.

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CHAPTER XV. MOVEMENTS PARALLEL TO CHRISTIANITY OR IMITATED FROM IT—SIMON OF GITTON.

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CHRISTIANITY was now really established. In the history of religions it is always the first years which are most difficult to traverse. When once a faith has borne up against the hard trials, which every new institution has to endure, its future is assured. More clever than the other sectaries of the same date, Epenians, Baptists, partizans of John the Gaulonite, which simply came out of the Jewish world, and perished with it, the founders of Christianity, with a singular clearness of sight, cast themselves very early into the great world, and took their place in it. The scantiness of the references to the Christians, which are to be found in Josephus, in the Talmud, and in the Greek and Latin writers, ought not to be surprising. Josephus has reached us through Christian copyists, who have suppressed all that was disagreeable to their faith. It is easy to believe that he spoke at greater length of Jesus and of the Christians than he does in the version which has come down to us. The Talmud has in the same way undergone in the Middle Ages many retrenchments and alterations since its first publication. The Christian censure was exercised with severity upon its text, and a host of unhappy Jews were burned for having been found in possession of a book containing passages which were considered blasphemous. It is not astonishing that the Greek and Latin writers occupied themselves but little with a movement which they could not understand, and which took place in a world which was closed to them, Christianity in their eyes lost itself in the depths of Judaism; it was a family quarrel in the bosom of an abject race; what was the use of troubling about it? The two or three passages in which Tacitus or Suetonius speaks of the Christians prove that, in spite of being outside the circle of everyday affairs, the new sect was already a very considerable fact, since, from one or two glimpses, we see it across the cloud of general inattention, picture itself with sufficient clearness. The circumstance that Christianity was not an isolated movement has contributed not a little towards the effacement of its outlines in the history of the Jewish world in the first century of our era. Philo, at the moment at which we have arrived, has finished his career—a career consecrated to the love of the good. The sect of Judas, the Gaulonite, still existed. The agitator had for continuers of his idea, his sons James, Simon, and Menahem, Simon and James were crucified by order of the renegade procurator, Tiberius Alexander. Menahem will play an important part in the final catastrophe of the nation. In the year 44 an enthusiast, named Theudas, arose announcing the approaching deliverance, and invited the mob to follow him into the desert, promising, like another Joshua, to make them pass dryshod over Jordan, this passage being, according to his explanation, the true baptism to initiate his believers into the Kingdom of God. More than four hundred souls followed him. (Acts v., 36.) The procurator Cuspius Fadius, sent cavalry against him, dispersed his force, and killed him. Some years earlier all Samaria had been moved by the voice of a fanatic, 112


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who pretended to have had a revelation of the site of Garizim, where Moses had hidden the holy instruments of worship. Pilate had repressed this movement with great vigour. Peace was at an end in Jerusalem. After the arrival of the procurator Vontidius Cumanus (48), disturbances were incessant. Excitement was pushed to such a point that life there became impossible; the most insignificant circumstances brought about an explosion. Everywhere was felt a strange fermentation, a sort of mysterious trouble. Imposters multiplied everywhere. The frightful scourge of the zealots (Kenaim), or assassins, began to appear. Scoundrels, armed with daggers, glided into the crowds, struck their victims, and were the first to shriek “Murder.” Hardly a day passed without the report of an assassination of this kind. An extraordinary terror prevailed. Josephus represents the crimes of the zealots as sheer wickedness, but it is indubitable that fanaticism mixed itself with them. It was in defence of the Law that these wretches took up the dagger. Whoever neglected to fulfil one of its ordinances, found his sentence pronounced, and immediately executed. They thought in this way to accomplish a work, the most meritorious and agreeable to God.

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Dreams like that of Theudas were everywhere renewed. Persons, pretending to be inspired, stirred up the people, and led them out into the desert, under pretence of showing to them, by manifest signs that God was about to deliver them. The Roman authorities exterminated these agitators and their dupes by thousands. A Jew of Egypt, who came to Jerusalem about the year 56, was skilful enough to draw after him 30,000 persons, amongst whom wore 4,000 zealots. From the desert he wished to take them to Mount Olivet, whence, he said, they might see the walls of Jerusalem fall at the sound of his voice alone. Felix, who was then procurator, marched against him, and dispersed his band. The Egyptian escaped, and was seen no more. But as in an unhealthy body one malady follows another, we very soon afterwards come upon mixed bodies of robbers and magicians, who openly urged the people to rebel against the Romans, threatening those who continued to obey them with death. Under this pretext they killed the rich, pillaged their goods, burned the villages, and filled all Jewry with marks of their fury. A frightful war announced itself. A general spirit of confusion prevailed, and men’s minds were in a state not far removed from madness. It is not impossible that Theudas had a certain after-thought of imitation, as regards Jesus and John the. Baptist. This imitation, at least, is evidently betrayed in Simon of Gitton, if the Christian traditions as to this personage are in any way worthy of credence. We have already met him in connexion with the Apostles apropos of the first mission of Philip to Samaria. It was under the reign of Claudius that he arrived at celebrity. His miracles passed as constant, and everybody in Samaria looked upon him as a supernatural personage. His miracles, however, were not the only foundation of his reputation. He added to them a doctrine which we can hardly judge of, since the work attributed to him, and entitled the Great Exposition, has reached us only by extracts, and is probably only a very modified expression of his ideas. Simon, during his stay in Alexandria, appears to have drawn from his studies of Greek philosophy, a system of syncretic philosophy, and of allegorical exegesis, resembling that of Philo.

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The system had its greatness. Sometimes it recalls the Jewish Cabala, sometimes the Pantheistic theories of Indian philosophy; looked at from a certain standpoint it appears to bear the impress of Buddhism and Parseeism. At the head of all things is “He who is, who has been, and who will be”; that is to say, the Samaritan Jahveh, understood, according to the etymological value of his name. The Eternal Being, alone, self-engendered, increasing himself; magnifying himself, finding in himself father, mother, sister, wife, and son. In the breast of that infinite being, every power exists from and to eternity; all things pass into action and reality by the conscience of man, by reason, language, and science. The world explains itself, it may be by a hierarchy of abstract principles, analogous to the Æons of gnosticism and the sephirotic tree of the Cabala, or by an angelic system, which appears to have been borrowed from the beliefs of Persia Sometimes these abstractions are presented as translations of physical and physiological facts. At other times the “Divine powers,” considered as separate substances, are realized as successive incarnations, sometimes feminine, sometimes masculine, whose end is the deliverance of the persons concerned from the bondage of matter. The first of these powers is that which is called, by way of especial distinction, “the Great,” and which is the intelligence of this world, the universal Providence. It is masculine, and Simon passed as being its incarnation. By its side is the feminine Syzygy, “the Great Thought.” Accustomed to clothe its theories with a strange symbolism, and to imagine allegorical interpretations for the ancient, sacred, and profane texts, Simon, or the author of the Great Exposition, gave to that Divine virtue the name of “Helen,” signifying thereby that it was the object of universal pursuit, the eternal cause of dispute amongst men, she who avenges herself on her enemies by blinding them, just at the moment when they consent to sing the Palinode; a grotesque theme which, ill-understood or distorted by design, gave rise amongst the Fathers of the Church to the most puerile legends. The knowledge of Greek literature which the author of the Great Exposition possessed, is in any case very remarkable. He maintained that, when properly understood, the Pagan writings sufficed for the knowledge of all things. His large eclecticism embraced all the revelations, and sought to establish all truth in a single order. At the basis of his system there is much analogy with that of Valentin, and with the doctrines as to the Divine persons which are found in the fourth Gospel, in Philo and on the Targums. The “Metatrône,” which the Jews placed by the side of the Divinity, and almost in its breast, has a strong resemblance to the “Great Power.” In the theology of the Samaritans may be found a “Great Angel,” chief of the others, and of the class of manifestations or “divine virtues,” like those which the Jewish Cabala figures on its side. It appears certain then that Simon, of Gitton, was a kind of theosophist of the race of Philo and the Cabalists. It is possible that he approached Christianity for the moment, but he certainly did not definitely embrace it. Whether he really borrowed something from the disciples of Jesus is very difficult to decide. If the Great Exposition is his in any degree, it must be admitted that in many points he went beyond Christian ideas, and that upon others he adopted them very freely. It would seem that he attempted eclecticism like that which Mahomet practised later on, and that he endeavoured to found his 114


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religious character upon the preliminary acceptance of the divine mission of John and of Jesus. He wanted to be in a mystical communion with them. He maintained, it is said, that it was he, Simon, who appeared to the Samaritans as Father, to the Jews the visible crucifixion of the Son, to the Gentiles, by the infusion of the Holy Ghost. He thus prepared the way, it would seem, for the doctrines of the docetes. He said that it was he who had suffered in Judea in the person of Jesus, but that that suffering had only been apparent. His pretension to be the Divinity itself, and to cause himself to be adored as such had probably been exaggerated by the Christians who sought only to render him hateful. It will be seen besides that the doctrine of the Great Exposition is that of almost all the Gnostic writers; if Simon really professed the doctrines, it was with good reason that the fathers of the Church made him the founder of Gnosticism. We believe that the Great Exposition has only a relative authenticity, and that it really is to the doctrine of Simon—to compare small things with great—what the Fourth Gospel is to the mind of Jesus; that it goes back to the first years of the second century, that is to say, to the period when the theosophic ideas of the Logos definitely gained the ascendency. These ideas, the germ of which we shall find in the Christian Church about the year 60, might however have been known to Simon, whose career we may reason-ably extend to the end of the century. The idea which we form to ourselves of this enigmatical personage is then that of a kind of plagiarist of Christianity. Counterfeiting appears to have been a constant habit amongst the Samaritans. Just as they had always imitated the Judaism of Jerusalem, their sectaries had also copied Christianity in their ways, their gnoxis, their theosophic speculations, their Cabala. But was Simon a respectable imitator, who only failed of success, or an immoral and profligate conjuror using for his own advantage a doctrine of shreds and patches picked up here and there? This is a question which will probably never be answered. Simon thus maintains in history an utterly false position; he walks upon a light rope where hesitation is impossible; in this order, there is no middle path between a ridiculous fall and the most miraculous success.

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We shall again have to occupy ourselves with Simon, and to enquire if the legends as to his stay in Rome are in any way founded on truth. It is certain that the Samarian sect lasted until the third century; that it had churches at Antioch, perhaps even at Rome, that Menanda, and Capharatea, and Cleobius, continued the doctrine of Simon, or rather imitated his part of theurgist with a more or less present remembrance of Jesus and of his apostles. Simon and his disciples were greatly esteemed amongst their co-religionists. Sects of the same time, parallel to Christianity and more or less borrowed from Gnosticism, did not cease to spring up amongst the Samaritans until their quasi destruction by Justinian. The fate of that sort of little religion was to receive the rebound of everything that went on around it, without producing anything at all original. Amongst the Christians, the memory of Simon of Gitton was an abomination. These illusions, which were so much like their own, irritated them. To have successfully rivalled the apostles was 115


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unpardonable. It was asserted that the miracles of Simon and of his disciples were the work of the devil, and they applied to the Samaritan theosophist the title of the “Magician,” which the faithful took in very bad part. All the Christian legends of Simon bear the marks of a concentrated wrath. He was credited with the maxims of quietisms, and with the excess which are usually supposed to be its consequence. He was considered to be the father of every error, the first heresiarch. Christians amused themselves by telling laughable stories of him and of his defeats by the apostle Peter. They attributed his approach towards Christianity to the vilest of motives. They were so preoccupied with his name that they fancied they read It in inscriptions which he had not written. The symbolism in which he had enveloped his ideas was interpreted in the most grotesque fashion. The “Helen,” whom he identified with the “Highest Intelligence,” became a prostitute whom he had bought in the market at Tyre. His very name was hated almost as much as that of Judas, and, taken as synonym of “anti-apostle,” became the last insult and as it were a proverbial word to describe a professional impostor, an adversary of the the truth whom it was desirable to indicate with mystery. He was the first enemy of Christianity, or rather the first personage whom Christianity treated as such. It is enough to say that neither pious frauds nor calumnies were spared to defame it. Criticism in such a case will hardly attempt a rehabilitation, the contradictory documents are wanting. All that can be done is to point out the similarity of the traditions, and the determined disparagement which is to be remarked in them. But criticism, at least, should not forget to mention in connexion with the Samaritan theurgist a coincidence which is perhaps not altogether fortuitous. In a story of the historian Josephus, a Jewish magician named Simon, born in Cyprus, plays the part of pander to Felix. The circumstances of this tale do not fit in with those of Simon of Gitton well enough for him to be made responsible for the acts of a person who could have nothing in common with him, but a name then borne by thousands of men, and a pretension to supernatural powers, which he unhappily shared with a host of his contemporaries.

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CHAPTER XVI. GENERAL PROGRESS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. WE have seen Barnabas depart from Antioch to carry to the faithful of Jerusalem the alms of their brethren in Syria. We have seen him share in some of the emotions which the persecutions of Herod Agrippa I. caused the Church at Jerusalem. Let us return with him to Antioch where all the creative activity of the sect appears at that moment to have been concentrated. 150

Barnabas brought with him a zealous collaborator, his cousin John-Mark, the favourite disciple of Peter, and the son of that Mary with whom the first of the apostles loved to dwell. Without doubt in taking with him this new co-operator, he was already thinking of the new enterprise with which he intended to associate him. Perhaps he even foresaw the divisions which that new enterprise would raise up, and was by no means unwilling to mix up with them a man whom he knew to be Peters right hand, that is to say, the right hand of that one of the apostles who had the greatest authority in general matters. This enterprise was nothing less than a series of great missions, starting from Antioch and having for programme the conversion of the whole world. Like all resolutions taken by the Church, this was attributed to the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost. A special vocation, a supernatural choice, was believed to have been communicated to the Church of Antioch whilst she was fasting and praying. Perhaps one of the prophets of the Church, Menaham or Lucius, in one of his fits of speaking with tongues, uttered words from which it was concluded that Paul and Barnabas had been selected for this mission. Paul himself was convinced that God had chosen him from his mother’s womb for the work to which he was henceforward wholly to devote himself. The two apostles took as coadjutor, under the name of subordinate, to attend to the material cares of their enterprise, this John-Mark, whom Barnabas had brought with him from Jerusalem. When the preparations were finished there were fastings and prayer; it is said that hands were laid upon the apostles, in sign of a mission conferred by the Church herself; they were commended to the grace of God and they departed. Whither would they go? What world would they evangelize? That is what we have now to inquire.

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All the great primitive Christian missions turned towards the West, or in other words, took the Roman Empire for their stage and framework. If we except some small portions of territory tributary to the Arsacides, comprehended between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Empire of the Parthians received no Christian missions in the first century. The Tigris was on the Eastern side, a boundary which Christianity did not overpass until under the Sapanides. Two great causes, the Mediterranean and the Roman Empire, decided this cardinal fact.

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The Mediterranean had been for a thousand years the great route where all civilization and all ideas intermingled. The Romans, having delivered it from piracy, had made it an unequalled means of communication. A numerous fleet of coasters made travelling on the shores of this great lake very easy. The relative security which the routes of the Empire afforded, the guarantees which were found in the public powers, the diffusions of the Jews on all the coasts of the Mediterranean, the use of the Greek language in the Eastern part of that sea, the unity of civilization which the Greeks first, and then the Romans had created there, made the map of the Empire the very map of the countries reserved for Christian missions, and destined to become Christian. The Roman orbis became the Christian orbis, and in this sense it may be said that the founders of the Empire were the founders of the Christian monarchy, or at least, that they sketched its outlines. Every province conquered by the Roman Empire has been a province conquered by Christianity. If we figure to ourselves the apostles in the presence of an Asia Minor, of a Greece, of an Italy divided into a hundred petty republics, of a Spain, an Africa, an Egypt in possession of ancient national institutions, we cannot imagine them as successful, or rather we cannot imagine how the project of them could ever have been conceived. The unity of the Empire was the preliminary condition of every great scheme of religious proselytism setting itself above nationalities. The Empire felt it strongly in the fourth century. It became Christian; it saw that Christianity was the religion which it had made without knowing it, the religion bounded by its frontiers, identified with it, and capable of securing for it a second term of life. The Church on her side made herself altogether Roman, and has remained to our days as a relic of the Empire. Paul might have been told that Claudius was his first coadjutor; Claudius might have been told that this Jew, who set out from Antioch, was about to found the most solid part of the Imperial edifice. Both would no doubt have been infinitely astonished, but the saying would have been true all the same. Of all the countries outside Judea, the first in which Christianity established itself was naturally Syria. The neighbourhood of Palestine and the great number of Jews established in that country rendered such a thing inevitable. Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and Italy, were visited by the apostolic messengers after some years. The south of Gaul, Spain, the coast of Africa, though they may have been evangelized sufficiently early, may be considered as forming a more recent course in the substructure of Christianity. It was the same in Egypt. Egypt plays scarcely any part in apostolic history. Christian missionaries appear to have systematically turned their backs upon it. This country, which from the beginning of the third century became the scene of such important events in the history of religion, was at first greatly behind hand in its Christianity. Apollos is the only Christian doctor produced by the school of Alexandria, and even he learned Christianity in his travels. The cause of this remarkable phenomenon must be sought in the little communication which then existed between the Jews of Egypt and those of Palestine, and above all, in the fact that Jewish Egypt had

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in some sort its separate religious development. Egypt had Philo and the Therapeutics; that was its Christianity which deterred it from lending an attentive ear to the other. Pagan Egypt possessed religious institutions much more definite than those of Græco-Roman Paganism the Egyptian religion was still in all its strength; it was almost at this very time that the great temples of Enoch and of Ombos were built, and that the hope of having in the little Cæsarion a last king Ptolemy, a national Messiah, raised from the earth those sanctuaries of Dendereh, of Hermonthis, comparable to the finest Pharaohnic work. Christianity seated itself everywhere on the ruins of national sentiment and local religions. The spiritual degradation of Egypt besides caused there a variety of aspirations which elsewhere opened an easy way to Christianity. A rapid flash, coming out of Syria, illuminating almost simultaneously the three great peninsulas of Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, and soon followed by a second reflection which embraced almost all the coasts of the Mediterranean, such was the first apparition of Christianity. The journey of the apostolic ship is almost always the same. Christian preaching appears to follow almost invariably in the wake of the Jewish emigration. As an infection which, taking its point of departure from the bottom of the Mediterranean, appears at the same moment at a certain number of points on the littoral by a secret correspondence, so Christianity had its ports of arrival as it were settled beforehand. These ports were almost all marked by Jewish colonies. A synagogue preceded in general the establishment of the Church. One might say a train of powder, or better still a sort of electric chain along which the new idea ran in an almost instantaneous fashion.

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For five hundred years, in effect, Judaism, until then confined to the East and to Egypt, had taken its flight towards the West. Cyrene, Cyprus, Asia Minor, certain cities of Macedonia and of Greece and Italy, had important Jewries. The Jews gave the first example of that species of patriotism, that the Parsees, the Armenians, and up to a certain point the modern Greeks were to exhibit later: a patriotism which was extremely energetic although not attached to a definite soil; a patriotism of merchants scattered everywhere; recognizing one another as brothers everywhere; a patriotism aiming at the formation not of great compact states but of little autonomous communities in the bosoms of other states. Strongly associated together, the Jews of the dispersion constituted in the cities, congregations almost independent having their own magistrates and their own council. In certain cities they had an ethnarch or alabarch, invested with almost sovereign rights. They inhabited separate districts, withdrawn from the ordinary jurisdiction, much despised by the rest of the world, but very happy in themselves. They were rather poor than rich. The time of the great Jewish fortunes had not yet come; they began in Spain under the Visigoths. The monopoly of finance by the Jews was the effect of the administrative incapacity of the barbarians, of the hatred which the Church conceived for monetary science, and its superficial ideas on the subject of usury. Under the Roman Empire there was nothing of this kind. Now when the Jew is not rich his pour, easy middleclass life is not to his taste. In any case he well knows how to support poverty. What he knows even better is how to ally religious preoccupation of the most exalted kind with the rarest commercial ability. Theological eccentricites by no means exclude good sense in business. In England, in 119


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America, in Russia, the most eccentric sectaries (Irvingites, Latter-day Saints, Raskolniks) are exceedingly good merchants.

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It has always been the peculiarity of the Jewish life, piously practiced, to produce great gaiety and cordiality. There was love in that little world; they love a past, and the same past; the religious ceremonies surrounded life very gently. Something analogous to these communities exist to this day in every great Turkish city; for example Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Smyrniots, communities, close brotherhoods in which every member knows every other, live together and—intrigue together. In these little republics, religious questions always prevail over questions of politics, or rather make up for the want of them. A heresy is there an affair of the State; a schism is always a personal question at bottom. The Romans, with but few exceptions, never penetrated these reserved quarters. The synagogues promulgated their decrees, decreed honours, and acted like living municipalities. The influence of the corporations was very great. At Alexandria it was of the first order and governed the whole internal history of the city. At Rome the Jews were numerous and formed an element which was not to be despised. Cicero represents having dared to resist them as an act of courage. Cæsar favoured them, and found them faithful. Tiberius, in order to restrain them, resorted to the severest measures. Caligula, whose reign was a mournful one for them in the East, gave them their liberty of association in Rome. Claudius, who favoured them in Judea, found himself obliged to drive them out of the city. They were to be met with everywhere, and it was openly said of them, as of the Greeks, that though conquered they had imposed their laws upon their conquerors. The disposition of the native populations towards these strangers varied greatly. On the one hand the sentiment of revulsion and of antipathy, that the Jews by their spirit of jealous isolation, their rancorous temper and unsociable habits, produced around them everywhere where they were numerous and organised, manifested itself most strongly. When they were free, they were in reality privileged; since they enjoyed the advantages of society without bearing its cost. Impostors profited by the movement of curiosity which their worship excited, and under the pretence of exposing its secrets delivered themselves to friends of every kind. Violent and half-burlesque pamphlets like that of Apion, pamphlets from which profane writers have too often drawn their inspiration, were circulated and served as food for the wrath of the Pagan public. The Jews seem to have been generally niggardly and given to complaining. They were believed to be a secret society, bearing no good will to the rest of the world, whose members advanced themselves at any cost to the injury of others. Their strange customs, their aversion to certain meats, their dirtiness, their want of distinction, the fetid odour which they exhaled, their religious scruples, their minuteness in the observance of the Sabbath, were found ridiculous. Placed under the ban of society, the Jews by a natural consequence, took no pains to figure as gentle people. They were met everywhere travelling in clothes shining with filth, an awkward air, a fatigued demeanour, a pale complexion, large diseased eyes, a sanctimonious expression, shutting themselves apart with their wives, their children, their bundles of bedding, and the basket which contained all their goods. In the cities they carried on the meanest trades; they were beggars, rag-pickers, dealers in second-hand goods, sellers of 120


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tinder boxes. Their law and their history were unjustly depreciated. At one time they were found to be superstitious and cruel; at another, atheists and despisers of the gods. Their aversion to images was looked upon as sheer impiety. Circumcision especially furnished the theme for interminable raillery.

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But those superficial judgments were not those of all. The Jews had as many friends as detractors. Their gravity, their good morals, the simplicity of their worship, charmed a crowd of people. Something superior was felt in them. A vast monotheistic and Mosaic propaganda was organised; a sort of singular whirlwind formed itself around this singular little people. The poor Jewish pedlar of the Transtevere, going out in the morning with his flat basket of haberdashery, often returned in the evening rich with the alms of a pious brother. Women were especially attracted by these missionaries in tatters. Juvenal reckons this love for the Jewish religion amongst the vices with which he reproaches the women of his time. Those who were converted boasted of the treasure which they had found, and the happiness which they enjoyed. Only the Greek and the Roman spirit resisted energetically; contempt and hatred of the Jews are the sign of all cultivated minds: Cicero, Horace, Seneca, Juvenal, Tacitus, Quintilian, Suetonius. On the contrary that enormous mass of mixed populations which the empire had subjugated, populations to which the Roman spirit and the Greek wisdom were foreign or indifferent, attached themselves in crowds to a society in which they found touching examples of concord, of charity, of mutual help, of clannish attachment, of a taste for work, of a proud poverty. Mendicity, which was at a late date an exclusively Christian business, was then a Jewish trade. The beggar by trade, “born to it,” presented himself to the poets of the time as a Jew. The exemption from certain civil charges, particularly the military, helped also to cause the fate of the Jews to be regarded as enviable. The State then demanded many sacrifices and gave little moral satisfaction. Everything was icily cold as on a flat plain without shelter. Life, so sad in the midst of Paganism regained its charm and its value in the warm atmosphere of synagogue and church. It was not liberty which was to be found there. The brethren spied much upon each other, everyone worrying himself about the affairs of everyone else. But although the interior life of these little communities was greatly agitated, they were happy enough; no one quitted them; there were no apostasies. The poor were content in them; they regarded the rich without envy, with the tranquility of a good conscience. The really democratic sentiment of the folly of the world, of the vanity of riches and of earthly grandeur finely expressed itself there. Little was known about the Pagan world and it was judged with an outrageous severity; Roman civilization was regarded as a mass of impurities and of odious vices, just as the honest workman of our own days, saturated with socialistic declamations, pictures the “aristocrats” to himself in the darkest colours. But there was then life, gaiety and interest just as there is to-day in the poorest synagogues of Poland and Galicia. The want of delicacy and of elegance in the habits of the people was atoned for by the family spirit and patriarchal good feeling. In high society, on the contrary, egotism and isolation of soul had borne their last fruits. 121


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The word of Zachariah was verified: that men “shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying we will go with you, for we perceive that God is with you.” There was no great town where the Sabbath fasts and other ceremonies of Judaism were not observed. Josephus dares to provoke those who doubted it, to consider their country and even their own house to see if there were not confirmation of what he said. The presence in Rome and near the Emperor of many members of the family of the Herods, who practised their worship ostentatiously in the face of all, contributed much to this publicity. The Sabbath besides imposed itself by a sort of necessity in the quarters where there were Jews. Their obstinate determination not to open their shops on that day forced their neighbours to modify their habits. It is thus that at Salonica one might say that the Sabbath is still observed, the Jewish population there being rich enough and numerous enough to make the law and to order the day of rest by closing its places of business. Almost the equal of the Jew, often in company with him, the Syrian was an active instrument in the conquest of the West by the East. They were confounded occasionally, and Cicero thought he had found the common feature which united them, when he called them “the nations born for servitude.” It was by that, that their future was assured, for the future was then for the slaves. A not less essential characteristic of the Syrian was his facility, his suppleness, the superficial clearness of his mind. The Syrian nature is like a fugitive image in the clouds of Heaven. From time to time we see certain lines traced there with grace, but those lines never form a complete design. In the shade, by the undecided light of a lamp, the Syrian woman under her veil, with her vague eyes and her infinite softness, produces some instants of illusion. But when we wish to analyse that beauty it vanishes; it will not bear examination. All that besides lasts but three or four years. That which is charming in the Syrian race is the child of five or six years of age; the universe of Greece where the child is nothing, the young man inferior to the mature man, the mature man to the old. Syrian intelligence attracts by an air of promptitude and lightness, but it wants firmness and solidity; something like the golden wine of the Lebanon which is very pleasant at first but of which one tires very soon. The true gifts of God have in them something at once fine and strong, something intoxicating, yet lasting. Greece is more appreciated to-day than she has ever been and she will be appreciated more and more. Many of the Syrian emigrants whom the desire of making their fortunes had drawn westwards, were more or less attached to Judaism. Those who were not, remained faithful to the worship of their villages; that is to say to the memory of some temple dedicated to a local “Jupiter,” who was usually simply the supreme being, differentiated by a particular title. It was at bottom a species of monotheism, which these Syrians brought under cover of their strange gods. Compared at least with the profoundly distinct divine personalities, which Greek and Roman polytheism offered, the gods whom they worshipped, for the most part synonyms of the Sun, were almost the brothers of the One God. Like long enervating chants these Syrian rites, might appear less dry than the Latin worship, less empty than the Greek. The Syrian women found in them something at once voluptuous and exalted. These women were at all times eccentric beings, disputing between the devil and God, floating between saintliness and demoniacal possession. The saint of serious virtues, of heroic

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renunciations, of steadfast resolutions, belongs to other races, and other climates: the saint of strong imagination, absolute enthusiasm, of ready love, is the saint of Syria. The witch of our middle ages is the slave of Satan by vulgarity or by sin; the “possessed” of Syria, is the mad-woman of the ideal world, the woman whose sentiment has been wounded, who avenges herself by frenzy or shuts herself up in silence, who only needs a gentle word or a benignant look to cure her. Transported to the Western World, these Syrians acquired influence, sometimes by the evil arts of woman, more often by a certain moral superiority and a real capacity. Fifty years later this will be specially seen, when the most important persons in Rome married Syrian women, who immediately acquired a great ascendency in affairs. The Mussulman woman of our days, a clamorous, Megæra, stupidly fanatical, scarcely existing save for evil, almost incapable of virtue, ought not to make us forget the Julia Domna, the Julia Mæsa, the Julia Maæmsa, the Julia Soemia, who upheld in Rome in the matter of religion mystical instincts, and a tolerance, hitherto unknown. What is very remark-able, also, is that the Syrian dynasty, conducted by fate, showed itself favourable to Christianity, that Mamacus, and later, the Emperor Philippus, the Arabian, passed for Christians. Christianity in the third and fourth centuries was especially the religion of Syria. After Palestine, Syria had the greatest share in its foundation. 161

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It was especially at Rome that the Syrian in the first century exercised his penetrating activity. Charged with almost all the minor trades, guide, messenger; letterbearer, the Syrus entered everywhere, introducing with himself the language and the manners of his country. He had neither the pride nor the philosophical hauteur of the European. Still less their bodily strength: weak of body, pale, often nervous, not knowing how to eat or to sleep at regular hours after the fashion of our heavy and solid races, eating little meat, living upon onions and pumpkins, sleeping but little and lightly, the Syrian died young, and was habitually ill. What were peculiar to him, were his humility, his gentleness, his affability, and a certain goodness; no solidity of mind, but an infinite charm; little good sense, except in matters of business, but an astonishing ardour, and a seductiveness altogether feminine. The Syrian, having never had any political life, has an altogether special aptitude for religious movements. This poor Maronite, humble, ragged as he is, has made the greatest of revolutions. His ancestor, the Syrus of Rome, was the most zealous bearer of the good news to all the afflicted. Every year brought to Greece, to Italy, to Gaul, colonies of these Syrians, urged by the natural taste which they had for small business. They were recognized on the ships by their numerous families, by their troops of pretty children almost of the same age, who followed them: the mother, with the childish air of a little girl of fourteen, holding herself by the side of her husband, submissive, gently smiling, scarcely bigger than her elder sons. The heads in these little groups are not strikingly marked; there is certainly no Archimedes, Plato or Phidias amongst them. But the Syrian merchant arrived in Rome, will be a man, good and pitiful, charitable to his fellow countrymen, loving the poor. He will talk with the slaves, revealing to them an asylum, where those unhappy wretches, reduced by Roman harshness to the most desolating solitude may find a little consolation. The Greek and Latin races of masters did not know how to profit by a humble position.

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The slave of these races passed his life in rebellion, and the desire of evil. The ideal slave of antiquity has all the defects; he is gluttonous, a liar, malicious, the natural enemy of his master. In this way he proved his nobility in a sort of way; he protested against an unnatural position. The good Syrian did not protest; he accepted his ignominy and sought to profit by it as much as possible. He conciliated the good-will of his master, dared to speak to him; knew how to please his mistress. This great agent of democracy went thus unpicking, stitch by stitch, the knot of antique civilization. The old societies founded upon disdain, upon the inequality of races, upon military courage, were lost. Weakness and humility were now to become an advantage for the perfecting of virtue. Roman aristocracy and Greek wisdom, will keep up the struggle for three centuries. Tacitus will find it good that thousands of these unfortunates should be transported: Si interissent, vile damnum. The Roman aristocracy will grow angry, will find it bad that such scum should have their gods, their institutions. But the victory is written beforehand. The Syrian, the poor man who loves his kind, who shares with them, who associates with them, will win the day. The Roman aristocracy will perish for want of mercy. To explain the revolution which is about to be accomplished, we must take into account the political, social, moral, intellectual, and religious state of the countries, where Jewish proselytism had opened the soil for Christian preaching to fertilize. That study will show, I hope, convincingly that the conversion of the world to Jewish and Christian ideas was inevitable, and will leave room for astonishment, only upon one point, which is, that conversion should be effected so slowly and so late. 163

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CHAPTER XVII. STATE OF THE WORLD AT THE MIDDLE OF THE FIRST CENTURY.

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THE political state of the world was of the saddest kind. All authority was concentrated at Rome and in the legions. There occurred the most shameful and degrading scenes. The Roman aristocracy, which had conquered the world, and which, in short, had alone governed under the Cæsars, delivered itself up to the most frightful Saturnalia of grime which the world has ever seen. Cæsar and Augustus, in establishing the aristocracy, had seen with perfect accuracy the necessities of their times. The world was so low in the political sense that no other government was possible. Since Rome had conquered provinces innumerable, the ancient constitution, founded on the privileges of patrician families, a species of obstinate and malevolent Tories, could not subsist. But Augustus had failed in all the duties of true policy in that he left the future to chance. Without regular hereditary succession, without fixed rules of adoption, without electoral laws, without constitutional limitations, Cæsarism was like a colossal weight on the deck of a ship without ballast. The most terrible shocks were inevitable. Thrice in a century, under Caligula, under Nero, and under Domitian, the greatest power which had ever existed fell into the hands of execrable or extravagant men. Hence, horrors, which have scarcely been exceeded by the monsters of the Mongal dynasties. In that fatal series of sovereigns we are reduced almost to excusing a Tiberius, who was absolutely wicked only towards the close of his life! a Claudius, who was simply eccentric, awkward and surrounded by evil advisers. Rome became a school of vice and cruelty. It must be added that the evil came especially from the East, from those flatterers of low rank, from these infamous men whom Egypt and Syria sent to Rome, where profiting by the oppression of the true Romans, they felt themselves all powerful with the scoundrels who governed them. The most shocking ignominies of the Empire, such as the apotheosis of the Emperor, his deification, when alive, came from the East, and especially from Egypt which was then one of the most corrupt countries in the universe. The true Roman spirit, in effect, still survived. Human nobility was far from being extinct. A great tradition of pride and of virtue was kept up in some families, which came to power with Nerva, and made the splendour of the century of the Antonines of which Tacitus has been the eloquent interpreter. A time, which was that of minds so profoundly honest as Quintilian, Pliny the younger and Tacitus, is not a time of which we need despair. The disturbance of the surface did not affect the great basis of honesty and of seriousness which underlay good society in Rome; some families still afforded models of valour, of devotion to duty, of concord, of solid virtue. There were in the noble houses admirable wives, admirable sisters. Was there ever a more touching fate than that of the young and chaste Octavia, daughter of Claudius, and wife of Nero, pure amidst so many infamies, killed at twenty-two years of age, before she had had time to enjoy her life? The women described in the inscriptions as Castissimæ, univiræ are not rare. Wives accompanied their husbands in exile; others shared their noble deaths. The old Roman simplicity was not lost; the education of children 125


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was grave and careful. The noblest women laboured with their hands at woolwork; the cares of the toilette were almost unknown in good families. 165

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The excellent statesmen who sprang up under Trajan were not improvised. They had served under preceding reigns; only they had had little influence, cast into the shade as they were by the freedmen and the basest favourites of the Emperor. Men of the highest character thus occupied exalted positions under Nero. The skeleton was good, the accession of the bad Emperors to power, disastrous though it was, did not suffice to change the general course of affairs and the principles of the State. The Empire, far from being in decadence, was in all the force of the most robust youth. The decadence was coming, but that would be two centuries later, and, strange to say, under the least evil of the sovereigns. Looked at from the political point of view, the situation was analogous to that of France, which, for want of an invariable rule since the Revolution as to the succession of powers, has gone through the most perilous adventures, without its internal organisation and national force suffering too much. From the moral point of view we may compare the time of which we speak with the eighteenth century, an epoch which we might fancy to be altogether corrupt, if we judged by the memories, the manuscript literature, the collection of anecdotes of the times, yet, in which houses maintained a great severity of morals. Philosophy had allied itself with the honest Roman families, and resisted nobly. The Stoic school produced the great characters of Cremastius Cordus, of Thraseas, of Arria, of Helvidius Priscus, of Annæus Cornelius, of Musonius Rufus—admirable masters of aristocratic virtue. The stiffness and the exaggerations of this school, arose from the horrible cruelty of the government of the Cæsars. The perpetual thought of the good man was how he might best endure tortures and prepare for death. Lucan, with bad taste, Persius, with greater talents, expressed the highest sentiments of a great soul. Seneca the philosopher, Pliny the elder, Papirius Fabianus, maintained an elevated tradition of science and philosophy. Everyone did not yield, there were still wise men. But, too often, they had no other resource than death. The ignoble parts of humanity were at times in the ascendent. The spirit of vertigo and cruelty then overflowed and turned Rome into a veritable hell. This government, so frightfully unequal at Rome, was much better in the provinces. Few of the disorders which shocked the capital were felt there. In spite of its defects the Roman administration was much better than the royalties and republics which the conquest had suppressed. The time of the sovereign municipalities had gone by for centuries. These little states had destroyed themselves by their egotism, their jealous spirit, their ignorance, or their little care for private liberties. The ancient Greek life, all struggles, all exterior, satisfied no one. It had been charming in its day, but this brilliant Olympus of a democracy of demi-gods having lost its freshness, had become something dry, cold, insignificant, vain, superficial, for want of goodness and of solid honesty. This, it was, which constituted the legitimacy of the Macedonian domination, then of the Roman administration. The Empire did not yet know the excess of centralization. Until the time of Diocletian, it left much

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liberty to the provinces and cities. Kingdoms, almost independent, existed in Palestine, in Syria, in Asia Minor, in little Armenia, in Thrace under the protection of Rome. These kingdoms became dangers only in the days of Caligula, because the rules of the great and profound political policy of Augustus were neglected. The free cities, and they were numerous, governed themselves according to their own laws; they had the legislative power and all the magistracy of an autonomous state, until the third century, municipal decrees began with the formula, “The senate and the people . . .” The theatres served, not only for the pleasures of the stage, they were the centres of opinion and of movement. The majority of the towns were under various names, little republics. The municipal spirit was very strong in them; they had not lost the right of declaring war—a melancholy right which had turned the world into a field of carnage. “The benefits conferred by the Roman people on the human race,” were the theme of declamations which were sometimes adulatory, but the sincerity of which cannot always be denied with justice. The worship of the “Roman peace,” the idea of a great democracy organised under the protection of Rome was at the bottom of all thoughts. A Greek orator exhibited vast erudition in proving that the glory of Rome ought to be gathered amongst all the branches of the Hellenic race as a sort of common patrimony. In what concerned Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, it may be said that the Roman conquest destroyed no liberty. These countries had long been dead to the political life which they had never had. In short, notwithstanding the exactions of the governors, and the violence, inseparable from an absolute government the world in many respects had never yet been so happy. An administration coming from a distant centre was so great an advantage that even the plunderings of the Prætors in the last days of the Republic had not been sufficient to make it odious. The Julian law, besides, had greatly narrowed the field of abuse and of collusions. The follies or the cruelties of the Emperor, except under Nero, affected only the Roman aristocracy and the immediate surroundings of the Prince. There never was a time when a man who did not meddle in politics could live more comfortably. The republics of antiquity, in which everyone was forced to occupy himself with the quarrels of parties, were exceedingly uncomfortable places of abode. People were incessantly upset or proscribed. Now the time seemed expressly fitted for large proselytisms above the quarrels of the little towns and the rivalries of dynasties. Such attempts against liberty as there were, arose out of what was still left of independence in provinces or communities much more than from the Roman administration. We have had, and we shall still have, numerous instances of this kind of thing to remark. In those of the conquered countries in which political necessities had not existed for centuries, and where the people were deprived only of the right to tear each other to pieces by continual wars, the Empire was a period of prosperity and of well-being, such as had never been known, we may even add without paradox, of liberty, On the one hand, freedom of trade and of industry, of which the Greek Republics had no idea, became possible. On the other, liberty of thought could only gain by the new system. That liberty is always stronger when it has to deal with a king or a prince, than when it has to negotiate with a narrow and jealous citizen. The ancient republics did not possess 127


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it. The Greeks did without it in great things, thanks to the incomparable strength of their genius, but it ought not to be forgotten that Athens had her inquisition. The inquisition was the archon king; the holy office was the Royal Porch, whither were taken accusations of “impiety.” Accusations of that kind were very numerous; it is concerning cases of this description that most of the great Attic orations were delivered. Not merely philosophical crimes, such as denying God or providence, but the slightest blow struck at the municipal worship, the preaching of foreign religions, the most childish infractions of the scrupulous legislation of the mysteries, were crimes which might be punished with death. The gods whom Aristophanes mocked at on the stage, killed sometimes. They killed Socrates, they wanted to kill Alcibiades. Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Theodorus the Atheist, Diagoras of Melos, Prodicus of Ceos, Stilpo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aspasia, Euripides, were more or less seriously disquieted. Liberty of thought was, in short, the fruit of the royalties which sprang out of the Macedonian conquest. It was the Attali, the Ptolemies, who first gave to thinkers the facilities that none of the old republics had ever offered to them. The Roman Empire continued the same tradition. There was, under the empire, more than one arbitrary act against the philosophers, but they arose always, through their interfering with politics. We may seek in vain in the list of Roman laws before Constantine for a text against the liberty of thought, in the history of the emperors for a process against abstract doctrine. Not one scholar was disturbed. Men who would have been burned in the middle ages, such as Galen, Lucian, Plotinus, lived on in peace, protected by the law. The empire inaugurated a period of liberty, inasmuch as it extinguished the absolute sovereignty of the family, of the city, of the tribe, and replaced or tempered these sovereignties by that of the state. Now an absolute power becomes more vexatious in proportion to the narrowness of the limits within which it is exercised. The ancient republics, feudality, tyrannized over the individual much more than the State did. We must admit that the Roman Empire at certain periods persecuted Christianity cruelly, but, at least, it did not stop it. Now the republics would have rendered it impossible; Judaism, if it had not submitted to the pressure of Roman authority, would have been sufficient to stifle it. The Pharisees were prevented from crushing out Christianity only by the Roman magistrates. Large ideas of universal brotherhood springing for the most part out of stoicism, a sort of general sentiment of humanity, were the fruits of the less narrow system and of the less exclusive education to which the individual was subjected. There were dreams of a new era and of new worlds. The public wealth was great, and, notwithstanding the imperfection of the economic doctrines of the times, wealth was widely spread. Morals were not what they have often been imagined to be. At Rome, it is true, all the vices were displayed with a revolting cynicism; the spectacles, especially, had introduced a frightful corruption. Certain countries, like Egypt, have thus sunk into the lowest depths. But there was, in most of the provinces, a middle class, where goodness, conjugal faith, the domestic virtues, probity, were sufficiently spread out. Is there anywhere an idea of family life in a world of honest citizens of small towns, more charming than that which Plutarch has left us?

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What bonhomie! What gentleness of manners! What chaste and amiable simplicity! Chæronea was evidently not the only place where life was so pure and so innocent.

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Customs even outside Rome were still to a certain ex-tent cruel, it may be through the memory of antique manners, everywhere rather sanguinary, it may be through the special influence of Roman hardness. But there was progress even in this respect. What soft and pure sentiment, what impression of tender melancholy had not found its tenderest expression by the pen of Virgil or Tibullus? The world grew more yielding, lost its antique rigour, acquired gentleness and susceptibility. Maxims of humanity grew common; equality, the abstract idea of the rights of man, were loudly preached by stoicism. Woman, thanks to the dowry system of the Roman law, became more and more her own mistress; precepts on the manner of treating slaves improved; Seneca ate with his. The slave was no longer of necessity that grotesque and malicious being, whom Latin comedy introduced to provoke outbursts of laughter, and whom Cato recommended to be treated as a beast of burden. The times have now greatly changed. The slave is morally the equal of his master; it is admitted that he is capable of virtue, of fidelity, of devotion, and he has given proofs that he is so. Prejudices as to nobility of birth are dying out. Many very humane and very just laws are enacted even under the worst of the Emperors. Tiberius was an able financier; he founded upon an excellent basis an establishment of the nature of a land-bank. Nero brought to the system of taxation, until then iniquitous and barbarous, improvements which put our own times to the blush. The progress of legislation was considerable, though the punishment of death was stupidly frequent. Love of the poor, sympathy for all, alms-giving, became virtues. The theatre was one of the most insupportable scandals to honest people, and was one of the first causes of the antipathy of Jews and Judaizers of every class against the profane civilization of the time. These gigantic circles appeared to them the sewer in which all the vices festered. Whilst the front ranks applauded, repulsion and horror alone were produced on the upper benches. The spectacles of gladiators were established in the provinces only with difficulty. The Greek countries at least objected to them, and clung more often to their ancient Greek exercises. The sanguinary games preserved always in the East a very pronounced mark of their Roman origin. The Athenians in emulation of the Corinthians having, one day deliberated as to imitating these barbarous games, a philosopher is said to have risen and moved that before this was done, the altar of Pity should be overthrown. The horror of the theatre, of the stadium, of the gymnasium, that is to say, of the public places, and of what constituted essentially a Greek or a Roman city, was thus one of the deepest sentiments of the Christian, and one of those which produced the greatest results. Ancient civilization was a public civilization; everything was done in the open air, before the assembled citizens. It was the reverse of our societies, where life is altogether private and closed within the compass of the house. The theatre was the heir of the agora and of the forum. The anathema uttered against the theatre rebounded upon all society. A profound rivalry was established between the Church on the

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one hand, the public games on the other. The slave, driven from the games, betook himself to the Church. I never sit down in these mournful arenas, which are always the best preserved ruins of an ancient city, without seeing there in the spirit the struggle of the two worlds—here the honest poor man, already half a Christian, sitting in the last rank, veiling his face, and going out indignant—there a philosopher rising suddenly and reproaching the crowd with its baseness. These examples were rare in the first century, but the protest began to make itself heard. The theatre began to fall into evil repute. Legislation and the administrative rules of the Empire were still a veritable chaos. The central despotism, the municipal and provincial franchises, the caprice of the governors, the violences of the independent communities clashed in the strangest manner. But religious liberty gained by these conflicts. The splendid unitary administration of Trajan will be more fatal to the rising worship than the irregular state, full of the unforeseen, without rigorous police of the time of the Cæsars.

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The institutions of public assistance, founded on the principle that the State has paternal duties towards its members, developed themselves extensively only after the period of Nerva and Trajan. Some traces of them are, however, found in the first century. There were already charities for children, distributions of food to the poor, an assize of bread, with indemnities to the corn merchants, precautions about provisions, premiums and assurances for ship owners, bread bonds, which permitted corn to be bought at a reduced price. All the emperors, without exception, showed the greatest solicitude about these questions, minor ones, if you like, but on certain occasions of primary importance. In the earliest ages it is possible that the world had no need of charity. The world was young and valiant, the hospital was useless. The good and simple Homeric moral, according to which the host and the beggar alike come from Jupiter, is the moral of robust and cheerful youth. Greece, in her classic age, enunciated the most exquisite maxims of pity, of benevolence, of humanity, without mixing up with them any after-thought of social inquietude, or of melancholy. Man, at this time, was still healthy and happy; he could not take evil into account. In connection with institutions of mutual succour, the Greeks had besides, a great priority over the Romans. Never did a liberal or benevolent disposition spring from that cruel nobility, who exercised during the period of the Republic, so oppressive a power. At the time of which we speak, the colossal fortunes of the aristocracy, luxury, the great agglomerations of men at certain points, and above all, the hard-heartedness peculiar to the Romans, their aversion to pity had given birth to pauperism. The civilities of certain Emperors to the Roman canaille had only served to aggravate the evil. The sportula, the tesseræ frumentariæ encouraged vice and idleness, but brought no remedy to misery. Here, as in many other matters, the East had a great superiority over the Western world. The Jews possessed real charitable institutions. The temples of Egypt appear sometimes to have had a poor box. The college of recluses, male and female, in the Serapeum, at Memphis, was also in a way, a charitable establishment. The terrible crisis, through which humanity passed in the capital of the Empire, was but little felt in distant countries, where life remained more simple. The reproach of having poisoned the earth, the comparison of Rome with a courtezan, who has poured forth upon 130


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the world the dregs of her immorality, was just in many ways. The provinces were better than Rome, or rather the impure elements from all parts, which were collected at Rome, as in a sewer, had formed there a centre of infection where the old Roman virtues were stifled, and where the good seed from elsewhere developed itself but slowly.

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The intellectual state of various parts of the Empire was not very satisfactory. In this respect there was a real falling off. The higher culture of the mind is not as independent of political circumstances as is private morality, though the progress of the two may be on parallel lines. Marcus Aurelius was certainly a more honest man than all the old Greek philosophers, yet his positive notions of the realities of the universe are inferior to those of Aristotle or of Epicurus; for he believed at times in the gods as finished and distinct personages, in dreams and in omens. The world at the Roman period made progress in morality, and suffered a scientific decline. From Tiberius to Nerva, the decline is altogether sensible. The Greek genius, with an originality, a force, a richness, which have never been equalled, had created in the course of centuries, the national encyclopædia, the normal discipline of the mind. This marvellous movement dating from Thales, and from the first schools of Ionia (six hundred years before Jesus Christ) had almost stopped about the year 120 B.C. The last survivors of these five centuries of genius, Apollonius of Perga, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, Hero, Archimedes, Hipparchus, Chrysippus, Carneades, Panetius, had died without leaving successors. I see only Posidonius and some astronomers who continued still the old traditions of Alexandria, of Rhodes, of Pergamus. Greece, so able in creating, had not known how to extract from her science, or her philosophy, a popular teaching, a remedy against superstition. Whilst possessing in their bosom admirable scientific institutions, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece itself, were given over to the most foolish beliefs. Now, when science cannot control superstition, superstition chokes science. Between these two opposed forces, the duel is to the death. Italy, in adopting Greek science, had learned for a moment to animate it with a new sentiment. Lucretius had furnished the model of the great philosophical poem, at once hymn and blasphemy, inspiring in turn, serenity and despair, penetrated with that profound sentiment of human destiny, which was always wanting to the Greeks. They, like true children, as they were, took life in so gay a fashion, that they never dreamed of cursing the gods, or of finding nature unjust or perfidious towards man. Graver thoughts arose amongst the Latin philosophers. But Rome knew no better than Greece how to make science the basis of popular education. Whilst Cicero gave with an exquisite tact, a finished form to the ideas which he borrowed from the Greeks; whilst Lucretius wrote his astonishing poem; whilst Horace avowed to Augustus, who was in no way moved by it, his frank incredulity; whilst Ovid, one of the most charming poets of the time, treated the most respectable fables like an elegant literature; whilst the great Stoics drew practical consequences from the Greek philosophy, the maddest chimeras found believers, the faith in the marvellous was unbounded. Never was the world more occupied with prophecies and prodigies. The fine eclectic deism of Cicero, continued and perfected still more by Seneca, remained the belief of a small number of lofty minds exercising no influence whatever upon their age. 131


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The Empire until the time of Vespasian had nothing which could be called public instruction. What there was of this kind at a later date was confined almost exclusively to the insipid exercises of the grammarians; the general decadence was rather pressed on than delayed. The last days of the republican government, and the reign of Augustus, were witnesses to one of the finest literary movements that ever took place. But after the death of the great Emperor the decadence is rapid, or, more correctly, altogether sudden. The intelligent and cultivated society of Cicero, Atticus, Cæar, Mæcenas, Agrippa, Pollio, had disappeared like a dream. Without doubt there were still enlightened men, men abreast of the science of their time, occupying high social positions, such as Seneca and the literary society of which he was the centre, Lucilius, Gallio, Pliny. The body of Roman law, which is philosophy itself in the form of a code, the putting in practice of Greek rationalism, continued its majestic growth. The great Roman families had preserved a bottom of elevated religion, and a great horror of superstition. The geographers, Strabo and Pomponius Mela, the doctor and encyclopædist, Celsus, the botanist, Dioscorides, the jurisconsult Sempronius Proculus, were very able men. But they were the exceptions. Except for some thousands of enlightened men, the world was plunged into the most complete ignorance of the laws of nature. Credulity was a general disease. Literary culture was reduced to hollow rhetoric, which taught nothing. The essentially moral and practical direction which philosophy has taken banished grand speculations. Human knowledge, if we except geography, made no progress. The instructed and well-read amateur replaced the creative scholar. The supreme defect of the Romans here made its fatal influence felt. This people so great for empire were second-rate in mind. The best educated Romans, Lucretius, Vitruvius, Celsus, Pliny, Seneca, were in positive knowledge the pupils of the Greeks. Too often even it was the most mediocre Greek science that they copied indifferently. The city of Rome had never had a great scientific school. Charlatanism reigned there almost without control. In short, the Latin literature which certainly had admirable parts, flourished but a short time and did not go out of the Western world. Greece happily remained faithful to her genius. The prodigious blaze of the Roman power had dazzled her, crushed her down, but had not destroyed her. In fifty years she will have reconquered the world, she will again be the mistress of all who think, she will sit on the throne with the Antonines. But now Greece herself is in one of her hours of lassitude. Genius is rare there; original science inferior to what it had been in the six preceding centuries and to what it will be in the pet, The school of Alexandria, decaying for nearly two centuries but which however in the time of Cæsar still possessed Sosigenes, is now mute.

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From the death of Augustus to the accession of Trajan must be reckoned as a period of momentary abasement of the human mind. The antique world was far from having said its last word; but the cruel trial through which it had passed, had robbed it of voice and heart. Better days are dawning, and the mind relieved from the desolating rule of the Cæsars will appear to revive. Epictetus, Plutarch, Dionysius, the golden-mouthed, Chrysostom, Tacitus, Quintilian, Pliny, the younger, Juvenal, Rufus of Ephesus, Aretæus, Galen, Ptolemy, Hypsicles, Theon, Lucian, will 132


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recall the best days of Greece, not of that inimitable Greece which existed but once for the despair and the charm of those who love the beautiful, but a Greece rich and flourishing yet, which whilst confounding her gifts with those of the Roman spirit will produce new fruits full of originality.

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The general taste was very bad. There are no great Greek writers. The Latin authors whom we know, with the exception of the satirist Persius, are mediocre and without genius. Declamation spoiled everything. The principle by which the public judged the works of the mind was pretty much the same as in our own day. They only looked for the brilliant strokes. The word was no longer the simple vesture of the thought, drawing all its elegance from its perfect proportion to the idea it expressed. Words were cultivated for their own sake. The object of an author in writing was to show his talent. The excellence of a recitation or public lecture was measured by the number of applauded words with which it was sown. The great principle that in matters of art everything ought to serve for ornament, but that all that is put in expressly as ornament is bad, this principle, I say, was profoundly forgotten. The time was if you will, very literary. They only spoke of eloquence, of good style, and at bottom almost all the world wrote ill; there was not a single orator, for the good orator, and the good writer are men who make a trade of neither one nor the other. At the theatre the principal actor absorbed attention; plays were suppressed that showy pieces might be recited—the cantica. The spirit of literature was a silly dilettantism which seized even upon the Emperors, a foolish vanity which led everybody to try to prove that he had wit. Hence an extreme insipidity, interminable “Theseids,” dramas written to be read in society, a whole poetic banality which can only be compared to the classic tragedies and epics of sixty years ago. Stoicism itself could not escape this defect, or at least did not know before Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, how to find a graceful form to envelope its doctrines. The tragedies of Seneca are really extraordinary monuments where the loftiest sentiments are expressed in the tone of a literary charlatanism, wholly fatiguing and indicative at once of moral progress and an irredeemable decadence of taste. The same maybe said of Lucan. The tension of soul, the natural effect of the eminently tragic character of the situation gave birth to an inflated style, where the only care was to shine by fine sentences. Something of the same kind happened amongst us under the Revolution; the severest crisis that had ever been known produced scarcely anything but a literature of rhetoricians, full of declamation. We must not stop at that. The new thoughts were sometimes expressed with a great deal of pretension. The style of Seneca is sober, simple, and pure compared with that of S. Augustine. But we forgive S. Augustine his, detestable though it often is, and his insipid concetti, for the sake of his fine sentiments. In any case that education, noble and distinguished as it was in many ways, never reached the people. That would have been a comparatively slight inconvenience, if the people had had at least a religious training analogous in some sort to that which the most disinherited portions of our

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societies receive in the Church. But religion in all parts of the Empire was at the lowest ebb. Rome with good reason had left the ancient worships undisturbed, cutting away only those things which were inhuman, seditious, or injurious to others. She had extended over all a sort of official varnish which made them all very much alike, and after a fashion melted them down together. Unfortunately these old worships, of very diverse origin, had one feature in common; it was equally impossible to arrive at theological instruction; at an applied morality; at an edifying preaching; at a pastoral ministry really fruitful for the people. The Pagan temple was in no way what the synagogue and the church were in their palmy days. I mean that common house, school, hostelry, hospital, shelter, where the poor may find an asylum. It was a cold cella, where one scarcely entered, and where one learned nothing. The Roman worship was perhaps the least bad of those which were still practised. Purity of heart and of body were there considered as making part of real religion. By its gravity, its decency, its austerity, this worship, but for some farces like those of our carnival, was superior to the bizarre and often ridiculous ceremonies which persons afflicted with Oriental notions secretly introduced. The affectation which led the Roman patricians to distinguish “religion” —that is to say their own worship, from “superstition,” that is to say foreign modes of worship, appears to us sufficiently puerile. All Pagan worship was essentially superstitious. The peasant who in our days puts a halfpenny into the box of some miracle-chapel, who invokes such a saint for his oxen or his horses, who drinks a certain water for certain diseases, is in those matters distinctly Pagan. Almost all our superstitions are the relics of a religion anterior to Christianity, which the latter has not been able entirely to root out. If one desired to find in our days the image of Paganism, it is in some secluded village at the bottom of the most backward country, that it is to be looked for. Having for guardians only a vacillating popular tradition and interested sacristan, the worship could not but fall back into adulation. Augustus, although with hesitation, suffered himself to be worshipped in the provinces while yet alive. Tiberius allowed that ignoble meeting of the Asiatic townsmen, who disputed the honour of erecting a temple to him, to be held under his eyes. The extravagant impieties of Caligula produced no re-action; outside Judaism there was not a single priest to resist such follies, Sprung for the most part from a primitive worship of natural forces, ten times transformed by mixtures of all kinds, and by the imagination of the people, Pagan worship was limited by its past. It was impossible to extract from them what they did not contain—deism, edification. The Fathers of the Church make us smile when they talk of the misdeeds of Saturn as of those of the father of a family, and Jupiter as a husband. And surely it was much more ridiculous still to erect Jupiter (that is to say the atmosphere) into a moral god who commands, forbids, rewards, punishes. In a world which aspired to possess a catechism, which can be done with a worship like that of Venus, which arose out of an old social necessity of the first Phœnecian navigators in the Mediterranean, but became with time an outrage to those who looked up to it more and more as the essence of religion? In all quarters, in short, the need of a monotheistic religion, having the morality of the divine prescriptions for its basis, was felt more and more. There thus came a time when natural religion, 134


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reduced to pure childishness, to the grimaces of sorcerers, would not suffice for society where humanity wanted a moral and philosophical religion. Buddhism, Zoroasterism answered to that need in India, in Persia. Orpheism and the Mysteries had attempted the same thing in the Greek world, with-out succeeding in a durable manner. At this epoch the problem presented itself to the whole of the world with a sort of solemn unanimity and imperious grandeur. 181

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Greece, it is true, formed an exception in this respect. Hellenism was much less used than other religions of the empire. Plutarch in his little Bœotian town lived by Hellenism, tranquil, happy, contented as a child with the calmest religious conscience. With him, not a trace of crisis, of rending, of disquiet, of imminent revolution. But it was only the Greek spirit which was capable of so infantine a serenity. Always satisfied with herself; proud of her past and of that brilliant mythology of which she possessed all the holy places, Greece did not share all the internal torments, which worried the rest of the world. Only she did not call for Christianity; only she wished to pass it by; only she thought to do better. She held to that eternal youth, to that patriotism, to that gaiety which have always characterised the veritable Hellene, and which to-day cause the Greek to be a stranger to the profound cares which eat us up. Hellenism thus found itself in a position to attempt a renaissance which no other of the religions of the empire would have been able to attempt. In the second, third, and fourth centuries of our era, Hellenism will constitute itself an organised religion by a sort of fusion of the Greek mythology and philosophy, and with its wonder-working philosophers, its ancient sages promoted to the rank of prophets, its legends of Pythagoras and of Apollonius, will enter into a rivalry with Christianity, which, though it remained powerless, was none the less the most dangerous obstacle which the religion of Jesus found in its path. That attempt was not made so early as the time of the Cæsars. The first philosophers who attempted a species of alliance between philosophy and Paganism—Euphrates of Tyre, Apollonius of Tyana, and Plutarch, are of the end of the century. Euphrates of Tyre is but little known to us. Legend has so covered up the warp and woof of the real biography of Apollonius that it is difficult to say, whether he is to be reckoned amongst the sages, amongst the founders of religions, or amongst the charlatans. Plutarch is less a thinker, an innovator than a man of moderate mind who wishes to make all the world agree by rendering philosophy timid and religion half reasonable. There is nothing in him of Porphyry or of Julian. The attempts at allegorical exegesis by the Stoics are very weak. The mysteries like those of Bacchus, where the immortality of the soul was taught by graceful symbols, were limited to certain countries and had no extended influence. The unbelief in the official religion was general in the enlightened class. The politicians who most affected to sustain the worship of the State made a jest of it with much wit. They openly put forward the immoral system that religious fables are good only for the people and ought to be maintained for them. The precaution was wholly useless, for the faith of the people was itself profoundly shattered. After the accession of Tiberius, it is true, a religious reaction made itself felt. It appears that the world was frightened by the avowed incredulity of the times of Cæsar and Augustus; the unlucky

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attempt of Julian was anticipated; all the superstitions found themselves revivified for reasons of State. Valerius Maximus gives us the first example of a writer of the lower class, making himself the auxiliary of the theologians at bay; of a venal or prostituted pen put at the service of religion. But it is the foreign religions which profit most by this return. The serious reaction in favour of the Græco-Roman cult will only be produced in the second century. Now the classes which have been seized with religious disquiet turn towards the religions, come from the East. Isis and Serapis find more favour than ever. Importers of every species, miracle-mongers, magicians, profit by the demand, and as usually happens at periods when and in countries where the religion of the State is weak, increased on every side, recalling the real or fictitious types of Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander of Abonoticus, of Peregrinus, of Simon of Gitton. These very errors and chimeras were as a prayer of the travailing earth, like the unfruitful efforts of a world seeking its rule and arriving sometimes in its convulsive efforts at monstrous creations destined to oblivion. To sum up:—the middle of the first century is one of the worst epochs of ancient history. Greek and Roman society show themselves in decadence after what has gone before, and much behind hand with respect to what is to follow But the grandeur of the crisis revealed clearly some strange and sacred formation. Life appeared to have lost its motive: suicides were multiplied. Never had a century presented such a struggle between good and evil. The evil was a powerful despotism, which put the world into the hands of men, who were either criminals or lunatics; it was the corruption of morals, the result of introducing into Rome the vices of the East; it was the absence of a good religion, and of a serious public instruction. The good was on one side, philosophy fighting with uncovered breast, against the tyrants, defying the monsters, three or four times proscribed in in half a century (under Nero, Vespasian and Domitian) it was on another side the efforts after popular virtue these legitimate aspirations after a better religious state, this tendency towards confraternities, towards mono-theistic worship; this rehabilitation of the poor, which was principally produced under cover of Judaism, or Christianity. These two great protestations were far from being in agreement. The philosophical party and the Christian party did not know each other, and they had so little idea of the community of their efforts, that the philosophical party, having come to power by the advent of Nerva, was far from being favourable to Christianity Truth to tell, the design of the Christian was much more radical. The stoic masters of the Empire, reformed it and presided over it during the hundred best years in the history of humanity The Christian Masters of the Empire, after Constantine, succeeded in ruining it. The heroism of some ought not to make us forget that of others. Christianity, so unjust to Pagan virtues, took up the task of depreciating those who had fought against the same enemies that it had. There was in the resistance of philosophy as much grandeur as in that of Christianity, but the rewards have been unequal. The martyr who turned away from the feet of the idols has his legend: why should not Annæus Cornutus, who declared before Nero, that his books would never be worth those of Chrysippus; why should not Helvidius Priscus, who told Vespasian to his face, It is for you to kill, and for me to die”; why should not Demetrius, the cynic, who answered the angry Nero “You threaten me with death but nature threatens

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you,”—why should not these men have their place amongst the popular heroes whom all men love and salute? Does humanity dispose of so many forces against vice and baseness, that every school of virtue should be allowed to reject the aid of others, and to maintain that it only has the right to be courageous, proud, resigned?

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CHAPTER XVIII. RELIGIOUS LEGISLATION AT THIS PERIOD.

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THE Empire in the first century, even whilst showing itself hostile to the religious innovations which came from the East, did not offer a constant resistance to them. The principle of the religion of the State was but moderately maintained. Under the Republic at various intervals, foreign religions had been forbidden, in particular the worship of Sabazius, of Isis, of Serapis. The people were impelled towards these religions by an irresistible force. When the demolition of the temple of Isis and Serapis, was decreed at Rome, in the year 535, not a workman was found who would put a hand to the work, and the Consul himself was obliged to break in the door with the blows of an axe It is clear that the Latin rite was not sufficient for the mob. Not unreasonably it has been supposed, that it was to gratify the popular instinct that Cæsar re-established the worship of Isis and Serapis. With the profound and liberal intention characteristic of him, this great man showed himself favourable to a complete liberty of conscience. Augustus was more attached to the national religion. He had antipathy for the Oriental religions; he forbade even the propagation of Egyptian ceremonies in Italy; but he wished that every religion, that of the Jews especially, should be supreme at home. He exempted the Jews from every-thing that might distress their consciences, especially from secular work on the Sabbath. Some persons of his court were less tolerant, and would willingly have made him a persecutor for the benefit of the Latin religion. He does not appear to have yielded to these wretched counsels. Josephus, who is suspected of exaggeration in this matter, will even have it that he made gifts of sacred vessels to the temple at Jerusalem. It was Tiberius who first laid down the principle of the religion of the State, with clearness, and took serious precautions against the Jewish and Oriental propaganda. It must be remembered that the Emperor was “Grand Pontiff,” that in protecting the old Roman religion he did but execute a duty laid upon him. Caligula withdrew the edicts of Tiberius, but his madness prevented anything further from being done. Claudius appears to have imitated the policy of Augustus. At Rome he strengthened the Latin religion, showed himself interested in the progress made by foreign religion, displayed harshness to the Jews, and pursued the confraternities with fury. In Judea, on the contrary, he showed himself well disposed towards the natives. The favour which the Agrippas displayed at Rome under these two last reigns, assured to their co-religionists a powerful protection, except in those cases when the police of Rome required measures of safety.

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Nero concerned himself but little with religion. His odious treatment of the Christians came from native ferocity and not from legislative disposition. The examples of persecution which were quoted in Roman society at this time sprang rather from family than public authority. Such things still happened only in the noble houses of Rome, which preserved the old traditions. The provinces

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were perfectly free to follow their own religions on the single condition that they did not insult the religions of other countries. The provincials of Rome had the same right, provided they made no scandal. The only two religions against which the Empire made war in the first century, Druidism and Judaism, were fortresses where nationalities defended themselves. All the world was convinced that the profession of Judaism implied contempt for the civil law, and indifference to the prosperity of the State. When Judaism was content to be a simple personal religion, it was not persecuted. The severities against the worship of Serapis, arose perhaps from the mono-theistic character which it presented, and which already caused it to be confounded with the Jewish and the Christian religion.

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No fixed law then forbade in the time of the apostles the profession of monotheistic religion. These religions, until the accession of the Syrian Emperors, were always watched, but it was not until the time of Trajan that the Empire began to prosecute them systematically as hostile to others, as intolerant, and as implying the negation of the State. In short, the only thing against which the Roman Empire declared war in the matter of religion was theocracy. Its principle was that of the lay state; it did not admit that a religion had civil or political consequence in any degree; above all it did not allow of any association within the State for objects outside of it. This last point is essential, seeing that it really was at the root of all the persecutions. The law upon confraternities, much more than religious intolerance, was the fatal cause of the violences which dishonoured the reigns of the best sovereigns. The Greek countries, associated as they were with all things good and delicate, had had the priority over the Romans. The Greek Eranes or Thiases of Athens, Rhodes, of the inlands of the Archipelago, had been excellent societies for mutual help, credit, assurance in case of fire, piety, honest pleasures. Every Erane had its decisions engraved upon the arches (stelos), its archives, its common chest, fed by voluntary gifts and assessments. The Eranites or Thiastes celebrated together certain festivals and met for banquets, where cordiality reigned. A member, embarassed for money, might borrow from the chest on condition of repayment. Women formed part of these Eranes, and had their separate President (proëranistria). The meetings were absolutely secret; a rigid order was maintained in them; they took place, it would seem, in closed gardens, surrounded by porches or small buildings, in the midst of which rose the altar of sacrifice. Finally, every congregation had a body of dignitaries, drawn by lot for a year (Clerotes), according to the custom of ancient Greek democracies, from whom the Christian “clergy” may have taken their name. The president alone was elected. These officers caused the new members to submit to a species of examination, and were bound to certify that he was “holy, pious and good.” There was in these little confraternities, during the two or three centuries which preceded our era, a movement almost as varied as that which in the middle ages produced so many religious orders and subdivisions of these orders. In the single island of Rhodes there were computed to be as many as nineteen, many of which bore

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the names of their founders or their reformers. Some of these Thiastes, especially those of Bacchus, held elevated doctrines, and sought to give some consolation to men of good will. If there still remained in the Greek world a little love, pity, religious morality, it was due to the liberty of such private religions. These religions were in a sort of way associated with the official religion, the abandonment of which became every day more and more marked. At Rome association of the same kind encountered greater difficulties and not less favour amongst the proscribed classes. The principles of the Roman policy concerning confraternities had been promulgated for the first time under the Republic (186 B.C.) apropos of the Bacchanals. The Romans by their natural taste were greatly inclined to associations, especially to religious associations; but permanent congregations of this kind displeased the patricians, guardians of public powers, who, in their narrow and dry conception of life, admitted only the Family of the State as the social group. The most minute precautions were taken; a preliminary authorization was made a necessity, the number of members was limited; it was forbidden to have a permanent magister sacrorum, and to create a common fund by means of subscriptions. The same solicitude was manifested on various occasions in the history of the empire. The laws contained texts for repressions of every kind. But it was for the authorities to say, if they should or should not be used. The proscribed religions often appeared a very few years after their proscription. The foreign emigration, besides, especially that of the Syrians, perpetually renewed the funds from which the beliefs were nourished, which it was vainly sought to extirpate.

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It is remarkable to note, to how great a degree a subject in appearance so wholly secondary occupied the strongest heads. One of the principal cares of Cæsar and of Augustus was to prevent the formation of new societies and to destroy those which had already been established. It appears that a decree was issued under Augustus, in which an attempt was made to define with clearness the limits of the law of union and association. These limits were extremely narrow. The societies were to be exclusively burial clubs. They were not permitted to meet more often than once a month; they might occupy themselves only with the funerals of deceased members; under no pretext might they extend their powers. The Emperor strove after the impossible. He wished out of his exaggerated idea of the state to isolate the individual, to destroy every moral tie between man, to repress a legitimate desire of the poor, that of crowding together in a small space to keep each other warm. In ancient Greece the city was very tyrannical, but it gave in exchange for its vexations so much pleasure, so much light, so much glory, that no one dreamed of complaining. Men would have died for her with joy; her most unjust caprices were submitted to without murmuring. The Roman Empire was too large for patriotism. It offered to all immense material advantages; it gave nothing to love. The insupportable sadness inseparable from such a life appeared worse than death. Thus, notwithstanding all the efforts of the politicians, the confraternities developed themselves enormously. They were exactly analogous to our middle age confraternities with their patron saints and their corporation meals. The great families were careful of their name, of their country, of their

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tradition; the humble, the small, had only their collegium. There they found all their pleasures. All the texts show us collegia or cœtus, as formed of slaves, of veterans, of small people (tenuiores). Equality reigned there among the freemen, emancipated slaves and servile persons. The women in them were numerous. At the risk of a thousand cavils, sometimes of the most severe punishments, men became members of these collegia, where they lived in the bonds of an agreeable confraternity, where they found mutual help, where they contracted relations which lasted after death. The place of meeting, or schola collegii, had usually a tetrastyle (a four sided porch), where was put up the rules of the college, by the side of the altar of the tutelary deity and a triclinium for meals. The meals were, in fact, impatiently expected; they took place on the feast days of the patron (God), and on the anniversaries of certain brethren who had founded benefactions. Every one carried thither his little basket (sportula); one of the brethren in turn furnished the accessories of the feast, the beds, the plate, bread, wine, sardines and hot water. The slave, who had been enfranchised gave his comrades an amphora of good wine. A gentle joy animated the festival; it was expressly stipulated that there should be no discussion of the business of the college, so that nothing should trouble the quarter of an hour of joy and rest which these poor people reserved to themselves. Every act of turbulence and every ill-natured word was punished with a fine. To all appearance, these colleges were only burial societies, to use the modern phrase. But that alone would not have sufficed to give them a moral character. In the Roman period, as in our time, and at all periods when religion is weakened, the piety of the tombs was almost the only one which the people retained. They liked to believe that they would not be thrown into the horrible common trench, that the college would provide for their funerals, that the brethren would come on foot to the funeral pile to receive a little honorarium of twenty centimes. Slaves especially wished to hope that if their masters caused their bodies to be thrown into the sewers, there would be some friends to make for them “imaginary funerals.” The poor man put his half-penny per month into the common fund, to provide for himself, after his death, a little urn in a Columbarium, with a slab of marble, on which his name might be engraved. Sepulture amongst the Romans being intimately bound up with the sacra gentilitia, or family rites, had an extreme importance. The persons, intending to be buried together, contracted a species of intimate brotherhood and relationship. It thus came about that Christianity presented itself for a long time in Rome as a kind of funeral collegium, and that the first Christian sanctuaries were the tombs of the martyrs. If Christianity had been that one, however, it would not have provoked so many severities; but it was besides quite another thing; it had common treasuries; it boasted of being a complete city; it believed itself assured of the future. When, on a Saturday evening, one enters the limits of a Greek Church in Turkey, for example that of S. Photinus in Smyrna, he is struck with the strength of these associated religions, in the midst of a persecuting and malevolent society. This irregular accumulation of buildings (church, presbytery, schools, prison), those faithful ones coming and going in their enclosed city, those lately opened tombs, on each of which a lamp is burning, the corpse-like odour, the impression

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of damp mustiness, the murmur of prayers, the appeals for charity, from a soft and warm atmosphere, that a stranger at times must find sufficiently sickening, but that is to the initiated eminently grateful.

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These societies, once provided with a special authorization, had in Rome all the rights of civil persons; but such an authorization was granted only with infinite reserves, as soon as the societies had funds in hand, and other matters than funerals might occupy them. The pretext of religion, or of the accomplishment of vows in common is foreseen, and formally pointed out as being amongst the circumstances, which give to a meeting the character of au offence; and this offence was no other than that of treason, at least for the person who hail called the assembly together. Claudius went so far as to close the inns where the confraternities met, and even to interdict the little eating-houses, where these poor people could get soup and hot water cheaply. Trajan and the best Emperors defied all the associations. The extreme humility of the persons was an essential condition that the right of religious meeting should be accorded, and even then, only with many restrictions. The legists, who put together the Roman law, eminent though they were as jurisconsults, afforded a measure of their ignorance of human nature by pursuing in every way, even by threats of capital punishment, in restraining by every kind of odious and puerile precaution, an eternal need of the soul. Like the authors of our Civil Code, they figured life to themselves with a mortal coldness. If life consisted in amusing oneself by superior orders, in eating a morsel of bread, in tasting pleasure in one’s rank and under the eye of a chief, everything would be well imagined. But the punishment of societies which abandoned that false and limited direction, is first weariness, then the violent triumph of religious parties. Never will man consent to breathe that glacial air; he wants the little enclosure, the confraternity in which men live and die together. Our great abstract societies are not sufficient to answer to all the instincts of sociability which are in man. Let him put his heart into anything, seek consolation where it may be found, create brethren for himself, contract ties of the heart. Let not the cold hand of the State interfere in this kingdom of the soul, which is the kingdom of liberty. Life and joy will not re-enter the world until our defiance of the collegia, that sad inheritance from the Roman law, shall have disappeared. Association outside the State, without destroying the State, is the capital question of the future. The future law as to associations will decide if modern society shall or shall not share the fate of ancient society. One example may suffice: the Roman Empire had bound up its destiny with the law upon the cœtus illiciti, the illicita collegia. Christians and barbarians accomplishing in this the work of the human conscience, have broken the law; the empire to which that law was attached has foundered with it. The Greek and Roman world; the lay world; the profane world, which did not know what a priest is, which had neither divine law nor revealed book, touched here upon problems which it could not solve. We may add that if there had been priests, a severe theology, a strongly organized religion, it would not have created the lay State, inaugurated the idea of a rational society, of a society founded upon simple human necessities, and upon the natural relations of individuals. The religious inferiority of the Greeks and Romans was the consequence of their political and intellectual superiority. The religious superiority of the Jewish people, on the contrary, was the cause of their 142


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political and philosophical inferiority. Judaism and primitive Christianity embodied the negation, or rather the subjection of the civil State. Like Islamism, they established society upon religion. When human affairs are taken up in this way, great universal proselytisms are founded, apostles run about from one end of the world to another converting it; but political institutions, national independence, a dynasty, a code, a people—none of these are founded.

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CHAPTER XIX. THE FUTURE OF MISSIONS.

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SUCH was the world which Christian missionaries undertook to convert. It appears to me, however, that we may here see that such an enterprise was not a madness, and that no miracle was required to insure its success. The world was troubled with moral necessities, to which the new religion answered admirably. Manners were growing softer; a purer worship was required; the notion of the rights of man, the ideas of social ameliorations were everywhere gaining ground. On the other hand there was extreme credulity; the number of educated persons inconsiderable. Let ardent apostles, Jews, that is to say, monotheists, disciples of Jesus, that is to say, men penetrated with the sweetest moral teaching that the ears of man have yet heard, present themselves to such a world, and they will assuredly be listened to. The dreams, which mingle with their teaching, will not be an obstacle to their success; the number of those who do not believe in the supernatural, in miracles, is very small If they are humble and poor, so much the better. Humanity, at its present point, can be saved only by an effort coming from the people. The ancient Pagan religions cannot be reformed; the Roman State is what the State always will be, harsh, dry, just, and hard. In this world, which is perishing for want of love, the future belongs to him, who will touch the living source of popular piety. Greek liberalism, the old Roman gravity, are altogether impotent for that. The foundation of Christianity, from this point of view, is the greatest work that the men of the people have ever achieved. Very quickly, without doubt, men and women of the high Roman nobility joined themselves to the Church. At the end of the first century, Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla, show us Christianity penetrating almost into the palace of the Cæsars. In the time of the first Antonines, there are rich people in the community. Towards the end of the second century, it embraces some of the most considerable persons in the Empire. But in the beginning all, or almost all, were humble. In the most ancient churches, nobles and powerful men were no more to be found than in Galilee about Jesus. Now, in these great creations, it is the first hour which is decisive. The glory of religions belongs wholly to their founders. Religion is, in fact, a matter of faith. To believe is something vulgar; the great thing to do is to inspire faith.

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When we attempt to delineate these marvellous beginnings, we usually represent things on the model of our own times, and are thus brought to grave errors. The man of the people in the first century of our era, especially in Greek and Oriental countries, in no way resembled what he is to-day. Education did not then mark out between the classes a barrier as strong as now. These races of the Mediterranean, if we except the population of Latium, which had disappeared, or had lost all their importance since the Roman Empire, in conquering the world, had become the heritage of the conquered peoples—these races, I say, were less solid than ours, but lighter, more lively, more spiritual, more idealistic. The heavy materialism of our disinherited classes, that something mournful 144


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and burnt out, the effect of our climate, and the fatal legacy of the middle ages, which gives to our poor so wretched a countenance, was not the defect of the poor of those earlier days. Though very ignorant and very credulous, they were scarcely more so than rich and powerful men. We ought therefore not to represent the establishment of Christianity as analogous in any way to a movement amongst ourselves, starting from the lower classes (a thing in our eyes impossible) by obtaining the assent of educated men. The founders of Christianity were men of the people, in the sense that they were dressed in a common fashion, that they lived simply, that they spoke ill, or rather sought in speaking only to express their ideas with vivacity. But they were inferior in intelligence to only a very small number of men, the survivors who were becoming every day more rare, from the great world of Cæsar and of Augustus. Compared with the elite of the philosophers, who formed the bond between the century of Augustus and that of the Antonines the first Christians were feeble. Compared with the mass of the subjects of the Empire, they were enlightened. Sometimes they were treated as freethinkers; the cry of the populace against them was, “Death to the atheists!” And this is not surprising. The world was making frightful progress in superstition. The two first capitals of the Christianity of the Gentiles, Antioch and Ephesus, were the two cities of the Empire, the most addicted to supernatural beliefs. The second and third centuries pushed even to insanity, credulity, and the thirst for the marvellous. Christianity was born outside the official world, but not precisely below it. It is in appearance, and according to earthly prejudices that the disciples of Jesus were unimportant persons. The worldly man loves what is proud and strong; he speaks without affability to the humble man; honour as he understands it, consists in not allowing himself to be insulted; he despises those who avow themselves weak, who suffer everything, yield to everything, who give up their coat to him who would take their cloak, who turn their cheeks to the smiters. There lies his error, for the weak, whom he despises, are usually superior to him; the highest virtue is amongst those who obey (servants, work-people, soldiers, sailors, etc.)—higher than amongst those who command and enjoy. And that is almost in order, since to command and to enjoy, far from aiding virtue, make virtue difficult.

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Jesus marvellously comprehended that the people carry in their bosoms the great reserve of devotion and of resignation which will save the world. This is why he proclaimed the blessedness of the poor, judging that they find it more easy than other people to be good. The primitive Christians were essentially poor. “Poor” (Ebionim) was their name. Even when the Christian was rich, in the second and third centuries, he was in spirit a tenuior; he escaped, thanks to the law of the Collegia tenuiorum. Christians were certainly not all slaves and people of low condition; but the social equivalent of a Christian was a slave; what was said of a slave was said of a Christian also. On both sides they honoured the same virtues, goodness, humility, resignation, sweetness. The judgment of Pagan authors is unanimous on that point. All, without exception, recognize in the Christian, the features of the servile character; indifference to great affairs, a sad and contrite air, morose judgments upon the age, aversion to games, theatres, gymnasia, baths.

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In a word, the Pagans were the world; Christians were not of the world. They were a little flock apart, hated by the world, finding the world evil, seeking “to keep themselves unspotted from the world.” The ideal of Christianity will be the reverse of that of the worldly man. The perfect Christian will love abjection; he will have the virtues of the poor and the simple, of him who does not seek to exalt himself. But he will also have the defect of his virtues; he will declare many things to be vain and frivolous, which are not so at all; he will depreciate the universe; he will be the enemy of the admirer of beauty. A system where the Venus of Milo is but an idol is a system, partial, it not false for beauty, is almost as valuable as the good and the true. A decadence of art is in any case inevitable with such ideas. The Christian will not care to build well, nor to sculpture well, nor to design well; he is too idealistic. He will care little for knowledge; curiosity seems a vain thing to him. Confounding the great voluptuousness of the soul, which is one of the methods of reaching the infinite, with vulgar pleasure, he will for-bid himself to enjoy it. He is too virtuous.

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Another law shows itself as dominating this history. The establishment of Christianity corresponds to the suppression of political life in the world of the Mediterranean. Christianity was born and expanded itself at a period when there was no such thing as patriotism. If anything is wholly wanting to the founders of the Church it is that quality. They are not Cosmopolitan; for, the whole planet is for them, but a place of exile, they are idealistic in the most absolute sense. Our country is composed of body and soul. The soul: its memories, images, legends, misfortunes, hopes, common regrets; the body: the soil, race, language, mountains, rivers, characteristic products. Now, never were people more detached from all that than the primitive Christians. They did not hold to Judea; at the end of a few years they had forgotten Galilee; the glory of Greece and Rome was indifferent to them. The countries where Christianity first established itself, Syria, Cyprus, Asia Minor, no longer remembered the time when they had been free; Greece and Rome had still a great national sentiment. But in Rome patriotism was confined to the army and to some families; in Greece, Christianity fructified only in Corinth, a city, which since its destruction by Mummius and its reconstruction by Cæsar, was a collection of people of all sorts. The true Greek countries then, as now, very jealous, much absorbed by the memory of their past, paid little attention to the new preaching; they were always indifferently Christian. On the contrary, those soft, gay, voluptuous countries of Asia, countries of pleasure, of free manners, of easy indifference, habituated to take life and government from others, had nothing to abdicate in the matter of pride and of traditions. The ancient metropolitan cities of Christianity, Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome, were common cities, if I may dare to say so, cities after the fashion of modern Alexandria, into which poured men of all races, and in which the marriage between man and the soil, which constitutes a nation, was absolutely broken through. The importance given to social questions is always in an inverse ratio to political pre-occupations. Socialism rises when patriotism grows weak. Christianity was the explosion of social and religious ideas for which the world had been waiting, since Augustus put an end to political conflicts. As with Islamism, Christianity being a universal religion, will be at bottom the enemy of nationalities. 146


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It will require many centuries and many schisms before the idea takes root of forming national churches with a religion, which was at first the negation of all earthly countries, which was born at a period when there were no cities and citizens in the world, and when the old rough and strong republics of Italy and of Greece would surely have been expelled from the State as a mortal poison. And this was one of the causes of the greatness of the new religion. Humanity is a varying, changeable thing at the mercy of contradictory desires. Great is the country; its saints are the heroes of Marathon, of Thermopylæ, of Valmy, and of Fleurus. Country, however, is not everything here below. One is man and Son of God before being Frenchman or German. The Kingdom of God, eternal dream which will never be torn from the heart of man, is a protest against a too exclusive patriotism. The thought of an organization of humanity in view of its greatest happiness and its moral amelioration is Christian and legitimate. The State knows but one thing—how to organise egotism. That is not indifferent, for egotism is the most powerful and the most assailable of human motives. But that is not sufficient. Governments which have started with the belief that man is swayed only by his instincts of cupidity, are deceived. Devotion is as natural as egotism to the man of a noble race, and the organization of devotion, is religion. Let no one hope then to get away from religion or from religious associations. Every step in the progress of modern society has made the need for them more imperious.

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It is in this way that these accounts of strange events may be for us full of both teaching and of example. There is no need for delay over certain details which the difference of time renders strange and eccentric. When it is a question of popular beliefs there is always an immense disproportion between the grandeur of the idealism, which faith pursues, and the triviality of the material circumstances, which we are called upon to accept. Hence the particularity, with which in religious history shocking details and acts like those of madness may be mixed up with everything that is really sublime. The monk who invented the holy ampulla was one of the founders of the kingdom of France. Who would efface from the life of Jesus the episode of the demoniac in the country of the Gergesenes? Never has man in cold blood done the things that were done by Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, Peter the Hermit, Ignatius Loyola. Nothing is of more relative application than the word “madness” as applied to the past of the human mind. If we carried out the ideas which are current in our own times there is not a prophet, not an apostle, not a saint, who would not be locked up. The human conscience is very unstable at times when reflection has not advanced; in these conditions of the soul it is by insensible transitions that good becomes evil, that the beautiful borders upon the ugly, and that the ugly becomes the beautiful. There is no possible justice towards the past if so much is not admitted. A single divine breath penetrates all history, and makes an admirable whole of it; but the variety of the combinations which the human faculties may produce is infinite. The apostles differ less from us than the founders of Buddhism, who were, however, nearer to us by language. and perhaps by race. Our age has seen religious movements quite as extraordinary as those of old times, movements which have excited quite as much enthusiasm, which have had already—proportion being kept in view—more martyrs, and the future of which is still uncertain. 147


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I do not speak of the Mormons, a sect which is in some respects so silly and so abject that it is hard to speak of it seriously. It is, however, instructive to see in the middle of the nineteenth century, thousands of men living by miracle, believing with a blind faith in the marvels, which, they say, they have seen and handled. There is already a whole literature devoted to the agreement between Mormonism and science; what is better, that religion, founded as it is upon the most silly impostures, has been able to accomplish miracles of patience and self-abnegation? In five hundred years learned men will prove its divine origin by the miracles of its establishment. Babism, in Persia was a phenomenon otherwise considerable. A gentle and unpretentious man, a sort of modest and pious Spinoza, has found himself almost against his own will raised to the rank of miracle worker, of incarnation of the divine, and has become the leader of a numerous, ardent and fanatical sect, which has very nearly brought about a revolution comparable to that of Islam. Thousands of martyrs have run to him with joy before death. A day unequalled perhaps in the history of the world was that of the day of the great butchery which was made of the babis of Teheran. “On that day were seen in the streets and bazaars of Teheran,” says a writer of undoubted authority, “a spectacle which it would seem as if the population were likely never to forget. When the conversation even yesterday turned upon that matter, you may judge of the admiration mixed with horror, which the crowd felt and which years have not diminished. We saw advancing amongst the executioners women and children, their flesh gashed all over their bodies, with lighted and flaming wicks fixed in their wounds. The victims were hauled along with cords and forced to walk by strokes of the whip. Children and women advanced singing a verse which said:—‘Of a truth we come from God and return to Him.’ Their voices rose loudly above the profound silence of the crowd. When one of the victims fell and was forced to rise by blows from the whip or thrusts of the bayonet, though the loss of blood, which ran over all his limbs, left him yet a little strength, he began to dance and to cry with an increase of enthusiasm, ‘Of a truth we come from God and we return to Him.’ Some of the children died during the journey. The executioners cast their corpses under the feet of their fathers and their sisters, who walked proudly over them and did not glance twice at them. When they arrived at the place of execution, the victims were offered their lives on condition of abjuration. One executioner took the fancy of saying to a father that if he did not yield he would cut the throats of his two sons upon his breast. They were two little lads, the eldest of whom might have been about fourteen and who, red with their own blood and with calcined flesh, listened coolly to this dialogue. The father answered, crouching on the ground, that he was ready, and the elder of the boys, claiming with some importance his right of seniority, demanded to be slaughtered the first. At last all was finished; night fell upon a mass of mangled flesh; heads were hung in baskets to the scaffold of justice and the dogs of the suburbs met in troops on that side of the city.” That happened in 1852. The sect of Mazdak under Chosroes Nouschirvan, was suffocated in a similar bath of blood. Absolute devotion is, for simple natures, the most exquisite of joys and a species of necessity. In the affair of the Bab, people who were hardly members of the sect, came forward to denounce themselves, so that they might be joined with the sufferers. It is so sweet for

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man to suffer for something, that in many cases the thirst for martydom causes men to believe. A disciple who was companion of Bab at his execution, hanged by his side on the ramparts of Tabriz and momentarily expecting death, had only one word in his mouth:—“Are you satisfied with me, master?”

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The persons who consider as miraculous or chimerical all that in history surpasses the calculations of ordinary good sense, find such things inexplicable. The fundamental condition of criticism is to know how to understand the varying conditions of the human mind. Absolute faith is for us wholly out of the question. Outside of the positive sciences, of a certainty in some degree material, every opinion is in our eyes only approximate, implying partial truth and partial error. The proportion of error may be as small as you will; it is never reduced to zero when morals implying a question of art, of language, of literary form, or of persons are concerned. Such is not the manner of seeing things which narrow and obstinate spirits adopt—Orientals for example. The eye of those people is not like ours; it is the glassy eye of men in mosaics—dull and fixed. They can see only only a single thing at a time; that thing besets them, takes possession of them; they are not then masters of their beliefs or their unbeliefs; there is no room for a reflective after-thought. For an opinion thus embraced a man will allow himself to be killed. The martyrs in religion are what the party man is in politics. Not many very intelligent men have been made martyrs. The confessors of the time of Diocletian would have been, after the peace of the Church, wearisome and imperious personages. Men are never very tolerant when they believe that they are altogether right and the rest of the world altogether wrong. The great conflagrations of religion, being the results of a too definite manner of seeing things, thus became enigmas for an age like ours, when the rigour of conviction is weakened. With us the sincere man constantly modifies his opinions; in the first place, because the world changes, in the second, because the observer changes also. We believe more things at the same time. We love justice and truth; for them we would risk our lives; but we do not admit that justice and truth belong to a sect or a party. We are good French-men, but we admit that the Germans and the English are superior to us in many ways. It is not thus at the periods and in the countries where everyone belongs with his whole nature to his communion, race, or political school; and this is why all great religious creations have taken place in societies, the general spirit of which was more or less analogous to that of the East. Until now, in short, absolute faith only has succeeded in imposing itself upon others. A good serving maid of Lyons, named Blandina, who caused herself to be killed for her faith at seventeen years of age, caused a brutal brigand chief, Clovis, who found her to his taste fourteen centuries ago, to embrace Catholicism, makes laws for us to this day. Who is there who has not, while passing through our ancient towns which have become modem, stopped at the feet of gigantic monuments of the faith of olden times? All is externally renewed; there is not a vestige of ancient habits; the cathedral remains, a little lowered in height may be by the hand of man, but profoundly rooted in the soil. Mole sua stat! Its massiveness is its law. It has

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resisted the deluge, which swept away everything else around it; not one of the men of old times returning to visit the places where he lived would find his home again; the crow alone, who has fixed his nest in the heights of the sacred edifice, has not seen the hammer threatening his dwelling. Strange prescription! These honest martyrs, these rude converts, these pirate church builders, rule us still. We are Christians because it pleased them to be so. As in politics it is the barbarous foundations only that live, so in religion there are only spontaneous, and, if I may dare to say so, fanatical affirmations that can be contagious. This is because religions are wholly popular works. Their success does not depend upon the more or less convincing proofs of their divinity which they bring forward; their success is in proportion to what they say to the heart of the people.

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Does it follow from thence that religion is destined to diminish little by little, and to disappear like popular errors concerning magic, sorcery, spirits? Certainly not. Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, imperfectly seen by the people, expressed by the people. All the symbols which serve to give a form to the religious sentiment are incomplete, and it is their fate to be rejected one after another. But nothing is more false than the dream of certain persons, who, seeking to conceive a perfect humanity, conceive it without religion. It is the very reverse which ought to be said. China is a very inferior species of humanity, and China has almost no religion. On the other hand, let us suppose a planet inhabited by a humanity whose intellectual, moral and physical power are double those of terrestrial humanity, that humanity would be, at least, twice as religious as ours. I say, at least, for it is probable that the augmentation of the religious faculties would take place in a more rapid progression than the augmentation of the intellectual capacity, and would not be done in a simple direct proportion. Let us so suppose a humanity ten times as strong as ours, that humanity would be infinitely more religious. It is even probable, that in that degree of sublimity, disengaged from all material cares and from all egotism, gifted with perfect tact, and a divinely delicate taste, seeing the baseness and the nothingness of all that is not true, good, or beautiful, man would be exclusively religious, plunged in a perpetual adoration, rolling from ecstasies to ecstasies, being born, living and dying, in a torrent of bliss. Egotism, in short, which gives a measure of the inferiority of being, diminishes in proportion, as the animal is got rid of. A perfect being would be no longer an egotist; he would be altogether religious. Progress then will have for its effect the increase of religion and neither its destruction nor its diminution. But it is time to return to our three missionaries, Paul, Barnabas and John—Mark, whom we left at the moment when they went out of Antioch by the gate, which led to Seleucia. In my third volume I will endeavour to trace these messages of good news by land and by sea, through calm and tempest, through good and evils days. I am in haste to retell that unequalled epic, to describe those infinite routes of Asia and of Europe by the side of which the seed of the gospel was sown, those seas which they traversed so many times under circumstances so diverse. The great Christian Odyssey is about to commence. Already the apostolic barque has spread its sails; the wind sighs and aspires only to carry upon its wings the words of Jesus.

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Indexes Index of Scripture References Deuteronomy 13:1-18 Acts 2:44-47 5:36 9:19 9:26 9:26-15:2 10:38 11:19 11:30 11:30 11:30 11:30 12:1-25 12:25 12:35 15:1-41 15:1-41 15:2 16:10 16:10 17:14-16 18:5 20:5-6 21:20-21 22:17 1 Corinthians 5:5 15:5-8 Galatians 1:1-2:21 1:11 2:1-21 Colossians 4:14 1 Thessalonians 3:1-2 2 Timothy 4:11 Philemon 1:24 James 5:13

Index of Latin Words and Phrases •Castissimæ, univiræ: 1 •Collegia tenuiorum: 1 •Corso: 1 2 •Italicæ: 1 •Mole sua stat!: 1 •Noli, me tangere: 1 •Reliqua ut de monstro narranda sunt.: 1 •Si interissent, vile damnum.: 1 •ad narrandum: 1 •ampulla: 1 •cœtus: 1 152


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•cœtus illiciti: 1 •canaille: 1 •cantica: 1 •cella: 1 •cohors prima Augustus Italica civium Romamorum: 1 •collegia: 1 2 3 •collegium: 1 2 •concetti: 1 •credo quia absurdum: 1 •familia: 1 •forum: 1 •fraticelli: 1 •illicita collegia: 1 •magister sacrorum: 1 •orbis: 1 •sacra gentilitia: 1 •sancta simplicitas: 1 •schola collegii: 1 •sportula: 1 2 •tenuior: 1 •tenuiores: 1 •tesseræ frumentariæ: 1 •triclinium: 1

Index of Pages of the Print Edition i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xx xxi xxii xxiii xix xxv xxvi xxvii xxviii xxix xxx xxxi xxxii xxxiii xxxiv 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206

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The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book III. Saint Paul. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/renan/saintpaul.html Renan, Joseph Ernest (1823-1892). Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library London: Mathieson & Company: 1890 (?) Copyright Christian Classics Ethereal Library 2005-05-20 All; History BR165.R42 V.3 Christianity History By period Early and medieval

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book III. Saint Paul.

Ernest Renan

Table of Contents About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. ii Title Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 1 Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 2 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 5 Chapter I. First Journey of Paul—The Cyprus Mission.. . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 29 Chapter II. Continuation of the First Journey of Paul—The Galatian Mission.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 36 Chapter III. First Affair in Regard to Circumcision.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 45 Chapter IV. Slow Propagation of Christianity: Its Introduction at Rome.. . . . p. 57 Chapter V. Second Journey of Paul—Another Sojourn at Galatia.. . . . . . p. 63 Chapter VI. Continuation of the Second Journey of Paul—The Macedonian Mission.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 69 Chapter VII. Continuation of the Second Journey of Paul—Paul at Athens.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 79 Chapter VIII. Continuation of the Second Journey of Paul—First Sojourn at Corinth.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 92 Chapter IX. Continuation of the Second Journey of Paul—First Epistles—Interior Condition of the New Churches.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 97 Chapter X. Return of Paul to Antioch—Quarrel Between Peter and Paul—Counter-Mission Organised by James, Brother of the Lord.. . . . . . p. 111 Chapter XI. Troubles in the Churches of Galatia.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 120 Chapter XII. Third Journey of Paul—Foundation of the Church at Ephesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 127 Chapter XIII. Progress of Christianity in Asia and Phrygia.. . . . . . . . . . . p. 133 Chapter XIV. Schisms in the Church of Corinth—Apollos—First Scandals.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 138 Chapter XV. Continuation of the Third Journey of Paul—The Great Contribution—Departure from Ephesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 154 Chapter XVI. Continuation of the Third Journey of Paul—Second Stay of Paul in Macedonia.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 160 Chapter XVII. Continuation of the Third Mission—Second Stay of Paul at Corinth—The Epistle to the Romans.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 166 Chapter XVIII. Return of Paul to Jerusalem.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 178 Chapter XIX. Last Stay of Paul at Jerusalem—His Apprehension.. . . . . . p. 182 Chapter XX. Captivity of Paul at Cæsarea of Palestine.. . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 190 iii


Chapter XXI. Paul’s Voyage as a Prisoner.. . . . Chapter XXII. A Glance over the Work of Paul.. Indexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index of Scripture References. . . . . . . . . . . Greek Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . Latin Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . French Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . Index of Pages of the Print Edition. . . . . . . .

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THE HISTORY OF THE


BOOK III. SAINT PAUL.

BY

ERNEST RÉNAN Member of the French Academy.

London:

MATHIESON & COMPANY

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CONTENTS.

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PAGE INTRODUCTION

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CHAP.

I.

First Journey of Paul—The 1 Cyprus Mission.

II.

Continuation of the First 12 Journey of Paul—The Galatian Mission.

III.

First Affair in regard to 28 Circumcision.

IV.

Slow Propagation of 50 Christianity: Its Introduction at Rome.

V.

Second Journey o f 59 Paul—Another Sojourn at Galatia.

VI.

Continuation of the Second 69 Journey of Paul—The Macedonian Mission.

VII.

Continuation of the Second 86 Journey of Paul—Paul at Athens.

VIII.

Continuation of the Second 110 Journey of Paul—First Sojourn at Corinth.

IX.

Continuation of the Second 119 Journey of Paul—First Epistles—Interior Condition of the New Churches.

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X.

Return of Paul t o 144 Antioch—Quarrel between Peter and Paul—Counter-Mission organised by James, Brother of the Lord.

XI.

Troubles in the Churches of 161 Galatia.

XII.

Third Journey Paul—Foundation of Church at Ephesus.

XIII.

Progress of Christianity in Asia 182 and Phrygia.

XIV.

Schisms in the Church of 191 Corinth—Apollos—First Scandals.

XV.

Continuation of the Third 219 Journey of Paul—The Great Contribution—Departure from Ephesus.

XVI.

Continuation of the Third 229 Journey of Paul—Second Stay of Paul in Macedonia.

XVII.

Continuation of the Third 240 Mission—Second Stay of Paul at Corinth—The Epistle to the Romans.

XVIII.

Return of Paul to Jerusalem.

XIX.

Last Stay of Paul at 267 Jerusalem—His Apprehension.

XX.

Captivity of Paul at Cæsarea of 282 Palestine.

XXI.

Paul’s Voyage as a Prisoner.

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o f 172 the

261

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XXII.

A Glance over the Work of 296 Paul.

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INTRODUCTION.

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CRITICISM OF ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS. THE fifteen or sixteen years of religious history comprised in this volume in the embryonic age of Christianity, are the years with which we are best acquainted. Jesus and the primitive Church at Jerusalem resemble the images of a far-off paradise, lost in a mysterious mist. On the other hand, the arrival of St Paul at Rome, in consequence of the step the Author of the Acts has taken in closing at that juncture his narrative, marks in the history of Christian origins the commencement of a profound darkness into which the bloody glare of the barbarous feasts of Nero, and the thunders of the Apocalypse, cast only a few gleams. In particular, the death of the Apostles is enveloped in an impenetrable obscurity. On the contrary, the era of the missions of St Paul, especially of the second mission and the third, is known to us through documents of the greatest value. The Acts, till then so legendary, become suddenly quite authentic; the last chapters, composed in part of the narrative of an eye-witness, are the sole complete historical writings which we have of the early times of Christianity. In fine, those years, through a privilege very rare in similar circumstances, provide us with documents, the dates of which are absolutely authentic, and a series of letters, the most important of which have withstood all the tests of criticism, and which have never been subjected to interpolations. In the introduction to the preceding volume, we have made an examination of the Book of Acts. We must now discuss seriatim the different epistles which bear the name of St Paul. The Apostle informs us himself, that even during his lifetime there were in circulation in his name several spurious letters, and he often took precautions to prevent frauds. We are, therefore, only carrying out his intentions in subjecting the writings which have been put forth as his to a rigorous censorship.

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There are in the New Testament fourteen of such epistles, which it will be necessary at the outset to divide into two distinct categories. Thirteen of these writings bear in the text of the letter the name of the Apostle. In other words, these letters profess to be the works of Paul, so that there is no choice between the following two hypotheses: either that Paul is really the author, or that they are the work of an impostor, who wished to have his compositions passed off as the work of Paul. On the other band, the fourteenth epistle, the one to the Hebrews, does not bear the name of Paul in the superscription)1; the author plunges at once in medias res without giving his name. The attribution of that epistle to Paul is founded only on tradition.

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In a note, the author defines “superscription” to mean the first phrase of the texts, and “title “as the heading of each chapter.—Translator.

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The thirteen epistles which profess to belong to Paul may, in regard to authenticity, be ranged into five classes:— 1. Epistles incontestable and uncontested. These are the Epistles to the Galatians, the two Epistles to the Corinthians, and the Epistle to the Romans. 2. Epistles that are undoubted, although some objections have been taken to them. These are the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, and the Epistle to the Philippians. 3. Epistles of a probable authenticity, although grave objections have been taken to them. This is the Epistle to the Colossians, to which is annexed the note to Philemon 4. Epistle doubtful. This is the epistle addressed to the Ephesians. 5. Epistles false. These are the two Epistles to Timothy, and the Epistle to Titus. We have nothing to remark here in regard to the epistles of the first category; the most severe critics, such as Christian Baur, accept them reservedly. We shall hardly insist on discussing the epistles of the second class either. The difficulties which certain modern writers have raised against them, are merely those slight suspicions which it is the duty of the critic to point out frankly, but without being determined by them when stronger reasons should sway him. Now, these three epistles have a character of authenticity which outweighs every other consideration. The only serious difficulty which has been raised against the Epistles to the Thessalonians, is deduced from the theory of the Anti-Christ appended in the second chapter of the second Epistle to the Thessalonians,—a theory which seems identical with that of the Apocalypse, and which consequently assumed Nero to be dead when the books were written. But that objection permits of solution, as we shall see in the course of the present volume. The author of the Apocalypse only applied to his times an assemblage of ideas, one part of which went back even to the origins of Christian belief, while the other part had reference to the times of Caligula.

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The Epistle to the Colossians has been subjected to a much more serious fire of objection.. It is undoubted that the language used in that epistle to express the part played by Jesus in the bosom of the divinity, as creator and prototype of all creation, trenches strongly on the language of certain other epistles, and seems to approach in style the writings attributed to John. In rending such passages one believes oneself to be in the full swing of Gnosticism. The language of the Epistle to the Colossians is far removed from that of the undoubted epistles. The vocabulary is a little different; the style is more emphatic and more round, and less abrupt and natural. At points it is embarrassed, declamatory and overcharged, similar to the style of the false Epistles to Timothy and to Titus. The ideas are hardly those with which one would expect to meet in Paul. Nevertheless, justification by faith occupies no longer the first place in the predilections of the Apostle. The theory of the angels is much more developed; the æons begin to appear. The redemption of Christ is no longer simply a terrestrial fact; it is extended to the entire universe. Certain critics have been able to discern in 6


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many passages either imitations of the other epistles, or the desire of reconciling the peculiar bias of Paul to the different schools of his own (a desire so apparent in the author of the Acts), or the inclination to substitute moral and metaphysical formulas, such as love and science, for the formulas of faith and works which, during the first century, had caused so many contests. Other critics, in order to explain that singular mixture of things agreeable to Paul, and of things but little agreeable to him, have recourse to interpolations, or assume that Paul confided the editing of the epistle in question to Timothy. It is certain that when we sift this epistle to the bottom, as well as the one to the Philippians, for a continued account of the life of Paul, we are not quite so successful as in the great epistles of certain authenticity, anterior to the captivity of Paul. In the latter, the operation furnished, so to speak, its own proofs; the facts and the texts fit the one into the other without effort, and seem to recall one another. In the epistles pertaining to the captivity, on the contrary, more than one laborious combination is required, and more than one contradiction has to be silenced; at first sight, the goings and comings of the disciples do not agree, many of the circumstances of time and place are presented, if we may so speak, backwards.

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There is, nevertheless, nothing about all this which is decisive. If the Epistle to the Colossians is, as we believe it to be, the work of Paul, it was written during the last days of the life of the Apostle, at a date when his biography is very obscure. We shall show later on that it is quite admissible, that the theology of St Paul, which, from the Epistles to the Thessalonians to the Epistle to the Romans, is so strongly developed, was developed still further in the interval between the Epistle to the Romans and that of his death. We shall show likewise, that the most energetic expressions of the Epistle to the Colossians were only a short advance upon those of the anterior epistles. St Paul was one of those men who, through their natural bent of mind, have a tendency to pass from one order of ideas to another, even though their style and their manner of perception present sentiments the most fixed. The taint of Gnosticism which is to be found in the Epistle to the Colossians is encountered, though less articulated in the other writings of the New Testament, in the Apocalypse, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews. In place of rejecting some passages of the New Testament in which are to be found traces of Gnosticism, we must sometimes reason inversely, and seek out in these passages the origin of the gnostic ideas which prevailed in the Second Century. We may, in a sense, even say, that these ideas were anterior to Christianity, and that nascent Christianity borrowed more than once from Gnosticism. In a word, the Epistle to the Colossians, though full of eccentricities, does not embrace any of those impossibilities which are to be found in the Epistles to Titus and to Timothy. It furnishes even many of those details which reject the hypothesis as false. Assuredly of this number is its connection with the note to Philemon. If the epistle is apocryphal, the note is apocryphal also; yet few of the pages have so pronounced a tone of sincerity; Paul alone, as it appears to us, could write that little master-piece. The apocryphal epistles of the New Testament—those, for example, to Titus and to Timothy—are awkward and dull. The Epistle to Philemon resembles in nothing these fastidious imitations.

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Finally, we shell soon show that the so-called Epistle to the Ephesian is in part copied from the Epistle to the Colossians, which leads to the supposition, that the compiler of the Epistle to the Ephesians firmly regarded the Epistle to the Colossians as an original apostolic. Note, also, that Marcion, who is in general so well informed in his criticism on the writings of Paul,—Marcion who so justly rejected the Epistles to Titus and to Timothy,—admits unreservedly in his collection the two epistles of which we have just been speaking. Infinitely more strong are the objection. which can be raised against the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians. And first of all, note that this designation is nothing if not certain. The epistle has absolutely no seal of circumstance; it is addressed to no one in particular; those to whom it was addressed occupied for the moment a smaller place in the thoughts of Paul than his other correspondents. Is it admissible that Paul could have written to a Church with which he had so intimate relations, without saluting anybody, without conveying to the brethren the salutation of the brethren with whom they were acquainted, and particularly Timothy, without addressing to his disciples some counsel, without reminding them of anterior relations, and without the composition presenting any of those peculiar features which constitute the most authentic character of the other epistles?

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The composition is addressed to converted Pagans; now the Church at Ephesus was, in great part, Judæo-Christian. When we remember with what eagerness Paul in all his epistles seized on and invented pretexts for speaking of his ministry and of his preaching, we experience a lively surprise in seeing him throughout the course of a letter addressed to these same Ephesians—“that for the space of three years he did not cease, night and day, to exhort with tears”—lose every opportunity presented to him of reminding them of his sojourn amongst them; in seeing him, I say, obstinately confining himself to abstract philosophy, or, what is more singular, to the lifeless formulas least suited to the growth of the first Church. How different it is in the Epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and Thessalonians, even in the Epistle to those Colossians, whom, however, the Apostle even only knew indirectly. The Epistle to the Romans is the only one which in this respect resembles somewhat the epistles in question. Like them, the Epistle to the Romans is a complete doctrinal expos’; whilst in regard to the epistles addressed to those readers who had received from him the Gospel, Paul supposes always the basis of his teaching to be known, and contents himself with insisting upon some point which is related to it. How does it come about that the only two impersonal letters of St Paul are, in the one case, an epistle addressed to a Church which he had never seen, and in the other, an epistle addressed to the Church with which he had the most extended and continuous relations! The reading of the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians suffices, therefore, to awaken the suspicion that the letter in question had not been addressed to the Church at Ephesus. The evidence furnished by the manuscripts changes these suspicions into certainty. The words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ, in the first verse, were introduced about the end of the fourth century. The Vatican manuscript, and the Codex

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Sinaiticus, both of the fourth century, and whose authority, at least, when they are in accord, are more important than that of all the other manuscripts together, do not contain these words. A Vienne manuscript, the one which is designated in the collection of the Epistles of Paul by the figures 67, of the eleventh or twelfth centuries, presents them erased. St Basil maintains that the ancient manuscripts which he was able to consult did not have these word. Finally, the testimony of the third century proves that at that epoch, the existence of the said words in the first verse was unknown. If then everybody believed that the epistle of which we are speaking had been addressed to the Ephesians, it was in virtue of the title, and not in virtue of the superscription. A man who, in spite of the a priori dogmatic sprit which is often carried into the correction of the holy books, had frequently flashes of true criticism, Marcion (about 150 A.D.), contended that the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians was the Epistle to the Laodicæans, of whom St Paul speaks in the Epistle to the Colossians. That which appears the most certain is, that the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians was not addressed to any special Church, and that if it belongs to St Paul, it is a simple circular letter intended for the churches in Asia which were composed of converted Pagans. The superscription of these letters, of which there are several copies, might present, according to the words τοῖς οὖσιν, a blank destined to receive the name of the Church to which it was addressed. Perhaps the Church at Ephesus possessed one of these copies of which the compiler of the letters of Paul availed himself. The fact of finding one such copy at Ephesus appeared to him a sufficient reason for writing at the head Πρὸς Ἐφεσίους. As it was omitted at an early date to preserve a blank after οὖσιν, the superscription became: τοῖς αγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν, χαὶ πιστοῖς, a rather unsatisfactory reading which may have been rectified in the fourth century, by inserting after οὖσιν, in conformity with the title, the words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ.

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This doubt in regard to the recipients of the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians might be very readily reconciled with its authenticity; but critical reflection upon this second point excites new suspicion. One fact which confronts us at the very threshold, is the resemblance which is to be remarked between the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians and the Epistle to the Colossians. The two epistles are copies of one another. Which is the epistle that has served for the original, and which is to be considered as an imitation? It looks indeed as if it were the Epistle to the Colossians which has served for the original, and that it is the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians which is the imitation. The second epistle is the most fully developed; the formulas in it are exaggerated; everything that distinguishes the Epistle to the Colossians among the epistles of St Paul is more pronounced still in the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians. The Epistle to the Colossians is full of special details; it has a dictum which corresponds well with the historical circumstances in which it must have been written; the Epistle to the Ephesians is altogether vague. We can understand how a general catechism might be drawn from a particular letter, but not how a particular letter might be drawn from a general catechism. In fine, the 21st verse of chapter vi. of the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians takes it for granted that the Epistle to the Colossians was previously written. As soon as it is admitted that the Epistle to the Colossians is a work of St Paul’s, the question then may be stated as 9


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follows:—How could Paul waste his time in counterfeiting one of his own works, repeating himself, to make an ordinary letter out of a topical and special letter? This is not altogether impossible; but it is not very probable. The improbability of such a conception is diminished if we suppose that Paul delegated that task to one of his disciples. Perhaps Timothy, for example, may have taken the Epistle to the Colossians so as to apply it, and to make of it a general composition which could be addressed to all the Churches of Asia. It is difficult to speak with assurance on this point: for it is also supposable that the epistle may have been written after the death of Paul, at an epoch when people set about seeking out apostolic writings, and when, seeing the small number of such writings, people were not over scrupulous in producing new ones—imitating, assimilating, copying, and diluting writings previously held to be apostolic. Thus, the second general Epistle of Peter was manufactured out of the first epistle, and out of the Epistle of Jude. It is possible that the so-called epistle to the Ephesians owed its origin to the same process. The objections which have been raised against the Epistle to the Colossians, both as regards language and doctrines, are addressed principally to the latter. The Epistle to the Ephesians, in respect of style, is sensibly different from the undisputed epistles; it contains favourite expressions, gradations which only belong to it; words foreign to the ordinary language of Paul, some of which are to be found in the Epistles to Timothy, to Titus, and to the Hebrews. The sentences are diffuse, feeble, and loaded with useless words and repetition, entangled with frivolous incidents, full of pleonasms and of encumbrances. The same difference is apparent in the ideas. In the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians Gnosticism is plainly manifest; the idea of the Church conceived as a living organism, is developed in it in such a way as to carry the mind to the years 70 or 80; the exegesis is foreign to the custom of Paul; the manner in which he speaks of the “holy Apostles” surprises one; the theory of marriage is different from that which Paul expounded to the Corinthians.

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On the other hand, it must be said that the aim and the interest the counterfeiter might have had in composing this piece is not altogether apparent, inasmuch as it adds little to the Epistle to the Colossians. It seems, moreover, that a forger would have written a letter plainly addressed and circumstantial, as was the case with the Epistles to Timothy and to Titus. That Paul wrote or dictated this letter is almost impossible to admit; but that some one may have composed it during his lifetime, under his eyes, and in his name, is what cannot be declared as improbable. Paul, a prisoner at Rome, is able to charge Tychicus to go and visit the Churches of Asia and to remit several letters—the Epistle to the Colossians, the Note to Philemon, and the Epistle, now lost, to the Laodicæans; he could, besides, remit to him copies of a sort of circular letter in which the name of the destined Church was left in blank, and which could be the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians. On his way to Ephesus, Tychicus may have shown this open letter to the Ephesians; and it in permissible to suppose that the latter took or retained a copy of it. The resemblance of this general epistle to the Epistle to the Colossians was, as if that a man who had written several letters at intervals of a few days, and who, being pre-occupied, with a certain number of fixed ideas, had relapsed, without knowing it, into the same expressions; or, rather, as if that Paul had charged either Timothy or 10


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Tychicus in composing the circular letter to make it fit in with the Epistle to the Colossians, and to exclude everything of a topical character. The passage, Colossians iv. 16, shows that Paul sometimes caused the letters to be carried from one Church to another. We shall see presently that a similar hypothesis must be made use of to explain certain peculiarities of the Epistle to the Romans. It appears that, in these last years, Paul adopted encyclical letters as a form of writing well adapted to the vast rural ministry that he had to fulfil. In writing to one Church, the thought occurred to him that the things which he indited might be suitable for other Churches, and he so arranged matters that the latter might not be deprived of them. We come in this way to regard the Epistle to the Colossians and the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians, taken together, as a pendant to the Epistle to the Romans, as a sort of theological exposition, which was destined to be transmitted in the form of a circular letter to the different Churches founded by the Apostle. The Epistle to the Ephesians had not the same degree of authenticity as the Epistle to the Colossians; but it had a more general application, and it was preferred. In very early times it was taken for a work of Paul’s, and for a writing of high authority. This is proved by the use which is made of it in the first epistle attributed to Peter, a treatise whose authenticity is not impossible, and which, in any case, belongs to the apostolic period. Among the letters which bear the name of Paul, the Epistle to the Ephesians is probably the one which was the first cited as a composition of the Apostle of the Gentiles.

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There remain the two Epistles to Timothy and the Epistle to Titus. The authenticity of these three epistles presents some insurmountable difficulties. I regard them as apocryphal productions. To prove this, I would point out that the language of the three writings is not that of Paul. I would take note of a series of turns and expressions either exclusively peculiar, or particularly dear to the author, which being characteristic, ought to be found in similar proportions in the other epistles of Paul, or, at least, in the proportion desired. Other expressions, which bear in a kind of way the signature of Paul, are lacking in this. I would particularly point out that these epistles embrace a multitude of inconsistencies, both as regards the supposed author and the supposed recipients. The ordinary characteristic of the letters fabricated with a doctrinal intention is, that the forger sees the public over the head of the pretended recipient, and writes to the latter about things of which he is entirely conversant, and to which the forger desires the public to listen. The three epistles under discussion partake in a high degree of this character. Paul, whose authenticated letters are so particular, so precise; Paul, who, believing in the near end of the world, never supposed that he would be read in after ages. Paul was herein a general preacher, just enough interested in his correspondent to make sermons to him which had not relation to himself, and to address to him a small code of ecclesiastical discipline in view of the future. But these arguments, which of themselves ought to be decisive, I can afford to pass over. I shall only, in proving my thesis, make use of reasonings which are more or less material. I shall attempt to demonstrate that there is no possible means of putting these into the known frame, or even into a possible frame of the life of St Paul. A very important preliminary observation is the perfect similarity of these three epistles, the one to the other—a similarity which compels the admission that either all three are authentic or all three

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must be rejected as apocryphal. The particular features which separate them widely from the other epistles of St Paul are the same. The odd expressions in the language of St Paul, which are to be remarked in them, are to be discovered equally in the three. The defects which render the style unworthy of St Paul are identical. It is a curious enough fact that each time St Paul takes the pen to write to his disciples he forgets his habitual mannerisms, falls into the same looseness, the same idioms. The ground-work of the ideas gives rise to a similar observation. The three epistles are full of vague counsels, or moral exhortations, of which Timothy and Titus, familiarised by daily intercourse with the ideas of the Apostle, had no need. The errors which are combatted in them are always a sort of Gnosticism. The predilections of the author in the three epistles do not much vary; we see the jealous and anxious care of an orthodoxy already formed and of a hierarch already developed. The three narratives are sometimes a repetition of one another, and copies of the other epistles of St Paul. One thing is certain, namely, that if the three epistles had been written at the dictation of Paul, they belong to the same period of his life—a period separated by long years from the time when he composed the other epistles. Any hypotheses which place between the three epistles in question an interval of three or four years, for example, or which placed between them some one of the other epistles which are known to us, ought to be rejected. To explain the similarity, the one to the other, of the three epistles, and their dissimilarity to the others, admits of but one possible construction, and that is to suppose that they were written in a space of time somewhat short, and a long time after the others—at an epoch when all the circumstances which surrounded the Apostle had been changed, when he had become old, when his ideas and his style had undergone modification. Certainly one might succeed in proving the possibility of such an hypothesis, but that would not resolve the question. The style of a man may change; but from a style the most striking and the most inimitable that ever existed, one cannot fall into a style, prolix and destitute of vigour. In any case, such an hypothesis is formally excluded by what we know for certain of the life of Paul. We proceed now to demonstrate this. The first Epistle to Timothy in the one which presents the fewest individual traits, and nevertheless, did it stand alone, we would not be able to find in it an incident in the life of Paul. Paul, when he was reputed to have written this epistle, had, for a long time, left Timothy, for he had not written to him since he went away (i. 3). The Apostle quitted Timothy at Ephesus. Paul at that same time had departed for Macedonia. Not having time to combat the errors which had begun to spread at Ephesus, the chief advocates of which were Hymenæus and Alexander (i. 20), Paul had left Timothy in order to combat these errors. The journey which Paul made was to be of short duration; he calculated to return soon to Ephesus (iii. 14, 16; vi. 13). Two hypotheses have been proposed in order to include this epistle in the contexture of the life of Paul, each as those which are furnished by the Acts, and confirmed by the certain epistles. According to the one, the journey from Ephesus into Macedonia, which separated Paul and Timothy, is the one which is narrated in Acts xx. 1. That journey took place during the third mission. Paul remained three years at Ephesus. He left in order to see once more his churches in Macedonia, and 12


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those in Achaia. It was, it is said, from Macedonia or Achaia that he wrote to the disciple whom he had left in Ephesus, giving him full powers. This hypothesis is inadmissible. First, the Acts inform us (xix. 22) that Timothy had gone in advance of his master into Macedonia, where in fact Paul joined him (2 Cor. i. 1). And then is it probable that, almost on the morrow of his departure from Ephesus, Paul should have given to his disciple the instructions of which we read in the first Epistle to Timothy? The errors which he singled out in it he had himself been able to combat. The turn of the verse (1 Tim. i. 3) is not compatible with a man who is about to depart from Ephesus after a long sojourn. Besides, Paul announces the intention of returning to Ephesus (iii. 14; iv. 13); but Paul, in quitting Ephesus, had the fixed intention of going to Jerusalem without passing again through Ephesus (Acts xix. 21; xx. 1, 3, 16; 1 Cor. xvi. 4; ii. 1, 16). Let us add, that if we suppose the epistle to be written at that moment, everything about it becomes awkward; the defect of the apocryphal letters, which are anything but precise, in which the author holds up to his fictitious correspondent things au courant of what was about to be; such a defect, I say, is carried so far as to be absurd.

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In order to avoid this difficulty, and above all to explain the intention announced by Paul of returning to Ephesus, some have had recourse to another explanation. It is supposed that the journey from Macedonia, mentioned in the verse (1 Tim. i. 3), is a journey not recounted in the Acts which Paul would have made during his three years’ sojourn at Ephesus. It is certainly permissible to believe that Paul was not all that time stationary. It is supposed, then, that he made a journey into the Archipelago, and through there, at the same sweep, a link was designed to be attached to the Epistle to Titus in a manner more or leas conformable to the life of Paul. We do not deny the possibility of such a journey, although the silence of the Acts presents, it is true, a difficulty: yet, we cannot deny that it is here where the embarrassments begin which are found in First Timothy. By accepting this hypothesis, we understand less than if we had adopted the former one as to the meaning of the verse i. 3. Why does he tell Timothy what he already knows quite well? Paul had just passed two or three years at Ephesus, and he will soon again return there. What signifies these errors he has suddenly discovered at the moment of departure, which he leaves Timothy at Ephesus to settle? By the latter hypothesis, moreover, the first Epistle to Timothy should have been written about the same time as the great authentic epistles of Paul. What! is it on the morrow of the Epistle to the Galatians, and on the eve of the Epistles to the Corinthians, that Paul could have written such a milk-and-water amplification? He must have dropped his habitual style in setting out from Ephesus; he must have found it again on returning there, in order to write the letters to the Corinthians, excepting on one occasion, a few years after, when he took up again the pretended style of the journey for the purpose of writing to the self-same Timothy. The second to Timothy, by the admission of everybody, could not have been written before the arrival of Paul at Rome, a prisoner. Accordingly, there must have elapsed several years between the first Epistle to Timothy and that to Titus, on the one hand, and the second to Timothy, on the other. This could not be. The three narratives have been copied the one from the other; but how are we to suppose that Paul, after an

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interval of five or six years, in writing to a friend, should make extracts from old letters? Would that be a proceeding worthy of a master of the epistolary art, one so ardent and so rich in ideas? The second hypothesis is then, like the first, a tissue of improbabilities. The verse (1 Tim. i. 3) is a maze from which the apologist cannot extricate himself. That verse raises an impossibility in the biography of St Paul. We must find an instance where Paul, in going into Macedonia, could only have touched at Ephesus; that instance has no existence in the life of St Paul previous to his imprisonment. Let us add, that when Paul is reputed to have written the epistle in question, the Church of Ephesus possessed a complete organisation of elders, deacons, and deaconesses; this Church even presents the usual appearances of a community already grown old with its schisms and errors, nothing of all of which is applicable to the time of the third mission. If the first to Timothy was written by Paul, we must throw it into an hypothetical period of his life posterior to his imprisonment, and beyond the scope of the Acts. This hypothesis, involving also the examination of the two other epistles of which we have just been speaking, will be reserved by us, till later on.

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The second Epistle to Timothy furnishes many more facts than the first. The Apostle is evidently in prison at Rome (i. 8, 12, 16, 17; ii. 9-10). Timothy is at Ephesus, (i. 16-18; ii. 17; iv. 14-15, 19), where the false doctrines continue to increase through the fault of Hymenæus and Philetus (ii. 17). Paul has not been long at Rome and in prison, when he gives to Timothy, in the form of news, certain details about a journey into the Archipelago he had just made; at Miletum he has left Trophimus sick (i. 11, 20); at Troas he has left several things with Carpus (iv. 13), and Erastus remained at Corinth (iv. 20). At Rome the Asiatics, among others Phygellas and Hermogenes, have abandoned him (i. 15). Another Ephesian, on the other hand, Onesiphorus, one of his old friends, having come to Rome, sought him out, and found him, and cared for him in his captivity (i. 16-18). The Apostle is filled with a presentiment of his near end (iv. 6-8). His disciples are far removed from him. Demas has forsaken him to pursue his worldly interests, and is departed unto Thessaloncia (iv. 10); Crescens to Galatia (ibid.), Titus unto Dalmatia (ibid.); and he has sent Tychicus to Ephesus (iv. 12); only Luke is with him (iv. 11). A certain Alexander, a copper-smith from Ephesus, did him much harm, and opposed him actively; this Alexander has set out again for Ephesus (iv. 14-15). Paul has already appeared before the Roman authorities; on this occasion no one has assisted him (iv. 16), but God has aided him, and delivered him from out of the mouth of the lion (iv. 17). In consequence of this, he begs Timothy to come before the winter (iv. 9, 21), and to bring Mark with him (iv. 11). He gives him at the same time a commission, which is, to bring him his cloak, the books, and the parchment which he left at Troas with Carpus (iv. 13). He recommends him to salute Prisca, Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. He sends to him the greetings of Pudens, of Linus, of Claudia, and of all the brethren (iv. 21). This simple analysis suffices to point out some strange incoherencies. The Apostle is at Rome; he has just made a journey of the Archipelago, he gives to Timothy the particulars of it, as though he had not written to him since the journey. In the same letter he speaks to him of his prison and of his trial. Will any one say that this journey into the Archipelago was the journey of Paul the 14


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captive, narrated in the Acts? But in this journey Paul did not traverse the Archipelago, neither could he go to Miletum, nor to Troas, nor, above all, to Corinth, since at the elevation of Cnide, the tempest drives the vessels upon Crete, then upon Malta. Will any one say that the voyage in question was the last voyage of St Paul, a free man, his return voyage to Jerusalem in company with the deputies charged with accusing him? But Timothy was in that voyage, at least from Macedonia (Acts xx. 4). More than two years rolled away between that voyage and the arrival of Paul at Rome (Acts xxiv. 27). Can we conceive that Paul would recount to Timothy as being news, things which took place in his presence a long time before, when, in the interval, they had lived together, and had hardly been separate? Far from being left sick at Miletum, Trophimus followed the Apostle to Jerusalem, and was the cause of his arrestment (Acts xx. 29). The passage, 2 Tim. iv. 10, 11, compared with Col. v. 10, 14, and with Philemon — 24, forms a contradiction not less serious. How could Demas have forsaken Paul when the latter wrote the second to Timothy, seeing that epistle was posterior to the Epistle to the Colossians and to the Epistle to Philemon? When writing these last two epistles Paul has Mark near him; how, in writing to Timothy, could he therefore say,—“Take Mark and bring him with thee; for he is profitable to me for the ministry?” On the other hand, we have established the fact, that it is not allowable to separate the three letters; but in the manner it has been treated by some there would be three years at least between the first and the second to Timothy, and it is necessary to place between them the second to the Corinthians and the Epistle to the Romans. One single refuge then remains here for the first to Timothy, and that is to suppose that the second to Timothy was written during a prolongation of the life of the Apostle of which the Acts makes no mention. This hypothesis may be demonstrably possible, but a multitude of inherent difficulties to the epistle would still remain. Timothy is at Ephesus, and (iv. 12) Paul says dryly, “I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus,” as if Ephesus was not the place of destination. What could be more barren than the passage 2 Tim. iii. 10-11? Nay, what could be more inexact? Paul was only associated with Timothy in the second mission, but the persecutions which Paul underwent at Antioch in Pisidia, at Iconium, and Lystra took place during the first mission. The real Paul writing to Timothy would have had many other mutual experiences to put him in mind of. Let us add, that he would not have dreamt of losing his time in recalling them to him. A thousand improbabilities rise up on every side, but it is useless to discuss them, for the hypothesis itself is in question, and according to which our epistle would be posterior to the appearance of Paul before the council of Nero. This hypothesis, I say, ought to be discarded, as we shall demonstrate when we come to discuss, in its turn, the Epistle to Titus. When Paul wrote the Epistle to Titus, the latter was in the island of Crete (i. 5). Paul, who had just visited that island, and had been very much dissatisfied with the inhabitants (i. 12, 13), left his disciples there, in order to complete the organisation of the churches, and to go from city to city to establish presbyteri or episcopi (i. 6). He promised Titus to send him soon Artemas and Tychicus; he begged his disciples to come, when he had received these two brethren, to rejoin him at Nicopolis

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where he calculated to pass the winter (iii. 12), The Apostle next recommends his disciple to bring diligently Zenas and Apollos, and to take great care of them (iii. 13). And here, again, with every phrase, difficulties present themselves. Not a word for the faithful Cretians—nothing but hurtful and unbefitting severity (i. 12, 13)—fresh declamations against errors, the existence of which the churches recently established had not dreamt of (i. 10 et suivi)—errors Paul, absent, saw and was better acquainted with than Titus who was on the spot—details which presumed Christianity to be already old and completely developed in the island (i. 5, 6)—trivial recommendations bearing upon points quite clear. Such an epistle would have been useless to Titus, as it did not contain a single word that he ought not to have known by heart. But it is by direct arguments, and not by plausible inductions, that the apocryphal character of the document in question can be made clear.

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If it is wished to connect this letter with the period in the life of Paul known through the Acts, the same difficulties are experienced as in those which precede. According to the Acts, Paul only touched at Crete once, and that was when shipwrecked. He made but a very short stay there, and during the stay he was a captive. It is surely not at this moment that Paul was able to commence the founding of churches in the island. Besides, if it were the voyage of Paul as a captive which is related (Tit. i. 5), Paul, when he wrote, ought to be a captive at Rome. How could he say from his prison at Rome that he intended to pass the winter at Nicopolis? Why did he not make, as wan his custom, some allusion to his being in the condition of a prisoner? Another hypothesis has been tried. It has been attempted to connect the Epistle to Titus and the Epistle to Timothy the one with the other. It has been premised that these two epistles were the results of the episodical voyage, which St Paul might have composed during his sojourn at Ephesus. No doubt this hypothesis may go a very little way to explain the difficulties in the first to Timothy, but we most investigate it to see whether the Epistle to Titus can lend it any support. Paul was at Ephesus for a year or two. During the summer he formed the project of making an apostolic tour, of which the Acts has made no mention. He left Timothy at Ephesus, and took with him Titus and the two Ephesians, Artemas and Tychicus. He went first into Macedonia, then from there to Crete, where he founded several churches. He left Titus in the island, charging him to continue his work, and to repair to Corinth with Artemas and Tychicus. He made there the acquaintance of Apollos, whom he had not seen before, and who was on the point of setting out for Ephesus. He begged Apollos to go a little way out of his straight route so as to pass through Crete, and to carry to Titus the epistle which has been preserved. His plan at that moment was to go into Epirus, and to pass the winter at Nicopolis. He sends to inform Titus of that plan, announces to him that he will see again Artemas and Tychicus in Crete, and begs him, as soon as he shall have seen them, to come and rejoin him at Nicopolis. Paul then made his journey into Epirus. He wrote from Epirus the first to Timothy, and charged Artemas and Timothy to take it with them; he enjoined them likewise to pass through Crete, so as to give at the same time the notice to Titus to come and 16


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join him at Nicopolis. Titus repaired to Nicopolis, and the Apostle and his disciple returned together to Ephesus. With this hypothesis we can in a fashion give an account of the circumstances contained in the Epistle to Titus, and the first to Timothy. Nay, more, we obtain two apparent advantages by it. It serves to explain the passages of the Epistles to the Corinthians, from which it appears, at first glance, to result that St Paul, in going to Corinth at the end of his long sojourn at Ephesus, went there for the third rime (1 Cor. xvi. 7; 2 Cor. ii. 1; xii. 14, 21; viii. 1); it serves further to explain the passage in which St Paul pretends to have preached the Gospel as far away as Illyrium (Rom. xv. 19). There is nothing substantial about these advantages, nor anything to compensate for the injuries done to probability in order to obtain them!

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First, this pretended episodical voyage, so short that the author of the Acts did not judge it proper to speak of it, must have been very considerable, since it embraced a journey into Macedonia, a voyage to Crete, a sojourn at Corinth, and wintering at Nicopolis. This must have taken almost a year. Why, then, does the author of the Acts say that the sojourn of Paul at Ephesus extended over three year. (Acts xix. 8, 10; xx. 31)? Doubtless these expressions do not exclude short absences, but they exclude a series of journeys. Besides, in the hypothesis we are discussing, the voyage to Nicopolis should have taken place before the second Epistle to the Corinthians. Yet, in that epistle, Paul declares that Corinth is, at the date when he wrote, the extreme point of his missions towards the west. Finally, the itinerary which has been traced of the journey of Paul is not very natural. Paul went first into Macedonia—the text is formal (1 Tim. i. 3)—and thence he repairs to Crete. In going from Macedonia into Crete, Paul must have cruised about the coast, either at Ephesus—in which case the verse, 1 Tim. i. 3, is denuded of meaning—or at Corinth, in which case we cannot conceive why he wanted to return there immediately after. And how is it that Paul, in desiring to make a journey from Epirus, speaks of the winter which he must pass, and not of the journey itself? And this sojourn at Nicopolis, how is it that we do not know more about it? To suppose the Nicopolis in question to be the one in Thrace, on the Nestus, only adds to the confusion, and does not possess any of the apparent advantages of the hypothesis discussed above. Some exegites think to remove the difficulty by modifying a little the journey required by this hypothesis. According to them, Paul went from Epirus into Crete, from there to Corinth, then to Nicopolis, then to Macedonia. The fatal verse, 1 Tim. i. 3, is opposed to that. Let suppose a person starting from Paris, with the intention of making a trip to England, following the banks of the Rhine in Switzerland and Lombardy. Would that person, having arrived at Cologne, write to one of his friends in Paris: “I have left you at Paris, and am going to Lombardy?” The conduct of St Paul, in any of these suppositions, is not less absurd than the route of such a one. The journey of Tychicus and Artemas into Crete is not susceptible of proof. Why did Paul not give to Apollos a letter for Timothy? Why did he delay writing to him through Tychicus and Artemas? Why did he not fix a time with Titus when he should come to join him, seeing that his projects were arrested? These

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journeys from Corinth to Ephesus, all made by way of Crete, for the lack of an apology, are not at all natural. Paul, in this hypothesis of the episodical journey, in whatever manner we may regard the itinerary, gives and holds back perpetually; he does things without due consideration; he extracts only from his wanderings a portion of their advantages, reserving for future occasions that which he could very well accomplish at the moment. When these epistles are in question, it seems that the ordinary laws of probability and of good sense are reversed.

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All attempts to include the Epistles to Titus and Timothy in the work of the life of St Paul traced by the Acts are tainted with insoluble contradictions. The authentic epistles of St Paul explain, suppose, and permeate one another. The three epistles in question may be compared to a small round which has been punched out by a severe critic; and this is so much the more singular when two of them, the first to Timothy and the one to Titus, should happen just in the middle of that whirl of affairs, so very consecutive and so well known, which have reference to the Epistle to the Galatians, the two to the Corinthians, and that to the Romans. Several also of the exegites who defend the authenticity of these three gospels have had recourse to another hypothesis. They pretend that these epistles ought to be placed at a period in the life of St Paul of which the Acts makes no mention. According to the latter, Paul, after having appeared before Nero, as is implied in the Acts, was acquitted, which is very possible, nay, even probable. Set at liberty, he resumed his apostolic career, and went into Spain, which is likewise probable. According to the critics, of whom we are speaking, Paul, at that period of his life, made a fresh journey to the Archipelago—the journey which is referred to in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. He returned again to Rome, and was there made prisoner a second time, and from his prison wrote the second to Timothy. All this, it most be owned, resembles much the artificial defence of an accused person who, in order to answer objections, is driven to vent an assemblage of facts which have no connection with anything that is known. These isolated hypotheses, without either support or force, are in the eyes of the law a sign of culpability, in criticism the sign of apocryphy. Even admitting the possibility of that new voyage to the Archipelago, it would take no end of pains to bring into accord the facts related in the three epistles; these goings and comings are susceptible of very little proof. But such a discussion is useless. It is evident, in fact, that the author of the second to Timothy knew well how to speak of the captivity mentioned in the Acts, and to which allusion is made in the Epistles to the Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. The similarity of 2 Tim. iv. 9-22 with the endings of the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, proves it. The personnel which surrounded the Apostle is nearly identical in both cases. The captivity, from the midst of which Paul is reputed to have written the second to Timothy, finishes with his liberation (2 Tim. iv. 17-18). Paul in this epistle is full of hope; he meditates new schemes, and is pre-occupied with the thought, which, in fact, he is full of during the whole of his first (and only) captivity, namely, to perfect evangelical preaching—to preach Christ to all nations, and in particular to peoples of the far west. If the three epistles were of so far advanced a date, we cannot conceive why Timothy should always be spoken of in them as a young man. We are able, besides, to prove directly that the voyage to the Archipelago, 18


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posterior to the sojourn of Paul at Rome, did not take place. In such a voyage, indeed, St Paul would have touched at Miletum (2 Tim. iv. 20). Now in the fine discourse which the author of the Acts attributes to St Paul at the end of the third mission, while passing through Miletum, he makes Paul say, “And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more” (Acts xx. 25). But it is not argued that Paul was deceived in his previsions, so that he had to change his opinions, and to see again a church to which he thought he had said a final adieu. This is not the question, however. It matters little to us whether Paul may or may not have uttered these words. The author of the Acts was well acquainted with the routine of Paul’s life, although, unfortunately, he has not judged it proper to inform us of it. It is impossible that he could have put into the mouth of his master what he knew very well could not be verified. The letters to Timothy and to Titus are therefore refuted by the whole contexture of the biography of Paul. When they are forced into it by one party, they are thrust out of it by another party. Even if an express period in the life of the Apostle were created for them, the result would not be any more satisfactory. These epistles refute themselves; they are full of contradictions; the Acts and the authentic epistles would be lost if we could not succeed in creating another hypothesis to uphold the epistles of which we are speaking. And may it not be alleged that a forger could not have thrown a little more sprightliness into these contradictions? Demo of Corinth, in the second century, has a theory not less chimerical in regard to the journeys of St Paul, inasmuch as he makes him arrive at Corinth and to depart from Corinth for Rome in the company of St Peter—a thing utterly impossible. There is no doubt that the three epistles in question were fabricated at a period when the Acts had not yet gained full authority. Later, the canvas of the Acts was embellished, like as did the author of the fable of Theckla about the year 200. The author of our epistles knew the names of the principal disciples of St Paul; he had read several of his epistles; he had formed a vague idea of his journeyings; justly enough, he is struck by the multitude of disciples which surrounded Paul, and whom he sends out as messengers in every direction. But the details which he has invented are false and inconsistent: they always represent Timothy as being a young man; the imperfect notion he has of a journey Paul made into Crete makes him believe that Paul had founded churches there. The personnel which he introduces into the three epistles is peculiarly Ephesian; we are tempted at moments to think that the desire to exalt certain families of Ephesus and to depreciate some others belonging to it was not altogether singular in a fabricator. The three epistles in question, were they apocryphal from one end to the other? or were they made use of for the purpose of composing authentic letters addressed to Titus and to Timothy, that they should have been diluted, in a sense, to conform with the ideas of the times, and with the intention of leading the authority of the apostles to the developments which the ecclesiastical hierarchy took? It is this that is difficult to decide. Perhaps, in certain parts, at the close of the second to Timothy, for example, letters bearing different dates have been mixed up; but even then it must be admitted that the forger has given himself plenty of scope. Indeed, one consequence which is derived from what precedes, is that the three epistles are sisters, that, to speak accurately, 19


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they are one and the same work, and that no distinction can be drawn between them in anything that regards their authenticity.

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It is quite otherwise with the question of finding out whether some of the data of the second to Timothy (for example, i. 15-18; ii. 17, 18; iv. 19-21) have not a historical value. The forger, though not knowing all the life of Paul, and not possessing the Acts, might have, notably in the last days of the Apostle, some original details. Especially do we believe that the passage in the second of Timothy (iv. 19-21) has much importance, and throws a true light upon the imprisonment of St Paul at Rome. The fourth gospel is also, in one sense, apocryphal; yet we cannot say that on this account it is a work destitute of historical importance. As to that which it possesses of chimera, according to our ideas of such supposititious works, it must, on no account, be discarded from the New Testament. This ought not to occasion the least scruple. If the pious author of the false letters to Timothy and to Titus could be brought back and made to assist amongst us in the discussions of which he has been the cause, he would not be forbidden; he would respond, like the priest of Asia, author of the Romance of Theckla, when he found himself pressed into a corner: convictum atque confessum id se amore Pauli fecisse. The time of the composition of these three epistles may be placed about the year 96 to 100. Theophilus of Antioch (about the year 170) cited them expressly. Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian admitted them also. Marcion, on the contrary, rejected them, or did not know them. The allusions which are believed to have been found in the epistles attributed to Clement of Rome, to Ignatius, to Polycarp, are doubtful. There were floating about at that epoch a certain number of hemitetic phrases, all facts; the presence of those phrases in a writing does not prove that the author has borrowed them directly from some other writing in which he has found them. The agreements which we remark between certain expressions of Hegesippe and certain passages in the epistles in question, are singular; one does not know what consequence to draw from them, for if, in those expressions, Hegesippe has in his eye the first Epistle to Timothy, it would seem that he regarded it as a writing posterior to the death of the Apostles. However that may be, it is clear that when he had collected the letters of Paul, the letters to Titus and to Timothy, he enjoyed full authority. Where were they composed? Probably at Ephesus; probably at Rome. The partisans of this second hypothesis may say that, in the East, people do not commit errors which are remarked on. Their style bristles with Latinisms. The intention which prompted the writing, to wit, the desire of augmenting the force of the hierarchical principle, and of the authority of the Church, in presenting a model of piety, of docility, of “ecclesiastical spirit,” traced by the Apostle himself, is altogether in harmony with what we know of the character of the Roman Church from the first century. It only remains for us now to speak of the Epistle to the Hebrews. As we have already said, that epistle does not belong to Paul; but it ought not to be put in the same category as the two epistles to Timothy and the one to Titus, the author not seeking to pass off his work for a writing of Paul. What is the value of the opinion which is established in the Church, and according to which Paul

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is the author of this maudlin epistle? A study of the manuscripts, an examination of the ecclesiastical tradition, and a searching criticism of the work itself, will enlighten us on that point. The ancient manuscripts bear simply at the head of the epistle, Πρὸς Εβραίους. As to the order of transcription, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus representing the Alexandrine tradition, place the epistle among those of Paul. The Græco-Latin manuscripts, on the contrary, exhibit all the hesitation which still remained in the West during the first half of the middle ages, as to the canonicity of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and, by consequence, its attribution to Paul. The Codex Bœrnerianus omits it; the Codex Augiensis gives it only in Latin after the epistles of Paul. The Codex Claramontanus puts the epistle in question outside the list, as a sort of appendix, after the stichometry general of the writing, a proof that the epistle was not found in the manuscript from which the Claramontanus was copied. In the aforesaid stichometry (a very ancient composition) the Epistle to the Hebrews does not appear, or, if it appears it is under the name of Barnabas. In fine, the errors which abound in the Latin text of the Epistle of the Claramontanus are sufficient to awaken the suspicion of the critic, and prove that that epistle was only included gradually, and as if surreptitiously, in the canon of the Latin Church. But there is uncertainty even as to the tradition. Marcion did not have the Epistle to the Hebrews in his collection of the epistles of Paul: the author of the canon attributed to Muratori omits it in his list. Irenæus was acquainted with the writing in question, but he did not consider it as belonging to Paul. Clement of Alexandria believed it was Paul’s; but he felt a difficulty in attributing it to him, and, to get out of the embarrassment, had recourse to a not very acceptible hypothesis: he assumes that Paul wrote the epistle in Hebrew, and that Luke translated it into Greek. Origen admits also, in a sense, the Epistle to the Hebrews as belonging to Paul, but he recognised that many people denied that it had been written by the latter. Nowhere in it could he discover the style of Paul, and supposes, almost as Clement of Alexandria did, that the origin of the ideas belonged only to the Apostle. “The character of the style of the epistle,” says he, “has not the ruggedness of that of the Apostle.” This letter is, as regards the arrangement of the words, much more Hellenic, as everybody must avow who is capable of judging of the difference of styles. . . . As for me, if I had to express an opinion, I should say that the thoughts are the Apostle’s, but that the style and the arrangement of the words belong to some one who has revoked from memory the words of the Apostle, and who has reduced to writing the discourse of his master. If, then, any church maintains that this epistle belongs to Paul, it has only to prove it; for the ancients must have had some reason to go on handing it down as the work of Paul. As to the question—Who wrote this epistle? God alone knows the truth. Amongst the opinions which have been transmitted to us by history, one appears to have been written by Clement of Alexandria, who was Bishop of the Romans; another by Luke, who wrote the Gospels and the Acts. Tertullian does not observe the same discretion: he unhesitatingly puts forward the Epistle to the Hebrews as the work of Paul. Gaius, a priest of Rome, St Hippolytus, and St Cyprian did not place it among the epistles of Paul.

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During the novatianistic quarrel, in which, for many reasons, this epistle might have been employed, it is not even mentioned. xxv

Alexandria was the centre where the opinion was formed that the Epistle to the Hebrews should be intercalated in the series of the letters of Paul. Towards the middle of the third century Dionysius of Alexandria appeared to entertain no doubt as to Paul being its author. From that time this became the opinion most generally accepted in the East; nevertheless, protestations did not cease to make themselves heard. The Latins especially protested vigorously; particularly the Roman Church, who maintained that the epistle did not belong to Paul. Eusebius hesitated much, and had recourse to the hypothesis of Clement of Alexandria and of Origen; he was inclined to believe that the epistle had been composed in Hebrew by Paul, and translated by Clement of Rome. St Jerome and St Augustine have been at pains to conceal their doubts, and rarely cite that part of the canon without a reservation. Divers documents insist always in giving as the author of the work either Luke, Barnabas, or Clement. The ancient manuscripts of Latin production sufficed, as we have seen, to attest the repugnance which the West experienced when this epistle was put forward as a work of Paul’s. It is clear that when we have made, if we may so speak, the editio princeps of the letters of Paul, the number of letters must be fixed at thirteen. People were no doubt accustomed very early to place after the thirteen epistles the Epistle to the Hebrews—an anonymous apostolic writing, whose ideas approached in some respects those contained in the writings of Paul. Hence, one had only a step to take to arrive at the conclusion that the Epistle to the Hebrew’s belonged to the Apostle. Everything induces the belief that this induction was made at Alexandria, that is to say, in a Church relatively modern as compared with the Churches of Syria, Asia, Greece, and Rome. Such an induction is of no value in criticism, if the clear, intrinsic proofs are perverted by another party in attributing the epistle in question to the Apostle Paul. Now, this is in reality what has taken place. Clement of Alexandria and Origen, very good judges indeed of the Greek style, could not find in our epistle any semblance of the style of Paul. St Jerome is of the same opinion; the fathers of the Latin Church who refused to credit that the epistle was Paul’s,—all gave the some reason for their doubts; propter styli sermonis que distantiam. This is an excellent reason. The style of the Epistle to the Hebrews is, in a word, different from that of Paul; it is more oratorical, more periodic; the diction contains a number of idiomatic expressions. The fundamental basis of the thoughts is not far removed from the opinions of Paul, especially Paul as a captive; but the exposition and the exegesis are quite distinct. There is no nominal superscription, which was contrary to the usage of the Apostle; characteristics which one always expects to find in an epistle of Paul’s are wanting in the former. The exegesis is particularly allegorical, and resembles much more that of Philo than that of Paul. The author has imbibed the Alexandrian culture. He only makes use of the version called the Septuagint; from the text of this

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he adduces reasons which exhibit a complete ignorance of Hebrew; his method of citing and of analysing Biblical texts is not in conformity with the method of Paul. The author, moreover, is a Jew; he fancies himself to be extolling Christ when he compares him to a great Hebrew priest; Christianity is to him none other than perfected Judaism; he is far from regarding the Law as abolished. The passage ii. 3, where the author is placed among those who have only indirectly heard of the mysteries of the life of Christ from the mouth of the disciples of Jesus, does not accord at all with one of the most fixed pretensions of Paul. Let us remark, finally, that, in writing of the Christian Hebrews, Paul must have deviated from one of his most fixed rules, which was, never to perform a pastoral not upon the soil of churches Judæo-Christian, so that the apostles of circumcision might not, on their side, encroach upon the churches of uncircumcision. The Epistle to the Hebrews was not, therefore, written by St Paul. By whom and where was it written? and to whom was it addressed? We shall examine all these points in our fourth volume. For the present, the simple date of a writing so important interests us. Now, this date has been determined with sufficient decision. The Epistle to the Hebrews was, according to all probability, anterior to the year 70, inasmuch as the Levitical service of the Temple is represented in it as being regularly, and without interruption, continued. On the other hand, at xiii. 7, and even at v. 12, there would appear an allusion to the death of the apostles,—of James, the brother of the Lord, for example; at xiii. 13, there seems to be recorded a deliverance to Timothy posterior to the death of Paul; at x. 32, and suivi, and probably at xiii. 7 there is, I think, a distinct mention of the persecutions of Nero in the year 64. It is probable that the passage xiii. 7, and following, contains an allusion to the commencements of the revolt of Judea (year 66), and a foreboding of the misfortunes which are to follow; this passage implies, moreover, that the year 40, after the death of Christ, had not passed, and that this term was drawing near. Everything, therefore, combines to support the hypothesis that the compiling of the Epistle to the Hebrews took place between the years 65 and 70, probably in the year 66. After having discussed the authenticity, it remains now for us to discuss the integrity of the epistles of Paul. The authentic epistles have never been interpolated. The style of the Apostle was so individual, and so original, that every addition would drop off from the body of the text by reason of its own inertness. In the labour of publication which took place when the epistles were collected, there were, nevertheless, some operations, the import of which must be taken into account. The principle upon which the compilers proceeded appears to have been; 1st, to add nothing to the text; 2d, to reject nothing which they believed to have been dictated or written by the Apostle; 3d, to avoid repetitions which could not fail, especially in the circular letters, but contain identical statements. In like manner, the compilers would appear to have followed a system of patching up, or of intercalating, the aim of which seems to have been to save some portions which would otherwise have been lost. Thus the passage (2 Cor. vi. 14; viii. 1) forms a small paragraph which breaks so

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singularly the sequence of the epistle, and which disposes one to believe that it has been clumsily pieced in there. The last chapters of the Epistle to the Romans presents facts much more striking, and which will require to be discussed with minuteness; for many portions of the biography of Paul depend upon the system which is adopted in regard to these chapters. In reading the Epistle to the Romans, after quitting chap. xii., we experience some astonishment. Paul appears to have departed from his habitual maxim, “Mind your own business.” It is strange that he gives imperative counsels to a Church he has not founded, and which resembles so closely the impertinence of those who seek to build upon foundations established by others. At to the close of chap. xiv., some peculiarities still more capricious make their appearance. Several manuscripts—que suit Gresbach—according to St John Chrysostom, Theodoretus, Theophylactus, Œcumenius, fix on that place as the finale of chap. xvi. (verses 25-27). The Codex Alexandrinus, and some others, repeat twice this finale—once at the end of chap. xiv., and once more at the end of chap. xvi. Verses 1-13 of chap. xv. excite anew our surprise. These verses repeat and take up tacitly again what has preceded. It is hardly to be supposed that they would be found in the same letter as the one which precedes. Paul repeats himself frequently in the course of the same disquisition; but he never returns to a disquisition in order to repeat and to enfeeble it. It must also be added that verses 1-13 appear to be addressed to Judæo-Christians. St Paul therein makes concessions to the Jews. How singular it is that, in verse 8, Christ is called δάχουος Περιτογης? We might say that we have here a resumé of chapters xii., xiii., xiv., for the use of Judæo-Christian readers, which Paul has seized on, to prove by texts that the adoption of the Gentiles did not exclude the privilege of Israel, and that Christ had fulfilled the ancient promises. The portion, xv. 14-33, is evidently addressed to the Church of Rome, and to this Church only. Paul expressed himself there without reserve, was proper in writing to a Church which he had not seen, and the majority of which, being Judæo-Christians, was not directly under his jurisdiction. In chapters xii., xiii., xiv., the tone of the letter is firmer; the Apostle speaks there with mild authority; he makes use of the verb Παραχαλῶ, a verb, no doubt, of a very mitigated nature, but which is always the word he employs when he speaks to his disciples. Verse 33 makes a perfect termination to the Epistle to the Romans, according to Paul’s method of making terminations. Verses 1 and 2 of chapter xvi. might also be admitted as a postscript to the Epistle to the Romans; but what follows verse 3 creates veritable difficulties. Paul, as though he had not closed his letter with the word Amen, undertakes to salute twenty-six persons, not to speak of five churches or groups. In the first place, he never thus puts salutations after the benediction and the Amen as the finale. Besides, the salutations here are not the common salutations that one would employ in addressing people one has not seen. Paul had evidently had the most intimate relations with the persons he salutes. Each of these persons has his or her special characteristics; these have laboured with him; those have been imprisoned with him; another has been a mother to him (doubtless in caring for him when he was sick); he knows at what date each has been converted; 24


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all are his friends, his fellow-workers, his dearly beloved. It is not natural that he should have so many ties with a Church in which he had never been, one that does not belong to his school, with a Church Judæo-Christian which his principles forbade him labouring for. Not only does he know by their names all the Christians in the Church to which he is addressing himself, but he knows also the masters of those who are slaves, Aristobulus, Narcissus. Why does he designate with so much assurance these two houses, if they are at Rome, a place he has never seen? Writing to the Churches which he has founded, Paul salutes two or three persons. Why does he salute so considerable a number of brothers and sisters of a Church which he has never visited? If we study in detail the persons he salutes, we shall discover still more evidence that this page of salutations was never addressed to the Church at Rome. Amongst them we find no persons that we know who formed part of the Church at Rome, and we find amongst them many persons who assuredly never belonged to it. In the first line we encounter Aquila and Priscilla. It is universally admitted that only a few months elapsed between the compilation of the first chapter of the Corinthians and the compilation of the Epistle to the Romans. Now, when Paul wrote the first chapter to the Corinthians, Aquila and Priscilla were at Ephesus. In the interval, that apostolic couple were able, it is said, to set out for Rome. This is very singular. Aquila and Priscilla were of the party which was at first driven from Rome by an edict; we find them afterwards at Corinth, then at Ephesus; they return to Rome without their sentence of expulsion having been revoked, on the morrow of the day when Paul had just said adieu to them at Ephesus. This is to attribute to them a life much too nomadic; it is the accumulation of improbabilities. Let as add, that the author of the second apocryphal epistle of Paul to Timothy supposes Aquila and Priscilla to be at Ephesus, which proves that tradition has located them there. The little Roman martyrology (the source of posterior compilations) has a memorandum, of date the 8th July—“in Asia Minori, Aquilæ et Priscillæ uxoris ejus.” This is not all. At v. 5, Paul salutes Epenetus, “the first-born of Asia in Christ.” What! the whole Church of Ephesus has gone to Rome to take up its abode! The list of names which follows, applies equally as well to Ephesus as to Rome. Doubtless the first Church at Rome was principally Greek by language. Amongst the world of slaves and freedmen from which Christianity was recruited, the Greek names even at Rome were ordinary ones. Nevertheless, in examining the Jewish inscriptions at Rome, P. Garrucci has found that the number of proper Latin names doubled that of Greek names. Now here, of twenty-four names, there were sixteen Greek, seven Latin, one Hebrew, so that the number of Greek names is more than double that of Latin names. The names of the chiefs of the houses of Aristobulus and Narcissus are Greek also. The verses, Romans xiv. 3-16, were therefore not addressed to the Church at Rome; they were addressed to the Church at Ephesus. The verses 17-20 could not have been addressed to the Romans either. St Paul there makes use of the word, which is habitual to him, when he gives an order to his

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disciples (παραχαλῶ); he expresses himself with extreme acerbity in regard to the divisions sown by his adversaries; we see that he is there en famille; he knows the condition of the Church to which he addresses himself; he is delighted with the good reputation of this Church; he rejoices over her as a master would over his pupils (ἐφ᾽υμῖν καὶρω). These verses have no meaning, if we suppose them addressed by the Apostle to a church which must have been strange to him. Each sentence proves that he had preached to those to whom he wrote, and that they were solicited by his enemies. These verses could only have been addressed to the Corinthians or to the Ephesians. The epistle, at the end of which they were found, was written from Corinth; these verses, which constitute the close of a letter, had, therefore, been addressed to Ephesus. Seeing that we have shown that the verses 3-16 were likewise addressed to the faithful at Ephesus, we obtain than a long fragment (xvi. 3-20), which most have formed part of a letter to the Ephesians. Hence it becomes more natural to connect with these verses, 3-20, verses 1, 2 of the same chapter—verses which might be considered as a postscript after the Amen, except that it is better to attach them to that which follows. The journey of Phoebe becomes thus more probable. Finally, the somewhat imperative commands of xvi. 2, and the motive with which Paul applied them, are better understood when addressed to the Ephesians, who were under so many obligations to the Apostle, than to the Romans, who were not indebted to him for anything. The verses 21-24 of chapter xiv. could not, any more than that which precedes, have made a part of the Epistle to the Romana. Why should all these people, who had never been to Rome, who had never known the faithful at Rome, salute the latter? What could these unknown person say to the Church of Rome? It is important to remark that all the names are those of Macedonians or people who could have become acquainted with the Churches of Macedonia. Verse 24 is the close of a letter. The verses (xvi.) 21-24 can then be made the close of a letter addressed to the Thessalonians. The verses 25-27 give on a new finale, which contains nothing topical, and which, as we have already said, is found in several manuscripts at the end of chapter xiv. In other manuscripts, particularly in the Bœrnerianus and the Augiensis (the Greek part), this termination is wanting. Assuredly that portion did not constitute a part of the Epistle to the Romans, which terminates with verse (xv.) 33, nor of the Epistle to the Ephesians, which terminates with verse (xvi.) 20, nor of the Epistle to the Churches of Macedonia, which finishes with the verse (xvi.) 24. We arrive, then, at the curious result that the epistle closes four times, and in the Codex Alexandrinus five times. This is absolutely contrary to the practice of Paul, and even to good sense. Here, then, is a difficulty proceeding from some peculiar accident. Must we, with Marcion and with Baur, declare the two last chapters of the Epistle to the Romans to be apocryphal? We are surprised that a critic so acute as Baur should be contented with a solution so crude. Why should a forger invent such insignificant details? Why should he add to a sacred work a list of proper names? In the first and second centuries

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the authors of apocrypha had almost all some dogmatic motive; apostolic writings were interpolated either with a view to some doctrine, or to establish some form of discipline. We believe we are able to propose a theory more satisfactory than that of Baur. In our view, the epistle addrexsed to the Romans was (1) not addressed entirely to the Romans, and (2) was not addressed to the Romans only. St Paul, advancing in his career, had acquired a taste for encyclical epistles, designed to be read in several churches. We presume that the intention of the Epistle to the Romans was an encyclical of this kind. St Paul, when he had reached his full maturity, addressed it to the most important churches, at least to three of them, and, as an exception, addressed it also to the Church of Rome. The four endings falling at verses, xv. 33, xvi. 40, xvi. 24, xvi. 27, are the endings of different copies despatched. When the epistles came to be published, the copy addressed to the Church of Rome was taken as a basis; but in order not to lose anything, there was annexed to the text thus constituted the various parts, and notably the different endings of the copies which were set aside. In this way many of the peculiarities are explained:—(1) The double use made of the passage xv. 1-13, with the chapters xii., xiii., xiv., chapters which, being appropriate only to the Churches founded by the Apostle, are not to be found in the copy sent to the Romans, whilst the passage xv. 1-13, not being appropriate to the disciples of Paul, but, on the other hand, perfectly adapted to the Romans; (2) Certain features of the epistle which were only partially adapted to the faithful of Rome, and which went even the length of indiscretion, if they had been addressed only to the latter; (3) The hesitation of the best critics on the question in distinguishing whether the epistle was addressed to the Pagan converts or to the Judæo-Christiana, a hesitation quite simple by our hypothesis, since the principal parts of the epistle had been composed for the simultaneous use of several churches; (4) What surprises is, that Paul should compose a letter so singularly important for a Church with which he was not acquainted, and in respect of which his title could be contested; (5) In a word, the capricious peculiarities of the chapters xv. and xvi., these nonsensical salutations, these four endings, three of which are certainly not to be found in the copy sent to Rome. We shall see, in the course of the present volume, how far this hypothesis is in accord with all the other necessities of the life of St Paul. We must not omit the testimony of an important manuscript. The Codex Bœrnerianus omits the name of Rome in the verses 7 and 15 of the first chapter. We must not say that the omission is there made in view of its being read in the churches; the Bœrnerian manuscript, the work of the philologers of St Gall, about the year 900, proposed to itself a purely exegetic aim, and was copied in a very old manuscript. I regret that I have not been able to find room in the present book to give an account of the last days of the life of St Paul: to have done that, it would have been necessary to largely increase the size of this volume. Moreover, the Third Book would have thus lost somewhat of the historical solidity which characterises it. After the arrival of Paul at Rome, in fact, we cease to tread on the

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ground of incontestable data; we begin to grope in the obscurity of legends and of apocryphal documents. The next volume (fourth volume of the beginnings of Christianity) will contain the end of the life of Paul, the occurrences in Judea, the arrival of Peter at Rome, the persecutions of Nero, the death of the apostles, the apocalypse, the taking of Jerusalem, the compilation of synoptic gospels. Then, a fifth and last volume will comprise the compilation of writings more ancient than the New Testament, the interior movements of the Church of Asia Minor, the progress of the hierarchy and of discipline, the birth of the gnostic sects, the definitive constitution of a dogmatic orthodoxy and of the episcopate. When once the last book of the New Testament has been reduced to writing, when once the authority of the Church constituted and armed with a sort of touchstone to discern truth from error, when once the small democratic confraternities of the early apostolic age have abdicated their power into the hands of the bishop, then is Christianity complete. The infant will grow still, but he will have all his members; he will no longer be an embryo: he will acquire no more essential organs. At the same time, however, the last bonds which attached the Christian Church to its mother, the Jewish synagogue, has been snapped; the Church exists as an independent being; she has nothing left for her mother but aversion. The History of the Origins of Christianity ends at this moment. I trust that I shall be spared for five years to finish this work, to which I have wished to devote the most mature years of my life. It will cost me many sacrifices, especially in excluding me from the instruction of the College of France, a second aim I had proposed to myself. But one must not be too exacting; perhaps he to whom, of two designs, it has been given to realise one, ought not to rail against fate, the rather if he has understood these designs as DUTIES.

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CHAPTER I. FIRST JOURNEY OF PAUL—THE CYPRUS MISSION. JOURNEYING from Antioch, Paul and Barnabas, accompanied by John-Mark, reached Seleucia. The distance from Antioch to the latter city is a short day’s journey. The route follows at a distance the right bank of the Orontes, winding its way over the outermost slopes of the mountains of Pieria, and crossing by fords the numerous streams which descend from the heights. On all sides there are copses of myrtles, arbutus, laurels, green oaks; while prosperous villages are perched upon the sharply-cut ridges of the mountains. To the left, the plain of Orontes unfolds to view its splendid cultivation. On the south, the wooded summits of the mountains of Daphne bound the horizon. We are now beyond the borders of Syria. We stand on soil classical, smiling, fertile, and civilised. Each name recalls the powerful Greek colony which gave to these regions so high a historical importance, and which established there a centre of opposition that sometimes assumed a violent form against the Semitic genius.

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Seleucia was the port of Antioch, and the chief northern outlet of Syria towards the west. The city was situated partly in the plain and partly on the abrupt heights, facing the angle made by the deposits of the Orontes at the foot of the Coryphas, about a league and a half to the north of the mouth of the river. It was here that the hordes of depraved beings, creatures of a rotten secularism, embarked every year to invade Rome and to infect it. The dominant religion was that of Mount Casius—a beautiful, regularly-formed summit, situated on the other side of the Orontes, and with which was associated various legends. The coast is inhospitable and tempestuous. The wind descending from the mountain tops, gives the waves a back stroke, and produces almost always a deep ground swell. An artificial basin, communicating with the sea by a narrow channel, shelters ships from the recurring shocks of the waves. The quays, the mole formed of enormous blocks are still standing and waiting in silence the not far distant day when Seleucia shall again become what she was formerly—one of the grandest termini in the globe. Paul, in saluting for the last time with his band the brethren assembled on the dark sands of the beach, had in front of him the beautiful section of the circle formed by the coast at the mouth of the Orontes; to the right, the symmetrical cone of the Casius, from which was to ascend three hundred years later the smoke of the last Pagan sacrifice; to the left, the rugged steeps of Mount Coryphas; behind him, in the clouds, the snows of Taurus, and the coast of Cilicia, which forms the Gulf of Issus. The hour was a solemn one. Although Christianity had for several years extended beyond the country which was its cradle, it had not yet reached the confines of Syria. The Jews, however, considered the whole of Syria, as far as Amanus, as forming part of the Holy Land, and sharing its prerogatives, its rights and duties. This, then, was the moment when Christianity really quitted its native soil, and launched forth into the vast world.

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Paul had already travelled much in order to spread the name of Jesus. He had been for seven years a Christian, and not for a single day had his ardent conviction been lulled to rest. His departure from Antioch with Barnabas, marked, however, a decisive change in his career. He began then that Apostolic life, in which he displayed unexampled activity, and an unheard-of degree of ardour and of passion. Travelling was then very difficult, when it was not done by sea; for carriage roads and vehicles hardly existed. This is why the propagation of Christianity made its way along the banks of the large rivers. Pozzuoli and Lyons were Christianised when a multitude of towns in the vicinity of the cradle of Christianity had not heard tell of Jesus. Paul, it seems, journeyed almost always on foot existing doubtless on bread, vegetables, and milk. What a life of privations and of trials is that of a wandering devotee! The police were negligent or brutal. Seven times was Paul put in chains. Hence, he preferred, when practicable, to travel by water. Certainly, when it is calm, these seas are delightful; but they have also suddenly their foolish caprices; the ship may run aground in the sand, and all that one can do is to seize on a plank. There were perils everywhere. “In labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in death oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep. In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils on the sea, in perils among false brethren. In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness: I have known all” (2 Cor. xi. 23-27). The Apostle wrote that in the year 56, when his trials were far from being at an end. For nearly ten years longer he must lead that existence, which death alone could worthily crown. In almost all his journeys Paul had companions; but he systematically refused the assistance from which the other Apostles, Peter, in particular, drew much consolation and succour—I mean, a companion in his Apostolic ministry, and in his labours. His aversion to marriage proceeded from a feeling of delicacy. He did not wish to burden the Church with the support of two persons. Barnabas followed the same rule. Paul reverted often to that fact—he cost the Churches nothing. He deemed it perfectly just that the Apostle should live upon the community,—that the catechist should share everything in common with the catechumen; but he was sensitive on the point; he had no desire to make capital out of that which was legitimate. His constant practice, with one single exception, was to earn his subsistence by his own labour. With Paul this was a question of morals and of good example; for one of his maxims was: “That if any one would not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thess. iii. 10-12). He added to it likewise a naïve sentiment of personal economy, fearing that people might reproach him with what he cost, and exaggerated his scruples, in order to anticipate murmurs; for people had come to be very circumspect in regard to questions of money, because of having to live among those who thought much of it. In every place where Paul took up his abode, he settled down and returned to his trade of tent-making. His exterior life resembled that of an artisan who makes a tour of Europe, and scatters about him the ideas with which he is permeated. 30


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Such a mode of life, which has become impossible in our modern society for any but a working man, was easy in societies in which either religious confraternities or commercial aristocracies constituted a species of freemasonry. The life of Arab travellers—d’Ibn-Batoutah, for example—greatly resembled that which must have been led by St Paul. They wandered from one end of the Mahometan world to the other, halting in every large town, engaging there in the avocation of judge or physician, getting married, finding everywhere a hearty welcome, and the chance of employment. Benjamin de Tudela, and the other Jewish travellers of the Middle Ages, led a similar life, going from Jewry to Jewry, and entering at once upon terms of intimacy with their hosts. These Jewries were distinct quarters, enclosed often by a gate, having a religious chief, who had an extended jurisdiction. In the centre there was a common court, and a place ordinarily used for meetings and for prayers. The relations which exist amongst the Jews in our own day, present still something of the same character. In every place where Jewish life is established and well-organised, the journeys of Israelites, who bear with them letters of recommendation, are made from ghetto to ghetto. That which takes place at Trieste, at Constantinople, at Smyrna, is, in this respect, the exact picture of that which took place in the time of St Paul at Ephesus, at Thessalonica, and Rome. The new-comer who presents himself on Sabbath at the synagogue, is remarked, surrounded, and questioned. He is asked where he hails from, who his father is, and what news he brings. In almost all Asia, and in a part of Africa, the Jews have thus exceptional facilities for travelling,—thanks to the species of secret society which they form, and to the neutrality they observe in the intestine quarrels of the different countries. Benjamin de Tudela travelled over the whole world without having seen any other thing save Jews; Ibn-Batoutah without having seen any one except Mahometans. These little coteries constituted excellent mediums for the propagation of doctrines. Each knew his neighbour well, each closely watched the other; nothing could be further removed from the vulgar freedom of our modern societies, in which men come in contact with each other so little. The divisions of parties in a city were always made according to religion, when politics was not the paramount consideration. A religious question falling into one of these faithful Israelitish communities, set everything on fire, and settled schisms and strifes. Most frequently a religious question was but a firebrand which was eagerly laid hold of by reason of previous hatreds—a pretext which was seized upon for reckoning up and denouncing one another. The establishment of Christianity was not discussed outside the synagogues, with which latter the coasts of the Mediterranean were already covered, when Paul and the other Apostles set out upon their missions. These synagogues had ordinarily little to distinguish them; they were like the other houses, forming with the quarter of which they were the centre and link a small vicus (village) or aingiport (small alley). One thing distinguished these quarters; this was the absence of ornaments of sculpture vivant, which necessitated recourse for decoration to expedients, crude, pronounced, and false. But that which more than anything else designated the Jewish quarter to new-comers disembarking at the port of Seleucia or Cæsarea, was the type of race—young women decked in 31


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gaudy colours, white, red and green, without medium tints; matrons with pleasing figures, rosy cheeks, slightly embonpoint, with kindly, maternal eyes. Having landed, and received a warm welcome, the Apostles awaited the Sabbath. They then betook themselves to the synagogue. It was a custom, when a stranger appeared intelligent or eager to make himself know, to invite him to address to the people a few words of edification. The Apostle took advantage of this custom, and expounded the Christian thesis. Jesus had proceeded precisely in the same manner. Astonishment was at first the general feeling. Opposition did not manifest itself until a little later, not until some conversions had taken place. Then the elders of the synagogues resorted to violence; forthwith they ordered to be applied to the Apostle the cruel and shameful chastisements which were inflicted on heretics; on other occasions they made an appeal to the authorities to have the innovator either expelled or beaten. The Apostle did not preach to the Gentiles until after he had preached to the Jews. The converts from Paganism were in general the least numerous, and yet they almost all were recruited from the classes of the population which were already in contact with Judaism, and had been brought to embrace it. This proselytism, as we see,. was confined to the towns. The first apostles of Christianity did not preach in country places. The countryman (paganus) was the last to embrace Christianity. The local patois, which the Greek had not been able to root out in the country districts, was in part the cause of this. To tell the truth, the peasant living outside the towns, was quite a rare thing in the country, at the time when Christianity first began to spread. The organisation of that Apostolic religion, consisting of assemblies (ecclesia), was essentially urban. Islamism, in like manner, is also par excellence a religion of the town. It is not complete without its grand mosques, its schools, its ulemas (doctors), its muezzins (the callers to prayers).

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The gaiety, the sprightliness of heart, which these evangelical odysseys breathed, were something new, original, and charming. The Acts of the Apostles, the expression of that first transport of the Christian conscience, is a book of gladness, of serene fervency. Since the Homeric poems, no work so full of such genuine sensation had appeared. A morning breeze, an odour of the sea—if I may be permitted to say so—inspiring a sort of cheerfulness and force, permeates the whole book, and made it an excellent compagnon de voyage, an exquisite breviary for him who followed the ancient landmarks along the Southern seas. It was the second poem of Christianity. The lake of Tiberias and its fishing barques had furnished the first. Now, a current more powerful, aspirations towards lands more distant, allure us on to the high seas. The first point at which the three missionaries touched, was the island of Cyprus, an ancient, mixed settlement where the Grecian race and the Phœnician race, planted at first side by side, had ended by nearly exterminating one another. It was the native country of Barnabas, and that circumstance doubtless had much to do in determining the direction in which the mission should make its first advance. Cyprus had already received the seeds of the Christian faith; in any case, the new religion embraced several Cypriotes in its fold. The number of Jewries there was

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considerable. It should, however, be remembered that the whole circle of Seleucia, Tarsus, and Cyprus was by no means extensive; and the small group of Jews scattered over those points, represented nearly what would be the parent families established at St Brieuc, Saint-Malo, and Jersey. Paul and Barnabas, then, set out for the countries with which they were already more or less familiar.

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The Apostolic band disembarked at the ancient port of Salamis. They traversed the whole island from east to west, inclining towards the south, and probably following the sea coast. It was the most Phœnician portion of the island, containing the towns of Citium, Amathontus, and Paphos, old Semitic centres whose original customs had not yet been effaced. Paul and Barnabas preached in the synagogues of the Jews. Only a single incident of the journey has been left on record. It occurred at Neo Paphos, a modern town, which had been built at some distance from the ancient town, so celebrated for the worship of Venue (Palæpaphos). Neo Paphos was at that time, as it would seem, the residence of the Roman pro-consul who governed the island of Cyprus. This pro-consul was Sergius Paulus, a man of illustrious birth, who, it appears (although it occurred often with the Romans), permitted himself to be amused with enchantments, and the superstitious beliefs of the country in which chance had placed him. He had near him a Jew named Bar-jesus, who passed himself off for a magician, and gave himself a title which is translated as elim, or “sage.” He produced there, it is said, scenes analogous to those which took place at Sebaste between the Apostles and Simon the magician. Bar-jesus raised a bitter opposition against Paul and Barnabas. Later tradition asserts that the occasion of this feud was the conversion of the pro-consul. It is related that in a public discussion, Paul, in order to silence his adversary, was obliged to strike him with temporary blindness, and that the pro-consul, moved by that great wonder, was converted. The conversion of a Roman of that order at this epoch is a thing absolutely inadmissible. Paul, doubtless, took for faith the manifestations of interest which Sergius evinced towards him; mayhap even he mistook irony for favour. The Orientals do not understand irony. Their maxim, moreover, is that he who is not for them is against them. The curiosity exhibited by Sergius Paulus was in the eyes of the missionaries regarded as a favourable disposition. Like many other Romans, Paulus might be very credulous. Probably the sorceries to which Paul and Barnabas had more than once recourse, but which we are unfortunately precluded from believing, appeared to him very striking and more wonderful than those of Bar-jesus. But, from a feeling of astonishment to conversion, is a long step. The legend appears to attribute to Paulus Sergius the reasonings of a Jew or of a Syrian. The Jew and the Syrian regard the miracle as the proof of a doctrine preached by the Thaumaturgus. The Roman, if he was enlightened, regarded the miracle as a trick by which he could amuse himself, and, if he was credulous and ignorant, as one of those things which happened now and then. But the miracle to him was no proof of doctrine. Absolutely destitute of theological sentiment, the Romans could not imagine that a dogma could be the aim that a god proposed to himself in working a miracle. The miracle was to them either a fantastical, although natural, thing (the idea of the laws of nature was foreign to them, unless they had studied the Grecian philosophy), or an act revealing 33


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to them the immediate presence of divinity. If Sergius Paulus had actually believed in the miracles of Paul, the reasoning that he would have employed would have been: “This man is very powerful: he is perhaps a god;” and not, “The doctrine which this man preaches is the truth.” In any case, if the conversion of Sergius Paulus rested upon motives so flimsy, we believe we are doing an honour to Christianity in not calling it a conversion, and in striking off Sergius Paulus from the number of the Christians.

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What is probable is that he had for the mission a benevolent regard; hence the mission retained for him the remembrance of a wise and good man. The supposition of Saint Jerome, according to whom Saul should have taken from Sergius Paulus his name of Paul, is but mere conjecture: we must not say, however, that that conjecture is improbable. It was from this moment that the author of the Acts constantly substituted the name of Paul for that of Saul. Perhaps the Apostle adopted Sergius Paulus as his patron, and took his name in token of clientship. It is possible, too, that Paul, following the example of a great many Jews, had two names—the one Hebrew, the other obtained by vulgarly Grecianising or Latinising the first (in like manner as the Josephs called themselves Hegesippus, etc.)—and that it was only at the moment when he entered into more intimate and more direct relations with the Pagan world, that he began to bear the single name of Paul. We do not know how long this Cyprus mission lasted. The mission possessed, evidently, no great importance, inasmuch as Paul never speaks of it in his epistles; and as he never dreamt of seeing again the churches that he had founded in the island, probably he regarded the latter as belonging to Barnabas more than to himself. The first essay of apostolic journeying, in any case, was decisive in the career of Paul. From that time he assumed the tone of master: till then he had been as a subordinate of Barnabas. The latter had been longer in the Church: he had been his introducer and his guarantor; people were more certain of Barnabas. In the course of this mission the rôles were exchanged. The talent of Paul for preaching necessitated that the office of speaking should devolve almost entirely on him. Henceforward, Barnabas was no more than a companion of Paul,—one of his suite. With admirable self-abnegation, that truly holy man lent himself to everything, and left everything to his intrepid friend, whose superiority he recognised. Not so with John-Mark. Disagreements, which soon ended in a rupture, broke out between him and Paul. We do not know the cause of them. Probably the teachings of Paul as to the relations of the Jews and the Gentiles shocked the Jerusalemitish prejudices of John, and appeared to him in contradiction with the ideas of Peter, his master. Perhaps, also, that ever-increasing self-sufficiency of Paul was insupportable to those who each day saw it become more pervading and more imperious. Nevertheless, it is not probable that Paul, from this time, either took, or allowed himself to be given, the title of Apostle. Up till now, that title had only been borne by the Twelve of Jerusalem; it was not considered as transferable; it was believed that Jesus alone had the power to bestow it. Perhaps Paul had already often said to himself that he also had received it directly from Jesus, in his vision on the road to Damascus; but he had not yet openly arrogated to himself so lofty a

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pretension. It required the grossest provocations of his enemies to constrain him to an act which at first he would have regarded as one of temerity.

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CHAPTER II. CONTINUATION OF THE FIRST JOURNEY OF PAUL—THE GALATIAN MISSION.

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THE mission, satisfied with what it had accomplished at Cyprus, resolved to attack the neighbouring coast of Asia Minor. Alone amongst the provinces of that country, Cilicia had heard the new gospel, and possessed churches. The geographical region that we call Asia Minor was by no means united. It was composed of peoples greatly diverse both as regards race and social status. The western part and the entire coast were embraced, from a remote antiquity, in the great vortex of that common civilisation of which the Mediterranean was the centre. Since the decadence of Greece, and of the Ptolemaic Egypt, these countries were held to be the countries the most lettered that then existed, or, at least, countries which produced the greatest number of men distinguished in literature. The province of Asia, notably the ancient kingdom of Pergamus, was, as is said to-day, at the head of progress. But the centre of the peninsula had been partly civilised. Local life had continued there as in the times of antiquity. Many of the indigenous languages had not yet disappeared. The state of public opinion was very backward. To speak the truth, the whole of these provinces had but one common characteristic, and that was boundless credulity and an extreme penchant for superstition. The ancient religions, under their Hellenic and Roman transformation, retained many of the features of their primitive form. Several of those religions still enjoyed great popularity, and possessed a certain superiority over the Greco-Roman worships. No other country has produced so many theurgists and theosophists. Apollonius of Tyana was preparing there, at the period at which we are now arrived, his strange fate. Alexander of Aboniticus and Peregrinus Proteus began soon to seduce the provinces; the one by his miracles, his prophecies, and his great demonstrations of piety, the other by his legerdemain. Artemidorus of Ephesus and Ælius Aristides presented the strange spectacle of men combining sincere and truly religious sentiments with ridiculous superstitions and the ideas of charlatans. In no part of the empire was the pious reaction which was brought about at the end of the first century in favour of the ancient religions, and opposed to positive philosophy, more pronounced. Asia Minor was, next to Palestine, the most religious country in the world. Entire regions, such as Phrygia, cities such as Tyana, Venasium, Comana, Cæsarea in Cappadocia, Nazianzus, were equally wedded to mysticisms. In many places the priests were still all but sovereigns. As for the life politic, there was not even a trace of it. All the towns, as if in emulation, were striving to outdo each other in their immoderate adulation of the Cæsars, and of the Roman functionaries. The appellation of “friend of Cæsar” was prized. The cities were disputing with childish vanity the pompous titles of “metropole,” of “very-illustrious,” conferred by imperial rescripts. The country had submitted to the Romans without a violent conquest, at least without national resistance. History does not mention a single serious political rising. Brigandage and anarchy, which for a long time had erected in Taurus, Isauria, Pisidia impregnable strongholds, had 36


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come to an end by yielding to the power of the Romans and their allies. Civilisation had spread with surprising rapidity. The traces of the beneficent actions of Claudius, and of the gratitude of the population towards him, despite certain tumultuous agitations, were encountered at every turn. It was not as in Palestine, where the ancient institutions and manners offered a furious resistance. If we except Isauria, Pisidia, the parts of Cilicia which still retained a shade of independence, and up to a certain point in Galatia, the country had lost all national sentiment. It had never had a dynasty proper. The old provincial individualism of Phrygia, Lydia, and Caria had been dead for a long time as political units. The artificial kingdoms of Perigamus, of Bithynia and of Pontus were likewise dead. The whole peninsula had gladly accepted the Roman domination.

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We might add with thankfulness; for never, in fact, had domination been legitimatised by so many benefits. “Providence Augustus” was, in good truth, the tutelary genius of the country. The cult of the Emperor, that of Augustus in particular, and of Livia, were the dominant religions of Asia Minor. The temples to those terrestrial gods, always associated with the divinity of Rome, were multiplied everywhere. The priests of Augustus, grouped by provinces, under archbishops (ἀρχιερεῖς, a sort of metropolitans or primates), succeeded later in forming a clergy analogous to that which became, beginning with Constantine, the Christian clergy. The political Testament of Augustus had become a kind of sacred text, a public teaching as of beautiful monuments, which were entrusted with making offerings on behalf of all, and of perpetuating them. The cities and the tribes were rivals for the epithets which attested the recollection that they preserved of the great Emperor. Ancient Nino di Caria argued with his old Assyrian religion of Mylitta, in order to establish his connection with Cæsar, son of Venus. In all this there was servility and baseness; but over and above, there was the sentiment of a new era—a happiness which they had not up till now enjoyed, and which, in fact, endured unchanged for centuries afterwards. A man who probably assisted at the conquest of his country, Denis of Halicarnassus, wrote a Roman history, to demonstrate to his countrymen the excellencies of the Roman people, to prove to them that that people was of the same race as themselves, and that its glory formed a part of theirs. After Egypt and Cyrenica, Asia Minor was the country in which there were most Jews. There they formed powerful communities, jealous of their rights, easily alarmed by persecution, having the vexatious habit of always complaining of the Roman authority, and of fleeing for protection outside the city They had succeeded in making themselves important toll-gatherers, and were in reality privileged, as compared with other classes of the population. Not only, in fact, was their religion free, but many of the ordinary imposts, which they pretended they could not pay conscientiously, were not exacted from them. The Romans were very favourable to them in these provinces, and almost always took their part in the conflicts which they had with the inhabitants of the country. Embarking at Neo Paphos, the three missionaries sailed towards the mouth of the Cestrus in Pamphylia, and, ascending the river for a distance of from two to three leagues, arrived at the

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eminence of Perga, a great and flourishing town, the centre of an ancient worship of Diana, almost as much renowned as that of Ephesus. This religion had a great resemblance to that of Paphos, and it is not impossible that the relations of the two towns, establishing between them a line of ordinary navigation, may have determined the sojourn of the Apostles. In general, the two parallel coasts of Cyprus and Asia Minor seemed to correspond the one to the other. These were the two divisions of the Semitic populations, mixed with divers elements, and which had lost much of their primitive character.

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It was at Perga that the rupture between Paul and John-Mark was consummated. John-Mark left the mission and returned to Jerusalem. This incident was doubtless painful to Barnabas, for John-Mark was his relative. But Barnabas, accustomed to submit to everything on the part of his imperious companion, did not abandon the grand design of penetrating into the heart of Asia Minor. The two Apostles plunged into the interior, and travelling always to the north, between the basins of Cestrus and of Eurymedon, traversed Pamphylia, Pisidia, and pressed on as far as mountainous Phrygia. It must have been a difficult and perilous journey. That labyrinth of rugged mountains was guarded by a barbarous population, habituated to brigandage, and whom the Romans had with difficulty subdued. Paul, accustomed to the aspect of Syria, must have been surprised at the romantic and picturesque Alpestrine regions, with their lakes, their deep valleys, which may be compared to the environs of Lake Maggiore and of Tessin. At first one is astonished at the singular route of the Apostles—a route which shunned the large centres of population and the routes the most frequented. There is, moreover, little doubt that they followed in the tracks of the Jewish emigration. Pisidia and Lycaonia had towns, such as Antioch in Pisidia, and Iconium, in which great colonies of Jews had established themselves. There the Jews made many conversions; far away from Jerusalem, and freed from the influence of Palestine fanaticism, they lived on good terms with the Pagans. The latter came to the synagogue; and mixed marriages were not infrequent. Paul had been able to learn from Tarsus what advantageous conditions the new faith would find here, in order to establish itself and to fructify. Derbe and Lystra are not very far from Tarsus. The family of Paul might have had some relations, or, at all events, have been well known in these scattered cantons. Departing from Perga, the two Apostles, after a journey of about forty leagues, arrived at Antioch in Pisidia or Antioch-Cæsarea, in the very heart of the high plateaux of the peninsula. This Antioch had continued to be a town of mediocre importance until it was raised by Augustus to the rank of a Roman colony, with Italian jurisdiction. It then became very important, and changed in part its character. Till now it had been a town of priests, similar, it would seem, to Comana. The temple which had rendered it famous, with its legions of temple slaves and its rich domains, was suppressed by the Romans (twenty-five years before Christ). But this grand religious establishment, as is always the case, left deep traces on the manners of the population. It was doubtless in the train of the Roman colony that the Jews had been drawn to Antioch in Pisidia.

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According to their custom, the two Apostles presented themselves at the synagogue on the Sabbath. After the reading of the Law and the prophets, the presidents, seeing two strangers who had the appearance of being pious, sent to them inquiring whether they had a few words of exhortation to address to the people. Paul spoke, and expounded the mystery of Jesus, his death and his resurrection. The impression made was marked, and they besought him to come the following Sabbath and continue his discourse to them. A great multitude of Jews and of proselytes followed them out of the synagogue, and during the whole week Paul and Barnabas did not cease to exercise an active ministry. The Pagan population were informed of this incident, and their curiosity was excited.

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The following Sabbath the whole city assembled at the synagogue; but the sentiments of the orthodox party had much changed. They repented of the tolerance they had shown the previous Sabbath; the eager multitude irritated the notables; a dispute accompanied with violence began. Paul and Barnabas bravely withstood the tempest; they were not permitted, however, to speak in the synagogue. They retired protesting. “It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you,” said he to the Jews; “but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles” (Acts xiii. 46). From that moment, in fact, Paul became more and more confirmed in the idea that his future was not for the Jews but for the Gentiles; that his ministry on new soil bore much better fruit; that God had specially singled him out to be the Apostle to the nations, and to spread the glad tidings to the ends of the earth. His great soul had the special characteristic of enlarging and expanding itself incessantly. The soul of Alexander is the only one I know that had that gift of perennial buoyancy, that indefinable capacity of wishing and of embracing. The disposition of the Pagan population was found to be excellent. Many were converted and were found at the first attempt to be perfect Christians. We shall see the same thing take place at Philippi, at Alexandria Troas, and in the Roman colonies in general. The attraction that a refined worship had for these good and religious peoples—an attraction which up till then had been manifested through conversions to Judaism—was evinced now through conversions to Christianity. Despite its foreign religion, and perhaps on account of a reaction against that religion, the population of Antioch, like that of Phrygia in general, had a sort of penchant in the direction of monotheism. The new religion, not exacting circumcision and not insisting upon certain paltry observances, was much better calculated than Judaism to attract the pious Pagans; thus, favour was quickly brought over to its side. These scattered provinces, lost amongst the mountains, little accustomed to authority, without historical celebrity and without any importance whatever, were excellent soils for the faith. A Church, somewhat numerous, was established. Antioch in Pisidia became a centre of propagandism whence the doctrine irradiated all around. The success of the new Gospel amongst the Pagans culminated in putting the Jews into a fury. A pious intrigue was formed against the missionaries. Several of the women of the highest class

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in the city had embraced Judaism; the orthodox Jews prevailed upon them to speak to their husbands, so as to obtain the expulsion of Paul and Barnabas. The two Apostles, in short, were banished from the city, and from the territory of Antioch in Pisidia, by a municipal decree. 20

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Following the apostolic usage, they shook the dust off their feet against the city. They then directed their steps towards Lycaonia, and reached, after a march of about five days across a fertile country, the city of Iconium. Lycaonia was, like Pisidia, an illiterate country, little known, and which had conserved its ancient customs. Patriotism had by no means died out there; manners were pure, and the minds of men, serious and honest. Iconium was a city of ancient religions and of old traditions—traditions which, in many points, approached even those of the Jews. The city, still very small, had just received, or was about to receive, from Claudius, when Paul arrived there, the title of Colony. A high Roman functionary, Lucius Pupius Præsens, procurator of Galatia, had been called the second founder of it, and the city hence changed its ancient name for that of Claudia or of Claudiconium. The Jews, doubtless because of that circumstance, were numerous there, and had gained over many partisans. Paul and Barnabas spoke in the synagogue: a Church was organised. The missionaries made Iconium a second centre of a very active apostleship, and dwelt there a long time. It was there that Paul, according to a very popular romance during the first half of the third century, must have conquered the most beautiful of all his disciples, the faithful and tender Theckla. But the story has no foundation to rest on. One asks oneself why, if it was by an arbitrary choice, the Asiatic priest, the author of the romance, selected for the scene of his narrative the city of Iconium. Even to-day the Greek women of that country are celebrated for their charms, and exhibit the phenomena of endemic hysteria, which the doctors attribute to the climate. Be that as it may, the success of the Apostles was very great. Many Jews were converted; but the Apostles made always more proselytes outside the synagogue, from amongst those sympathetic populations who were no longer satisfied with the old religions. The spotless morality of Paul charmed the good Lycaonians; their credulity, moreover, disposed them to receive with admiration that which they regarded as miracles, and the supernatural gifts of the Spirit. The tempest which had forced the preachers to quit Antioch in Pisidia, broke out afresh at Iconium. The orthodox Jews sought to stir up the Pagan population against the missionaries. The city became divided into two parties. There was a riot: people spoke of stoning the two Apostles. They took flight, and quitted the capital of Lycaonia. Iconium is situated near an intermittent lake, at the entrance of the great steppe which forms the centre of Asia Minor, and which has, even up till now, rebelled against all forms of civilisation. The route towards Galatia, properly speaking, and Cappadocia, was closed. Paul and Barnabas essayed to compass the foot of the arid mountains which form a semicircle round the plain on the south side. These mountains are none other than the northern back of the Taurus; but the central plain being raised considerably above the level of the sea, Taurus attains on that side only a moderate 40


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elevation. The country is cold and bleak; the soil, now swampy, now sandy, or cracked by the heat, is painfully dismal. Alone, the mass of the extinct volcano, called now Karadagh, stands like an island in the middle of that boundless sea.

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Two small, obscure towns, the position of which is uncertain, became then the theatre of the activity of the Apostles. These two small towns were called Lystra and Derbe. Dropped down in the valleys of the Karadagh, in the middle of poor people devoted to the raising of flocks, in the neighbourhood of the most notorious haunts of brigands that antiquity had known, these two towns stood entirely isolated. A civilised Roman felt himself there to be in the midst of savages. The people spoke Lycaonian. Few Jews were to be found there. Claudius, by the establishment of colonies in the inaccessible regions of Taurus, gave to these outlandish cantons more order and security than they had ever before had. Lystra was the first to be evangelised. A singular incident happened there. In the first days of the sojourn of the Apostles at that town, the rumour spread that Paul had performed a miraculous cure on a lame person. The credulous inhabitants, and the friends of the person on whom the miracle had been wrought, were thereupon seized with a singular idea. It was believed that the Apostles were two divinities who had taken human form in order to walk about among mortals. The belief in their descent from the gods was widely spread, especially in Asia Minor. The life of Apollonius of Tyana became soon to be regarded as the sojourn of a god upon earth. Tyana was not far from Derbe. As an ancient Phrygian tradition—consecrated by a temple, and annual feast and pretty recitations—made Zeus and Hermes to wander thus about in company, people applied to the Apostles the names of these two divine travellers. Barnabas, who was taller than Paul, was Zeus; Paul, who was the chief speaker, was Hermes. There was just outside the gate of the town a temple of Zeus. The priest, warned that a divine manifestation had taken place, and that his god had appeared in the town, took steps to make a sacrifice. The bulls had already been led out and garlands placed on the front of the temple, when Paul and Barnabas arrived on the scene, rending their clothes and protesting that they were but men. The Pagan races, as we have already said, attached to a miracle a totally different sense than did the Jews. To the latter, the miracle was a doctrinal argument; to the former, it was the immediate revelation of a god. The aim of the Apostles, when they were preaching to people of that kind, was less of preaching Jesus than of preaching God; their preaching thus became again purely Jewish, or rather deistical. The Jews who have become proselytes, have always felt that that which in their religion is adapted to the universality of mankind is at bottom only monotheism; that all the rest, Mosaic institutions, Messianic ideas, etc., form, as it were, a secondary series of beliefs, constituting the peculiar appanage of the children of Israel, a sort of family heritage, which is not transmissible. As Lystra had only a few or no Jews of Palestine origin, the life of the Apostle there was for a long time very tranquil. One family in that town was the centre and the school of the highest piety. It was composed of a grandmother named Lois, of a mother named Eunice, and of a young son

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named Timothy. The two women professed, undoubtedly, the Jewish religion as proselytes. Eunice had been married to a Pagan, who probably was dead before the advent of Paul and Barnabas. Timothy, in the society of these two women, advanced in the study of sacred literature, and in the sentiments of the most ardent devotion; but as he frequently visited the houses of the most devout proselytes, his parents had not had him circumcised. Paul converted the two women. Timothy, who might be fifteen years of age, was initiated into the Christian faith by his mother and his grandmother.

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The reports of these conversions spread to Iconium and to Antioch in Pisidia, and re-awakened the anger of the Jews of these two cities. They sent emissaries to Lystra, who provoked a disturbance. Paul was seized by the fanatics, dragged outside the city, stoned, and left for dead. The disciples came to his rescue. His wounds were not serious. He re-entered the town, probably by night, and on the morrow set out with Barnabas for Derbe. They made here a long stay, and won over a great many souls. These two Churches of Lystra and of Derbe were the first Churches which were composed almost entirely of Pagans. We can understand what a difference there must have been between these Churches and those of Palestine, formed in the bosom of pure Judaism, or even that of Antioch, encircled by a Jewish leaven and in a society already Judaised. Here there were subjects completely unprejudiced, honest country folks who were very religious, but of a turn of mind quite different from that of the Syrians. Till now, the preaching of Christianity had prospered only in the large towns, where resided a numerous population, plying their trades. Hence-forward, churches were planted in the villages. Neither Iconium, nor Lystra, nor Derbe was considerable enough in which to found a Church to be compared to that of Corinth or of Ephesus. Paul was in the habit of designating the Christians of Lycaonia by the name of the province in which they dwelt. Now, this province—we mean Galatia—understood the word in the administrative sense in which the Romans had applied it.

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The Roman province of Galatia, in fact, by no means embraced simply that country, peopled with Gallic adventurers, of which the town of Ancyra was the centre. It was an artificial agglomeration, corresponding to the transient reunion which was effected at the hands of the Galatian King Amyntas. This personage, after the battle of Philippi, and the death of Dejotarus, received from Antony, Pisidia, then Galatia, together with a part of Lycaonia and of Pamphylia. He was confirmed by Augustus in this possession. At the end of his reign (twenty-five years B.C.) Amyntas possessed, outside of Galatia properly speaking, Lycaonia and Isauria, including even Derbe, the south-east and the east of Phrygia, with the towns of Antioch and Apollonia, Pisidia and Cilicia Trachæa. All these countries at his death formed a single Roman province, with the exception of Cilicia Trachæa and the Pamphylian towns. The province which bore the name of Galatia in the official nomenclature, at least under the first Cæsars, included therefore for certain—(1) Galatia, properly speaking, (2) Lycaonia, (3) Pisidia, (4) Isauria, (5) Mountainous Phrygia, with the towns of Apollonia and Antioch. This state of things lasted for a long time. Ancyra was the capital of this large group, comprising almost the whole of central Asia Minor. The Romans were thus not sorry

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in order to decompose nationalities, and to efface recollections, to change the ancient geographical acceptations and to create arbitrary administrative groups analogous to our departments.

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Paul was accustomed to make use of the administrative name to designate each country. The countries he had evangelised, from Antioch in Pisidia to Derbe, were called by him “Galatia;” and the Christians of these countries were to him “Galatians.” That name was to him extremely dear. The Churches of Galatia were embraced amongst those for which the Apostle had the most affection, and which in turn had for him the greatest personal attachment. The recollection of the friendship and the devotion which he had found at the houses of these good people, was one of the deepest impressions of his apostolic life. Several circumstances enhanced the keenness of these recollections. It appears that during his sojourn in Galatia, the Apostle was subject to attacks of weakness, or of the malady which frequently overtook him. The solicitude, the attentions of the faithful proselytes, touched him to the heart. The persecutions that they had to suffer together served to create between them a strong bond. That little Lycaonian centre had in its way great importance: St Paul loved to revert to it, as being his first achievement; it was from there that he drew later on two of his most faithful companions, Timothy and Gaius. He was for four or five years thus absorbed within a quite limited circle. He thought less then of those great rapid journeys, which towards the end of his life became with him a sort of passion, in order to establish firmly the Churches which might serve him as a base of operations. We do not know whether during that time he had any relations with the Church at Antioch, whose mission he had received. The desire of seeing again that Mother Church was awakened in him. He determined to make a journey thence, and proceeded by the opposite route to the one he had already gone by. The two missionaries visited for the second time Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch in Pisidia. They took up anew their abodes in these towns, confirming the faithful in the faith, exhorting them to perseverance, to patience, and teaching them that it was only through tribulation that they could enter into the Kingdom of God. For the rest, the constitution of these scattered Churches was very simple. The Apostles chose from amongst each of them elders who after their departure were the depositaries of their authority. The ceremony of their departure was touching. There were fastings and prayers, after which the Apostles recommended the faithful to God, and departed.

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From Antioch in Pisidia, the missionaries once more attained to Perga. They made there, moreover, it appeared, a mission which was crowned with success. The city processions, pilgrimages, and grand annual panegyrics, were often favourable to the preaching of the Apostles. From Perga, after a day’s journey, they reached Attalia, the great port of Pamphylia. There they embarked for Seleucia; then they returned to great Antioch, where they had, by the grace of God, been liberated five years before. The mission field was by no means a wide one. It embraced the Island of Cyprus in the sense of its length, and in Asia Minor a broken line of about a hundred leagues. It was the first instance of an apostolic journey of that kind: nothing had been pre-arranged. Paul and Barnabas had to 43


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wrestle with the greatest external difficulties. We must not compare these journeys with those of a Francis Xavier or of a Livingstone, backed up by rich associations. The Apostles resembled much more the Socialist workmen, spreading their ideas from tavern to tavern, than the missionaries of modern times. Their trade was forced upon them as a necessity; they were compelled to halt in order to pursue it, and to regulate their movements according to the localities in which they could find work. Hence from delays, from dull seasons, there was much time lost. In spite of the enormous obstacles, the general results of that first mission were immense. When Paul had re-embarked for Antioch, there were several churches of Gentiles. The great step had now been made. All steps of that kind which had taken place anteriorly had been more or less undecided. For all that, they were obliged to give an answer, more or less plausible, to the pure Jews at Jerusalem, who maintained that circumcision was the preliminary obligation of the Christian profession. Moreover, the question had assumed a different form. Another tact of the highest importance was again brought to light; that was the excellent disposition which they had been able to discover among certain races, attached to mythological religions, to receive the gospel. The doctrine of Jesus was evidently about to profit by the species of charm which Judaism had until now exercised upon the pious Pagans. Asia Minor, in particular, was destined to become the second Christian soil. After the disasters which were soon to strike the Churches of Palestine, she was destined to be the principal home of the new faith, the theatre of the most important transformations.

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CHAPTER III. FIRST AFFAIR IN REGARD TO CIRCUMCISION. THE return of Paul and Barnabas was hailed in the Church of Antioch with a shout of joy. The whole street of Singon was en fête: the Church was assembled. The two missionaries related their adventures and the things which God had done by them. “God Himself,” said they, “had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles” (Acts xiv. 27, 28). They spoke of the Churches of Galatia, which were almost wholly composed of Pagans. The Church of Antioch, which had for a long time on his account recognised the legitimacy of the baptism of the Gentiles, approved their conduct. They remained there several months, resting from their labours, and refreshing themselves at that source with the apostolic spirit. It was then, it appears, that Paul converted and adopted as a disciple, companion, and fellow-worker, a young uncircumcised man named Titus, who had been born of Pagan parents, and whom we find henceforth always with him. A serious dissension, which nearly destroyed the work of Jesus, broke out at that time, and threw the nascent Church into great disorder. This dissension embraced the very essence of the situation. It was inevitable. It was a crisis that the new religion could not fail but pass through. 29

Jesus, in raising religion to the highest summit it had ever attained, had not stated very distinctly whether or not he would remain a Jew. He had not indicated what he desired to conserve of Judaism. Sometimes he asserted that he had come to confirm the Law of Moses, at others, to supplant it. To speak the truth, this was, for a great poet like him, an insignificant detail. When one has reached the point of knowing the Heavenly Father, Him whom one adores in spirit and in truth, one no longer belongs to any sect, to any particular religion, or to any school; one has the true religion: all practices become of no account; one does not despise them, for they are the symbols of what has been or is still respectable; but one ceases to impute to them an intrinsic virtue. Circumcision, baptism, the Passover, unleavened bread, sacrifices, all these become equally secondary matters: one thinks no more about them. None of the uncircumcised, moreover, had identified themselves with Jesus, or his life; the question did not hence call for solution. Like all men of genius, Jesus concerned himself with mind alone. Practical questions of the highest importance, questions which appeared paramount to inferior minds, questions which caused the acutest pain to men of application, had no existence for him. At his death the confusion was general. Abandoned to themselves, deprived of him who had been for them all a living theology, they returned to the practices of Jewish piety. There were men who were in the highest degree devout; but the devotion of the times was Jewish devotion. They preserved their customs, and fell again into those petty observances that ordinary persons looked upon as the essence of Judaism. The world esteemed them as holy men; and by a singular change

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of front, the Pharisees, who had served as a butt for the keenest satires of Jesus, became almost reconciled to his disciples. It was the Sadducees who showed themselves to be the irreconcilable enemies of the new movement. The minute observance of the Law appeared to them the first condition of being a Christian. Very soon people encountered, in looking at things from this point of view, the greatest difficulties. For, as soon as the family of Christians increased in numbers, it was exclusively amongst the people of non-Israelitish origin, amongst the sympathetic adherents of Judaism who were uncircumcised, that the new faith found the readiest access. To oblige these to become circumcised was out of the question. Peter, with admirable practical good sense, recognised this clearly. On the other hand, timorous persons, such as James, the brother of the Lord, looked upon it as supreme impiety to admit Pagans into the Church, and to eat with them. Peter put off as far as he was able all solution of the question.

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For the rest, the Jews, on their part, found themselves in the same situation, and had taken up a similar position. When proselytes or partisans came to them from all parts, the question presented itself to them. Some advanced minds, honest laymen ignorant of science, and removed from the influence of the doctors, did not insist upon circumcision. Sometimes even they dissuaded the new converts from the practice. These simple-minded and good souls desired only the salvation of the world, and sacrificed all the rest to this. The orthodox, on the contrary, with the disciples of Schammai at their head, declared circumcision to be indispensable. Opposed to the proselytising of the Gentiles, they did nothing to facilitate the cause of religion; on the contrary, they exhibited towards the converts a certain coldness; Schammai drove them out of his house we are told, with a bâton. This division was clearly manifested in respect of the royal family of Adiabene. The Jew named Ananias who converted her, and who was by no means a savant, strongly dissuaded Izate against circumcision. “One can live as perfectly,” said he, “as a Jew can, without circumcision; to adore God was the really important thing.” The pious Helene was of the same opinion. A rigorist, named Eleazar, declared, on the contrary, that if the king did not undergo circumcision he was an impious person; that the reading of the Law was of no avail if one did not observe it, and that the highest precept was circumcision. The king, at the risk of losing his crown, followed this advice. The petty kings who embraced Judaism, in view of the rich marriages that the family of Herod offered, submitted to the same rite. But true piety was of a less facile composition than politics and avariciousness. Many of the pious converts led the Jewish life without being subjected to the rite which was reputed by the vulgar as the opening of the door to excesses. It was indeed for them a source of perpetual embarrassment. Society bigots, in whom prejudices are strong, are accustomed to represent their religious practices as matters of good taste, of superior education. Whilst in France the devout man, in order to avow his piety, is compelled to conquer a sort of shame, and of human respect, with the Mussulmans, on the other hand, the man who practices his religion is the gentleman; he who is not a good Mussulman is not the person that he ought to be; his position is analogous to that of a boorish, ill-mannered country man with us. Similarly, in England and in the United States, 46


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he who does not observe the Sunday, is put to the ban in good society. Amongst the Jews, the position of the uncircumcised was still worse. Contact with such a being was in their eyes something insupportable; circumcision appeared to them as obligatory on every one who wished to live amongst them. He who would not submit to it, was a creature of low quality; a sort of impure animal that people avoided; a wretch with whom a man of good standing could hold no relations.

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The grand duality which is the essence of Judaism, was revealed in this. The Law, which was essentially restrictive, and made for the purpose of isolating, was totally different in spirit from the Prophets who dreamt of the conversion of the world, and embraced the widest fields. Two words borrowed from the Talmudic language well defines the difference that we have indicated. The agada, the opposite of the halaka, designates popular preaching, proposes to itself the conversion of the heathen, in opposition to the learned casuistry which only thinks of the strict execution of the Law, without aiming at converting any one. To use the phraseology of the Talmud, the gospels are the agadas; the Talmud, on the contrary, is the highest expression of the halaka. It is the agada which has conquered the world and made Christianity; the halaka is the foundation of orthodox Judaism, which still endures without seeking to extend itself. The agada is represented as a thing principally Galilæan; the halaka as a thing peculiarly Jerusalemitish. Jesus, Hillel, the authors of apocalypses and apochryphas, are agadists, pupils of the Prophets, inheritors of their infinite aspirations; Schammai, the Talmudists, the Jews posterior to the destruction of Jerusalem, are the halakistes, the adherents of the Law, with its strict observances. We shall see, up to the time of the supreme crisis of the year 70, the fanaticism of the Law increasing each day, and, on the eve of the great national disaster, terminating in a sort of reaction against the doctrines of St Paul; in those “eighteen measures” which afterwards rendered impossible all intercourse between the Jews and the non-Jews, and opened the sad history of exclusive Judaism, hateful and hated, which was the Judaism of the Middle Ages, and is still the Judaism of the East. It is clear that, for nascent Christianity, here was the point upon which its future depended. Judaism—did it or did it not impose particular rites upon the multitudes which professed it? Did it establish a distinction between the monotheistic basis which constituted its essence, and the observances with which it was surcharged? If the former party had triumphed, as the Schammaites wished it should, the Jewish propaganda would have been wiped out. It is quite certain that the world would not have become Jewish, in the narrow sense of the word. That which constituted the attraction of Judaism, was not its rites, which did not differ in principle from those of other religions: it was its theological simplicity. We accept it as a sort of deism, or religious philosophy; and, in fact—in the mind of a Philo, for example—Judaism was itself very closely associated with philosophical speculations. With the Essenians it had reassumed the form of a social Utopia; with the author of the poem attributed to Phocylides, it had become a simple catechism of good sense and of honesty; with the author of the treatise of “The Empire of Reason,” a sort of Stoicism. Judaism, like all religions founded primarily upon caste and tribalism, was encumbered by practices destined to separate the believer from the rest of the world. These practices were no longer an 47


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obstacle on the day when Judaism justly aspired to become the universal religion, without either exclusion or separation. It was as Deism and not as Mosaicism that it was to become the universal religion of humanity. “Love all men,” said Hillel, “and draw them together with the Law; act not otherwise than you would not wish that others should act to you. Here is the whole Law, the rest is the commentary of it.” When we read the treatises of Philo, entitled, “Of the Contemplative Life,” or, “That Every Honest Man is Free;” when we read even the Sibylline verses written by the Jews, we are transported into an order of ideas which contain nothing specially Jewish, into a world of general mysticism which is not more Jewish than Buddhist or Pythagorean. The Pseudo-Phocylides goes the length of abolishing the Sabbath. We perceive that all these men, ardent for the amelioration of humanity, seek to reduce Judaism to a general morale, to strip it of all that it possesses of individuality, and of everything that would make of it a restricted religion. Three capital reasons, in fact, rendered Judaism a thing very exclusive. These were, circumcision, the prohibition of mixed marriages, and the distinction between meats permissible or forbidden. Circumcision was for adults a painful ceremony; a ceremony, moreover, not free from danger, and disagreeable to the last degree. That was one of the reasons which interdicted the Jews from leading a life in common with other races, and made of them a separate caste. At the baths and at the gymnasiums, most important places in ancient cities, circumcision exposed the Jews to all manner of affronts. Every time that the attention of the Greeks or the Romans was drawn to the subject, it was the signal for outbursts of pleasantry. The Jews were very sensitive on the point, and avenged themselves by cruel reprisals. Many, in order to escape the ridicule, and wishing to pass themselves off for Greeks, attempted to dissimulate their original mark by a surgical operation, the details of which have been preserved to us by Celsus. As for the converts who submitted to that initiatory ceremony, there was only one course they could take—that was, to conceal themselves to escape the sarcasms. No man of the world could resign himself to such a situation, and this was doubtless the reason that the conversions to Judaism were much more numerous among the women than among the men, the former not being subjected at first to an experience, shocking and repulsive in every respect. We find many instances of Jewish women being married to Pagans, but there is not a single instance of a Jew being married to a Pagan woman. Hence the origin of much of the jeering. The necessity made itself felt by a broad casuistry which brought peace into troubled households. Mixed marriages were the origin of difficulties of a similar kind. The Jews regarded these marriages as pure fornication. It was the crime that the kana m punished with the dagger, simply because the Law in not prescribing any particular punishment for it, left its repression in the hands of zealots. Although united by faith and love to Christ, two Christians could thus be prevented from contracting marriage. The Israelite converted to Jesus who wished to espouse a sister of the Grecian race, expected that union, holy in his eyes, to be called by the most outrageous names. The prescriptions as to meats being pure or impure were not of the least consequence. We can judge of this by that which still takes place in our own time. Nudity being no longer a part of modern

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manners, circumcision no longer subjects Israelites to these inconveniences. But the necessity of slaughtering for themselves continues to be very embarrassing for them. It requires of those who are strict not to eat with Christians, and, consequently, to be sequestered from general society. That precept is the principal cause which still places Judaism, in many countries, in the position of an exclusive sect. In countries where Israelites are not separated from the rest of the nation, it is a rock of offence; for, to understand it, it is sufficient on this point to have seen Puritan Jews arrive from Germany or Poland, who are shocked at the licences their co-religionists permit on this side of the Rhine. In cities like Salonica, in which the majority of the population is Jewish, and where the wealth is in the hands of the Jews, the actual trade of the community is on this account rendered impossible. Even in ancient times these restrictions were irksome. A Jewish law, the relic of innumerable centuries during which the responsibilities of property were an essential part of religious legislation, stamped the pig with a brand of infamy, which had no raison d’être in Europe. That old antipathy, having its origin in the East, appeared puerile to the Greeks and the Romans. A multitude of other prohibitions had descended from a time when one of the pre-occupations of the leaders of civilisation was to constrain their subordinates from eating things unclean, or from touching carrion. The hygiene of marriage, in fine, had given room for the enacting of a code of legal impurities for women sufficiently complicated. The peculiarity of these kind of prohibitions is their survival from times when they had a raison d’être, and of their becoming at length so vexatious that they might have had their origin in what was proper and salutary. One particular circumstance gave to the prohibitions in regard to meat much importance. The flesh provided for the sacrifices made to the gods was considered as impure. Now these meats, after the sacrifices, were often carried to the market, where it became very difficult to distinguish them; hence the inextricable scruples. The strict Jews did not regard as lawful the indiscriminate provisioning of them-selves in the market. They held that the seller should be questioned as to the origin of the meat, and that before accepting the dish the host should be questioned as to how it had been supplied. The imposing of that load of casuistry upon converts had evidently been carried to excess. Christianity would not have been Christianity if, like the Judaism of our day, it had been compulsory to have slaughtering done separately, or if the Christian could not, without violating his conscience, eat with other men. When one has discovered in that network of difficulties religions surcharged with prohibitions pertaining to life; when one has seen the Jew in the East; the Mussulmans separated by their ritualistic laws, as if by a wall, from the European world, where they might take their place, one can comprehend the immense importance of the questions which were to be decided at the time at which we are now arrived. The question to be decided was, whether Christianity should be a religion of formulas and rituals, a religion of ablutions, of purifications, of distinctions between things pure and things impure, or, on the other hand, the religion of mind, the idealistic cult, which has killed or shall kill by degrees religious materialism, all formularies, all ceremonies. Or, better still, the question to be decided was whether Christianity was to be a petty sect or a universal religion; whether the idea of Jesus should be overshadowed by reason of

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the incapacity of his disciples; or whether that idea, by virtue of its original force, should triumph over the scruples of backward and narrow minds, which were ready to have it replaced and obliterated.

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The mission of Paul and Barnabas had presented the question with such a force that there was no way of avoiding a solution. Paul, who in the first period of his ministry had, it appears, preached circumcision, now declared it useless. He had surreptitiously admitted Pagans into the Church; he had constituted Churches composed of Gentiles; Titus, his intimate friend, had not been circumcised. The Church at Jerusalem could not longer close its eyes to facts so notorious. Broadly speaking, this Church was, on the point with which we are now engaged, hesitating, or favourable to the party the most backward. The conservative senate was there. In close proximity to the Temple, in perpetual contact with the Pharisees, the old Apostles, timid and narrow-minded, could not lend themselves to the profoundly revolutionary theories of Paul. Many of the Pharisees, however, had embraced Christianity without renouncing the essential principles of their sect. To such persons, the supposition that one could be saved without circumcision was blasphemy. To them the Law seemed to remain in its entirety. They had been told that Jesus had come to fulfil the Law, not to abrogate it. The privileges of the children of Abraham appeared to them intact: the Gentiles could not enter into the kingdom of God without being previously affiliated with the family of Abraham; in a word, before becoming a Christian, it was necessary to be made a Jew. Never, we can see, had Christianity had to resolve a more fundamental doubt. If one might credit the Jewish party, the love feast even, the common repast, would have been impossible; the two sections of the Church of Jesus would not have been able to commune the one with the other. From the theological point of view, the matter was still more serious; the question was to know whether one could be saved through the works of the Law or by the grace of Jesus Christ. Some members of the Church of Judæa having arrived at Antioch without, as it would appear, any mission from the apostolic body, provoked discussion. They proclaimed loudly that one could not be saved without circumcision. It is necessary to recall that the Christians, who had at Antioch a name and a distinct individuality, had nothing of the kind at Jerusalem; that which did not oppose whoever came from Jerusalem had not in the whole Church much force, for the centre of authority was there. People were greatly excited. Paul and Barnabas resisted in the most energetic manner. There were long disputes. To bring it to an end, it was decided that Paul and Barnabas should go to Jerusalem to consult with the Apostles and the Elders on the subject. The question had for Paul a personal importance. His action until now had been almost entirely independent. He had only spent a fortnight at Jerusalem since his conversion, and for eleven years he had not put a foot in it. In the eyes of many he was a sort of heretic, teaching on his own account, and scarcely in communion with the rest of the faithful. He declared proudly that he had had his revelation, his apostleship. To go to Jerusalem was, in appearance at least, to forfeit his liberty, to subject his apostleship to that of the Mother Church, to learn from others what he knew through

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his own and personal revelation. He did not deny the authority of the Mother Church; but he defied it, because he was acquainted with the obstinacy of some of its members. He therefore took precautions so as not to compromise himself too much. He declared that in going to Jerusalem he would not submit to any dictation; he even feigned, indulging a pretension that was habitual to him, that in this he was obeying a command of Heaven, and of having had a revelation on the subject. He took with him his disciple Titus, who shared all his opinions, and who, as we have said above, was not circumcised.

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Paul, Barnabas, and Titus set out on their journey. The Church at Antioch accompanied them on their route as far as Laodicæa-on-the-sea. They followed the coast of Phœnicia, then traversed Samaria, finding at every step brethren, to whom they recounted the marvels of the conversion of the Gentiles. There was great joy everywhere. In this way they reached Jerusalem. This was one of the most solemn hours in the history of Christianity. The grand doubt was now to be solved. The men upon whom rested the whole future of the new religion were going to be ranged face to face. Upon their grandeur of soul, upon their uprightness of heart depended the future of humanity. Eighteen years had rolled on since the death of Jesus. The Apostles had grown old. One of them had suffered martyrdom. Others probably were dead. We know that the deceased members of the apostolic college were not replaced; that the college became extinct when they had disappeared. On the part of the Apostles, they formed themselves into a college of elders, in which authority was divided. The “Church,” the reputed depository of the Holy Spirit, was composed of the Apostles, of the elders, and of all the brotherhood. Amongst the simple-minded brethren themselves there were degrees. Inequality was perfectly admissible; but that inequality was altogether moral; it was neither a question of external prerogative nor of material advantage. The three principal “pillars,” as we have said, of the community were still Peter, James, the brother of the Lord, and John, the son of Zebedee. Many Galileans had disappeared. They had been replaced by a certain number of persons belonging to the party of the Pharisees. “Pharisee” was synonymous with “devotee”; but all the best saints of Jerusalem were also strong devotees. Lacking the mind, the finesse, the grandeur of Jesus, they had, after his death, fallen into a kind of stupid bigotry, a state similar to that which their master so strongly combated. They were incapable of irony; they had almost forgotten the eloquent invectives of Jesus against the hypocrites. Some had developed into a sort of Jewish Indian priests, after the manner of John the Baptist and of Banou, monks totally addicted to formulas, and at whom Jesus certainly, if he had been still alive, could not have aimed sarcasms enough.

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James, in particular, surnamed the Just, or “the brother of the Lord,” was one of the most exact observers of the Law that there was. According to certain traditions—very doubtful, it is true—he was even an ascetic, practising all the Nazarene abstinences, observing celibacy, drinking no intoxicating liquors, eschewing flesh, never cutting his hair, forbidding himself anointings and baths, wearing neither sandals nor garments of wool, clothed in plain linen. Nothing, we see, was more contrary to the idea of Jesus, who, at least from the death of John the Baptist, declared

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affectations of that kind perfectly vain. Abstinence—already in favour with certain branches of Judaism—became the fashion, and formed the dominant trait of the fraction of the Church which, later on, was to be connected with a pretended Ebion. The pure Jews were opposed to those abstinences; but the proselytes, particularly the women, inclined much to them. James did not stir from the Temple; he remained there alone, it is said, for long hours in prayer, until the callus of his knees had contracted, like those of the chamois. It is believed that he passed his time there after the manner of Jeremiah, a penitent for the people, weeping for the sins of the nation, and turning aside the chastisements that threatened them. He had only to raise his hands to heaven to perform miracles. He had been surnamed the Just, and also Obliam, that is to say, “Rampart of the people,” because it was supposed that it was his prayers which prevented the Divine wrath from sweeping everything away. The Jews, as we are assured, held him in the same veneration as the Christians. If that singular man was really the brother of Jesus, he must have been at least one of those inimical brothers who abjured him and wished him arrested; and it is probable to such recollections that Paul, irritated by a mind so narrow, made allusion when he wrote concerning these pillars of the Church at Jerusalem:—“Whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me; God accepteth no man’s person” (Gal. ii. 6). Jude, the brother of James, was, it seems, in entire agreement with his ideas. To sum up, the Church at Jerusalem had been more and more broadened by the spirit of Jesus. The dead weight of Judaism had borne it down. Jerusalem was for the new faith an unwholesome centre, and would have ended by destroying it. In that capital of Judaism, it was very difficult to cease being a Jew. Moreover, new men, like St Paul, all but systematically avoided residing there. Forced now, under pain of being separated from the primitive Church, to come to confer with their elders, they found themselves in a position full of hardship; and the work, which could not live except by the power of concord and of abnegation, ran an immense risk.

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The interview, in fact, was singularly protracted and embarrassing. People listened favourably at first to the account that Paul and Barnabas gave of their missions; for every one, even the most Judaised, was of opinion that the conversion of the Gentiles was the harbinger of the Messiah. The curiosity to see the man of whom so much was being said, and who had led the sect into so new a path, was at first very lively. They glorified God for having made an Apostle out of a persecutor. But when they came to circumcision, and the obligation of practising the Law, dissension broke out in all its force. The Pharisean party set forth its pretensions in the most uncompromising manner. The party in favour of emancipation responded with triumphant force. They cited the cases of several uncircumcised persons who had received the Holy Ghost. If God made no distinction between Pagans and Jews, how could they have the temerity to do it for Him? How could that be held for unclear which God had purified? Why impose a yoke on the converts that the race of Israel had not been able to bear? It was through Jesus that one was saved, and not through the Law. Paul and Barnabas advanced in support of that thesis the miracles which God had wrought for the conversion of the Gentiles. But the Pharisees objected with no less force that the Law was not abolished; that one never ceased to be a Jew; that the obligations of a Jew remained ever the same. 52


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They refused to hold relations with Titus, who was uncircumcised; they openly accused Paul of infidelity, and of being an enemy of the Law. The most admirable characteristic in the histories of the origins of Christianity is that that radical and serious division, embracing a question of the first importance, did not occasion in the Church a complete schism, which would have been its ruin. The eager and impulsive mind of Paul had here a splendid opportunity of displaying itself; his sound practical sense, his sagacity, and his judgment, remedied everything. The two parties were eager, excited, almost harsh to one another; nobody rejected his advice; the question was not yet shaped; people remained united in the common work. A superior bond, the love that every one had for Jesus, the remembrance which all entertained for him, were stronger than the divisions. The most fundamental dissension that was ever produced in the bosom of the Church, did not lead to reprobation. This is a great lesson that succeeding centuries have seldom been able to imitate.

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Paul understood that in large and heated assemblies he could never succeed, because that there narrow minds would always have the sway, and because Judaism was too long at Jerusalem for one to hope to be able to extort from it a concession of principles. He went and saw separately all personages of consideration, in particular, Peter, James, and John. Peter, like all men who exist for the most part on elevated sentiment, was indifferent to questions of party. These disputes grieved him; he wished for union, concord, and peace. His timid and rather contracted mind detached itself with difficulty from Judaism; he would have preferred that the new converts had accepted circumcision, but he saw the impossibility of such a solution. Deep and tender natures are always undecided; they sometimes even have to resort to a little dissimulation. They desire to please everybody—no question of principle seems with them to outweigh the value of peace. They let themselves be carried away by different parties, and to making contradictory promises and engagements. Peter sometimes committed this by no means heinous fault. To Paul, he was for uncircumcision; to the strict Jews, be sided with the partisans of circumcision. The soul of Paul was so grand, so sincere, so full of the new zeal which Jesus had brought into the world, that Peter could not fail to sympathise with him. They loved each other, and when they were together, it was as sovereigns of the entire world of the future, which they divided between them. It was doubtless at the close of one of their conversations that Paul, with the exaggeration of language and the verve that were habitual to him, said to Peter, “We quite understand one another; yours is the gospel of circumcision; mine is the gospel of uncircumcision.” Paul laid hold of these words later on as a sort of regular treaty, which ought to be accepted by all the Apostles. It is difficult to believe that Peter and Paul should dare to repeat outside their private conversations words which would have injured to the highest degree the pretensions of James, and probably even those of John. But the words were uttered. These large schemes, which were hardly those of Jerusalem, struck greatly the enthusiastic soul of Peter. Paul made upon him the greatest impression, and won him over completely. Up to this time Peter had travelled little; his pastoral visits had not, it seems, been

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extended beyond Palestine. He must have been about fifty years of age. Paul’s eagerness for travelling, the recitals of the apostolic journeys, the projects that had been communicated to him in regard to the future, fired his zeal. It was from this time that Peter was seen to absent himself from Jerusalem, and to lead in his turn the wandering life of apostleship.

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James, with the sanctity of a life so equivocal, was the chief of the Judaistic party. It was through him that almost all the conversions of Pharisees had been made: the exigencies of that party were imposed on him. Everything tends to the belief that he did not make any concession upon the dogmatic principle; nevertheless, a moderate and conciliatory opinion soon began to make itself manifest. The legitimacy of the conversion of the Gentiles was admitted; it was declared that it was useless to be disquieted in regard to what concerned circumcision; it was only necessary to maintain a few interesting prescriptions, the morale or the suppression of which would shock too keenly the Jews. In order to reassure the Pharisean party, it was remarked that the existence of the Law was not for the sake of compromise, seeing that Moses had from time immemorial, and would always be, for the people to be read in the synagogues. The converted Jews thus remained submissive to the entire Law, and the exemptions only concerned the converted Pagans. In practice, however, people were to avoid shocking those who had more contracted ideas. It was probably these moderate persons, the authors of that harmless contradiction, who counselled Paul to induce Titus to let himself be circumcised. Titus, in fact, had become one of the principal difficulties of the situation. The converted Pharisees of Jerusalem willingly supported the idea that, far removed from them, at Antioch, or in the depths of Asia Minor, there were Christians uncircumcised. But in their midst at Jerusalem, to be obliged to associate with them, and thus to commit a flagrant violation of that Law to which they were attached to the bottom of their hearts, this was what they could not consent to. Paul took the most infinite precautions in acceding to this demand. It was indeed owned that it was not as a matter of necessity that the circumcision of Titus was demanded, as Titus would remain a Christian even if he did not submit to that rite; but it was asked of him as a mark of condescension for the brethren whose consciences were pledged, and who otherwise could not hold relations with him. Paul consented, but not without uttering some severe words against the authors of such an exaction, against those false brethren who only had entered the Church to diminish the extent of the liberties created by Jesus. He protested that be would in nothing submit his opinions to theirs; that the concession he had made was for once only, for the sake of the general good, and of peace. With such reservations he gave his consent, and Titus was circumcised. That concession cost Paul much, and the sentence in which he spoke of it is one of the most original that he ever wrote. The language that it cost him seemed not to be able to run off his pen. The sentence, at first sight, appeared to mean that Titus was not circumcised, whilst it implied that he was. The remembrance of that painful moment often returned to him; that semblance of returning

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to Judaism appeared to him sometimes as a denying of Jesus; he re-assured himself by saying,—“And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews.” Like all men who possess a multiplicity of ideas, Paul set little store by forms. He perceived the vanity of everything which was not a thing of the soul, and when the supreme interests of conscience were at play, he, usually so stubborn, abandoned all else. The capital concession which involved the circumcision of Titus, appeased much of the ill-feeling. It was admitted that in distant countries in which the new converts had no daily intercourse with the Jews, it would be sufficient if they abstained from blood, together with meats offered in sacrifice to the gods, or suffocated, and that they observed the same laws as the Jews in regard to marriage, and the relations between the sexes. The use of pork meat, the interdiction of which was everywhere the symbol of Judaism, was left free. It was almost the embodiment of the Noachic precepts; that is to say, which it was supposed had been revealed to Noah, and which were imposed on all proselytes. The idea that the blood was the life, that the blood was life itself, inspired in the Jews an extreme horror for meats from which the blood had not been let. To abstain from these was for them a precept of natural religion. Demons were supposed to be particularly greedy of blood, so in eating meat not bled people ran the risk of having for companion of the food they partook of a demon. A man who about that period wrote under the usurped name of the celebrated Greek moralist Phocylides a short course of Jewish natural morals, simplified the usages of the non-Jews, by seizing upon similar solutions. That bold impostor did not essay to convert his reader to Judaism; he sought merely to inculcate on him the “Noachical precepts,” with some greatly modified Jewish rules in regard to meat and to marriage. The first of these rules was altered by him to accord with hygienic requirements and alimentary convenience, to the abstaining from things forbidden or unclean; the second had reference to the regulating and the purifying of sexual relations. All the rest of the Jewish ritual went for nothing. For the rest, that which issued from the assembly at Jerusalem was only agreed to by word of mouth, and was not even stated in very strict terms, for we shall see them frequently set aside. The idea of dogmatic canons emanating from a council was not yet heard of. By reason of profound good sense, these simple people attained to the loftiest pinnacle of policy. They saw that the only way of escaping great questions was to leave them unresolved, to take a middle course which would please no one, and to leave problems to wear themselves out, and to die from lack of a raison d’être. People were content to be divided. Paul explained to Peter, James, and John the gospel that he preached to the Gentiles; the former entirely approved of it, finding nothing in it to reprimand, and not attempting to add anything thereto. Paul and Barnabas were heartily given the right hand of fellowship; their immediate right divine to the apostleship of the Pagan world was admitted; people recognised in them a sort of peculiar grace for what was the special object of their vocation. The title of Apostle of the Gentiles, which Paul had already assumed, was, as he assures us, officially conferred on him; and without doubt people accorded to him, at least by tacit assent, the fact which

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he prized the most, to wit, that he had had his special revelation as direct as those who had seen Jesus; in other words, that his vision on the way to Damascus was of as much importance as the other appearances of Christ risen from the dead. All that was required of the three representatives of the Church of Antioch in return, was not to forget the poor at Jerusalem. The Church of that city, in fact, by reason of its communistic organisation, its peculiar responsibilities, and the misery which reigned in Judea, appeared to be nearing its last gasp. Paul and his party accepted gladly that idea. They hoped by a kind of contribution to shut the mouth of the intolerant Jerusalemitish party, and to reconcile it with the thought that he existed for the Church of the Gentiles. By means of a trifling tribute they purchased liberty of thought, and remained in communication with the central Church, outside of which one did not dare hope for salvation. In order that no doubt should remain as to the reconciliation, it was decided that Paul, Barnabas, and Titus, in returning to Antioch, were to be accompanied by two of the principal members of the Church at Jerusalem, Judas Bar-Saba and Silvanus or Silas, who were charged with disavowing the brethren from Judæa who had created the trouble in the Church at Antioch, and to render witness to Paul and Barnabas, whose services and devotion were recognised. The joy at Antioch was very great. Judas and Silas held the rank of prophets: their inspired speech was appreciated extremely by the Church at Antioch. Silas was so much charmed with that atmosphere of life and of liberty, that he had no desire to return to Jerusalem. Judas alone returned to the Apostles, and Silas attached himself to Paul by bonds of brotherhood, which every day became more intimate.

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CHAPTER IV. SLOW PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY: ITS INTRODUCTION AT ROME. AN idea which, above all things, it is necessary to get rid of, when the question at issue is the propagation of Christianity, is that that propagation had to be made by succeeding missionaries, and by preachers similar to those of modern times, who have to go from city to city. Paul and Barnabas and their companions were the only ones who sometimes proceeded in this manner. The rest was done by workmen whose names remain unknown. Alongside the Apostles who attained celebrity, there was thus an obscure apostleship, whose agents were not dogmatists by profession, but who were none the less most efficacious. The Jews of the period were nomads par excellence. Merchants, servants, small tradesmen, they visited all the large towns of the coast, and pursued their calling. Active, industrious, polite, they brought with them their ideas, their good example, their exaltation, and dominated these populations, degraded in point of religion, with all the superiority that the enthusiastic man possesses over those that are indifferent. Those affiliated to the Christian sect travelled like the other Jews, and carried the glad tidings with them. It was a sort of familiar preaching, and much more persuasive than any other. The gentleness, the gaiety, the good humour, the patience of the new believers, caused them to be received gladly everywhere, and conciliated their minds.

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Rome was one of the first points attacked in this manner. The capital of the Empire had heard the name of Jesus long before all the intermediate countries could have been evangelised, just as a high summit is illuminated when the valleys lying between it and the sun are still in darkness. Rome was, in fact, the rendezvous of all the Oriental religious, the point of the Mediterranean with which the Syrians had the most intercourse. They arrived there in enormous bands. Like all poor populations going up to attack the large cities in quest of fortune, they were obedient and humble. With them disembarked troops of Greeks, Asiatics, and Egyptians, all speaking Greek. Rome was literally a bilingual city. The language of the Jewish world and of the Christian world of Rome was for three centuries Greek. Greek was at Rome the language of all that was most wicked and most honest, of all that was the best and the most base. Rhetoricians, grammarians, philosophers, noble pedagogues, preceptors, servants, intriguers, artists, singers, dancers, brokers, artisans, preachers of new sects, religious heroes—they all spoke Greek, The old Roman burgess class lost ground each day, swamped as it was by this flood of strangers. It is in the highest degree probable that about the year 50 several Jews from Syria, already Christians, entered the capital of the Empire, and disseminated their ideas there. In fact, among the good administrative measures of Claudius, Suetonius placed the following: “He expelled the Jews from Rome, who, at the instigation of Chrestus, indulged frequently in riots.” Certainly, it is possible that there might have been at Rome a Jew named Chrestus who fomented troubles amongst his 57


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co-religionists, and which led to their expulsion. But it is much more probable that the name of Chrestus was none other than that of Christ himself. The introduction of the new faith provoked, doubtless, in the Jewish quarter at Rome, altercations, quarrels, scenes analogous, in a word, to those which had already taken place at Damascus, at Antioch in Pisidia, and at Lystra. Wishing to put an end to these disorders, the police were compelled to take measures for the expulsion of the perturbators. The chiefs of police may have inquired superficially into the nature of the quarrel, which interested them so little; a report addressed to the Government may have proved that the agitators called themselves Christiani, that is to say, partisans of a certain Christus; that name being unknown, it may have been changed into Chrestus, in consequence of the custom of unlettered persons giving to the names of strangers a form appropriate to their habits. Hence, in order to come to a conclusion that there existed a man of that name, who had been the provoker and the leader of the riots, was but a short step to take; the inspectors of police might have overlooked the fact, and, without further inquiry, pronounced sentence of banishment against the two parties. The principal Jewish quarter in Rome was situated on the other side of the Tiber; that is to say, in the part of the city the poorest and the most filthy, probably in the neighbourhood of the actual Porta Portese. Here was situated formerly, as in our own times, the port of Rome, the place where merchandise was unloaded which had been brought in flat boats from Ostia. It was the quarter of the Jews and of the Syrians, “nations born to servitude” as is remarked by Cicero. The first nucleus of the Jewish population at Rome had, in fact, been formed of freedmen, descendants, for the most part, of those who had been carried prisoners to Rome by Pompey. They had undergone slavery without changing any of their religious habits. That which is admirable about Judaism, is that simplicity of faith which makes the Jew, though transported a thousand leagues from his country, at the end of many generations a Jew still of the purest type. The intercourse between the synagogues of Rome and those of Jerusalem was continual. The first colony had been reinforced by numerous emigrants. These poor people disembarked by hundreds at Ripa, and lived there by themselves in the quarter adjacent to Transtevere, serving as street porters, engaging in small commerce, exchanging matches for broken glasses, and presenting to the haughty Italian population a type which, later, should become to them too familiar —that of a mendicant skilled in his art. A Roman who respected himself never put his foot into these debased quarters. It was treated as a suburb given over to contemned classes, and to disreputable avocations; tanneries, sausage factories, steeping troughs, were relegated there. So the unfortunates lived quite tranquilly in that despised corner, in the midst of bales of merchandise, infamous taverns, and of litter porters (Syrians), who had here their general quarters. The police did not enter it except when the quarrels were bloody, or when they were too often repeated. Few of the quarters of Rome were so free; politics had nothing to do with it. Not only was religion practised in ordinary times without opposition, but every facility was afforded for active propagandism. Protected by the contempt which they inspired, little sensitive, moreover, to the railleries of the people of the world, the Jews of Transtevere led thus a very active, religious, and social life. They 58


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possessed a few kakamin (schools); nowhere was the ritual and ceremonial of the Law more scrupulously observed; the synagogues had the most perfect organisation that ever was known. The titles of “father” and of “mother of the synagogue” were much prized. Some rich converts took biblical names; they converted their slaves along with themselves; the Scroll was explained by the doctors; they built places of prayer, and showed themselves to be proud of the consideration they enjoyed in that little world. The poor Jew, when begging, found the opportunity, in a trembling voice, to whisper into the ear of the grand Roman dame a few sentences of the Law, and often gained over the matron, who had given him a handful of small change. To observe the Sabbath and the Jewish feasts was, according to Horace, the characteristic which classes a man amongst the weak-minded, that is to say, with the multitude, unus multorum. Universal benevolence, the felicity of reposing with the just, assisting the poor, purity of manners, the sweetness of family life, the mild perception of death, which was considered as a sleep, are the sentiments which are found on the Jewish inscriptions, together with that special note of touching unction of humility, certain hope, which characterises Christian inscriptions. There were many Jews, men of the world, rich and powerful, such as Tiberius Alexander, who attained to the highest honours of the Empire, and who twice or thrice exercised an influence of the first order in public affairs, and had even, to the great chagrin of the Romans, his statue in the Forum; but the latter were no longer good Jews. The Herods, although ostentatiously practising their religion at Rome, were also far from (it was only through their relations with the Pagans) being true Israelites. The poor remained faithful, esteeming these worldlings as renegades; in like manner, we see in our day the Polish or Hungarian Jews treat with severity the aristocratic French Israelites who have deserted the synagogue, and have had their children educated in Protestantism, so as to make their circle more exclusive. A world of ideas were thus propounded on the common wharf where was unloaded the merchandise of the whole world; but all this is lost in the tumult of a large city like London or Paris. Certainly the proud patricians, who, in their promenades upon the Aventine cast their eyes to the other side of the Tiber, could not suspect that the future was being prepared in the pile of poor houses erected at the foot of Janiculum. The day when, under the reign of Claudius, a certain Jew, initiated in the new beliefs, placed foot on the ground opposite the Emporium, that same day no one knew in Rome that the founder of a second Empire, another Romulus, lodged at the gate on a bed of straw. Near the gate was a kind of lodging-house, well known to the people and the soldiers, which went under the name of Taberna meritoria. There was shown here, in order to attract the credulous, a pretended fountain of oil, issuing from the rocks. Very soon that fountain of oil was regarded by the Christians as symbolical. It was pretended that its appearance had coincided with the birth of Jesus. It appears that later on the Taberna was made into a church. Who knows whether the oldest souvenirs of Christianity were not connected with that resort! Under Alexander Severus we see the Christians and the tavern-keepers contending for a certain spot which had formerly been public, and which that good Emperor adjudged to the Christians. One feels that one is here upon the natal soil of an old popular Christianity. Claudius, about that time, struck with the “progress of

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foreign superstitions,” believed that he was performing an act of good conservative policy in re-establishing the soothsayers. In a report made to the Senate, complaint was made of the indifference of the times for the ancient usages of Italy, and for good discipline. The Senate had invited the Pontiffs to see whether it was possible to re-establish the old customs. Everything went well, in consequence, and it was believed that these respectable impostures were saved for all eternity.

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The great question of the moment was the attainment of Agrippa to power, the adoption of Nero by Claudius, and his ever-increasing fortune. No one thought of the poor Jew who uttered for the first time the name of Christus in the Syrian colony, and expounded the faith which brought happiness to those amongst whom he was living. Others soon arrived. The letters from Syria, brought by the newcomers, spoke of the movement which was increasing more and more. A small circle was formed. Everybody “smelled the garlick.” These ancestors of the Roman prelates were poor proletariats, filthy, undistinguished, ill-mannered, clothed in dirty smock-frocks, and had the bad breath of people who are ill-fed. Their hovels had that odour of misery which exhales from persons poorly nourished and clothed, and huddled up in a small room. They soon became numerous enough to make a noise. They preached in the ghetto, and the orthodox Jews resisted them. What with the tumultuous scenes which were taking place; what with the scenes recurring night by night; what with the Roman police being interviewed; what (little caring to know what was the cause of the trouble) with addressing a report to the superior authority, and laying the troubles to the account of a certain Chrestus, whom it was impossible to get hold of; what with the expulsion of the agitators having been decided on—there was nothing in that which was not plausible. The passage in Suetonius, and, better still, that of the Acts, would seem to imply that all the Jews were driven out on that occasion; but such a thing is not to be supposed. The likelihood is that the Christians, the partisans of the seditious Chrestus, were alone expelled. Claudius, in general, was favourable to the Jews, and it is even not impossible that the expulsion of the Christians, of which we have just been speaking, took place at the instigation of the Jews—the Herods, for example. These expulsions, however, were always only temporary and conditional. The tide, arrested for the moment, always returned. The edict of Claudius was, in any case, of little consequence, since Josephus does not mention it, and in the year 58 Rome had already a new Christian Church. The founders of this first Church at Rome, destroyed by the decree of Claudius, are unknown. But we know the names of two Jews who were exiled in consequence of the emeutes of the Porta Portese. They were an old pious couple, the one Aquila, originally a Jew from Pontus, following the same calling as St Paul, that of an upholsterer, the other Priscilla, his wife. They sought refuge at Corinth, where we soon see them en rapport with St Paul, whose intimate friends and zealous fellow-workers they became. Aquila and Priscilla are hence the two oldest known members of the Church at Rome. But they are hardly remembered. Legend, which is always unjust, because it is always swayed by political motives, has expelled from the Christian Pantheon these two obscure workers, in order to attribute the honour of the foundation of the Church of Rome to a name more 60


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illustrious, corresponding better to the proud pretensions of universal dominion which the capital of the Empire, now become Christian, could not abdicate. For us, it is not at the theatrical basilica which has been consecrated to St Peter, it is at the Porta Portese, that ancient ghetto, where we really find the starting-point of Western Christianity. It is the traces of those pier wandering Jews, who carried with them the religion of the world,—those men who hardly dreamt, in their misery, of the kingdom of God—we must search out and embrace. We do not contest with Rome its essential title; Rome was probably the first spot of the Western world, and even of Europe, where Christianity was established But in place of these proud and magnificent churches, in place of these insulting devices, Christus vincit, Christus regit, Christus imperat—Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ governs—it would be much better to erect a little chapel to the two good Jews of Pontus who were expelled by the police of Claudius for belonging to the party of Chrestus. After the Church of Rome (if it was not even anterior) the most ancient Western Church was that of Pozzuoli. St Paul found Christians there about the year 61. Pozzuoli was in a certain sense the port of Rome; it was at least the place where the Jews and the Syrians who came to Rome disembarked. This strange soil undermined by fire; these Phlegreens fields; that sulphur bed; these caverns full of burning vapours, which seemed the breath of hell; these sulphurous waters; these myths of giants, and of demons buried in the burning valleys, a sort of Gehennas; these baths, which appeared to the austere Jews and the enemies of total nudity the acme of abomination—greatly impressed the imaginations of the new emigrants, and have left a deep trace on the apocalyptic compositions of the times. The follies of Caligula, of which we still see traces, left also in these places terrible recollections.

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In any case, one capital feature, as we have already had occasion to remark, is, that the Church at Rome was not, like the Churches of Asia Minor, of Macedonia and of Greece, a foundation of the school of Paul. It was a Judæo-Christian creation, connected directly with the Church at Jerusalem. Paul was never here on his own ground; he found in that great Church many shortcomings, which he treated with indulgence, but which offended his exalted idealism. Attached to circumcision, and to exterior practices; ebionite by its taste for abstinences, and by its doctrine, more Jew than Christian, in regard to the person and the death of Jesus; strongly attached to millenarianism, the Roman Church presented in its early days the essential features which have distinguished it during its long and marvellous history. The direct daughter of Jerusalem, the Roman Church has always had an ascetic, sacerdotal character, and been opposed to the Protestant tendency of St Paul. Peter was its veritable chief; then, being penetrated by the political and hierarchical spirit of old Pagan Rome, it became, in truth, the new Jerusalem, the city of the pontificate, of religion, hierarchical and solemn, of material sacraments, which are their own justification, the city of ascetics, after the manner of Jacques Obliam, with its callosities on the knees and its plates of gold on the forehead. She was to be the church of authority. If it can be believed, the special sign of the apostolic mission was the showing of a letter signed by the Apostles, the producing of a certificate of orthodoxy. The good and the evil that the Church at Jerusalem did for infant Christianity, the Church of Rome did 61


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for the Church universal. It was in vain that Paul addressed to them his beautiful epistle, in order to explain to them the mystery of the cross of Jesus and of salvation by faith alone. This epistle the Church at Rome but vaguely comprehended. But Luther, fourteen and a half centuries later, comprehended it, and opened a new era in the secular series of the alternative triumphs of Peter and Paul.

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CHAPTER V. SECOND JOURNEY OF PAUL—ANOTHER SOJOURN AT GALATIA.

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HARDLY had Paul returned to Antioch, when he began forming new projects. His ardent soul could not brook repose. On the one hand, he proposed to enlarge the rather limited field of his first mission: on the other, the desire to see again his dear Churches of Galatia, to confirm them in the faith, pursued him incessantly. The tenderness which that strange nature appeared in some respects to lack, had been transformed into a powerful faculty of loving the communities which he had founded. He had for his Churches the sentiments that other men have for that which they love the most. This was indeed a special gift of the Jews. The feeling of association with which they were imbued caused them to give to the esprit de famille applications altogether novel. The synagogue and the church were thus what the monastery was to the Middle Ages, the beloved home, the hearth of the warmest affections, the roof under which people sheltered that which they held most dear. Paul communicated his design to Barnabas. But the friendship of the two Apostles, which had been proof against the severest tests, which no susceptibility of amour propre, no freak of character had been able to lessen, received now a cruel blow. Barnabas proposed to Paul to take John, surnamed Mark, with them: Paul flew into a passion. He could not pardon John-Mark for having abandoned the first mission at Perga, at the moment when it had entered upon the most perilous stage of the journey. The man who had once refused to go on with the work, appeared to him as unworthy of being enrolled anew. Barnabas defended his cousin, whose motives, in fact, it is probable Paul judged with too much severity. The quarrel waxed very hot: it was impossible to come to an understanding. That old friendship which had been the condition of the evangelic preaching, gave place for a time to a miserable question of individuals. To speak truly, it is allowable to suppose that the rupture was based on deeper reasons. It is a miracle that the always increasing pretensions of Paul, his pride, his eagerness to be absolute chief, had not already twenty times rendered relations impossible between two men whose reciprocal positions had entirely changed. Barnabas had not the genius of Paul; but who can tell whether in the true hierarchy of souls, which is regulated by the order of goodness, he did not occupy a still higher rank? When we recall what Barnabas had been to Paul; when we think that it was he who at Jerusalem had silenced the not altogether groundless defiances of which the new convert was the object;—who went to seek at Tarsus the future Apostle, as yet isolated and uncertain as to his path;—who introduced him into the young and active life of Antioch;—who, in a word, made him an Apostle,—one cannot help seeing in that open rupture a motive of secondary importance, a gross act of ingratitude on the part of Paul. But the exigencies of the work were too powerful for him. What man of action is there that has not once in his life committed a great crime of the heart?

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The two Apostles then separated from each other. Barnabas and John-Mark embarked at Seleucia for Cyprus. History from this point loses sight of his wanderings. While Paul marches on to glory, his companion, falling into obscurity the moment he quitted him who illuminated him with his rays, wears himself out with the labours of an unrecorded apostleship. The enormous injustice which often regulates the things of this world, presides over history like as over everything else. Those who undertake the rôle of self-devotion and unostentation, are ordinarily forgotten. The author of the Acts, with his ingenuous conciliatory policy, has, without wishing it, sacrificed Barnabas to the desire that he entertained of reconciling Peter to Paul. By a sort of instinctive lack of the principle of compensation, on the one hand diminishing and subordinating the importance of Paul, on the other, the author has enhanced the importance of Paul at the expense of a modest fellow-worker, who had not a part cut out for him, and who was not weighted in history with the unequal weights which result from the arrangements of parties. Hence arises the ignorance in which we are placed as to what belongs to the apostleship of Barnabas. We only know that that apostleship continued to be very active. Barnabas remained faithful to the grand rules which Paul and he had established during their first mission. He did not take with him in his peregrinations female companions; he lived always by his work, never accepting anything from the Church. He again encountered Paul at Antioch. The imperious temper of Paul provoked a fresh discord between them; but the nature or sentiment of the holy work carried all before it; the communion between the two Apostles remained intact. Labouring each in his own way, they remained in communication the one with the other, mutually informing one another of their labours. In spite of the greatest dissensions, Paul continued always to treat Barnabas as a fellow-worker, and to consider him as dividing with himself the work of the apostleship of the Gentiles. Ardent, hot-headed, and susceptible, Paul soon forgot, when the great principles to which he had devoted his life were not in question. In place of Barnabas, Paul selected for his companion Silas, the prophet of the Church at Jerusalem, who had remained at Antioch. He was probably not sorry at the defection of John-Mark, who, it seems, wished to be near Peter. Silas possessed, it is said, the title of a Roman citizen, which, joined with his name of Silvanus, induces the belief that he was not of Judea, or that he had already had occasion to familiarise himself with the world of the Gentiles. Both departed, recommended by the brethren to the grace of God. These forms were not at that time vain. People believed that the finger of God was everywhere; that each step of the Apostles of the new kingdom was directed by the immediate inspiration of Heaven. Paul and Silas journeyed by land. Taking to the north, across the plain of Antioch, they traversed the defile of Amanus, the Assyrian passes; then rounding the end of the Gulf of Issus they crossed the northern ridge of Amanus by the Amanida pass; they then traversed Cilicia, passing probably through Tarsus, emerging from Taurus doubtless by the celebrated Cilician passes—one of them the most frightful mountain pass in the world; penetrating thence into Lycaonia; finally reaching Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium.

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Paul found his dear Churches in the same state in which he had left them. The faithful had persevered, and their numbers had increased. Timothy, who was but an infant at the time of his first journey, had become an excellent subject. His youth, his piety, and his intelligence, delighted Paul. All the faithful of Lycaonia testified highly of him. Paul attached him to himself, loved him tenderly, and always found in him a zealous collaborateur, or, rather, a son (it is Paul himself who uses this expression). Timothy was a man of great candour, modesty, and reserve. He had not assurance enough to undertake the chief rôles; he lacked authority, especially in Greek countries, where the minds of the people were frivolous and fickle; but his self-denial made of him an unequalled deacon and secretary to Paul. Paul moreover declared that he had not another disciple who was so completely according to his heart. Impartial history is compelled to withhold, to the advantage of Timothy and of Barnabas, a portion of the glory monopolised by the all-absorbing personality of Paul.

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Paul, in attaching Timothy to himself, foresaw grave embarrassments. He feared that, in his communications with the Jews, Timothy, uncircumcised as he was, could only be a source of repulsion and of trouble. It was, in fact, known everywhere that his father was a Pagan. A multitude of timorous people would decline to hold intercourse with him: the quarrels, which had hardly been laid to rest by the interview at Jerusalem, would be revived. Paul recalled the difficulties he had experienced in regard to Titus. He resolved to anticipate these; and, in order to avoid being brought later to make a concession to the principles he had recoiled from, he circumcised Timothy himself. This was altogether in conformity with the principles which had guided him in the affair of Titus, and which he always practised. But he had never been induced to say that circumcision was necessary to salvation; for, in his eyes, that would have been an error of faith. Yet circumcision being in itself not a wicked thing, he thought that it might be practised, in order to avoid scandal and schism. His great rule was that an apostle ought to be all things to all men, and to yield to the prejudices of those whom he wished to gain over, when these prejudices in themselves were merely frivolous, and did not contain anything absolutely reprehensible. But, at the same time, as if he had a presentiment of the tests that the faith of the Galatians was about to be put to, he made them promise never to listen to another teacher than himself, and to anathematise all other teaching save his own. From Iconium Paul probably went to Antioch in Pisidia, and completed thus the visit of the principal Churches in Galatia, founded during his first journey. He resolved then to enter upon new territory; but grave doubts restrained him. The thought of attacking the West of Asia Minor, that is to say, the province of Asia, came into his mind. It was the part of Asia the most populated. Ephesus was the capital of it; it contained the beautiful and flourishing cities of Smyrna, Pergamos, Magnesia, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Colossus, Laodicæa, Hierapolis, Tralles, Miletus, in which the centre of Christianity was soon to be established. It is not known what turned St Paul away from carrying his efforts in that direction. “The Holy Spirit,” says the writer of the Acts, “forbade him going to preach in Asia.” The Apostles, it must be borne in mind, were reputed to obey, in choosing the direction of their courses, inspirations from on high. Sometimes there were 65


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real motives, reflections, or positive indications which they dissimulated under this language. Sometimes there was also the absence of motives. The opinion that God made known to man his volitions by means of dreams, was widespread, just as it is still in our day in the East. A dream, a sudden impulse, an unpremeditated movement, an inexplicable noise (bath kôl), appeared to them as the manifestations of the Spirit, and decided the route of the mission.

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What is certain is that, from Antioch in Pisidia, instead of going in the direction of the brilliant provinces of the south-east of Asia Minor, Paul and his companions plunged more and more into the heart of the peninsula, which contained provinces much less celebrated and less civilised. They traversed Phrygia Epictetus, passed probably through the towns of Synnada and Æzana, and reached the confines of Mysia. There, their indecision returned. Should they turn to the north towards Bithynia, or continue west and enter Mysia? They essayed first to enter Bithynia, but untoward events supervened, which they took for the indications of the will of Heaven. They imagined that the spirit of Jesus did not wish that they should tarry in that country. They then traversed Mysia from one end to the other, and arrived at Alexandria-Troas, a considerable port almost opposite Tenedos, and not far from the site of ancient Troy. The apostolic band made thus, in almost a single journey, a distance of more than a hundred leagues, across a country little known, and which, destitute of Roman colonies and Jewish synagogues, did not offer them any of the facilities they had found elsewhere. These long journeys in Asia Minor, full of sweet ennuis and mystical dreams, are a singular mixture of sadness and of charm. Often the route is hard; certain cantons are peculiarly rugged and barren. Other parts, on the contrary, are full of freshness, and do not correspond at all to the ideas that we are accustomed to embrace in that vague phrase, the East. The mouth of the Orontes marks, both in relation to nature and in relation to races, a well-defined line of demarcation. Asia Minor, both for aspect and for the style of landscape, recalls Italy or our South, at the eminence of Valence and of Avignon. The European is not out of his native climate there, as he is in Syria or in Egypt. It is, if I may say so, an Aryan, not a Semitic country, and it is not to be doubted that one day it will be occupied anew by the Indo-European race (Greeks and Armenians). Water there is abundant: the towns are as if inundated by it. Certain points, such as Nymphi, Magnesia in Siplyus, are veritable paradises. The smooth mountain slopes which bound almost everywhere the horizon, present such varieties of infinite forms, and sometimes of fantastic shapes, that they would be regarded as idle fancies if an artist dare to imitate them. There are summits indented like the teeth of a saw, sides torn and slashed, strange cones, and perpendicular walls, in which are finely exposed to view all the beauties of the stone. Thanks to the numerous chains of mountains, the waters are living and sparkling. Long rows of poplars, small plane-trees, in the wide surface of the winter torrents, superb stumps of trees, where the feet plunge into pools, and which jut out in dark tufts from the foot of each mountain, these are the solace of the traveller. At the source of each stream the caravans stop to water. The journey continues for days and days upon the narrow lines of antique pavement which for centuries have borne travellers so diverse, and oftentimes fatigued; but the halts are delicious. 66


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A repose of an hour, a piece of bread eaten upon the banks of these limpid streams, running in beds of pebbles, sustains one for a long time. At Troas, Paul, who in certain parts of that journey seems not to have followed any well-defined plan, became once more irresolute as to which route he should choose. Macedonia appeared to him to offer a fine harvest. It appears that he was confirmed in that idea by a Macedonian whom he encountered at Troas. He was a doctor, an uncircumcised proselyte, by the name of Lucanus or Lucas. This Latin name would lead one to believe that the new disciple belonged to the Roman colony of Philippi; his rare knowledge, in fact, of nautical geography and of navigation would, however, rather incline to the idea that he was a Neapolitan: the ports and all the coast of the Mediterranean appear to have been remarkably familiar to him.

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This man, to whom was reserved so important a part in the history of Christianity, seeing he was to be the historian of the Christian origins, and seeing his judgment, self-deceptive as to the future, was to regulate the ideas that were formed in the early times of the Church, had received a sufficiently careful Jewish and Hellenic education. He had a gentle and conciliatory mind, a tender and sympathetic soul, a modest temperament, inclining to self-effacement. Paul loved him much, and Luke, on his part, was always faithful to his master. Like Timothy, Luke appeared to have been born expressly to be the companion of Paul. Submission and blind confidence, unbounded admiration, a desire to be submissive, unlimited devotion, were his habitual sentiments. It might be said that it was this absolute abnegation of self that made le moine hibernais in the hands of his abbot. The ideal of “the disciple” was never so perfectly realised. Luke was literally fascinated by the superiority of Paul. His affability as a man of the people proclaimed itself incessantly; his idle fancy showed him always to be a model of perfection and of happiness; an honest man, a good master in his family, of which he was the spiritual head; a Jew at heart, who was converted with all his house. He esteemed the Roman officers, and unhesitatingly believed them to be virtuous. One of the objects he admired the most was a good centurion, pious, benevolent towards the Jews, well served, well obeyed. He had probably studied the Roman army at Philippi, and had been much struck with it. He naturally supposed that discipline and the hierarchy were things of a moral order. His esteem for the Roman functionaries was also great. His title of doctor implies that he possessed medical knowledge, which is proved besides by his writings, but does not imply a scientific and rational culture, which few doctors possessed then. What Luke was par excellence was “the man of firm will”—the true Israelite at heart, he to whom Jesus brought peace. It is he who has transmitted to us, and who probably composed, those delicious canticles of the birth and of the infancy of Jesus, those hymns of the angels, of Mary, of Zachariah, of old Simeon, in which shone out in tones so clear and so joyous the happiness of the new alliance, the Hosanna of the pious proselyte, the accord re-established between the fathers and the sons in the enlarged family of Israel.

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Everything tends to the belief that Luke was touched by grace at Troas; that he was attached from that time to Paul, and persuaded him that he would find in Macedonia an excellent field. His words made a great impression upon the Apostle. The latter believed he saw in a vision a Macedonian, standing up, who invited him, saying unto him, “Come over and help us.” This was received by the apostolic group as a command of God that they should go to Macedonia, and they waited only a favourable opportunity to depart thence

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CHAPTER VI. CONTINUATION OF Tl9E SECOND JOURNEY OF PAUL—THE MACEDONIAN MISSION.

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THE mission at this point entered upon entirely new ground. It was what was called the province of Macedonia; but these regions had not formed a portion of the Macedonian kingdom since the time of Philip. They were, in reality, portions of Thracia, anciently colonised by the Greeks, then absorbed by the powerful monarchy the centre of which was at Pella, and which was included for two hundred years in the great Roman unity. Few countries in the world were, in fact, purer in race than the countries situated between Hæmus and the Mediterranean. That they were composed of diverse branches was true, but each genuinely belonged to the Indo-European family, which were superimposed on it. If we except some Phœnician influences coming from Thasos and from Samothracia, almost nothing foreign had penetrated into the interior. Thracia, which was in great part Celtic, had remained faithful to the Aryan life: she preserved the ancient religions, under a form which appeared barbarous to the Greeks and Romans, but which, in reality, was only primitive. As for Macedonia, it was probably the region the most honest, the most serious, the most pious of the ancient world. It was originally a country of feudal boroughs, not of large independent towns; now, the latter is, of all administrations, that which has best conserved human morality, and placed the most forces in reserve for the future. Monarchical through steadfastness of mind and through abnegation, filled with antipathy for charlatanism, and for the frequent barren agitations of small republics, the Macedonians presented to Greece the type of a society analogous to that of the Middle Ages, founded upon loyalism, upon faith in legitimacy and heredity, and upon a conservative spirit, equally removed from the grovelling despotism of the East, and from that democratic fever which, inflaming the blood of the people, wears out quickly those who abandon themselves to it. Thus disencumbered from the causes of social corruption that democracy almost always brings in its train, and yet free from the iron chains which Sparta had invented to fortify herself against revolution, the Macedonians were the people of antiquity who most resembled the Romans. They recall in some other respects the German barons, brave, dissipated, rude, proud, faithful. If they realised but for a moment what the Romans knew how to establish in a durable manner, they would have had less honour in having survived their attempt. The little kingdom of Macedonia, without factions or seditions, with its good interior administration, was the most solid nationality that the Romans had to combat in the East. A strong patriotic and legitimist spirit reigned there to such a degree that after their defeats we see the inhabitants take fire with a singular facility against the impostors who pretended to continue their old dynasty. Under the Romans, Macedonia remained a land worthy and pure. It furnished to Brutus two excellent legions. We do not see the Macedonians, like the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Asiatics, rushing to Rome in order to enrich themselves with the fruits of their evil practices. Despite the 69


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terrible substitution of races which followed, it may be said that Macedonia has always preserved the same character. It is a country placed under the normal conditions of European life,—wooded, fertile, watered by splendid rivers, possessing interior sources of wealth; whilst that Greece, meagre, poor, singular in everything, has nothing left it but glory and beauty. A land of miracles, like Judæa and Sinai, Greece flourished once, but can never flourish again. She has created something unique, which cannot be reproduced. It seems that when God has once manifested Himself in a country, He blasts it for ever. A laud of klephtes and of artists, Greece cannot again take an original part on the day when the world enters into the channels of wealth, of industry, of abundant consumption: she can only produce genius. In passing through it one is astonished that a powerful race was able to live upon that pile of arid mountains, in the middle of which is a somewhat humid and deep valley, a little plain, a kilometre in extent—all this compels our wonder. Never has there been so plainly seen the opposition which exists between opulence and high art. Macedonia, on the contrary, will one day resemble Switzerland or the south of Germany. Its villages are like clumps of gigantic trees. She has everything that is required for becoming a country of great culture, and of great industry—vast plains, rich mountains, verdant prairies, extended prospects, very different from those charming little mazes of the site of Greece. Solemn and grave, the Macedonian peasant has no longer anything of the assurance and the vivacity of the Hellenic peasant. The women, beautiful and chaste, work in the fields like the men. We might say, a country of Protestant peasants: it is a beautiful and strong race, laborious, steady, loving its country, and full of the future. Embarking at Troas, Paul and his companions (Silas, Timothy, and probably Luke) set sail with a fair wind, touched the first evening at Samothracia, and the morrow approached Neapolis, a town situated upon a small promontory opposite the Isle of Thasos. Neapolis was the port of the great city of Philippi, situated about three leagues thence in the interior. It was the point where the great Egnatine road, which traversed Macedonia and Thracia from west to east, touched the sea. Taking this road, which they did not need to quit until reaching Thessalonica, the Apostles ascended the stony slope cut in the rocks which overlooked Neapolis, emerged from the little chain of mountains which forms the coast, and entered the beautiful plain in the centre of which stands, detached upon a projecting promontory of the mountain, the city of Philippi.

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This rich plain, the lowest portion of which is composed of a lake and of marshes, communicates with the basin of Strymon from behind Pangea. The gold mines which at the Hellenic and Macedonian epoch had made the country celebrated, were now almost abandoned. But the military importance of the position of Philippi, squeezed in between the mountain and the morass, had given to it a new life. The battle which ninety-four years before the arrival of the Christian missionaries had opened its gates, brought to it an unexpected splendour. Augustus had established there one of the most considerable Roman colonies, under the jus italicum. The city was much more Latin than Greek; Latin was there the common tongue; the religions of Latium seemed to have been transported thither intact. The surrounding plain, dotted with towns, was equally, at the epoch at which we have now arrived, a kind of Roman canton, thrown into the heart of Thracia. The colony was inscribed 70


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in the Voltinian tribune. It had been formed principally of the wrecks of the Antonine party, which Augustus had cantoned on these coasts; it was there mixed with portions of the old Thracian stock. In any case, it was a hard-working population, living orderly and peaceably; besides, it was very religious. The confraternities flourished there, particularly those under the patronage of the god Sylvain, who was considered as a sort of tutelary genius of the Latin domination. The mysteries of the Bacchus of Thracia embraced exalted ideas in regard to immortality, and made the population familiar with the views of a future life, and of an idyllic paradise very similar to that which Christianity had spread. Polytheism was in these countries less complicated than elsewhere. The religion of Sabazius, common to Thracia and to Phrygia, in close rapport with the ancient Orpheism, and yet detached by the syncretism of the times from the Dionysian mysteries, included the germs of monotheism. A certain infantile simplicity of taste prepared the way for the Gospel. Everything indicated habits honest, serious, and amiable. One felt oneself to be in a centre analogous to that in which the agronomic and sentimental poetry of Virgil was created. The ever green plain was favourable for the varied culture of vegetables and flowers. Splendid fountains, gushing from the base of the mountain of shining marble which crowned the city, diffused, when properly applied, wealth, shade and freshness. The thickets of poplars and willows, of fig trees and cherry trees and of wild vines, exhaled the sweetest odours, and scented the brooks, which abounded on all sides. Moreover, the prairies, which were overrun or covered with monster roses, exhibited herds of dull-eyed buffaloes, with enormous horns, with their heads just above the water; whilst the bees and the swarms of black and blue butterflies gyrated from flower to flower. Pangaea, with its majestic summits, which were covered with snow till the middle of June, stretched out as if to unite the city across the morass. Beautiful ranges of mountains bounded the horizon on all the other sides, leaving only an aperture through which the sky vanished, and showing in the clear distance the basin of Strymon. Philippi offered to the mission a most appropriate field. We have already seen that in Galatia the Roman colonies of Antioch in Pisidia and of Iconium had very favourably received the new doctrine. We shall observe the same thing at Corinth and at Alexandria-Troas. The population, which had been for a long time settled there, and possessing ancient local traditions, gave few signs of innovations. The Jewry of Philippi, if there was one, was little important; at most, it was limited probably to the women celebrating the Sabbath. Even in the towns in which there were no Jews, the Sabbath was usually celebrated by some of the people. In any case, it seems clear that there was no synagogue there. When the apostolic band entered the city, it was on the first day of the week. Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke remained some days within doors, awaiting, according to custom, the Sabbath day. Luke, who knew the country, remembered that the people who had adopted Jewish customs were wont to assemble on that day without in the suburbs, upon the banks of a small secluded rivulet, which issued from the ground a league and a half from the city, from an

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enormous boiling spring, and which was called Gangas or Gangites. Perhaps it went then by the antique Aryan name of the sacred rivers (Ganga). What is certain is that the peaceful scenes recounted in the Acts, and which marked the first establishment of Christianity in Macedonia, took place at the same spot where a century before the fate of the world had been decided. Gangites marked the spot in the great battle of the year 42 before Jesus Christ, where were placed the foremost ensigns of Brutus and of Cassius. In towns where there was no synagogue, the meetings of those who were affiliated to Judaism were held in small hypethral erections, or frequently simply in the open air in enclosed spaces, which were called proseuchæ. People delighted in establishing these oratories near the sea or rivers, so as to have facilities for ablutions. The Apostles repaired to the place indicated. Many women, in fact, resorted there for devotion. The Apostles spoke to them, and proclaimed to them the mystery of Jesus. They were listened to attentively. One woman, in particular, was touched. “The Lord,” says the writer of the Acts, “opened her heart.” She was called Lydia or Lydian, because she was from Thyatira. She traded in one of the principal products of Lydian industry—purple. She was a pious person, of the order of those who were called “believing in God,” that is to say, a Pagan by birth, but observing the precepts denominated “Noachic.” She was baptised, with all her house, and did not rest until, through much entreaty, she induced the four missionaries to take up their abode with her. They remained there some weeks, teaching each Sunday at the place of prayer, upon the banks of the Gangites.

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A small Church, almost wholly composed of women, was formed. It was very pious, very obedient, and most devoted to Paul. Besides Lydia, this Church embraced within its bosom Evhodia and Syntyche, who with the Apostle fought valiantly for the Gospel, but who sometimes had disputes in regard to the ministry of deaconesses. Epaphroditus, a courageous man, whom Paul treated as a brother, a fellow-worker, a companion in arms; Clement, and others still, whom Paul called “his fellow-workers, and whose names,” said he, “are written in the book of life.” Timothy was also much beloved of the Philippians, and he had for them great devotion. It was the only Church from which Paul accepted pecuniary succour, because it was rich, and was little burdened by poor Jews. Lydia was undoubtedly the principal author of these gifts. Paul accepted them from her, for he knew her to be strongly attached to him. This woman gave from the heart; one had not to fear reproaches on her part, nor for an interested return. Paul preferred, doubtless, to be indebted to a woman (probably a widow), of whom he was sure, rather than to men, in respect of whom he would have been less independent, if he had had some acquaintance with them. The absolute purity of Christian manners disarmed all suspicion. Perhaps, moreover, it is not too audacious to suppose that it is Lydia whom Paul, in his Epistle to the Philippians, calls “my dear spouse.” That expression can be taken, if one so desires, as a simple metaphor. Is it, nevertheless, absolutely impossible that Paul may have contracted with that sister a union more intimate? The

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only thing certain is, that Paul did not take this sister with him in his journeys. Notwithstanding this, a whole branch of ecclesiastical tradition has claimed that he was married.

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The character of the Christian woman became more and more outlined. To the Jewish woman, sometimes so strong, so devoted; to the Syrian woman, who is indebted to the soft languor of a distempered organisation for flashes of enthusiasm and of love; to Tabitha, Mary Magdalen, succeeded the Greek women, Lydia, Phœbe, Chloe, vivacious, gay, active, amiable, distinguished, open-hearted to all, yet nevertheless circumspect, giving themselves up to their master to whom they were subordinate, capable of the greatest things, because they were contented to be the fellow-labourers of the men and their sisters, and to aid them when they performed worthy actions. These Greek women, sprung from a fine and healthy race, experienced at the turn of life a change which transformed them. They became pale, and their eyes wandered languishingly; they then covered the bands of thick hair which bounded their cheeks with a black veil, and devoted themselves to austere cares, and brought to bear on these an animated and intelligent ardour. The “female servant,” or Greek deaconess, surpassed even her of Syria and of Palestine in courage. These women, guardians of the secrets of the Church, ran the greatest dangers, and endured every torment, rather than divulge anything. They created the dignity of their sex, and justly too, because they did not speak of their rights; they did more than the men, in assuming the attitude of limiting themselves to serving the latter. An incident happened which hastened the departure of the missionaries. The city began to speak of them, and public imagination was engaged already upon the marvellous virtues which were attributed to them. One morning, as they were repairing to the place of prayer, they encountered a young slave—probably a ventriloquist—who passed for a witch, and predicted the future. Her masters made a great deal of money out of that ignoble performance. The poor girl, either because she possessed indeed a spirit of divination, or because she was tired of her infamous calling, had no sooner perceived the missionaries than she started to follow them, uttering loud cries. The faithful pretended that she was rendering homage to the new faith and to those who preached it. This was repeated several times. At length, one day, Paul exorcised her. The girl, calmed, pretended to be freed from the spirit which tormented her. But the anger of her masters was extreme. Through the healing of the girl they lost their livelihood. They entered a process against Paul, and Silas as his accomplice, and caused them to be taken to the agora, before the duumvirs. It would have been difficult to found a claim for indemnity upon such peculiar grounds. The plaintiffs laid special stress on the fact of the trouble caused in the city, and of illegal preaching. “They preach customs,” said they, “that we are not allowed to follow, inasmuch as we are Romans.” The city, in fact, was under the Italian law, and liberty of worship became the more constrained the nearer people were to the Roman city. The superstitious population, excited by the masters of the witch, made, at the same moment, a hostile demonstration against the Apostles. These sorts of petty uprisings were frequent in ancient towns. The newsmongers, the unemployed, the “plunderers

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of the agora,” as Demosthenes had already denominated them, lived on them. The duumvirs, believing that they were dealing with ordinary Jews, condemned—without informing themselves of, or inquiring into, the position of the accused—Paul and Silas to be beaten. The lictors divested the Apostles of their garments, and beat them cruelly in public. They were next cast into prison, put in one of the innermost cells, and had their feet made fast in the stocks.

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Whether they had not been allowed to speak in their own defence, or whether they purposely had courted the glory of suffering humiliation for their Master, it does not appear that either Paul or Silas took advantage of their title of citizens before the tribunal. It was during the night in the prison that they declared their rank. The jailor was much troubled. Thus far he had treated the two Jews with harshness; now he found himself in the presence of two Romans, Paulus and Silvanus, unlawfully condemned. He washed their wounds, and gave them to eat. It is probable that the duumvirs were informed at the same time; for early in the morning they sent the lictors to order the jailor to release the captives. The Valerian and the Porcian laws were express. The application of stripes to a Roman citizen constituted a grave offence. Paul, taking advantage of this circumstance, refused thus to leave his confinement. He demanded, it is related, that the duumvirs should themselves come and give him his liberty. The embarrassment of the latter was somewhat great. They came and besought Paul to quit the city. The two prisoners, once at liberty, repaired to the house of Lydia. They were received as martyrs. They addressed to the brethren a few parting words of exhortation and consolation, and departed. In no city had Paul ever been so beloved, and so much loved. Timothy, who was not implicated in the prosecution, and Luke, who played a secondary part, remained at Philippi. Luke did not see Paul again until five years after.

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Paul and Silas, having departed from Philippi, followed the Egnantine road, which led to Amphipolis. This was one of the most beautiful day’s journey Paul ever experienced. In leaving the plain of Philippi, the road enters a smiling valley, dominated by the peaks of Panga. The natives cultivated there flax and the plants of the most temperate countries. Large villages were to be seen in every indentation of the mountain. The Roman road was made of marble flagstones. At each step, almost under every plane tree, deep wells filled with water, coming directly from the snowy vicinage, and filtering through the thick layers of permeable earth, presented themselves to the traveller. Through the openings in the white marble rocks issued rivulets of incomparable limpidity. It is in such a locality that one learns to place pure water in the first rank of the gifts of Nature. Amphipolis was a large city, the capital of a province, and about an hour’s journey from the mouth of the Strymon. The Apostles do not appear to have stopped there, probably because it was a purely Hellenic city. From Amphipolis the Apostles, after quitting the estuary of Strymon, proceeded between the sea and the mountain, across the thick woods and the prairies which extend to the sand on the sea shore. The first halt, under the plane trees, near a cooling fountain which issues from the sand, a 74


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few steps from the sea, is a delicious place. The Apostles then entered Aulon of Arethusa, a deep rent, a kind of Bosphorus cut perpendicularly, which served as an outlet from the interior lakes to the sea, and passed, probably without any one knowing it, by the side of the tomb of Euripides. The beauty of the trees, the freshness of the air, the rapidity of the waters, the strong growth of the ferns and shrubs of all kinds, recall the prospect of Grand Chartreuse or of Grésivaudan, thrown into the bottom of a furnace. The basin of the lakes of Mygdonia, in fact, is torrid, having, as we might say, surfaces of molten lead; the snakeweeds, raising their heads out of the water and seeking the shade, imprint there only a few wrinkles. The flocks, towards the south, crowded together round the foot of the trees, seem shrivelled up. If it were not for the hum of the insects and the song of the birds, which alone in creation can resist such oppression, it might be regarded as the kingdom of the dead.

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Traversing the small town of Apollonia, without halting, Paul skirted the south side of the lakes, and continuing almost as far as the bottom of the plain whose depressed centre they occupy, he arrived at the foot of the small range of heights which form the east side of the gulf of Thessalonica. When one attains the summits of these hills, the outline of Olympus is seen in all its splendour. The base and the middle regions of the mountain are blended with the azure of the sky; the snows of the summit appear as an ethereal dwelling suspended in space. But, alas! the holy mountain had been already disenchanted. Man had ascended it, and had clearly seen that the gods no longer dwelt there. When Cicero, in his exile at Thessalonica, saw their white summits, he knew that there was there only snow and rocks. Paul, doubtless, had no regard for these enchanted places belonging to another race. A great city was before him, and from experience he divined that he would find there an excellent base for establishing something grand. Since the Roman domination, Thessalonica had become one of the most important commercial ports of the Mediterranean. It was a very wealthy and populous city. It had a grand synagogue, serving as a religious centre to the Judaism of Philippi, of Amphipolis, and of Apollonia, all of which had only oratories. Paul followed here his usual practice. For three consecutive Sabbaths he spoke in the synagogue, repeating his uniform discourse on Jesus, proving that he was the Messiah, that the Scriptures had found in him their fulfilment, that he had to suffer, and that he had risen again. Some Jews were converted; but the conversions were numerous, especially among the Greeks “fearing God.” It was always this class which furnished to the new faith its most zealous adherents.

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The women came in crowds. All that was best in the feminine society of Thessalonica had already for a long time observed the Sabbath and the Jewish ceremonies; the élite of these pious dames flocked to the new preachers. The ordinary phenomena of thaumaturgy, of glossology, of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, of mystical effusions, and of ecktases were produced. The Church of Thessalonica soon rivalled that of Philippi in piety and in delicate attentions to the Apostle. Paul nowhere expended more ardour, tenderness, and penetrating grace. This man, naturally vivacious and passionate, exhibited in his mission a surprising gentleness and calmness; he was a father, a

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mother, a nurse, as he himself said; while his austerity and rudeness served but to enhance his charm. Stubborn and stern natures have, when they wish to be unctuous, unequalled powers of seduction. Severe language, never flattery, has much more chance of being made agreeable, with women in particular, than softness, which is often the indication of feeble and interested views. Paul and Silas lived at the house of one Jesus, an Israelite by race, who, according to the usage of the Jews, had Grecianised his name to that of Jason; but they would accept nothing but lodgings. Paul laboured at his trade night and day, in order to cost the Church nothing. The rich purple merchants of Philippi and the sisterhood would, moreover, have been grieved if others than they had furnished to the Apostle the things requisite for existence. On two occasions, during his sojourn at Thessalonica, Paul received from Philippi an offering which he accepted. That was altogether contrary to his principles; his rule was to maintain himself, without receiving anything from the Churches; yet he would have made a scruple about refusing this present of the heart: the pain that he would have given to pious women prevented him. Perhaps, moreover, as we have already stated, he preferred to contract obligations from the women, who never restrained his action, except in regard to men like Jason, in respect of whom he desired to preserve his authority. 83

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Nowhere, it seems, had Paul so much as at Thessalonica succeeded in realising his ideal. The population to which he addressed himself was chiefly composed of laborious workmen; Paul entered into their spirit: he preached to them order, industry, and to hold fast to the good in sight of the heathen. A complete new series of precepts were added to his lessons; to wit, economy, application to business, industrial honour founded upon ease and independence. By a contrast, which ought not to surprise us, he expounded to them, at the same time, the most fantastic mysteries of the Apocalypse that had ever been described to them. The Church at Thessalonica was a model that Paul afterwards delighted to cite, and whose good odour, like a perfume of edification, spread everywhere. There were nominated, besides Jason, among the notables of the Church, Gaius, Aristarchus, and Secundus; Aristarchus was circumcised. That which had happened twenty times before happened again at Thessalonica. The discontented Jews fomented trouble. They employed a band of idlers, of vagabonds, and of those poor creatures of every description who in ancient cities passed the day and night under the columns of the basilicas, ready to make a noise for whoever paid them for it. They went in a body to assail the house of Jason. They called loudly for Paul and Silas. As they did not find them, the rioters seized Jason, together with some of the faithful, and brought them before the politarcs or magistrates. The most confusing cries were raised. “Revolutionaries are in the city,” said some, “and Jason has received them.” “All these people,” said others, “are in revolt against the edicts of the emperor.” “They have a king they call Jesus,” said a third party, The excitement was great, and the politarcs were somewhat alarmed. They compelled Jason and the faithful who had been arrested with him to give bail, then sent them away. The following night the brethren led Paul and Silas out of the city, and had them

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conducted to Beræa. The persecutions of the Jews against the little Church continued, but that only served to consolidate it. The Jews of Beræa were more liberal and better educated than those of Thessalonica. They listened willingly, and allowed Paul, without interruption, to expound his ideas in the synagogue. For several days it was to them a lively source of curiosity. They passed the time in perusing the Scriptures, in order to find there the texts cited by Paul, and to see whether they were correct. Many were converted, among others a certain Jew, named Sopater or Sosipater, son of Pyrrhus. Here, nevertheless, as in all the other Churches of Macedonia, the women were in the majority. The converts belonged all to the Greek race, to that class of devout persons who, without being Jews, practised the Jewish ceremonies. Many Greeks and proselytes were also converted, and the synagogue for once remained peaceable. The storm came from Thessalonica. The Jews of that city, learning that Paul had preached with success at Beræa, came to the latter city, and renewed there their plotting. Paul was again obliged to depart hurriedly, and without taking Silas with him. Many of the brethren of Beræa accompanied him as an escort.

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The warning given by the synagogues of Macedonia was such that sojourning in this country seemed to have become impossible to Paul. He saw himself tracked from city to city, and the rioters to spring up, as it were, from under his feet. The Roman police were not very hostile to him; but they acted in the circumstances according to the habitual practice of police. When there was disturbance in the street, they would blame everybody, and without fretting themselves as to that which served as the true pretext for the excitement, they would beg of people to be quiet or to move on. It was in effect an encouragement to disturbance, and to establish in principle that it only needed a few fanatics to deprive a citizen of his liberty. The policeman never piques himself much on philosophy. Paul hence resolved to depart, and to go to some distant country, where the hatred of his adversaries could not follow him. Leaving Silas and Timothy in Macedonia, he, with the Beræans, directed his steps towards the sea. Thus ended that brilliant Macedonian mission, the most successful of any that Paul had as yet accomplished. Churches composed of entirely new elements had been formed. It was no longer the easy-going Syrian woman, the good-natured Lycaonian woman; it was the subtle, delicate, elegant, spiritual races, who, prepared by Judaism, now embraced the new religion. The coast of Macedonia was completely covered with Greek colonies. The Greek genius had there borne its choicest fruits. These noble Churches of Philippi and of Thessalonica, composed of the most distinguished women of each city, were unquestionably the two greatest conquests that Christianity had yet made. The Jewish woman was outstripped; submissive, retired, and obedient, participating little in religion, the latter was not easily converted. It was the woman “fearing God,” the Greek woman, wearied of the goddesses brandishing their spears on the summit of the Acropolis, the virtuous woman turning her back on a worn-out Paganism, and seeking the pure religion, who was attracted heavenwards. These were the second foundresses of our faith. Next to the Galileans who followed

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Jesus and served him, Lydia, Phœbe, the obscure pious women of Philippi and of Thessalonica are the true saints to whom the new faith owed its most rapid progress. 86

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CHAPTER VII. CONTINUATION OF THE SECOND JOURNEY OF PAUL—PAUL AT ATHENS. PAUL, accompanied still by the faithful Beræans, sailed for Athens. From the end of the Gulf of Thermmus to Phalera, or to Piræus, the voyage in a small craft occupies three or four days. The traveller passes the foot of Olympus, of Ossa, and of Pelion; he follows the sinuosities of the interior sea which Eubœa separates from the rest of the Ægæan Sea, and touches the singularly narrow strait of Euripus. On either bank one skirts that truly holy ground where perfection is at once discovered, where the ideal has really existed,—that soil which has seen the noblest of races found at once art, science, philosophy, and politics. Paul, no doubt, experienced on landing there that species of filial sentiment which cultivated men experience when touching this venerated soil. It was another world: his holy ground was elsewhere.

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Greece had not recovered from the terrible blows she had received during the previous centuries. Like the sons of Earth, these aristocratic tribunes had torn one another to pieces; the Romans had completely exterminated them; the old families had nearly disappeared; the ancient cities of Thebes and of Argos had become poor villages; Olympus and Sparta had been humiliated; Athens and Corinth were the sole survivors. The country was almost a desert: the images of desolation which we gather from the descriptions of Polybius, Cicero, Strabo, and Pausanias are heart-rending. The appearances of liberty which the Romans had left in the towns, and which only disappeared under Vespasian, were little else than irony. The wicked administration of the Romans had ruined everything; the temples were no longer maintained; at each step there were pedestals from which the conquerors had stolen the statues, or which adulation had consecrated to the new rulers. Peloponesus, in particular, had been struck dead. Sparta had killed her; consumed by the proximity of this foolish Utopia, that poor country never sprang into life again. At the Roman epoch, moreover, the administration of the large cities had absorbed and superseded the numerous small ruling centres: Corinth attracted to itself all the life. The race, if we except Corinth, had, however, remained quite pure; the number of Jews outside of Corinth was inconsiderable. Greece had received but a single Roman colony. The invasions of slaves and of Albanians, which have so completely changed the Hellenic blood, did not take place till later. The old religions were still flourishing. Some women, unknown to their husbands, practised much in secret, at the far corner of the gymnasiums, the foreign superstitions, especially those of the Egyptians. The sages, however, protested. “What a God he must be,” said they, “who is pleased with the surreptitious homage of married women! A wife ought not to have other friends besides those of her husband. The gods, are they not our best friends?”

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It seems that, either during the voyage or at the moment of his arrival in Athens, Paul regretted having left his companions in Macedonia. Perhaps that new world astonished him, and he found him-self there too much isolated. What is certain is, that in dismissing the faithful Beræans he charged them to request Silas and Timothy to come and join him at the earliest possible moment. 88

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Paul therefore found himself for some days alone at Athens. This had not happened to him for a long time. His life had been as a whirlwind, and he had never journeyed without two or three companions. Athens, to the world, was something unique—at all events, something totally different from anything that Paul had seen before; hence, he was extremely embarrassed. In waiting for his companions, he amused himself by roaming, in the widest sense, over the city. The Acropolis, with the innumerable statues which covered it, and which constituted it a museum such as had never before been seen, must, in particular, have been to him a subject of the deepest reflection. Athens, although she had suffered much from Sylla, although, like Greece, she had been pillaged by the Roman administrators, and was already in part despoiled by the gross avidity of its masters, had yet the appearance of being ornamented with almost all her master-pieces of art. The monuments of the Acropolis were intact. Some clumsy additions of detail, quite a sufficient number of mediocre works which were already glittering in the sanctuary of high art, some silly substitutions, which consisted in placing Romans on the pedestals of ancient Greeks, had not changed the sanctity of that immaculate temple of the beautiful. Pœcile, with its brilliant decoration, was as fresh as it was on the fast day. The exploits of the odious Secundus Carinas, the purveyor of statues for the gilded House, did not commence until some years after, and Athens suffered less from this than did Delphos and Olympus. The false taste of the Romans for colonnaded cities had not penetrated here; the houses were poor and by no means commodious. That exquisite city was moreover an irregular city, with narrow streets which were the conservators of its old monuments, and archaic souvenirs were preferred to streets scientifically laid out. Many of these marvellous things affected Paul but little; he beheld the only perfect objects which had ever existed, which shall ever exist,—the Propylæum, that chef-d’œuvre of grandeur; the Parthenon, which absorbed every other grandeur save its own; the Temple of Victory without wings, worthy of the battles which it consecrated; the Erechthæum, a prodigy of elegance and of finish; the Errhephoræ, these divine young women with a bearing so full of grace; he beheld all that, and his faith was not overcome, nor was he disquieted. With the prejudices of the iconoclastic Jew, insensible to the plastic beauties which blinded him, he took these incomparable figures for idols. “His spirit,” says his biographer, “was stirred in him when. he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” Ah! thou lovely and chaste images, true gods and goddesses, tremble! Behold him who raised against you the hammer! The fatal words had gone forth: “Ye are idols!” The error of that pitiful little Jew was your death-warrant! Surrounded by so many things which he did not understand, there were two which greatly struck the Apostle: first, the very religious character of the Athenians, which was manifested by a multitude of temples, altars, and sanctuaries of every description, symbols of a tolerant eclecticism which

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they carried into religion; in the second place, certain anonymous altars which were erected to the “unknown gods.” These altars were somewhat numerous at Athens and in the environs. Other cities of Greece possessed them also. Those at the port of Phalera (Paul must have seen them on landing) were celebrated; they belonged to the legends of the Trojan War. They bore this inscription:—“To the unknown gods.” Some of them were even thus inscribed:— 90

ΑΓΗΩΣΤΩΙΘΕΩΙ “To an unknown God.” These altars owed their existence to the extreme scrupulousness of the Athenians for things religious, and to their habit of seeing in everything the manifestation of a mysterious and special power. Fearing, without knowing it, to offend some god of whose name they were ignorant, or of neglecting a powerful god, or even of wishing to obtain a favour which might depend upon a certain divinity with whom they were unacquainted, they either erected anonymous altars, or placed up the afore-mentioned inscriptions. It is possible, too, that these fanciful inscriptions were taken from altars which were originally anonymous, to which, in the work of making a general census, had to be affixed some such an epigraph, for lack of the knowledge of that which properly belonged to them. Paul was greatly surprised at these dedications. Interpreting them with his Jewish mind, he imputed to them a meaning which did not belong to them. He believed that they had reference to a God called par excellence “The Unknown God.” He saw in that Unknown God the God of the Jews, the only God, towards whom Paganism itself might have had some mysterious aspirations. This idea was the more natural, because in the eyes of Pagans that which in particular characterised the God of the Jews was, that he was a God without name, a doubtful God. It was further probable that it was in some religious ceremony, or m some philosophical discussion, that Paul heard the hemistiche:— Τοῦ γὰρ χαὶ γένος ἐσμέν

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borrowed from the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter, or from the Phenomena of Aratus, and which was frequently used in the religious hymns. He grouped in his mind those features of local colouring, and sought to compose a discourse on them appropriate to his new auditors: for he felt that here it was necessary for him to modify greatly his preaching. Certain it is Athens was far from being then what she had been for centuries, the centre of human progress, the capital of the republic of mind. Faithful to her ancient character, this divine mother of art was one of the last asylums of liberalism and of the republican spirit. She was what might be called a city of opposition. Athens was always on the side of the lost cause. She energetically declared for the independence of Greece, and for Mithridates against the Romans, for Pompey against Cæsar, for the republicans against the triumvirs, for Antony against Octavius. She raised statues to Brutus and to Cassius by the side of those of Harmodius and of Aristogiton; she honoured Germanicus to the point of compromising herself; she merited the insults of Piso. Sylla plundered her in an atrocious manner, and dealt the final blow to her democratic constitution. 81


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Augustus, although merciful to her, did not show her any favour. Her title as a free city was never taken away, but the privileges of free cities were gradually diminished under the Cæsars and the Flavii. Athens was thus in the condition of a city suspected and disgraced, but justly ennobled through her disgrace. At the advent of Nerva, there began for her a second life. The world, having returned to reason and to virtue, recognised its mother. Nerva, Herod Atticus, Hadrian, Antonine, Marcus Aurelius, restored her, endowing her even with monuments and new institutions. Athens became again for four centuries the city of philosophers, of artists, of genius, the holy city of every liberal soul, the pilgrim city of those who loved the beautiful and the true. 92

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But let us not anticipate events. At the sad moment at which we are now arrived, the ancient splendour had disappeared, and the new had not yet dawned. She was no longer “the city of Theseus,” and was not yet “the city of Hadrian.” In the century before our era, the philosophic school of Athens had been very brilliant; Philo of Larissa, and Antiochus of Ascalon, had continued or modified the academy; Cratippus taught there peripatetics, and understood how to be at once the friend, the master, the consoler, or the protégé of Pompey, of Cæsar, of Cicero, and of Brutus. Romans, the most celebrated and most eminent in business, attracted to the Orient by ambition, halted at Athens to listen to the philosophers in vogue. Atticus, Crassus, Cicero, Varro, Ovid, Horace, Agrippa, Virgil, either studied or resided there as amateurs. Brutus passed there his last winter, dividing his time between the peripatetic Cratippus and the academician Theomnestus. Athens was, on the eve of the battle of Philippi, a centre of opinion of the highest importance. The instruction which was given there was entirely philosophic, and much superior to the insipid eloquence of the school of Rhodes. That which was indeed prejudicial to Athens was the advent of Augustus and the universal pacification. The precepts of philosophy were from that time suspected—the schools lost their importance and their activity. Rome, on the other hand, by reason of the brilliant literary evolution which she had achieved, became for some time semi-independent of Greece in regard to matters of thought. Other centres were formed: as a school of varied instruction, Marseilles was preferred. The original philosophy of the four great sects had come to an end. Eclecticism, a sort of flabby, unsystematic style of philosophising, had commenced. If we except Ammonius of Alexandria, the master of Plutarch, who founded about that time at Athens a species of literary philosophy, which was to become the fashion, beginning with the reign of Hadrian, there was no one illustrious, about the middle of the first century, in the one city of the world which had produced or attracted the most celebrated men. The figures which were now consecrated with deplorable prodigality on the Acropolis were those of consuls, of pro-consuls, of Roman magistrates, and of members of the imperial family. The temples which were erected there were dedicated to the goddess Rome, and to Augustus. Nero had even his statues there. Artists of talent having been attracted to Rome, the Athenian works of the first century were, for the most part, of a mediocre quality that is surprising. Still monuments, such as the clock of Andronicus Cyrrhesta, the portico of Athene Archegetes, the temple of Rome and of Augustus, the mausoleum of Philopappus, were

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either a little anterior or posterior to the time when Paul saw Athens. Never had the city, during its long history, been more mute and peaceful.

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She still preserved, however, a great portion of her nobility. She still occupied the first rank in the regards of the world. Despite the harshness of the times, the respect for Athens was profound, and every one bowed to her. Sylla, though so terrible in consequence of her rebellion, had pity on her. Pompey and Cæsar, before the battle of Pharsalia, caused it to be proclaimed by a herald that all the Athenians were to be spared, as priests of the goddesses Thesmophores. Pompey gave a large sum of money to adorn the city: Cæsar refrained from avenging himself on her, and contributed to the erection of one of the monuments. Brutus and Cassius, who comported themselves as private persons, were received and flattered like heroes. Antony loved Athens, and liked to reside there. After the battle of Actium, Augustus pardoned her for the third time, and his name, like that of Cæsar, was inscribed on an important monument. His family and entourage were looked upon at Athens as benefactors. The Romans were at great pains to prove that they left Athens free and honoured. Spoiled children of fame, the Athenians lived thenceforward on the recollections of their past history. Germanicus, while be resided at Athens, wished to be preceded by only one lictor. Nero, though not superstitious, did not dare to enter the city for fear of the Furies which lived under the Areopagus,—of those terrible “Semnes,” which the parricides dreaded. The recollection of Orestes made him tremble. He dare no more affront the mysteries of Eleusis, at the threshold of which the herald proclaimed that the profligate and the impious were to be careful not to approach. Noble foreigners, descendants of dethroned kings, came to spend their fortunes at Athens, and were delighted to find themselves decorated with high-sounding and mock titles. All the small barbarian kings emulated one another in rendering service to the Athenians, and in restoring their monuments. Religion was one of the principal causes of this exceptional favour. Essentially municipal and political in its origin, having for its basis the myths relating to the foundation of the city and to its divine protectors, the religion of Athens was at first only the religious consecration of patriotism and of the institutions of the city. It was the cult of the Acropolis. “Aglaure” and the oath which the young Athenians took upon the altar had no other meaning; just as if religion with us consisted in drawing the conscription, in drilling, and in honouring the colours. It soon became insipid enough; it possessed nothing infinite, nothing that touched man through his destiny, nothing universal. The railleries of Aristophanes against the gods of the Acropolis proved by themselves alone that these gods could not bring every race under subjection. The women were turned early in the direction of petty foreign devotions like those of Adonis. The mysteries, in particular, were successful; philosophy in the hands of Plato was a kind of delicious mythology, whilst art created for the multitude images really admirable. The Athenian gods became the gods of beauty. The old Athene Poliade was but a mannikin, without apparent arms, swathed in a peplos, like the old virgin of Loretta. Toreutic accomplished an unexampled miracle; she made realistic statues after the model of the Italian and Byzantine Madonnas, adorned with appropriate ornaments, which were at the same time marvellous masterpieces. Athens succeeded in possessing, after a sort, one of the most perfect religions of 83


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antiquity. This religion underwent at that time a kind of eclipse, on account of the misfortunes of the city. The Athenians were the first to defile their sanctuary. Lachares stole the gold from the statue of Athene. Demetrius Poliorcetes was installed by the inhabitants themselves in the opisthodome of the Parthenon. He harboured his courtesans near himself, and people were amused by the scandals that such surroundings must have caused to the chaste goddess. Aristion the last defender of the independence of Athens, permitted the immortal lamp of Athene Poliade to be extinguished. Such, however, was the glory of that unique city, that the universe seemed to take to heart the adoption of her goddess, at the moment when she deserted her. The Parthenon, through the action of foreigners, regained her honours. The mysteries of Athens were a religious attraction for the whole Pagan world. 96

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But it was principally as a city of schools that Athens exercised a peculiar prestige. That new destiny which, through the assiduity of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, came to possess a character so decided, had been begun two centuries before. The city of Miltiades and Pericles had been transformed into a university city, a sort of Oxford, the resort of all the young noblesse, who scattered gold in handfuls. It contained nothing but professors, philosophers, rhetoricians, pedagogues of every description, sophmores, tutors, gymnasts, pædotribes, hoplomates, masters of fencing and of riding. From the time of Hadrian the cosmetists or prefects of the students assumed to a certain extent the importance and the dignity of the archons. People fixed the date of the years by them: the old Greek education, destined in principle to form the free citizen, became the pedagogic law of the human species. Alas! she produces henceforth little else than rhetoricians; bodily exercises, formerly a real occupation of the heroes upon the banks of the Illissus, became now a mere matter of pose. A circus grandeur, the gestures of Franconi, have replaced solid grandeur. But it is the peculiar attribute of Greece to have ennobled everything. Even the work of the schoolman became with her a moral ministry. The dignity of the professor, in spite of more than one abuse, was one of her creations. The jeunesse dorée could sometimes remember the fine discourses of its masters. She was, like all youths, republican; she flocked to the appeal of Brutus; she was mown down at Philippi. The day was employed in declaiming on tyrannicide and on liberty, in celebrating the noble death of Cato, and in making a eulogy on Brutus. The population had always been sprightly, spirituelle, curious. Every one lived in the open air, in perpetual contact with the rest of the world, breathing, under smiling skies, a serene atmosphere. The strangers, who were numerous and eager after knowledge, evinced great activity of mind. Publicity, the journalism of the ancient world—if one may be permitted to make use of such an expression—had its centre at Athens. The city not being commercial, everybody had but one care, which was to learn the news, to be made au courant of what was said and of what was being done in the universe. It is very remarkable that the great development of religion did not destroy rational culture. Athens might have been at once the most religious city of the world, the Parthenon of Greece, and the city of philosophers. When we see in the theatre of Dionysius the marble arm-chairs which surround the orchestra bearing each the name of the priesthood the titulary of which came 84


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to sit there, we should say that here was a city of priests; and yet it was pre-eminently the city of free-thinkers. The religions in question had neither dogmas nor holy writ. They had not for physics the horror that Christianity has always evinced, and which has led it to condemn positive researches. The priest and the Epicurean atomist, except for a few broils, lived peaceably enough together. The true Greeks were perfectly contented with such accord, founded not upon logic, but upon mutual tolerance and mutual regard. This was for Paul a species of existence altogether new. The cities in which he had up till now preached were for the most part commercial cities, resembling Leghorn or Trieste, and having large Jewries rather than brilliant centres, cities of the great world and of great culture. Athens was profoundly Pagan; Paganism was bound up with every pleasure, with every interest, with every glory of the city. Paul hesitated a great deal. Timothy at length arrived from Macedonia; Silas, for reasons which we do not know was not able to come. 98

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There was a synagogue at Athens, and Paul disputed in it with the Jews, and with the “devout persons;” but in such a city any successes in the synagogue counted for little. That brilliant agora in which was displayed so much mind, that portico Pœcile in which was asked every conceivable question, tempted him. He spoke there not as a preacher addressing himself to the multitude assembled, but as a stranger feeling his way—putting forth his ideas timidly, and seeking to create for himself some point d’appui. “Jesus and the resurrection” (anastasis) appeared foreign words, and destitute of meaning. Several of them, as it would appear, took anastasis for the name of a goddess, and believed that Jesus and Anastasia were some new divine couple that these Oriental dreamers had come to preach. Some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, it is said, came near and listened. This first contact of Christianity with Greek philosophy was not very encouraging. We have never seen a better example of how men of mind ought to distrust themselves and to guard against laughing at an idea, however foolish it may seem to them. The bad Greek spoken by Paul, his incorrect and halting phraseology, were not calculated to make him accredited at Athens. The philosophers turned their backs disdainfully at his barbarous speech. “He is a babbler” (spermologos), said some. “He is a preacher of strange gods,” said others. No one could have suspected that this babbler would one day supplant them, and that, four hundred and seventy-four years later, their professorships would be suppressed as useless and injurious, in consequence of the preaching of Paul. What a grand lesson! Proud of their superiority, the Athenian philosophers disdained the questions pertaining to popular religion. In their midst superstition flourished. Athens almost equalled in that respect the most religious cities of Asia Minor. The aristocracy of thinkers cared little for the social wants which made themselves felt under the cover of so many unpolished worships. Such a renunciation is always punished. When philosophy declares that she will not occupy herself with religion, religion responds by extinguishing her; and this is just, for philosophy

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is something only when she shows to humanity the way, when she takes up seriously the infinite problem which is the same for all.

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The liberal spirit which reigned at Athens assured Paul of complete security. Neither Jews nor Pagans attempted anything against him; but that tolerance was even worse than hatred. Moreover, the new doctrine produced a lively reaction, at least in the Jewish society; here it could find only curious and blasé auditors. It appears that one day the auditors of Paul, wishing to obtain from him a sort of official exposition of his doctrine, conducted him to the Hill of Mars, and there summoned him to declare what religion he preached. It is indeed possible that there is some legend here, and that the celebrity of the Areopagus may have led the narrator of the Acts, who had not been an eyewitness, to select this illustrious audience to enable him to deliver on his hero a pompous discourse, a philosophic harangue. This hypothesis, nevertheless, is not necessary. The Areopagus had retained, under the Romans, Its ancient organisation. It had even seen its prerogatives increased, as a result of the policy which led the conquerors to suppress in Greece the ancient democratic institutions, and to replace them by the Council of Notables. The Areopagus had always been the aristocratic corporation of Athens: it gained what the democracy had lost. Let us add that people were living in an epoch of literary dilettanteism, and that that tribunal, by its classic celebrity, enjoyed a great prestige. Its moral authority was recognised by the entire world. The Areopagus thus became again, under Roman domination, what it had been at different times in the history of the Athenian Republic, a political body, almost divested of judicial functions, the real senate of Athens, intervening only in certain cases, and constituting a conservative nobility of retired functionaries. Beginning with the first century of our era, the Areopagus figures in the inscriptions as head of the powers of Athens, superior to the Council of Six Hundred, and to the people. The erection of statues, in particular, was made by it, or at least with its authorisation. At the epoch at which we are now arrived, it had just decreed a statue to Queen Berenice, daughter of Agrippa I., with whom we shall soon see Paul en rapport. It seems also that the Areopagus exercised a certain superintendence over instruction. It was a chief council of religious and moral censure, before which was brought all that concerned laws, manners, medicine, luxury, ædileship, the religions of the city; and there is no-thing unlikely in the fact that when a novel doctrine was promulgated, that the preacher should be invited to come and make his declarations before such a tribunal, or at least to the place in which it held its sessions. Paul, it is said, stood up in the middle of the assembly and spoke thus: “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription:—‘TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.’ Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that he is lord of earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath, and all

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things. And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation. That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, ‘For we are all his offspring.’ Forasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, or graven by art of man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. Because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts xvii. 22-31). At these words, according to the narrator, Paul was interrupted. Hearing him speak of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said:—“We will hear thee again of this matter.”

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If the discourse which we have just related was really delivered, it must indeed have produced a very singular impression upon the cultivated minds which heard it. That almost barbarous speech, now incorrect and formless, now scrupulously correct; that unequal eloquence, strewn with happy fancies and disagreeable failings; that profound philosophy, embracing beliefs the most singular, and extending, seemingly, to another world. Immensely superior to the popular religion of Greece, such a doctrine was in many things below the level of the current philosophy of the age. If, on the one hand, it extended the hand to that philosophy through the elevated notion of divinity and the beautiful theory which it proclaimed of the moral unity of the human mind, on the other, it embraced in part supernatural beliefs that no informed mind could admit. In any case, it is not surprising that Christianity had no success in Athens. The motives which were to work the success of Christianity, were elsewhere than in the circle of letters. They were lodged in the hearts of pious women, in the secret aspirations of the poor, the slaves, and the afflicted of every description. Before philosophy could approach the new doctrine, it was necessary that philosophy itself should be much debased, and that the new doctrine should be renounced from the grand chimera of the near judgment, that is to say, from the concrete ideas with which from its first formation it had been enveloped. Whether it was delivered by Paul, or by one of his disciples, this discourse, in any case, shows us an endeavour, almost the only one in the first century, made to reconcile Christianity with philosophy, and even, in one sense, with Paganism. The author, giving proof of a breadth of views most remarkable amongst the Jews, discovers in all races a sort of innate sense of the divine, a sort of secret instinct of monotheism which might lead to the knowledge of the true God. To be believed in, Christianity is nothing more than natural religion, which one arrives at by consulting simply one’s own heart, and by interrogating oneself conscientiously—the two-sided idea which was soon to reproach Christianity with deism, and to inspire a pride of which it had been shorn. This is the first example given of the tactics of certain apologists of Christianity, in advance of philosophy, using or feigning to use scientific language; speaking with complaisance or politeness of the reason

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advanced by the other side of wishing to have it believed, by means of skilfully grouped quotations, that in the main it might be understood by lettered people; but which led to misunderstandings that were inevitable, for they plainly declared their opinions, and spoke of their supernatural dogmas. One can already perceive the effort to translate into the language of Greek philosophy Jewish and Christian ideas; one can foresee Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Biblical ideas, and those of Greek philosophy, aspired to embrace one another; but in order to that many concessions had to be made; for that God in which we live and move is far removed from the Jehovah of the prophets, and from the celestial father of Jesus. Be that as it may, the times were far from being ripe for such an alliance; at any rate, it was not to take place at Athens. Athens, at the point which it had reached in history, that city of grammarians, of gymnasts, and of fencing-masters, was likewise as ill adapted as it was possible to be, for receiving Christianity. The power over vassals, the hardness of heart of the schoolman, were unpardonable sins in the eyes of grace. The pedagogue is the least convertible of men; for he has a religion of his own, which is routine, faith in old authors, and a taste for literary exercises. This satisfies him, and extinguishes in him all other desires. There has been found at Athens a series of hermes-portraits of cosmetics of the second century. The latter are splendid men, grave, majestic, with a noble mien, and yet Hellenic. From the inscriptions we learn of the honours and pensions which were conferred on them: the really great men of the ancient democracy never had so many of these. Assuredly if Paul had encountered some of the predecessors of these superb pedants, he could not have achieved much more success than, during the Empire, would have had a romancist imbued with neo-Catholicism, attempting to convert to his views a Universitarian attached to the religion of Horace, or than would in our own days a socialist humanitarian declaiming against English prejudices before the fellows of Oxford or Cambridge.

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In a society so different from that in which he had till now lived, in the midst of rhetoricians and professors of dialectics, Paul found himself indeed from home. His thoughts constantly reverted to the dear Churches of Macedonia and Galatia, where he had discovered such an exquisite religious sentiment. He thought many times of departing for Thessalonica. A lively desire carried him thence, the more so as he had received news that the faith of the young Church had been subjected to many severe tests, and he feared that the proselytes might succumb to the temptations. Some obstacles, that he attributed to Satan, prevented him from carrying out that project. When he could no longer forbear, as he himself said, he separated once more from Timothy, whom he sent to Thessalonica to confirm, to exhort, and to console the faithful, and remained alone again at Athens. He laboured there with renewed vigour, but the soil was unpropitious. The sprightly Athenian mind was diametrically opposed to that tender and profound religious disposition which produced conversions, and which was predestined to Christianity. The truly Hellenic ground was little inclined to the doctrine of Jesus. Plutarch, living in an atmosphere purely Greek, had not the least wind of it in the first half of the second century. Patriotism, attachment to old recollections of country,

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turned the Greeks against exotic worships. “Hellenism” became an organised, almost rational religion, which admitted a great part of philosophy. The “gods of Greece” appeared to wish to be regarded as the universal gods of humanity.

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That which characterised the religion of Greece formerly, that which still characterises it in our day, is the want of infinity, of the unconfined, of compassion, of feminine softness. The profoundness of German and Celtic religious sentiment is lacking in the true Hellenic race. The piety of Greek orthodoxy consists in practices and in exterior signs. The orthodox Churches, sometimes very elegant, have none of the terrors which one feels in a Gothic Church. In that Oriental Christianity there are no tears, prayers, or outward compunctions. The funerals there are almost gay. They take place at night, or at the setting of the sun, when the shadows have become lengthened, and are accompanied by songs set in a medium key, and are a display of bright colours. The fanatical gravity of the Latins is distasteful to those brisk, cheerful, and sprightly races. The infirm one is not cast down; he watches death softly approach; all about him is smiles. Herein lies the secret of that divine gaiety of the Homeric poems and of Plato—the narration of the death of Socrates in Phædon shows hardly a taint of sadness. Life produces its flower, then its fruit; what is wanted more? If, as it can be maintained, the pre-occupation of death is the most important characteristic of Christianity and of modern religious sentiment, then the Greek race is the least religious of races. It is a superficial race, treating life as a thing devoid of the supernatural, and having no future. Such simplicity of conception is owing in great measure to the climate, to the purity of the atmosphere, to the astonishing joy that one breathes, but even more so to the instincts of the Hellenic race, finely idealistic. Anything—a tree, a flower, a lizard, a tortoise, calls up the recollection of a thousand metamorphoses which have been sung by the poets; a jet of water, a small crevice in the rock which is called a cave of the nymphs; a well with a drinking-cup at the brink; an arm of the sea so narrow that the butterflies cross it, and nevertheless navigable for the largest ships, like the Bosphorus; orange groves, cypress trees, whose shades are reflected on the sea; a small pine wood in the midst of rocks—suffice in Greece to produce the contentment which is awakened by beauty. People walk in the gardens during the night to listen to the nightingales; sit down in the clear moonlight to play the flute; go to drink the pure mountain water, carrying with them a piece of bread, and a flask of wine, which is drunk while singing. At family feasts, there is suspended above the doors a crown of branches, to match with the headpieces of flowers; on days of public festivals, thyrsi are carried, adorned with leaves; the days are passed in dancing, playing with tame goats; these are the delights of the Greeks, the pleasures of a race, poor, economical, eternally young, inhabiting a charming country, finding its welfare within itself, and in the gifts that the gods have given it. The shepherd’s song or pastoral, after the manner of Theocritus, was in the Hellenic countries a reality. Greece al-ways delighted in that unpretentious species of delicate and amiable poetry, the species the. most characteristic of her literature, the mirror of her own life, though almost always silly and artificial. Good humour and the delights of life are Greek traits par excellence. This race is always twenty years old; for she, indulgere genio is not the deep drinking of the English, or the gross diversions

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of the French; it is simply to think that nature is kind, that one can and one ought to unbend to it. For Greece, in fact, nature is a counsellor of elegance, a mistress of justice and of virtue:—“concupiscence.” The idea that nature induces us to do evil is to her a not-sense. The taste for personal adornment which distinguishes the palicare, and which is exhibited with so much innocence in the Greek girl, is not the pompous vanity of the barbarian, the vulgar pretension of the bourgeois, swollen with the ridiculous pride of an upstart; it is the pure and delicate sentiment of unsophisticated youth, which feels itself to be the legitimate heir of the true inventors of beauty. 107

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Such a race, one can understand, would have received Jesus with a smile. It was a subject these exquisite children were incapable of learning from us—serious, profound, really simple devotion without glory, goodness without parade. Socrates is a moralist of the first order, but he has nothing to do with the history of religion. The Greek always appears to us a little cold and heartless; he has wit, action, subtlety, but has nothing of the pensive or the melancholic. On the other hand, with us Celts and Germans, the source of our genius is our heart. Our deepest recesses (au fond de nous) resemble a fairy fountain, a fountain clear, fresh, and deep, in which is reflected the infinite. With the Greek, love of self and vanity is mixed with everything; vague sentiment is unknown to him; reflection upon his own destiny ap-pears to him unprofitable. Pushed to the length of caricature, so incomplete a mode of understanding life as it is conditioned, at the Roman epoch, the græculus esuriens, grammarian, artist, charlatan, acrobat, physician, amuser of the whole world, greatly resembling the Italian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; at the Byzantine epoch, the theological sophist making religion degenerate into subtle disputes; in our day, the modern Greek, sometimes foolishly vain and ungrateful; the orthodox fathers, with their egotistical and materialistic religion. Unfortunate he who arrests that decadence! Shame upon him who, in front of the Parthenon, dreams of holding it up to ridicule! Nevertheless, this has to be acknowledged: Greece was never seriously Christian, nor is she to this day. No race in our Middle Ages was less romantic, more destitute of chivalrous sentiment. Plato built all his theory of the beautiful en se passant without reference to woman. To think of a woman in order to be incited to do great things! a Greek would have been surprised at such language. For him, he thought of men assembled around the agora, he thought of his country. In this respect the Latins were nearer to us. Greek poetry, incomparable in the grander species of it, such as the epic, the tragic, the disinterested lyric poetry, had not, it seems, the sweet elegiac note of Tibullus, of Virgil, of Lucretius, a note so much in harmony with our sentiments, so closely related to that which we love. The same difference is found between the piety of St Bernard, of St François d’Assisi, and that of the saints of the Greek Church. These splendid schools of Capadocia, of Syria, of Egypt, of the Fathers of the desert, approximate the philosophical schools. The popular holy writings of the Greeks are more mythological than those of the Latins. The majority of the saints represented in the iconostase of a Greek house, before which a lamp burns, are not great authors, great men like saints of the West: they are often fanciful beings, old gods transfigured, or at least a combination of historic and mythological personages, like St George. And that admirable temple of St Sophia! 90


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It is an Aryan temple: the whole human species might have made its prayers there. Not having had either people, inquisition, scholasticism, or Middle Age barbarism, having always preserved a leaven of Arianism, Greece rejected with greater facility than any other country a supernatural Christianity, just as those Athenians of former times were at once (thanks to a sort of vivacity which was a thousand times more profound than the seriousness of our dull races) the most superstitious of peoples, and the nearest approach to Rationalism. The popular Greek songs are still to-day charged with Pagan images and ideas. Differing so widely from the West, the East remained during the Middle Ages, and down to modern times, true “Hellenists;” at bottom more Pagan than Christian, living on a religion of old Greek patriotism, and of old authors. These Hellenists were, in the fifteenth century, the promoters of the Renaissance in the West, to which they affixed Greek texts, the basis of all civilisation. The same spirit has presided, and will continue to preside, over the destinies of new Greece. When we have fully studied that which made of us bears the caul of a cultivated Hellenist, we see that there is in him very little Christianity: he is Christian in form, as a Persian is a Mussulman, but at bottom he is “Hellenist.” His religion is the adoration of the ancient Greek genius. He pardons every heresy to philo-Hellenism, to him who admires its past: he is much less a disciple of Jesus and of St Paul, than of Plutarch and of Julian. Wearied by his little success at Athens, Paul, without awaiting the return of Timothy, departed for Corinth. He had not formed at Athens any considerable Church. There were only a few isolated persons, among others a certain Dionysius, who belonged, it is said, to the Areopagus, and a woman, named Damaris, who had adhered to his doctrines. This was, then, in his apostolic career, his first and almost only check. Even in the second century the Church at Athens is of little importance. Athens was one of the cities which was the last to be converted. After Constantine, she is the centre of opposition against Christianity, the bulwark of philosophy. By a rare privilege she preserved the temples intact. These prodigious monuments, protected through the ages, thanks to a sort of instinctive respect, were to come down to us as an eternal lesson of good sense and honesty, given by artists of genius. Even to-day we feel that the Christian covering which is spread over the old Pagan foundation is very superficial. It is hardly necessary to modify the actual names of the churches at Athens to find again the names of the ancient temples.

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CHAPTER VIIL CONTINUATION OF THE SECOND JOURNEY OF PAUL—FIST SOJOURN AT CORINTH. DEPARTING from Phalera or Piræus, Paul arrived at Cenchrea, which was the port of Corinth on the Ægæan Sea. It is a pretty enough little harbour. It is surrounded by verdant hills and pine woods, and is situated at the extremity of the Gulf of Saronica. A beautiful open valley, nearly two leagues in extent, reaches from that port to the great city built at the foot of the colossal dome from which can be seen the two seas.

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Corinth was a field much better adapted than Athens to receive the new seed. It was not like Athens a sort of sanctuary of thought, a city sacred and unique to the world; it was even hardly a Hellenic city. Ancient Corinth had been razed to. its foundations by Mummius. For a hundred years the soil of the Achaian Confederation was desert. In the year 44 B.C. Julius Cæsar rebuilt the city and made it an important Roman colony, which he peopled principally with freedmen. This is equivalent to saying that the population was very heterogeneous. It was composed of a conglomeration of those peoples of every sort and of every origin which loved Cæsar. The new Corinthians remained for a long time strangers to Greece, where they were regarded as intruders. Their entertainments consisted of the brutal games of the Romans, which were repulsive to true Greeks. Corinth became thus a city like so many others on the shores of the Mediterranean, very populous, wealthy, brilliant, frequented by many strangers, a centre of commercial activity, one of those conglomerate cities, in short, which no longer contained patriots. The dominant trait which rendered its name proverbial was the exceeding corruption of manners which was remarked there. In this again it constituted an exception amongst the Hellenic cities. The purely Greek manners were simple and gay, and could on no account be held to be luxurious and debauched. The affluence of the mariners who were attracted thence by the two ports, had made of Corinth the last sanctuary of the worship of Venus Pandemos, a remnant of the ancient Phœnician establishments. The great temple of Venus had more than a thousand consecrated courtesans; the whole city was like a vast pandemonium, where numerous strangers, sailors particularly, resorted to spend their wealth foolishly. There was at Corinth a colony of Jews, which was probably established at Cenchrea, one of the ports which was used in trading with the East. A short time before the arrival of Paul, a colony of Jews, which had been expelled from Rome by the edict of Claudius, had disembarked, and among the number were Aquila and Priscilla, who, it seems, at that time already professed the faith of Christ. From all this there resulted a concomitance of circumstances most favourable. The isthmus formed between the two masses of the Greek continent has always been the seat of a world-wide commerce. It had always been one of those emporiums, quite irrespective of race or of nationality,

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designed to be the headquarters, if I might say so, of infant Christianity. New Corinth, on account of its having few Hellenic nobility, was a city already semi-christianised. With Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, and Rome, she became an ecclesiastical metropolis of the first rank. But the immorality which reigned should at the same time have presaged that the first abuses in the history of the Church would be produced there. In a few years Corinth shall present tows the spectacle of incestuous Christians, and of drunken people sitting down to the table of Christ. Paul quickly divined that a long sojourn at Corinth would be necessary. He resolved hence to take up there a fixed abode, and to prosecute his trade of upholsterer. Now, strictly speaking, Aquila and Priscilla followed the same trade as Paul. He went there to live with them, and the three set up a small shop, which was stocked by them with ready-made articles. Timothy, whom Paul had sent from Athens to Thessalonica, soon rejoined him. The news from the Church at Thessalonica was excellent. All the faithful continued in the faith and in charity, and in their attachment to their master. The persecutions of their fellow-citizens had not shaken them; brotherly love prevailed throughout Macedonia. Silas, whom Paul had not seen since his flight from Beræa, had probably been joined by Timothy, and returned with the latter. What is certain is, that the three companions found themselves reunited at Corinth, and that they lived there together for a long time.

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The attention of Paul was, as usual, first directed to the Jews. Each Sabbath he spoke in the synagogue. He found there dispositions greatly diverse, One family, that of Stephenephorus or Stephanus, was converted, and were all baptised by Paul. The orthodox resisted energetically, even to the extent of injuring and of anathematising them. One day, finally, there was an open rupture. Paul shook the dust off his raiment upon the incredulous of the assembly, made them responsible for the consequences, and declared to them that, seeing they closed their ears to the truth, he would go unto the Gentiles. Having uttered these words, he left the hall. He taught henceforth in the house of one Titus Justus, a man that feared God, and whose house was contiguous to the synagogue. Crispus, the chief of the Jewish community, belonged to the party of Paul; he was converted with his whole house, and Paul baptised him himself, a thing of rare occurrence. Many others, both Jews and Pagans, and those “fearing God,” were baptised. The number of converted Pagans appeared to be here relatively considerable. Paul displayed prodigious zeal. Several divine visions which came to him during the night fortified him. The fame of the conversions he had made at Thessalonica, nevertheless, preceded him, and had favourably disposed the religious society in his behalf. The supernatural phenomena were not wanting: there were some miracles. Innocence was not the same thing here as at Philippi and Thessalonica. The corrupt manners of Corinth crossed sometimes the threshold of the Church; at any rate, all those who entered it were not equally pure. But, in return, few of the Churches were more numerous; the community of Corinth irradiated the whole province of Achaia, and became the home of Christianity in the Hellenic peninsula. Without speaking of Aquila and of Priscilla—almost received in the rank of apostles—and 93


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of Titus Justus, of Crispus, of Stephanus—mentioned above—the Church numbered in its bosom Gaius, who was himself also baptised by Paul, and who extended hospitality to the Apostle during the second sojourn of the latter in Corinth; Quartus, Achaicus, Fortunatus, Erastus, rather an important personage, who was treasurer of the city; a woman named Chloe, who had a numerous household. We have only vague and uncertain notions in regard to one Zenas, a doctor of Jewish law. Stephanus and his household constituted the most influential group, the one which had the most authority. All the converts, nevertheless, with the probable exception of Erastus, were simple-minded people, without much instruction, without social distinction, drawn, in a word, from the humblest ranks. The port of Cenchrea had likewise its Church. Cenchrea was in great part peopled by Orientals. There one could reverence Isis and Eschmoun, while the Phœnician Venus was not neglected. It was like Calamaki in our days, less a city than a mass of shops and inns for seafaring men. In the midst of the corruption of these filthy hovels of seafarers, Christianity produced its miracle. Cenchrea possessed an admirable deaconess, who, one day, as we shall see later on, concealed under the folds of her woman’s garments the whole future of Christian theology, the writing which was to regulate the faith of the world. She was named Phœbe. She was an active person, never at rest, always eager to render service, and who was very precious to Paul.

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The sojourn of Paul at Corinth lasted for eighteen months. The beautiful rock of Acrocorinth, the snowy summits of Helicon and of Parnassus, remained for a long time in his regards. Paul contracted in that new religious family some deep friendships, although the taste of the Greeks for disputation displeased him; while on more than one occasion his natural timidity may have been increased by the disposition of his auditors to subtlety. He could not detach himself from Thessalonica, from the simplicity he had found there, from the lively affections he had there left behind him. The Church at Thessalonica was the model which he never ceased to proclaim, and to-wards which he always reverted. The Church at Philippi, with its pious women, its rich and good Lydia, was not allowed to be forgotten. That Church, as we have seen, enjoyed a singular privilege; which was, to nourish the Apostle when his labour did not suffice to do so. At Corinth he received from her fresh succour. As if the somewhat sprightly nature of the Corinthians, and of the Greeks in general, had inspired him with distrust, he would not accept anything of this kind from them, although more than once he found himself reduced to want during his sojourn in their midst. It was with difficulty, nevertheless, that the anger of the orthodox Jews, always so active, was restrained from breaking out. The preachings of the Apostle to the Gentiles, his broad principles in regard to the adoption of all those who believed, and their incorporation into the family of Abraham, irritated to the highest pitch the partisans of the exclusive privilege of the children of Israel. The Apostle, on his part, was not very sparing in hard words. He announced to them that the anger of God was about to break out against them. The Jews had recourse to the Roman authorities. Corinth was the capital of the province of Achaia, comprising the whole of Greece, and

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which ordinarily was joined to Macedonia. The two provinces had been made senatorials by Claudius, and in virtue of which they had a pro-consul. That position was filled at the time of which we speak by one of the most amiable and best instructed men of the century—Marcus Annæus Novatus, elder brother of Seneca. who had been adopted by the rhetorician L. Junius Gallio, one of the litterateurs of the society of the Senecas: Marcus Annæus Novatus took hence the name of Gallio. He had a great mind and a noble soul, was a friend of the poets and of the celebrated authors. Every one who knew him adored him. Statius called him dulcis Gallio, and probably he was the author of some of the tragedies which proceeded from that literary roof. He wrote, it seems, upon natural philosophy. His brother dedicated to him his book on Anger and Happy Life; people attributed to him one of the most intellectual works of the period. It appears that it was his high Hellenic culture which, under the learned Claudius, led to his selection for the administration of a province which all governments, somewhat enlightened, surrounded with delicate attentions. His sanctity obliged him to abandon the post. Like his brother, he had, under Nero, the honour of expiating by his death his distinction and his honesty. Such a man was little disposed to agree to the demands of fanatics coming to ask the civil power, which they protested against in secret, to rid them of their enemies. One day Sosthenes, the new ruler of the synagogue, who had succeeded Crispus, brought Paul before the judgment seat, and accused him of preaching a religion contrary to the law. Judaism, in fact, which had old authorisations, and all sorts of guarantees, pretended that the dissentient sect, as soon as they had made a schism in the synagogue, enjoyed no longer the charters of a synagogue. The situation was one which would have brought before the French law liberal Protestants on the day they separated themselves from recognised Protestantism. Paul was going to answer, but Gallio restrained him, and, addressing the Jews, said: “If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason were that I should bear with you; but if it be a question of words and of names, and of your law, look ye to it, for I will be no judge of such matters.” This was an admirable response, worthy of being set up as a model to civil governments when they are invited to meddle with religious questions. Gallio, after he had pronounced it, gave orders to drive away both parties. A great tumult ensued. Everybody was seized with the desire to fall upon Sosthenes, and he was beaten before the judgment seat, and no one could tell whence the blows proceeded. Gallio paid little heed, and caused the place to be cleared. The sage politician had avoided entering into a dogmatic quarrel; the well-educated man refused to mix himself up with a quarrel of vulgar people; and when he saw violence break out, he sent every one away. No doubt it would have been wiser not to appear so disdainful. Gallio was well inspired in declaring himself to be incompetent to judge in a question of schism and of heresy; but yet men of mind have sometimes little prescience! It was discovered later that the quarrel of these abject sectaries was the great affair of the century. If, instead of treating a religious and social question with that unceremoniousness, the government had taken the trouble to make an impartial investigation, to make a searching public investigation, and to discontinue giving an official sanction 95


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to a religion become completely absurd; if Gallio had been disposed to take into account what it was that constituted a Jew and a Christian, to read Jewish books, to keep himself au courant of what was passing in the subterranean world; if the Romans had not been so narrow-minded, so little addicted to the study of science, many misfortunes would have been avoided. How very singular! There was, in the case now under consideration, on the one hand, a man who was one of the most intellectual and the most studious; on the other, a soul which was one of the most robust and the most original of his time, and they passed the one before the other without either perceiving the fact; and, surely, if the first blows had fallen upon Paul instead of upon Sosthenes, Gallio would have been equally indifferent. One of the things which causes the most faults to be committed by people of the world, is the superficial disgust which badly educated and unmannerly people inspire in them yet manners are only a matter of form, and those who have them not are found sometimes not to be destitute of good sense. The society man, with his frivolous sneers, passes continually, without knowing it, the man who is going to create the future; they do not belong to the same world; yet the common error of society people is to think that the world which they see is the entire world. These difficulties, however, were not the only ones that the Apostle had to encounter. The Corinthian mission was thwarted by obstacles which, for the first time, he had met with in his Apostolic career,—obstacles proceeding from the bosom of the Church itself, from intractable men who had been introduced to it, and who opposed him, or from many Jews who had been attracted to Jesus, but more attached than Paul to legal observances. The false spirit of the degenerated Greek who, starting from the fourth century, corrupted Christianity so much, was already making itself felt. The Apostle then called to mind his beloved Churches at Macedonia, that unlimited docility, that purity of morals, that frank cordiality, which had procured for him at Philippi and Thessalonica such happy days. He was seized with an ardent desire to go and see once more the faithful of the Lord, and when be received from them an expression of the same desire, he could hardly restrain himself. In order to comfort himself in this embarrassment, and to protect himself from the importunities of those with whom he was surrounded, it pleased him to write to them. The epistles dated from Corinth bear the imprint of a kind of sadness,—praises of the most lofty description for those to whom Paul wrote; but these letters were completely silent, or contained some unfavourable allusions to those from whose midst he wrote.

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CHAPTER IX. CONTINUATION OF THE SECOND JOURNEY OF PAUL—FIRST EPISTLES—INTERIOR CONDITION OF THE NEW CHURCHES. IT was at Corinth that the apostolic life of Paul attained its highest degree of activity. To the cares of the grand Christianity which he was engaged in founding, he had just added the prepossessions of the communities that he had left behind him. A sort of jealousy, as he has told us himself, devoured him. He thought less at that moment of founding new Churches than of caring for those which he had created. Each of his Churches was to him as a bride which he had promised to Christ, and which he wished to preserve pure. The power that he claimed over these little corporations was absolute. A certain number of rules, which he regarded as having been laid down by Jesus himself, was the sole canonical law anterior to himself that he recognised. He was thought to have divine inspiration for adding to those rules all those which the new circumstances called for, and which had to be obeyed. But was not his example a supreme rule to which all his spiritual children might conform themselves?

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Timothy, whom he employed to visit the Churches that were far away from him, could not, had he been indefatigable, satisfy the immense ardour of his master. It was then that Paul conceived the idea of supplying by correspondence what he was prevented from saying himself or through his principal disciples. There did not exist in the Roman Empire anything which resembled our postal establishment for private letters; all correspondence had to be forwarded incidentally, or by express. St Paul hence made it a point to take everywhere with him persons of a second order, who could be used as messengers. Correspondence between the synagogues already existed in Judaism. The envoy charged with bearing the letters was himself a dignitary drawn from the synagogues. The epistolary style formed amongst the Jews a species of literature which was continued amongst them down to the heart of the Middle Ages, as a consequence of their dispersion. Without doubt, from the period when Christianity was extended to the whole of Syria, Christian epistles existed; but in the hands of Paul these writings, which up till then had not, for the most part, been preserved, were, equally with his speaking, the instruments of progress in the Christian faith. It was held that the authority of the Epistles equalled that of the Apostle himself; they were all to be read before the Church assembled; some of them had even the character of circular letters, and were communicated successively to various Churches. The reading of the correspondence thus became an essential part of the offices of the Sabbath. And it was not merely at the moment of its reception that a letter served thus for the edification of the brethren; deposited in the Church archives, it was taken from there on days of assembling, and read as a sacred document, and as a perpetual source of instruction. The epistle was thus the form of primitive Christian literature. It was an admirable form, perfectly adapted to the conditions of the times, and to the natural aptitude of Paul.

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The condition of the new sect, in fact, did not by any means permit of connected discourse. Infant Christianity was wholly disengaged from texts. The hymns even were composed by each for him-self, and were not written. People believed in watching for the final catastrophe. The sacred books, which we call the “Scriptures,” were the books of the ancient Law. Jesus had added no new book. He must return to fulfil the ancient Scriptures, and to open an age in which he himself would be the living book. Letters of consolation and of encouragement were the only means which could produce a similar state of mind. If already, about the time at which we are arrived, there had been more than a small booklet, designed to assist the memory in regard to “the sayings and doings” of Jesus, these booklets were of an entirely private character. They were not authentic, official writings, universally received in the community; they were notes of which persons au courant of events took little account, and were considered as altogether an inferior authority to tradition. Paul, as regarded himself, had not a mind adapted to the composition of books. He had not the patience that is required for writing; he was incapable of system; the labour of the pen was disagreeable to him, and he preferred to delegate it to others. Correspondence, on the contrary, so obnoxious to those who are accustomed to employ art in putting forth their ideas, suited well his feverish activity, and the necessity of expressing on the spur of the moment his impressions. Now brisk, crude, polite, snarlish, sarcastic, then suddenly tender, delicate, almost roguish and coaxing; happily expressed and polished to the highest degree; skilful in sprinkling his language with reticences, reserves, infinite precautions, malignant allusions, and ironical dissimulations, he came to excel in a style which required above everything original impulses. The epistolary style of Paul is the most individual that we have ever had. Its language, if I may say so, is ground up (hoy e), without a single consecutive phrase. It would be impossible to violate more audaciously, I do not say the genius of the Greek language, but the logic of human language. It might be described as a rapid conversation, stenographed and reproduced without corrections. Timothy was quickly trained to fulfil for his master the functions of secretary, and as his language came to resemble somewhat that of Paul, he replaced him frequently. It is probable that in the Epistles and perhaps in the Acts we have more than one page of Timothy; but such was the modesty of that singular man, that we have no certain marks by which to single them out. Even when Paul corresponded directly, he did not write with his own hand; he dictated; sometimes when the letter was finished he re-read it. His impetuous soul carried him away at such moments; he made marginal additions to it, at the risk of injuring the context, and of producing suspended and entangled sentences. He transmitted the letter thus effaced, regardless of the numberless repetitions of words and of ideas which it contained. With his marvellous fervour of soul, Paul has yet a singular poverty of expression. A phrase besets him, he recurs to it in a page at every turn. It was not sterility, it was contentiousness of mind and complete indifference to the requirements of a correct style. In order to avoid the numerous frauds to which the passions of the times gave rise, the authority of the Apostle and the material conditions of antique epistolography, Paul was in the habit of sending to the Churches a specimen of his writing, which was easily 98


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recognisable; this done, it was sufficient for him, according to a usage then general, to put at the end of his letters some words in his own hand as a guarantee of their authenticity.

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There is no doubt that the correspondence of Paul was considerable, and that what is remaining of if to us constitutes only a small portion. The religion of the primitive Churches was so detached in every way, so purely idealistic, that people did not realise the immense value of such writings. Faith was everything: each one carried it in one’s heart, and cared little for stray leaves of papyrus, which, besides, were not holograph. These epistles were for the majority mere occasional pieces; nobody suspected that one day they would become sacred books. It was only towards the end of the life of the Apostle that people bethought themselves of retaining his letters because of their intrinsic merit,—of passing them on and of preserving them. Then each Church guarded preciously its own, consulted them often, had regular lectures on them, allowed copies to be taken of them; still, a multitude of letters of the first period were irrecoverably lost. As for the letters in response to those of the Churches, all have disappeared; and it could not be otherwise; Paul in his wandering existence never had any other archives than his memory and his heart. Two letters only of the second mission remain with us: they are the two epistles to the Church at Thessalonica. Paul wrote them from Corinth, and joined with his own name in the superscription those of Silas and Timothy. They have the appearance of being composed at a short interval from one another. They are two productions full of unction, tenderness, emotion, and charm. In them the Apostle does not conceal his preference for the Churches of Macedonia: He made use of the latter to give utterance to that love for glowing expressions, for images the most endearing; he represents himself as the kind nurse cherishing her children in her bosom, as a father charging his children. This was indeed what Paul was for the Churches he had established. He was an admirable missionary, and, what was more, an admirable director of consciences. Never did he appear to better advantage than in having the charge of souls; never did any one take up the problem of the education of man in a more enthusiastic and thorough manner. But it must not be thought that he acquired that ascendency through fawning and flattery. No; Paul was blunt, disagreeable, and sometimes ill-tempered. In no respect did he resemble Jesus; he had not his charming indulgence, his habit of excusing everybody, his divine incapacity of seeing evil. He was often imperious, and made his authority to be felt with a haughtiness which shocks us. He commanded, he blamed severely, he spoke of himself with assurance, and unhesitatingly held himself up as a model. But what haughtiness! what purity! what disinterestedness! Upon the last point he is painfully minute. Ten times he reverts with pride to the apparently puerile fact that he had cost no man anything, that he had never eaten gratis the bread of any one, that he had laboured day and night with his hands, although he might well have done like the other Apostles, and lived by religion. The bent of his zeal was, in a manner infinite, a love of souls. The kindness, the innocence, the fraternal spirit, the unlimited charity of the primitive Churches, are a spectacle which will never again be seen. It was wholly spontaneous, unconstrained, and yet

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these little associations were as solid as iron. Not only could they resist the perpetual bickerings of the Jews, but their interior organisation possessed surprising force. In order to understand them, it is necessary to think, not of our grand churches open to all, but of religious orders endowed with a most intense individual life,—of confraternities firmly consolidated, in which the members by turns embraced, animated, quarrelled with, loved, hated one another. These Churches had a kind of hierarchy: the oldest members, the most active, those who were en rapport with the Apostle, enjoyed a precedence! But the Apostle himself was the first to repress everything which had the appearance of domineering; he held himself to be only “the promoter of the common joy.” 125

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The “elders” were sometimes elected by the common voice,—that is to say, by a show of hands,—sometimes installed by the Apostle, but always considered as chosen by the Holy Spirit, that is to say, by that superior instinct which directed the Church in all its acts. People began already to call them “deacons” (episcopi, a word which in the language of politics had passed into the eranes), and to consider them as “pastors” charged with the conduct of the Church. Certain of them, moreover, were regarded as having a sort of speciality for teaching; these were catechists, going from house to house, and imparting the word of God in private admonitions. Paul made it a rule, at least in particular cases, that the catechumen, during his instruction, was to share all that he possessed in common with his catechist. Full authority belonged to the Church assembled. This authority was extended to the minutest details of private life. All the brethren watched one another, corrected one another. The Church assembled, or at at least those who were called “the devout,” reprimanded those who were in fault, consoled the cast-down, and undertook the office of skilled directors, versed in the knowledge of the heart. Public penitences had not yet been instituted; but they no doubt already existed in embryo. As no exterior force restrained the faithful, nor prevented them from splitting or abandoning the Church, we should have thought that such an organisation, which appears to us insupportable, in which is only to be seen a system of espionage and of accusation, would speedily have come to an end. But nothing of the kind. We do not find, at the period at which we have now arrived, a single example of apostacy. Every one submitted humbly to the sentence of the Church. He whose conduct was irregular, or who had strayed from the traditions of the Apostles, or who was not attentive to his duties, was marked; he was avoided; no one would hold communion with him. He was treated as an enemy, though he was at the same time admonished as a brother. This isolation covered him with shame, and he repented. The gaiety in these little companies of good people living together, always sprightly, occupied, eager, loving and hating much, the gaiety, I say, was very great. Verily the words of Jesus had been fulfilled; the reign of the meek and lowly had come, and had been manifested by the extreme felicity which flowed from every heart. People had a perfect horror of Paganism, but were very tolerant in their treatment of Pagans. Far from fleeing from them, people sought to attract them and to gain them over. Many of the faithful had been idolaters, or had parents who were; they knew with what good faith one might

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be in error. They recalled their honest ancestors, who had died without having known saving truth. A touching custom, baptism for the dead, was the consequence of that sentiment. People believed that in being baptised for those of their ancestors who had not received holy water, they conferred on them the merits of the sacrament; thus the hope of not being separated from those that they loved was not frustrated. A profound idea of solidarity dominated every one; the son was saved through his parents, the father through the son, the husband through the wife. People could not be brought to condemn a man of good intentions, or who through any side way whatever clung to the saints.

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Manners were severe, though not sad. That virtuous gloom which the rigorists of modern times (Janissaries, Methodists, etc.) preach as a Christian virtue, had no existence then. The relations between men and women, far from being interdicted, were multiplied. One of the scoffs of the Pagans was to represent the Christians as effeminate, deserting common society for the conventicles of young women, old women, and children. Pagan nakednesses were severely condemned. The women, in general, were closely veiled: not a single precaution for protecting timid chastity was omitted; but the bashful woman is also a voluptuous woman, and the ideal dream which is in man is susceptible of a thousand applications. When we read the Acts of St Perpetue, the legend of St Dorothy, we see that they are the heroines of an absolute purity; but how little do they resemble a Port Royal female religionist! Here, one-half of the instincts of humanity is suppressed; there, these instincts, which later on came to be regarded as Satanic suggestions, had received only a new direction. It may be said that primitive Christianity was a sort of moral romanticism, a powerful revulsion of the faculty of loving. Christianity did not diminish that faculty; it took no precautions against it; it did not place it under suspicion—it nourished it with air and with light. The danger of these liberties was not yet manifest. In the Church, the bad was, in some sort, impossible, for the root of evil, which is wicked desire, was taken away. The position of catechist was often filled by women. Virginity was regarded as a state of sanctity. This preference accorded to the celibate was not a negation of love and of beauty, like that which found place in the barren and unintelligible asceticism of later centuries. It was, in a woman, that just and true sentiment which virtue and beauty prize so much the more the more it is concealed; so that she who has not found that rare peril of strong love, guards, by a sort of pride and of reserve, its beauty and moral perfection for God alone, for God conceived as jealous, as the co-partner of close secrets. Second marriages, though not forbidden, were regarded as a mark against one. The popular sentiment of the century ran in that groove. The beautiful and touching expression of σύμβιος became the ordinary word for “spouse.” The words Virginius, Virginia, Παρθενιχός, indicating the husbands who had not formed other alliances, became terms of eulogy and of tenderness. The spirit of the family, the union of husband and wife, their reciprocal esteem, the recognition by the husband of the cares and the foresight of his wife, permeated in a touching manner the Jewish inscriptions, which in this only reflected the sentiment of the humble classes amongst which the Christian propaganda recruited converts. It is a singular thing that the most elevated ideas on the sanctity of marriage have been spread in the world by a people amongst whom 101


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polygamy had never been universally interdicted. But it required, in the fraction of Jewish society in which Christianity was formed, that polygamy should actually be abolished, since the Church did not seem to think that such an enormity needed to be condemned.

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Charity, brotherly love, was the supreme law, and common to all the churches and all the schools. Charity and chastity were par excellence Christian virtues,—virtues which made a success of the new gospel, and converted the entire world. One was commanded to do good to all: nevertheless, co-religionists were regarded as being worthy of preference. A taste for work was held to be a virtue. Paul, a good workman, vigorously reproved indolence and idleness, and repeated often that naïf proverb of a man of the people: “He that would not work, neither should he eat.” The model that he conceived was a punctual artisan, peaceable, applying himself to his work, eating tranquilly—his mind at ease—the bread that he earned. But how far are we from the primitive ideal of the Church at Jerusalem, wholly communistic and monastical, or even from that of Antioch, wholly preoccupied with prophecies, with supernatural gifts, with apostleship! Here the Church is an association of honest workmen, cheerful, content, not jealous of the rich, for they are more happy than the latter, for they know that God does not judge like the worldly, and prefers the honest soiled hand to the white and intriguing hand. One of his principal virtues was to conduct his affairs orderly; “that ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.” There were some members of the Church, of whom St Paul had heard tell, who worked not at all, but were busy-bodies, and who are severely reprimanded. That combination of practical good sense and of delusion ought not to surprise. Does not the English race in Europe and in America present to us the same contrast, so full of good sense as regards things of this world, so absurd as regards things pertaining to heaven? Quakerism, even, commenced with a tissue of absurdities, and retained them until the day, thanks to the influence of William Penn, it became something practical, great, and fruitful. The supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as prophecy, were not neglected. But we can well see that in the Churches of Greece, composed of Jews, these fantastic exercises possessed no longer much meaning, and we can believe that they soon fell into desuetude. Christian discipline turned on a kind of deistic piety, which consisted in serving the true God, in praying and in doing good. A powerful hope gave to these precepts of pure religion the efficacy that they of themselves never could possess. The dream that had been the soul of the movement inaugurated by Jesus, continued still to be the fundamental dogma of Christianity; everybody believed in the near future of the kingdom of God, in the unseen manifestation of a great glory, from the midst of which the Son of Man would appear. The idea that people had of that marvellous phenomena was the same as in the times of Jesus. A great storm—that is to say, a terrible catastrophe—was near at hand: that catastrophe would strike all those whom Jesus would not have saved. Jesus was to show himself in the heavens as “king of glory, surrounded by angels.” Then the judgment was to take place. The saints, the persecuted, were to go and range themselves about Jesus, in order to enjoy with him eternal rest. The unbelievers who had persecuted them (the Jews especially) were to be the prey of 102


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fire; their punishment was to be eternal death. Chased from before the face of Jesus, they were to be hurried away to the abyss of destruction. A destroying fire, in short, was to be lighted and was to consume the world and all those who had rejected the gospel of Jesus. That final catastrophe was to be a kind of great and glorious manifestation of Jesus and his saints, an act of supreme justice, a tardy reparation for the iniquities which had been up to that time the rule of the world. Objections were naturally raised against this strange doctrine. One of the principal of them arose from the difficulty of conceiving what should be the portion of the dead at the moment of the advent of Jesus. Since the visit of Paul, there had been several deaths in the Church at Thessalonica, and these first deaths had made, on all sides, a very deep impression. Was it necessary to compassionate, and to regard as excluded from the kingdom of God, those who had thus disappeared before the solemn hour? The ideas upon individual immortality and a special judgment were yet too little developed to enable people to sustain auy such objection. Paul responded with remarkable clearness:— 131

“That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing. But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

People sought to discover the day of that grand appearance. St Paul condemned these inquisitive speculations, and made use of them in order to show the almost worthlessness of the words themselves which people had attributed to Jesus. “But of the times and the season, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.”

The preoccupation of that near catastrophe was extreme. The enthusiasts believed that they had discovered the date by means of special revelations. There existed already several apocalypses; people went even the length of causing forged letters of the Apostle to be circulated, in which this end of things was announced,— “Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means; for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition. Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

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Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things! And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall the Wicked be revealed, whom that Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming; even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.”

We see that in these texts, written twenty years after the death of Jesus, only a single essential element has been added to the description of the day of the Lord such as Jesus had conceived it, namely, the character of an Anti-Christ, or false Christ, which was to spring up before the grand appearance of Jesus himself—a sort of Satanic Messiah, who was to work miracles, and desire to be worshipped. Apropos of Simon the Magician, we have already met with the singular idea that the false prophets worked miracles exactly like the true prophets. The opinion that the judgment of God would be preceded by a terrible catastrophe, by the spread of impiety and abominations, by the passing triumph of idolatry, by the advent of a sacrilegious king, was, however, very ancient, going back as far as the first origins of the apocalyptic doctrines. Gradually that ephemeral reign of evil, the precursor of the final victory of the good, which would happen to the Christians, would be personified in a man who was conceived to be the exact converse of Jesus, a sort of Christ of the infernal regions.

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The type of that future misleader was composed in part out of recollections of Antiochus Epiphanes, such as he is presented in the book of Daniel, combined with the reminiscences of Balaam, of Gog and Magog, of Nebuchadnezzar, and partly from ideas borrowed from the circumstances of the times. The ghastly tragedy that was being enacted at Rome at that moment, in face of the world, could not fail but excite greatly the imaginations of men. Caligula, the anti-deity, the first emperor who sought to be worshipped during his life, suggested in all probability the circumstance to Paul, when the aforesaid person exalted himself above all the pretended gods, all the idols, and took his seat in the temple of Jerusalem, desirous of being regarded as God himself. The Anti-Christ was thus conceived in the year 54 as a continuer of the foolish sacrilege of Caligula. Reality affords but too many opportunities to explain away such presages. A few months after Paul wrote that strange passage, Nero came to the throne. It was in him that the Christian conscience should see later on the hideous precursor of the coming of Christ. What was the cause, or rather who was the personage, that alone, in the year 54, still prevented, according to Saint Paul, the appearance of Anti-Christ? This has been left in obscurity. The question’s here asked may perhaps have been a mysterious secret, no strange thing in politics, which the faithful discussed among themselves, but which they did not commit to paper, for fear of compromising one another. The mere seizure of a letter would have sufficed to bring about the most atrocious persecutions. Here, as in other points, the habit which the early Christians had of not writing down certain things, has created for us irremediable obscurities. It has been supposed that the personage in question was the Emperor Claudius, and we have seen in the language of Paul a play of words on his name,—Claudius

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= qui claudit = ὁ χατέχωυ. At the date when that letter was written, in fact, the death of poor Claudius—circumvented by fatal snares laid by the villainous Agrippa—seemed only to be a question of time; everybody expected it; the Emperor himself spoke of it; dark presentiments showed themselves at every turn; natural prodigies like those which, fourteen years later, struck so forcibly the author of the Apocalypse, tormented the popular imagination. People spoke in terror of the monstrous fœtus,—of a son which had the long claws of a sparrow-hawk; all this made people tremble for the future. The Christians, like ordinary people, participated in these terrors; the prognostications, and the superstitious fears of natural calamities, were the essential cause of the Apocalyptic fears. That which is clear; that which still is revealed for us in these inestimable documents; that which explains the wonderful success of the Christian propaganda, is the spirit of devotion, the high morality which reigned in those little Churches. They might be compared to the reunions of the Moravian brothers, or to pious Protestants addicted to the extremest devotion, or, again, to a sort of third order of a Catholic congregation. Prayer and the name of Jesus were constantly on the lips of the faithful. Before each act, before partaking of food, for example, they pronounced a short benediction or short act of grace. It was looked upon as an injury done to the Church, to bring an action before the civil judges. The belief in the near destruction of the world raised a revolutionary ferment which carried into every mind a great portion of its sourness. The invariable rule of the Apostle was, that it was necessary for one to abide in the state to which one had been called. “Is any person called (being) circumcised, let him not dissimulate circumcision; is any person called uncircumcised, let him not be circumcised; is any one a virgin, let her remain a virgin; is any one married, let such remain married; is any one a slave, seek not to be made free; and even if one can obtain one’s freedom, let such a one remain in slavery. The slave who is called, is the free servant of Christ; the free man who is called, is the slave of Christ.” A marvellous resignation had taken possession of souls, which rendered everything indifferent, and shed over all the weariness of that world, extinct and forgotten. The Church was a permanent source of edification and of consolation. It must not be imagined that the Christian gatherings of those times were modelled after the cold assemblies of our days, in which the unforeseen, the individual initiative, had no part. It is rather of the English Quakers, the American Shakers, and the French Spiritualists, that one must think. During the meeting all were seated, and each spoke when he felt inspired. The inspired one would then rise up, and deliver, through the impulse of the Spirit, discourses of various forms, which it is difficult for us to distinguish to-day—psalms, canticles of acts of grace, eulogies, prophecies, revelations, lessons, exhortations, consolations, and treatises on language. These improvisations, considered as divine oracles, were sometimes chanted, sometimes delivered in a speaking tone of voice. Each invited his neighbour to do this; each excited the enthusiasm of others: it was what was called singing to God. The women remained silent. As every one believed oneself to be constantly visited by the Spirit, every image, every throb which crossed the brain of the believers, seemed to contain a deep meaning, and, with 105


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the most perfect good faith in the world, they drew a real nourishment of soul from pure illusions. After each eulogy, each prayer thus improvised, the multitude had a collective inspiration through the word Amen. In order to mark the diverse acts of the mystic seance, the president interposed, either by the invitation Oremus; or by a sigh directed towards heaven—Sursum Corda! or in recalling that Jesus, according to his promise, was in the midst of the assembled—Dominus Vobiscum. The cry Kyrie Eleison was also repeated frequently in a suppliant and plaintive tone. 136

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Prophecy was esteemed a high gift: some women were endowed with it. In many cases, especially when the matter in hand had reference to philology, people hesitated; people sometimes even believed themselves to be dupes of a cunning device of the evil spirits. A particular class of the inspired, or, as was said, of the “spiritual,” was charged with the interpretation of these fantastic outbursts,—to find sense in them, to discern the minds from which they proceeded. These phenomena had great efficacy in the conversion of Pagans, and were regarded as the most demonstrative miracles. The Pagans, in fact—at least those of them who were supposed benevolent—were drawn into the assemblies. Then there would often follow strange spectacles. One or several of the inspired would address the intruder, address him alternately with rudeness or with gentleness, reveal to him inner secrets which he believed he himself only knew, and unfold to him the sins of his past life. The wicked were astonished, confounded. The shame of that public manifestation, which in that assembly had been exposed in a state of spiritual nudity, created between him and the brethren a strong bond, which was not again to be broken. A sort of confession was sometimes the first act which was done in entering the sect. The intimacy, the affection which such exercises established between the brothers and the sisters, was without reserve: all became indeed as one person. It required nothing less than a perfect spirituality to hinder such relations from springing up, and to check abuse. We can conceive the immense attraction that a soul-movement so active would exercise amongst a society freed from moral bonds, especially amongst the common classes, who were neglected equally by the state and by religion. Hence the grand lesson which is to be derived from that history for our century; the times resemble each other; the future belonged to the party who took up the masses and educated them. But, in our days, the difficulty is indeed greater than it has ever been. In antiquity, upon the coasts of the Mediterranean, material life could be simple: the wants of the body were secondary, and easily satisfied. With us, these wants are numerous and imperative; popular associations are weighed to the earth as with a weight of lead. It was the sacred feast, “the Lord’s Supper” especially, that had an immense moral efficacy; it was considered as a mystic act by which all were incorporated with Christ, and as a consequence united in the same body. There was hence a perpetual lesson of equality, of fraternity. The sacramental words which were connected with the last supper of Jesus were present to all. It was believed that that bread, that wine, that water, were the body and blood of Jesus himself. Those who partook of it were accounted to eat Jesus, were united to him, and bound to him by an ineffable mystery. The prelude to it was the giving of “the holy kiss,” or “kiss of love,” without any of the scruples which came to trouble the 106


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innocence of another golden age. Ordinarily the men gave it to one another, and the women gave it amongst themselves. Some Churches, however, pressed the holy liberty to the point of not making any distinction of sexes in the kiss of love. Profane society, little capable of comprehending such purity, made this the occasion of divers calumnies. The chaste Christian kiss awakened the suspicions of the libertines, and soon the Church was constrained to the point of taking severe precautions; but in the beginning it was an essential rite inseparable from the Eucharist, and completing the high signification of the symbol of peace and love. Some abstained from it in youth, and in the time of mourning and of fasting. 138

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The first monastic Church at Jerusalem broke bread every day. Twenty or thirty years after, people had come to celebrate the holy feast only once a week. This celebration took place in the evening, and, according to the Jewish usage, by the light of numerous lamps. The day chosen for this was the day following the Sabbath, the first day of the week. This day was called “the day of the Lord,” in rememberance of the “resurrection,” and also because it was believed that on the same day God had created the world. Alms were done, and collections made on this day. The Sabbath, which all Christians probably celebrate still in a manner not equally scrupulous, was distinct from the day of the Lord. But without doubt the day of rest tended more and more to be confounded with the day of the Lord, and it is permissible to suppose that in the Churches of the Gentiles, who had no reason to prefer the Saturday, that change was already made. The ébonim of the East, on the contrary, rested on Saturday. Little by little the supper tended to become purely symbolical in form. At the first it was a real supper, at which one ate as much as one wanted, only with an elevated mystic intention. The supper was prefaced by a prayer. As at the dinners of the Pagan fraternities, each brought his basket and consumed what he brought: the Church, no doubt, furnishing the accessories, such as hot water, pilchards, that which was called the ministerium. People loved to think of two invisible servants, Irene (Peace) and Agapæ (Love), the one pouring out the wine, the other mixing it with hot water; and, perhaps, at certain moments during the repast, one would be heard to say, with a sweet smile, to the deaconesses (ministræ), that from which they derived their names: Irene, da calda (hot water)—Agape, misce me (pour me out). A spirit of delicate reserve and of discreet sobriety presided at the feast. The table at which people sat was in the form of a hollow semi-circle, or of a crescent, sigma (a symbol); the elder was placed in the centre; the cups or saucers which were used for drinking out of were the objects of particular care. The bread and the wine, which were blessed, were carried to the absent by the minister of the diocese. In time the supper came to be no more than a ceremony. People ate at home to appease hunger; at the assembly people eat only a few mouthfuls; drank only a few sups, in view of the symbol. People were led by a kind of logic to distinguish the common fraternal repast from the mystical act which consisted solely of a fraction of bread. The fraction of bread became each day more sacramental; the supper, on the contrary, in proportion as the Church increased, became more

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profane. Sometimes the supper was reduced almost to nothing, and in being thus reduced, lost all the importance of a sacramental act. Sometimes the two things subsisted, but separately; the supper was a prelude or a sequel to the Eucharist; people dined together before or after the communion. Then the two ceremonies were separated entirely; the pious repasts were acts of charity towards the poor, sometimes the remnants of Pagan usages, and had no longer any connection with the Eucharist. As such, they were in general suppressed in the fifth century. The “eulogia” or “consecrated bread” remained, then, the sole souvenir of a golden age in which the Eucharist was invested with the more complex and less purely analytic forms. For a long time, still, however, the custom was preserved of invoking the name of Jesus in drinking, and people continued to consider as a eulogy the act of breaking bread and of drinking together, which were the last traces, and the traces well-nigh effaced, of the admirable institutions of Jesus. 140

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The name which, at the first, the eucharistic feast bore, expressed admirably all that there was in that excellent rite of divine efficacy and of salutary morality. They were called agapæ, that is to say, “loves” or “charities.” The Jews—the Essenians especially—had already attached a moral sense to the religious feasts; but in passing into the hands of another race, these Oriental usages took an almost mythological significance. The Mythriatic mysteries which began soon to be developed in the Roman world had as their principal rite the offering of bread and of the cup, over which were pronounced certain words. The resemblance was such, that the Christians explained it as a ruse of the devil, who wished by this means to have the infernal pleasure of counterfeiting their most holy ceremonies. The secret bonds between all these things are very obscure. It was easy to foresee that grave abuses would so quickly be mixed up with such practices, that one day the feast (the agapæ, properly speaking) would fall into desuetude, and that there would only remain the eucharistic wafer, the sign and memorial of the primitive institution. One could no longer be surprised to learn that strange mysteries should be made the pretext for calumnies, and that the sect which pretended to eat, under the form of bread and wine, the body and the blood of its founder, should be accused of renewing the feasts of Thyestes, of eating infants covered with pastry, and of anthropophagistic practices. The annual feasts were always the Jewish feasts, especially Easter and Pentecost. The Christian Easter was generally celebrated on the same day as the Jewish Passover. Nevertheless, the cause which had transferred the holy-day of each week from the Saturday to the Sunday regulated also Easter, not from usage and Jewish souvenirs, but from the souvenirs of the passion and of the resurrection of Jesus. It is not impossible that, from the time of Paul, in the Churches of Greece and Macedonia, that change had already been effected. In any case, the thought of that fundamental feast was profoundly modified. The passage of the Red Sea became a thing of little account after the resurrection of Jesus; people no longer thought of it, except to find in it a figure of the triumph of Jesus over death. The true Paschal Lamb was henceforth Jesus, who had been offered up for all; the true unleavened breads were truth, justice; the old leaven had lost its power, and ought therefore to be rejected. For the rest, the feast of the Passover had indeed more anciently undergone with the 108


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Hebrews an analogous change of signification. It was certainly in its origin a feast of spring time, which was connected by an artificial etymology with the remembrance of the flight from Egypt. Pentecost was also celebrated on the same day as with the Jews. Like Easter, that feast took a signification altogether new, which put into the shade the old Jewish idea. Right or wrong, people believed that the principal incident of the Holy Spirit upon the assembled Apostles had taken place on the day of Pentecost which followed the resurrection of Jesus; the ancient harvest festival of the Semites became thus in the new religion the feast of the Holy Ghost. About the same time that feast underwent an analogous transformation amongst the Jews; it became with them the anniversary of the promulgation of the law upon Mount Sinai.

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No edifice had been built or any building rented expressly for the meetings;—no art, consequently no images. The assemblies took place in the houses of the brethren the best known, or who had a room well adapted for the purpose. People preferred for this the apartments which, in Oriental houses, formed the first floor, and corresponding to our drawing-room floor. These apartments are high, containing numerous windows, very fresh, very airy; it was here that one received one’s friends, where one held feasts, where one prayed, where one laid out the dead. The groups thus formed constituted “domestic churches,” or pious coteries full of moral activity, and resembling greatly those “domestic colleges,” examples of which were to be found about that time in the bosom of Pagan society. All great things are thus founded in inconsiderable centres, where one is tightly squeezed the one against the other, and where souls are warmed by a powerful love. Up to this time Buddhism alone had elevated man to this degree of heroism and of purity. The triumph of Christianity is inexplicable, if it is studied only in the fourth century. It happened with Christianity as happens almost always in human things: it succeeded when it began to decline morally; it became official when it no longer had anything to rest upon except itself; it came into vogue when its true period of originality and of youth had passed away. But it did none the less merit its high recompense: it had merited this by its three centuries of virtue, or by the incomparable predilection for the good which it had inspired. When we think of that miracle, no hyperbole about the excellence of Jesus appears illegitimate. It was he, always he, who was the inspirer, the master, the principle of life in his Church. His divine mission grew each year, and this was but just. He was no longer only a man of God, a great prophet, a man approved and authorised of God, a man powerful in works and in speech; these expressions which suffice, which were sufficient for the faith and the love of the disciples of early times, passed now for silly fables. Jesus is the Lord, the Christ, a personage entirely superhuman, not yet God, but very near being it. One lives in him, one dies in him, one rises in him; almost everything that one says of God, one says of him. He was in truth already a divine personality, and when it is wished to identify him with God, it is only a question of words, a mere “communication of idioms” as the theologians say. We shall see that Paul himself attained to this: the most advanced formulas that are to be found in the Epistle to the Colossians existed already in germ in the older epistles. “For to us there is but one God, the Father,

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of whom are all things, and we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him” (1 Cor. viii. 6). Again, and Jesus shall be the logos, creator; the most exaggerated of the consubstantialists of the ninth century could already be foreshadowed.

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The idea of the Christian redemption in the Churches of Paul underwent a similar transformation. People knew little of the parables or the moral teachings of Jesus: the Gospels did not yet exist. Christ, having lived, is not to the Churches something approaching a real personage: he is the image of God, a heavenly minister, having taken upon himself the sins of the world, charged with reconciling the world to God; he is a divine reformer, creating all things new, and abolishing the past. It is death for all; all are dead through him to the world, and ought no longer to live, except for him. He was rich in all the richness of divinity, and he became poor for us. All Christian life ought hence to be a contradiction of the human sense: weakness is the true strength, death is the true life; cardinal wisdom is folly. Happy he who carries in his body the dying of Jesus, he who is continually exposed to death for Jesus’ sake. He shall live again with Jesus; he shall see his glory face to face, and shall be transformed unto him, rising uninterruptedly from glory to glory. The Christian thus lives in the hope of death, and in a state of perpetual groaning. In proportion as the exterior man (the body) falls into ruin, the interior man (the soul) is renewed. One moment of tribulation is worth more to him than an eternity of glory. What matters it that his terrestrial house is dissolved? He has in Heaven an eternal house, not made with hands. Terrestrial life is exile; death is return to God, and equivalent to the absorption of all that is mortal in life, only the treasure of hope which the Christian carries in earthen vessels, and until the great day when all shall be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, he must tremble.

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CHAPTER X. RETURN OF PAUL TO ANTIOCH—QUARREL BETWEEN PETER AND PAUL—COUNTER-MISSION ORGANISED BY JAMES, BROTHER OF THE LORD.

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PAUL, however, felt the necessity of revisiting the Churches of Syria. It was three years since he had left Antioch; notwithstanding that his stay there had been shorter than formerly, this new mission had become much more important. The new Churches, recruited from lively, energetic populations, brought to the feet of Jesus homage of an infinite value. Paul had just recounted all this to the Apostles, and bid them attach themselves to the Mother Church, the model of all others. In spite of his taste for independence, he felt sure that, outside of the communion of Jerusalem, there was only schism and dissension. The admirable mixture of opposite qualities which could be discerned in him, allowed him to ally, in the most unexpected fashion, docility with pride, revolt with submission, severity with gentleness. Paul chose as a pretext for his departure the celebration of the Passover of the year 54. To give the utmost solemnity to his resolution, and to avoid the possibility of changing his decision, he made a vow to celebrate that Easter at Jerusalem. The mode of performing vows of this kind was to shave the head, and to undertake to say certain prayers, and to abstain from wine during thirty days before the festival. Paul said good-bye to his Church, had his head shaved at Cenchrea, and embarked for Syria. He was accompanied by Aquila and Priscilla, who intended to stop at Ephesus, and perhaps also by Silas. As for Timothy, it is probable that he did not go away from Corinth or from the shores of the Ægæan Sea. We find him again at Ephesus within a year. The ship stayed for some days at Ephesus. Paul had time to go to the synagogue and to dispute with the Jews. They begged him to stay; but he put forward his vow, and declared that at any cost he would celebrate the festival in Jerusalem; all they could get from him was a promise to return. He took leave then of Aquila and Priscilla, and of those with whom he had already entered into relationships, and took ship again for Cæsarea of Palestine, whence he speedily made his way to Jerusalem.

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There he celebrated the festival in the way in which he had vowed to do. Perhaps this Hebrew scruple was a concession, like so many others, that he made to the spirit of the Church at Jerusalem. He hoped by an act of great devotion to obtain pardon for his daring, and to conciliate the Judaisers. The discussions were scarcely pacified, and peace was only kept for the sake of business. It is probable that he profited by the opportunity to remit to the poor people in Jerusalem a considerable amount of money as alms. Paul, as usual, stayed for a very short time in the metropolis: here there were susceptibilities which could not have failed to bring about divisions if he had prolonged his stay. He, accustomed to live in the exquisite atmosphere of his truly Christian Churches, found here, under the name of Brethren of Jesus, only Jews. He thought that they did not give a sufficiently

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exalted place to Jesus; he grew indignant that, after Jesus, people should be found to attribute any value whatever to those things which had existed before him. The head of the Church of Jerusalem was now James, the brother of the Lord. It was not that the authority of Peter had diminished, but he was no longer resident in the city. Partly in imitation of Paul, he had embraced the active apostolic life. The idea that Paul was the Apostle of the Gentiles, and Peter the Apostle of the Circumcision, had more and more gained ground. In accordance with this idea, Peter went about preaching the Gospel to the Jews all over Syria. He carried about with him a sister, as spouse and deaconess, thus giving the first example of a married Apostle—an example which the Protestant missionaries more lately followed. John, surnamed Mark, appeared always also as his disciple, his companion, and his interpreter, a circumstance which causes it to be generally believed that the Prince of the Apostles knew no Greek. Peter had in some sort adopted John-Mark, and treated him as a son.

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The details of the pilgrimage of Peter are unknown to us. What was told about him in later days is mainly fabulous. We only know that the life of the Apostle of the Circumcision was, like that of the Apostle of the Gentiles, a series of trials. It may be believed also that the itinerary which serves as foundation for the fabulous acts of Peter—a journey which conducts the Apostle from Jerusalem to Cæsarea, from Cæsarea along the coast by Tyre, Sidon, Beyrout, Byblos, Tripoli, Antaradus to Laodicea-upon-the-sea, and from Laodicea to Antioch—is but imaginary. The Apostle certainly visited Antioch; we think even that he used it as his headquarters after a certain date. The lakes and the ponds formed by the Orontes and the Arkeuthas about the town, which furnished to the lower classes of the people fresh water fish of inferior quality, perhaps afforded him the opportunity of again taking up his old trade of fisherman. Many of the brothers of the Lord, and some members of the Apostolic College, travelled even from the bordering parts of Judæa. As Peter, and in a different manner to that of the missionaries of the school of Paul, they travelled with their wives, and lived at the cost of the Churches. The trade which they had exercised in Galilee was not, like that of Paul, of a nature to enable them to subsist upon it, and they had abandoned it a long time ago. The wives who accompanied them, who were called “sisters,” were the origin of those novices, a kind of deaconesses and of nuns, living under the direction of a clergyman, who played an important part in the history of ecclesiastical celibacy. Peter having thus ceased to be the resident chief of the Church of Jerusalem, several members of the Apostolic Council having in the same way taken up with an itinerant life, the first place in the Mother Church was given up to James. He was thus “the bishop of the Hebrews,” that is to say, of that part of the disciples who spoke the Semitic languages. That did not compromise the chief part of the universal Church: no one had been exigent enough to claim the right to such a title, people being divided between Peter and Paul; but his presidency of the Church at Jerusalem, joined to his quality of brother of the Lord, gave James an immense power, since the Church at Jerusalem 112


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always remained the centre of concord. James was, moreover, very old; some ambitious movements, too much prejudice, were the consequences of such a position. All the faults which must later make the Court of Rome the flail of the Church, and the principal agent of its corruption, were already germinating in this primitive community of Jerusalem. James was a worthy man in many respects, but with a narrow mind, that Jesus would have assuredly pierced with his keenest railleries, if he knew him, or even if be knew him as he has been represented to us. Was he really the brother, or only a cousin-german, of Jesus? All the witnesses in this respect agree so well together, that one is forced to believe the latter hypothesis. But, in that case, Nature must have played one of her most fantastic tricks. Perhaps this brother, being converted only after the death of Jesus, possessed less of the true tradition of the Master than those who, without being his relations, had accompanied him in his lifetime. It is less surprising that two children born of the same mother, or of the same family, should have been at first enemies, then reconciled; should remain so profoundly diverse, that the only known brother of Jesus would have been a kind of Pharisee, an ascetic exterior, a devotee tainted with all the absurdities that Jesus attacked without mercy. One thing is certain, namely, that the person who has been called up to this time “James, brother of the Lord,” or “James the Just,” or the “Rampart of the People,” was in the Church of Jerusalem the representative of the most intolerant Jewish party. Whilst the active Apostles travelled all over the world, in order to conquer it for Jesus, the brother of Jesus at Jerusalem did all that was possible to destroy their work, and to contradict Jesus after his death, in a more profound fashion perhaps than he had done in his life-time.

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This society of half-converted Pharisees, this world which was in reality more Jewish than Christian, living around the temple, preserving the old practices of the Jewish religion, as if Jesus had not declared them vain, formed unbearable company for Paul. That which particularly annoyed him was the opposition of all this class to his missionary work. Like the Jews of the strict observance, the partisans of James did not wish to make proselytes. The ancient religious parties often had such contradictions. On the one hand, they proclaimed that they alone had possession of the truth; on the other, they only wished to enlarge their sphere: they pretended to preserve the truth for themselves. French Protestantism presents in our days a similar phenomenon. Two opposite parties, the one desiring, before everything else, the preservation of old customs; the other capable of gaining to Protestantism a world of new adherents, being produced in the bosom of the reformed Church. The conservative party has waged, in a second ground, a war to the knife. It has repulsed with scandal all that has resembled an abandonment of the family traditions, and it has preferred to the brilliant destinies that are offered to them, the pleasure of remaining a little club, without importance, shut up, composed of well-thinking men,—that is to say, of men partaking of the same prejudices, and regarding the same things as aristocratic. The feeling of defiance that the members of the old party of Jerusalem experienced before the stern missionary who introduced to them multitudes of new brethren without titles of Jewish nobility, must be something analogous. They looked upon themselves as overruled, and instead of falling at the feet of Paul, and thanking him, 113


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they found in him a disturber, an intruder who forced his way with men recruited from every place. More than one hard word, it seems, had been exchanged. It is probable that at this moment James, the brother of the Lord, conceived the unsuccessful project of overthrowing the work of Jesus,—I mean the project of a counter mission charged to follow the Apostle of the Gentiles, to contradict his dogmas, to persuade converts that they must be circumcised, and practise all the Law. Sectarian movements are not produced without schisms of this kind; when one recalls the heads of Saint-Simonianism quarrelling amongst themselves, but yet remaining ardent Saint-Simonians, and as such voluntarily reconciled by the survivors after his death. Paul avoided these scandals by setting out as soon as possible for Antioch. It was probably then that Silas left him. The latter was the founder of the Church at Jerusalem. He remained there, and henceforth attached himself to Peter. Silas, as the compiler of the “Acts,” appears to have been a conciliatory man, oscillating between the two parties, and in turn attached to each of the two chiefs; a thoroughly good Christian, and of the opinion which in triumphing saved the Church. Never, in fact, did the Christian Church bear in its bosom a cause of schism so deep as that which agitated it at this moment. Luther and the most fossilised scholar differed less than Paul and James. Thanks to some gentle and generous spirits—Silas, Luke, Timothy—all the attacks were softened, all the heartburnings concealed. A beautiful tale, calm and dignified, has not allowed it to be seen that the fraternal understanding in these years was traversed by such terrible rents.

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At Antioch Paul breathed freely. He there met with his old companion Barnabas, and without doubt they felt great joy at seeing each other; for the motive which had separated them for a short time was not a question of principle. Perhaps Paul also found at Antioch his disciple Titus, who had not shared the second journey, but who henceforth attached himself to him. The recital of miraculous conversions wrought by Paul astonished the young and active Church. Paul, for his part, felt a lively joy at revisiting the town which had been the cradle of his apostleship—the places where, ten years before, he had conceived the Church which had conferred on him the title of Missionary of the Gentiles. An incident of the greatest gravity was soon to interrupt these sweet effusions, and to revive with a degree of gravity those divisions which up to then had been lulled for a moment. Whilst Paul was at Antioch, Peter arrived there. This at first only redoubled the joy and cordiality. The Apostle of the Jews and the Apostle of the Gentiles loved each other as very good and very ardent natures always love each other, when they found themselves in relation to each other. Peter communicated without reserve with the converted Pagans, and even, in open violation of the Jewish Law, he did not object to eating with them; but soon this good understanding was disturbed. James had executed his fatal project. Some brethren, provided with letters of recommendation signed by him as the chief of the Twelve, and as the only one who had the right to authorise a mission, set out from Jerusalem. Their pretext was that one could not preach the doctrine of Christ if he had not been to Jerusalem to compare his doctrine with that of James, the brother of the Lord, and if he did

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not carry an attestation from the latter. Jerusalem was, according to them, the source of all faith,—of every apostolic commission: the true Apostles lived there. Whoever preached without a letter of authority from the chief of the Mother Church, and without having sworn obedience to him, ought to be repelled as a false prophet and a false apostle, as an emissary of the devil. Paul, who had no such letters, was an intruder, boasting of personal relations with them without reality, and of a mission the title to which he could not produce. He alleged his visions, contending even that the fact of having seen Jesus in a supernatural fashion was worth much more than the fact of having known him personally. “What can be more chimerical?” said the Jerusalemites. No vision was so valuable as the evidence of the senses: visions are not actualities. The spectre that he saw was perhaps an evil spirit: idolaters had visions as well as saints. When the apparition was questioned, it answered all that was wanted: the spectre shone for an instant, and then disappeared quickly; there was no time to talk to it at leisure. The mind of the dreamer was not his own: in that state volition ceases. To see the Son out of the flesh! but that is impossible: one would die of it. The superhuman brightness of that light would kill. Even an angel, to make himself visible, is obliged to assume a body!” The emissaries cited on this head a number of visions which had been seen by infidels and heretics, and concluded from them that the chief Apostles, those who had seen Jesus, had an immense superiority. They even declared that they could show texts of Scripture proving that visions came from an offended God, whilst to converse face to face was the privilege of his friends. “How can Paul assert that by an interview of an hour Jesus had rendered him capable of teaching? It needed a whole year of lessons for Jesus to form his Apostles. And if Jesus really appeared to him, how did he know that he did not teach the reverse of the doctrine of Jesus? Let him prove the reality of the interview which he had had with Jesus, by conforming himself to His precepts, by loving His Apostles, by not declaring war with those whom Jesus had chosen. If he wished to serve the truth, let him make himself the disciple of Jesus’ disciples, and then he could be a useful auxiliary.”

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The question of ecclesiastical authority and of individual revelation, of Catholicism and of Protestantism, showed itself with a real grandeur. Jesus had settled nothing clearly in this matter. So long as he lived, and throughout the first years following his death, Jesus was so essentially the soul and body of His little Church, that no idea of government or of constitution offers itself. Now, on the contrary, it was necessary to know if there was a power representing Jesus, or if the Christian conscience remained free; if to preach Jesus, subscription to articles of faith were necessary, or if he had the command received from Jesus sufficed. As Paul did not offer any other proof of his immediate mission than his affirmation, his position was weak in many ways. We shall see with what prodigies of eloquence and of activity the great innovator, attacked in every quarter, will face all assaults and maintain his position without absolutely breaking with the Apostolic College, whose authority he recognised each time that his liberty was not straitened. But the struggle rendered him less amiable to us. A man who disputes, resists, speaks of himself; a man who maintains his opinion and his prerogative, who gives pain to others, who denounces them to their face, such a man is 115


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antipathetic to us. Jesus, in such a case, yielded everything, escaped from his difficulty by some charming word.

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The emissaries of James arrived at Antioch. James, while admitting that converted Gentiles could be saved without observing the Law of Moses, in no way admitted that a true Jew, a circumcised Jew, could, without sin, violate the law. The scandal of the disciples of James was at its height when they saw the chief of the Churches of the circumcision act like a true Pagan, and destroy those exterior compacts that a respectable Jew looked upon as titles of nobility and marks of his superiority. They spoke keenly to Peter, who was much frightened. This man, profoundly good and just, wanted peace above everything: he scarcely knew how to contradict anybody. This made him changeable: at least he was so to all appearance; he was easily disconcerted, and did not know how to find a quick reply. Already, from the life of Jesus, this kind of timidity, coming from awkwardness rather than from want of heart, had led him into a fault which cost him many tears. Knowing little about argument, incapable of holding up his head against contradiction, in difficult cases he was silent and hesitated. Such a kind of temper made him again commit a great act of feebleness. Placed between two classes of people, one of whom he could not content without annoying the other, he isolated himself completely, and lived apart, refusing all communications with the uncircumcised. This manner of acting keenly wounded the converted Gentiles. What was graver still, was that all the circumcised imitated him; even Barnabas allowed himself to follow this example, and avoided uncircumcised Christians. Paul’s anger was extreme. When we recall the ritual meaning of the meal in common, refusing to eat with a part of the community meant excommunication. Paul broke out into reproaches, treated this kind of thing as hypocrisy, accused Peter and his imitators of falsifying the meaning of the gospel. The Church must soon assemble: the two Apostles would meet there. To his face, and before all the assembly, Paul violently apostrophised Peter, and reproached him for his inconsequence. “If thou,” said he to him, “being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” Then he developed his favourite theory of the salvation coming by Jesus, and not by the Law,—of the abrogation of the Law by Jesus. It is probable that Peter did not answer him. Exactly, it was Paul’s advice; as all men who seek by innocent artifices to get out of a difficulty, he did not pretend to be right; he only wanted to satisfy one side, and not to alienate others. In this manner one only succeeds, as a general rule, in being in opposition to everybody.

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Only the removal of the envoys of James made an end to the disagreement. After their departure, good Peter began again without doubt to eat with the Gentiles as before. These singular alternatives of violence and of fraternity are one of the features of a Jewish character. Modern critics conclude from certain passages in the Epistle to the Galatians that the quarrel between Peter and Paul absolutely made them contradict each other, not only in the “Acts” but in other passages from the Epistle to the Galatians. Ardent men pass their life in disputing with each other, without ever actually 116


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quarrelling. It is not necessary to judge these tempers after the manner of things whose actions happen in our time between men well educated and susceptible upon the point of honour. This last word, in particular, has scarcely ever had any meaning to the Jews. It seems certain, nevertheless, the quarrel of Antioch left deep traces. The great Church on the borders of the Orontes was split in two, if we are permitted to explain thus, that in two parishes there was on the one hand the parish of the circumcised, on the other, that of the uncircumcised. The separation of these two portions of the Church continued for a long time. Antioch, as they tell us later, had two bishops, one appointed by Peter and the other by Paul. Evhode and Ignatius are named as having filled up after the Apostles that office.

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As for the animosity of the emissaries of James, it only increased. The quarrel of Antioch left them a feeling, the indignant expression of which, a century after, one still finds in the writings of the Judæo-Christian section. The eloquent adversary who had almost destroyed the Church of Antioch, without any real reason became their enemy. They vowed vengeance, which even in his lifetime raised up for him troubles without number, and after his death bloody anathemas and atrocious calumnies. Passion and religious enthusiasm are far from overcoming human weaknesses. On leaving Antioch, the agents of the Jerusalemite party vowed to overthrow the foundations of Paul, to destroy his Churches, and to throw down what he had built up with so much labour. It seems that on this occasion new letters were sent from Jerusalem in the name of the Apostles. It is possible that a specimen of those hateful letters may have been preserved for us in the Epistle of Jude, brother of James, and like him “brother of the Lord,” which forms part of the canon. It is a manifesto of the most violent description against nameless adversaries, who are presented as rebels and impure men. The style of this piece, which comes much nearer to classic Greek than that of the greater portion of the writings of the New Testament, has much analogy with the style of the Epistle of James. James and Jude did not probably know any Greek: the Church of Jerusalem had perhaps Hellenic secretaries for communications of this kind. “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to, write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you, that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. Yet Michael the archangel, when, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, the Lord rebuke thee. But these speak evil of things which they know not, but 117


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what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core. These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. And Enoch, also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage. But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.”

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Paul from this moment was for a section of the Church one of the most dangerous of heretics, a false Jew, a false Apostle, a false prophet, a new Balaam, a Jezebel, a villain who prophesied (lit. preluded.) the destruction of the temple—in two words, a Simon Magus. Peter was angrier than all, and was always busy in fighting him. They were accustomed to designate the Apostle of the Gentiles by the sobriquet of Nicholas (Conquerer of the People), a name akin to Balaam. This seemed a happy nickname; a Pagan seducer, who had visions although an infidel, a man who persuaded people to sin with Pagan women, appeared the true type of Paul, this false missionary, this partisan of mixed marriages. His disciples for the same reason were called Nicolaitans. Far from forgetting his character of persecutor, they insisted on it in a most odious fashion. His gospel was a false gospel. It was of Paul that the question was raised, when the fanatics of the party talked between themselves in innuendoes of a person whom they called “the apostate,” or “the enemy,” or “the impostor,” the forerunner of Anti-Christ, that the chief of the Apostles follows in his footsteps to repair the evil which he does. Paul was “the frivolous man” of whom the Gentiles, having seen their ignorance, have received the doctrine which is opposed to the Law; his visions, which he calls “depths of God,” they qualified as “the depths of Satan,” his Churches, they named “the synagogues of Satan;” in spite of Paul, they proclaim boldly that the Twelve only are the foundation of the Church of Christ. A whole legend begins from this time to be formed against Paul. They refuse to believe that a true Jew could have been capable of committing such an atrocity as that of which he had been guilty. They pretended that he had been born a Pagan, and that he had been made a proselyte. And why? Calumny is never without plenty of reasons for it. Paul was circumcised because he wished to marry the daughter of the High Priest. The High Priest, being a wise man, having refused her to him, Paul, out of spite, began to declaim against circumcision, the Sabbath, and the Law. . . . That is the reward which one obtains from fanatics for having served their cause,

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otherwise than they understand it; let us say rather, for having served the cause which they lost by their narrow spirit and their foolish exclusiveness. James, on the contrary, became for the Judæo-Christian party the head of all Christianity, the bishop of bishops, the president of all the good Churches, of those that God had truly founded. It was probably after his death that they created for him this apocryphal character; but there is no doubt that legend in this case may be based in several respects upon the real character of the hero. The grave and rather emphatic delivery of James; his manners, which recalled a sage of the old world, a solemn Brahmin or an antique mobed; his pompous and ostentatious sanctity made him conspicuous in the popular eye, an official, holy man, even already a species of Pope. The Judæo-Christians accustomed themselves to believe that he had been clothed with the Jewish priesthood; and as a sign of the High Priest was the pétalon or breastplate of gold, they decorated him with it. “The Rampart of the people,” with his golden breastplate, thus became a sort of Jewish bonze, an imitation High Priest, for the use of the Judæo-Christians. They supposed that, as the High Priest, he entered, by virtue of a special permission, once a year into the sanctuary; they even pretended that he belonged to the sacerdotal race. They asserted that he had been ordained by Jesus the bishop of the Holy City; that Jesus had entrusted him with his own episcopal throne. The Judæo-Christians made a good many of the people of Jerusalem believe that it was the merits of this servant of God which held off the thunderbolt which was ready to burst on the people. They nearly went as far as creating for him as for Jesus, a legend founded upon biblical passages, where they pretended that the prophets had spoken of him in parables. 160

The image of Jesus in this Christian family became smaller year by year, whilst in the Churches of Paul it took more and more colossal proportions. The Christians of James were simple, pious Jews—hasidim—believing in a Jewish mission of Jesus; the Christians of Paul were good Christians in the sense which has prevailed ever since. The Law, the temple, sacrifices, high priests, all became indifferent to them. Jesus has replaced everything else, abolished everything else; to attach a meaning of sanctity to what has been before, is to do injury to the merits of Jesus. It was natural that to Paul, who had not seen Jesus, the wholly human figure of the Galilæan Master should transform itself into a metaphysical type much more easily than for Peter and the others who had talked with Jesus. To Paul, Jesus is not a man who has lived and taught; he is Christ who has died for our sins, who saves us, who justifies us; He is an altogether Divine being: we partake of him; we communicate with Him in a wonderful manner; He is for man Wisdom and Righteousness, Santification and Redemption; He is the King of Glory, All Powerful in Heaven and Earth, which is soon to be delivered to Him; He is only inferior to God the Father. If this school only had written the Scriptures, we should not touch upon the person of Jesus, and we might doubt its existence. But those who know Him, and who guarded His memory, possibly wrote about this time the first notes upon which these Divine writings (I speak of the Gospels) which have made the fortune of Christianity, and which have transmitted to us the essential features of the most important character which has ever been known. 119


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TROUBLES IN THE CHURCHES OF GALATIA. THE emissaries of James, having left Antioch, bent their steps towards the Churches of Galatia. The Jerusalemites had for a long time known of the existence of these Churches; it was even with regard to them that the question of the circumcision was first raised, and that what was called the Council of Jerusalem was held. James had probably recommended his confidential agents to attack this important point, it being one of the centres of Paul’s power.

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Success was easy for them. These Galatians were men readily seduced; the last one who had come to speak to them in the name of Jesus was almost certain to be right. The Jerusalemites had soon persuaded a great number of them that they were not good Christians. They incessantly repeated to them that they ought to be circumcised, and to observe all the Law. With the puerile vanity of fanatical Jews, the deputies represented circumcision as a corporal advantage; they were proud of it, and did not admit that one could be as much a man without this privilege as he ought to be. The habit of ridiculing the Pagans, representing them as inferior beings and badly brought up, introduced these grotesque ideas. The Jerusalemites poured out at the same time against Paul a flood of invective and disparagement. They accused him of posing as an independent Apostle, although he had received his mission from Jerusalem, or else they had seen him at different times betake himself to the school of the Twelve, as a disciple. Was not his coming to Jerusalem a recognition of the superiority of the Apostolic College? What he knew he had learned from the Apostles; he had accepted the rules which they had drawn up. This missionary who pretended to dispense with circumcision, knew very well the need of preaching and of practising it. Turning his concessions against him, they alleged cases when they had seen him recognise the necessity of Jewish practices; perhaps they did not recall in particular the facts relative to the circumcision of Titus and Timothy. How could he, who had never seen Jesus, dare to speak in the name of Jesus? It was Peter, it was James, who ought to be held to be the true Apostles—the depositaries of revelation. The consciences of these good Galatians were troubled. One party abandoned the doctrine of Paul, yielded to the new doctors, and were circumcised; the other party remained faithful to their first master. The trouble, in all these cases, was profound: they said the harshest things to each other. This news on reaching Paul filled him with anger. Jealousy, which formed the basis of his character, and susceptibility, often already put to the test, were excited in the highest degree. It was the third time that the Pharisaical party of Jerusalem attempted to demolish his work as he accomplished it. The kind of cowardice which there is in attacking weak, docile men without defence, and who only lived in confidence on their master, revolted him. He could restrain himself no longer. At the same time, the daring and vehement Apostle dictated that admirable epistle, that may well be compared, except for the art of writing, with the most beautiful classical works, and

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in which his impetuous nature is painted in letters of fire. The title of “Apostle” that he had at first taken timidly, he now took as assumed in defiance, to reply to his adversaries, and in the maintenance of what he believed to be the truth. 163

“PAUL AN APOSTLE (NOT OF MEN, NEITHER BY MAN, BUT BY JESUS CHRIST, AND GOD THE FATHER, WHO RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD); AND ALL THE BRETHREN WHICH ARE WITH ME, UNTO THE CHURCHES OF GALATIA: “Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

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“But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God, and wasted it: and profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the Apostles saw I none, save James, the Lord’s brother. Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not. “Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia; and was unknown by face unto the Churches of Judæa which were in Christ; but they had heard only, that he which persecuted us in times past, now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed And they glorified God in me. “Then, fourteen years after, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also. And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run in vain. But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised: and that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage, to whom we

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gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour: that the truth of the gospel might continue with you. But of these who seemed to be somewhat (whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me. God accepteth no man’s person), for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me; but contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed onto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter (for he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles), and when James, Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision. Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do. “But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles; but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter, before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? We, who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid. For, if I build again the things which I destroy, I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ Liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

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“O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain. He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. . . . . . But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster, to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified 122


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by faith, but after that faith has come we are no longer under a school-master. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: but when the fulness of the time was come God sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father, Wherefore thou art no more a servant but a son, and if a son then an heir of God through Christ. “Howbeit then when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. “Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are; ye have not injured me at all. Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation, which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me. Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth? They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them. But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you. My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be, present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you. . . . . .

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“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I, Paul, say unto you that, if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law: ye are fallen from grace. For we, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith, which worketh by love. “Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded; but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be. And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer

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persecution? Then is the offence of the cross ceased? I would they were even cut off which trouble you.

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“For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty: only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in times past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they which are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. . . . .” Paul wrote this epistle at a single sitting, as if filled with an interior fire. According to his habit, he wrote with his own hand, in postscript, “Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand.” It seems natural that he should finish with the usual salutation; but he was too much animated: his fixed idea possessed him. The subject being exhausted, he again returns to it with some keen remarks:— “As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. From henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.”

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Paul despatched this letter at once. If he had taken an hour’s reflection, it is doubtful whether he would have let it be sent. We do not know to whom it was entrusted; Paul doubtless had it carried by one of his disciples, whom he charged with a journey into Galatia. The epistle, in fact, is not addressed to a particular community; each of those little Churches of Derbe, of Lystra, of Iconium, of Antioch in Pisidia, was not considerable enough to serve as a metropolis to the others; the Apostle, on the other hand, gives no instruction to the receivers as to the manner of circulating his letter. 124


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The effect that the letter produced upon the Galatians is also unknown. Without doubt it confirmed the party of Paul; it probably, however, did not entirely extinguish the opposite party. Almost all the Churches henceforward will be divided into two camps. The Church of Judæa will maintain its pretensions until the fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70). It is only at the end of the first century that a true reconciliation will come about, partly at the expense of Paul’s glory, which will during nearly a hundred years be cast into the shade, but for the full triumph of its fundamental ideas. The Judæo-Christians from this moment will only be a sect of old fanatics, dying out slowly and obscurely, and only ending towards the close of the fifth century in the remoter districts of Syria. Paul, in revenge, will be nearly disavowed. His title of Apostle, refused him by his enemies, will be feebly defended by his friends. The Churches which notoriously owe their foundation to him, will wish it to be thought that they were founded by him and by Peter. The Church of Corinth, for example, will do the most flagrant violence to history to show that she owes her origin to Peter as well as to Paul. The conversion of the Gentiles will pass for the collective work of the Twelve; Papias, Polycrates, Justin, Hegesippus, seem to labour to suppress the share of Paul in the work, and nearly ignore his existence. It is only when the idea of a canon of new sacred writings will be established that Paul will regain his importance. His epistles will then emerge in some way from the archives of the Churches to become the base of Christian theology, which they will renew from age to age.

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At the distance at which we now stand, the victory of Paul appears complete. Paul recounts to us, and perhaps exaggerates, the injuries that have been done to him. Who will tell us the injuries of Paul? The mean intention which he attributes to his adversaries of following in his footsteps to carry away for themselves the affection of his disciples and to glorify themselves afterwards over the circumcision of these simple men, is not this a travesty? May not the recital of his relations with the Church of Jerusalem, different as it is from that of the Acts, be a little arranged for the needs of the moment? The pretence of having been an Apostle by divine right from the very day of his conversion, is it not historically inaccurate! in this sense, that the conviction of his own apostleship slowly took possession of him, and arrived at its completion only after his first great mission. Was Peter really so much to be blamed as Paul asserted? The conduct of the Galilean Apostle, on the contrary, was not it that of a conciliatory man, preferring brotherliness to principle, wishing to content everybody, yielding to avoid scandal, and blamed by all, precisely because he was right. We have no means of answering these questions. Paul was very egotistical; it is not impossible that he more than once attributed to a private revelation what he had learnt from his elders. The Epistle to the Galatians is so extraordinary a work, the Apostle there paints himself with so much artlessness and truth, that it would be absolutely unjust to turn against him a document which does so much honour to his talent and his eloquence. The cares of a narrow orthodoxy are not ours; to others belong the right of explaining how one can be a saint, whilst abusing the ancient Cephas. Paul is not degraded from the companionship of great men when he is proved to be sometimes hasty, passionate, pre-occupied with his own defence, and fighting his enemies. In

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everything that is truly Protestant, Paul has the faults of a Protestant. It requires time and much experience to enable him to see that each dogma is not worth the trouble of violent resistance and of wounding charity. Paul is not Jesus. How far we are from thee, dear Master. Where is thy tenderness, thy poesy? Thou who didst consider the lilies, dost thou recognise as thy disciples these disputants, these men who are so bitter about precedence, who wish that every body should originate with them alone. They are men, thou wast a God. Where should we be, if thou wert known to us only by the simple letters of him who calls himself thy Apostle. Happily, the perfumes of Galilee still live in some faithful memories. Perhaps already the Sermon on the Mount is written on some secret sheet. The unknown disciple who bears this treasure truly bears the future.

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CHAPTER XII THIRD JOURNEY OF PAUL—FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH AT EPHESUS.

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LESS great, less possessed by the sacred genius whicn had seized upon him, Paul was made use of in these barren disputes. To reply to little minds, he was obliged to make himself as mean as they were: these miserable quarrels had absorbed him. Paul scorned them as a man of superior genius should. He went straight forward, and left time to decide between him and his enemies. The first rule for a man devoted to great things, is to refuse mediocre men the power of turning him aside from his way. Without discussing with the delegates of James as to whether it were right or wrong to preach to the Gentiles and to convert them, Paul only thought of beginning again, even at the risk of encountering new anathemas. After some months passed at Antioch he departed on a third mission, on this occasion to his dear Galatian Churches. At times he was in great perplexity with regard to these Churches; he regretted having grieved them by using harsh language to them; he wished to change his tone, to correct by the gentleness of his words the asperity of his letter. Paul wished above all things to dwell at Ephesus, which he had only touched at first in order to constitute a preaching centre such as there was at Thessalonica and Corinth. The field of that third mission was thus very nearly that of the second. Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece were the provinces that Paul in some sort assigned to himself. He set out from Antioch, accompanied probably by Titus. He followed the same track as on his second journey, and visited for the third time the Churches of the centre of Asia Minor—Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, Antioch in Pisidia. He speedily regained his authority, and soon effaced such false impressions as still remained, and which his enemies had sought to raise against him. At Derbe he took as assistant a new disciple, named Gaius, who followed him. These good Galatians were full of docility, but weak in the faith. Paul, accustomed to express himself with firmness, treated them with a severity that sometimes even he himself was afraid they would take for harshness. He had scruples; he was afraid that he had spoken to his children in a manner that perhaps did not express clearly enough the affection there was for them in his heart.

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The motives that had made him in his second journey abstain from preaching the gospel to pro-consular Asia existing no longer, Paul, after having finished his tour in Galatia, set out for Ephesus. This was in the middle of the summer. From Antioch in Pisidia, the most natural route to follow should have led him to Apamea-Cibotus, and thence into the basin of the Lycus, to the three neighbouring towns of Colosse, of Laodicæa, of Hierapolis. These three towns for some years will form an active centre of Christian work, and Paul will be in close communication with them. But for the moment he did not stop here, and made acquaintance with no one. Going round the rock of Cadmas, he passed into the valley of Meander, towards the inns of Carura, a great highway of the roads of Asia. Thereçe, a beautiful and easy route, leads, in three days, by Nysa, Tralles, and 127


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Magnesia, to the summits of the chain which separates the waters of the Meander from those of the Caystrus. A ravine, where the ancient road and the torrent dispute the narrow space, descends into “the prairie of Asia,” sung of by the Homerides, that is to say, into the plain where the Caystrus forms a lagoon before reaching the sea. It is a beautiful Greek site, with a clear horizon, formed sometimes of from five to six mountain heights, or bounded by low hills. The swans and the beautiful birds which met there at that time even as now gave all the charm of antiquity. There, partly in the marshes, partly hanging to the declivities of Mount Coressus, supported, besides, by Mount Prion and its surroundings on another little isolated hill, rose the immense town destined to be the third capital of Christianity after Jerusalem and Antioch.

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We have already had occasion several times to remark that Christianity was most readily accepted in the smaller towns of the Roman Empire. The policy of that Empire had been to multiply isolated municipalities; isolated as regards race, religion, and patriotism. Ephesus was like Alexandria, Antioch, and Corinth, a typical town of this kind. It is easy thus to imagine what are still, in our days, the great towns of the Levant. What strikes the traveller when he goes through these labyrinths of infectious bazaars, of narrow and filthy courtyards, of temporary structures, which do not seem expected to last long?—it is the litter of a noble, of a political, and even of a municipal spirit. In these swarms of men, vulgarity and good instincts, idleness and activity, impertinence and amiability, meet each other: everything is found there excepting what constitutes an old local aristocracy; I would say glorious remembrances cultivated in common. With all that, there is much gossiping, prattling, levity; nearly everybody knows everybody else, and the people for ever occupy themselves with each other’s business; there is something active, passionate, unsteady,—a vain curiosity of frivolous folk, greedy after the smallest novelty, ever ready to follow the fashion, never capable of setting it. Christianity was a fruit of that species of fermentation which usually arises in societies of this kind, where men, freed from the prejudices of birth and race, take up more readily the philosophical attitude which calls itself cosmopolitan and humanitarian, than the peasant, the burgess, the noble, or feudal citizen can do. Like the Socialism of our days, like all new ideas, Christianity germinates in what may be called the corruption of great towns. This corruption, in fact, is often only a plainer and freer life, a greater indication of the hidden forces of humanity. Formerly, as now, the Jews in such mixed towns held a very conspicuous position. That place was, to a small extent, what Smyrna and Salonica are at the present day. Ephesus especially possessed a very populous Jews’ quarter. The Pagan inhabitants were fanatical enough, as happens in all towns which are centres of pilgrimages and famous rites. The devotion to Artemis of Ephesus, spreading over the entire world, supported several considerable industries. But the importance of the town as the capital of Asia, the movement of business, the wealth of the people, of every race, made Ephesus a very useful centre for the diffusion of Christian ideas. These ideas found nowhere a better reception than in the populous commercial cities, full of strangers, visited by Syrians, Jews,

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and that population of uncertain origin who from time to time have commanded all the ports of the Mediterranean. For centuries Ephesus had been nothing more than a purely Hellenic town. Formerly Ephesus had shone in the first rank, the least artistic among the Greek cities; but now and then she had allowed herself to be seduced by the manners of Asia. The town always had a bad reputation among the Greeks. Corruption, the introduction of luxury, was, according to the Greeks, a result of the effeminate manners of Ionia; at this time, and in this way, Ephesus was the centre and the abridgment of Ionia. The domination of the Lydians and of the Persians had destroyed energy and patriotism alike. Ephesus, like Sardis, was the most advanced point of Asiatic influence upon Europe. The excessive importance which the worship of Artemis took there, extinguished the scientific spirit, and favoured the over-flowing of all superstitions. It was an almost theocratic town; the fêtes there were numerous and splendid; the right wing of the temple peopled the town with courtesans. The scandalous sacerdotal institutions maintained there appeared each day more devoid of all sense of shame. That brilliant country of Heraclites, of Parhasius, perhaps of Apella, was only a town of porticoes, of stadia, of gymnasia, of theatres, a town of common-place sumptuosity, in spite of the masterpieces of painting and of sculpture that she still guards.

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Although the gate had been spoilt by the engineers of Attains Philadelphus, the town increased rapidly, and became the principal emporium of the region on this side of the Taurus. It was the port of landing for what came from Italy and Greece, a sort of hostelry or mart on the threshold of Asia. Produce of every kind was heaped together there, and the town became a cosmopolitan one, where the socialistic ideas gained ground among the men who had lost all idea of patriotism. The country was extremely rich; the commerce immense; but nowhere was public spirit at a lower ebb. The inscriptions breathed the most shameful servility, the most absolute submission to the Romana. It has been called the meeting-place of harlots and their prey. The town swarmed with magicians, diviners, mummers, and flute players; eunuchs, jewellers, sellers of amulets and medals, and romancers. The title of “Ephesian novels” designated, like that of “Milesian fables,” a species of literature, Ephesus being one of the towns which was especially chosen as the scene of love romances. The softness of the climate, in fact, put aside serious things: dancing and music remained the sole occupation. Public life degenerated into bacchanalian festivities: there was no such thing as study. The most extravagant miracles of Apollonius are reputed to have happened at Ephesus. The most celebrated Ephesian of the time at which we have now arrived was an astrologer named Balbilas, who possessed the confidence of Nero and Vespasian, and who appears to have been a scoundrel. A beautiful Corinthian temple, whose ruins can be seen at the present day, was raised about the same period. It was perhaps a temple dedicated to poor Claudius, whom Nero and Agrippa had just “drawn to heaven with a hook,” according to the happy word of Gallio.

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Ephesus had already been reached by Christianity when Paul went to sojourn there. We have seen that Aquila and Priscilla had remained there, after having set out from Corinth. This pious couple, to whom, by a singular destiny, it was reserved to figure in the origin of the Churches of Rome, of Corinth, of Ephesus, formed a little nucleus of disciples. Of this number, doubtless, was that Epasnetus whom St Paul calls “the first-fruits of Achaia unto Christ,” and whom he loved so much. Another much more important conversion was that of a Jew named Apollonius or Apollos, originally of Alexandria, who had settled at Ephesus a little after the first journey of Paul. He had acquired in the Jewish schools of Egypt a profound knowledge of the Scriptures, an ingenious manner of interpreting them, a sublime eloquence. He was a kind of Philo, in quest of new ideas which then dawned on all parts of Judaism. In his journeys, he found him-self of the same belief with the disciples of John the Baptist, and had received their baptism. He had also heard them speak of Jesus, and it seems certain that from that time he accorded to the latter the title of Christ; but his idea of Christianity was incomplete. On his arrival at Ephesus he betook himself to the synagogue, where he had much success by his lively and inspired delivery. Aquila and Priscilla heard him, and were enraptured to receive such an auxiliary. They took him aside, instructed him more fully, and gave him more precise ideas upon certain points. As they were not very clever theologians themselves, they did not dream, it seems, of re-baptising him in the name of Jesus. Apollos formed around him a little group, whom he taught his doctrine, corrected by Aquila and Priscilla, but on whom he merely bestowed the baptism of John, the only one he knew. After some time he wished to pass into Achaia, and the brethren of Ephesus gave him a very warm letter of recommendation to those of Corinth. It is under these circumstances that Paul arrived at Ephesus. He lodged with Aquila and Priscilla, as he had already done at Corinth; associated himself anew with them, and worked in their shop. Ephesus was justly celebrated for its tents. The artisans of this trade probably inhabited the poor suburbs which extended from Mount Prion to the steep hill of Ai -Solouk. There doubtless was the first Christian household; the apostolic basilicas were there, the venerated graves of all Christianity. After the destruction of the temple of Artemis, Ephesus having exchanged its Pagan celebrity for an equally celebrated Christianity, and having become a town of the first order in the memories and legends of the new worship. Byzantine Ephesus was wholly grouped round a hill which had the advantage of possessing the most precious monuments of Christianity. The old site being exchanged from an infectious marsh, where an active civilisation had ceased to regulate the course of the waters, the old town had been abandoned little by little; its gigantic monuments, in consequence of their nearness to navigable canals and the sea, had been made use of as quarries, and thus the town had been displaced for nearly a league. Perhaps the choice of a domicile which some poor Jews in the reign of Claudius or Nero had made was the first cause of this removal. The most ancient Turkish conquest continued the Byzantine tradition; a great Mussulman town succeeded to the Christian town, which still exists in the midst of so many memories of ruin, fever, and oblivion.

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Paul was not here, as he was in his first missions, in the midst of a synagogue, ignorant of the new mystery, which he must endeavour to gain over. He had before him a Church which had been formed in the most original and spontaneous fashion, with the aid of two good Jewish merchants, and of a strange doctor, who was still only half a Christian. The company of Apollos was composed of about twelve members. Paul questioned them, and perceived that their faith was still incomplete: in particular, they had never heard of the Holy Ghost. Paul completed their instruction, re-baptised them in the name of Jesus, and “laid his hands on them.” The Spirit immediately descended on them; they spake with tongues, and prophesied like perfect Christians. The Apostle sought to enlarge this little circle of believers. He was not afraid of finding himself here in the presence of the intellectual and scientific spirit which had stopped him short at Athens. Ephesus was not a great intellectual centre. Superstition reigned there without any control; everybody lived in foolish preoccupations of demonology and theology. The magic formulas of Ephesus (Ephesia Grammata) were celebrated, books of sorcery abounded, and a number of men employed their time in these foolish puerilities. Apollonius of Tyana was at Ephesus about this time.

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Paul, according to his habit, preached in the synagogue. During the space of three months, he did not cease each Sabbath to teach the Kingdom of God. He had little success. They did not come against him with riotings or severities, but they received his doctrine with insulting and scornful words. He then resolved to renounce the synagogue, and re-united himself to part of his disciples in a place which they called Σχολὴ Τυράννου, “The school of one Tyrannus.” Perhaps it was a public spot there, one of those scholæ or semicircular vaults (or apses) which were so numerous in ancient towns, and which served as xystes for conversation and free instruction. Perhaps, on the other hand, it served as a private hall of a personage—of a grammarian, for example—named Tyrannus. In general, Christianity profited very little by these scholæ, which nearly always formed parts of the hot baths and gymnasia. The favourite place of the Christian propaganda, after the synagogue, was the private house, the chimney corner, In this vast metropolis of Ephesus. preaching might, however, be done openly. During two years, Paul did not cease to speak in the Schola Tyranni. This prolonged teaching in a public place, after a little time, made noise enough. The Apostles supplemented it by frequent visits to the houses of those who had been converted or touched. All pro-consular Asia heard the name of Jesus, and several Churches, subordinate to Ephesus, were established around. They also spoke of certain miracles effected by Paul. His reputation as a worker of miracles had reached such a point that people eagerly sought for the “hand-kerchiefs and aprons” which had touched his garment, to apply them to the sick. They believed that a medical virtue was exhaled from his body, and was so transmitted. The taste of the Ephesians for magic introduced episodes still more shocking. Paul was believed to have a great power over devils. It appears that the Jewish exorcists sought to steal his charms and to exorcise “in the name of Jesus whom Paul preacheth.” There is a legend of the misadventure of these quacks, who pretended to be sons or disciples of a certain High Priest named Scæva. Having

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wished to drive out an evil spirit by means of the aforesaid formula, they were grossly insulted by the possessed man, who not content with that, threw himself upon them, tore their clothes in pieces, and beat them soundly. The degradation of the popular mind was such, that many Jews and many Pagans believed in Jesus for such a poor motive. These conversions took place above all among the men who occupied themselves with magic. Struck by the superiority of Paul’s formula, the lovers of occult sciences came to him to exchange confidences concerning their practices. Many even brought their books of magic and burnt them; they valued at fifty thousand pieces of silver (drachmæ) the price of the Ephesia Grammata burnt in this manner. 182

Let us turn our eyes away from these sad shadows. All that is done by the popular ignorant masses is spotted with unpleasantness. Illusion, chimera, are the conditions of the great things created by the people. It is only the work of wise men which can be pure; but wise men are usually powerless. We have a physiology and a medicine very superior to that of Paul; we are disengaged from a crowd of errors of which he partook, alas! and it is to be feared that we may never do a thousandth part of what he did. It is only when humanity as a whole shall be instructed, and reach a certain point of positive philosophy, that human affairs will be led by reason. One would never understand the history of the past if one did not refuse to treat as good and great movements in which many mean and equivocal features are mixed up.

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CHAPTER XIII. PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN ASIA AND PHRYGIA.

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THE ardour of Paul during his stay at Ephesus was extreme. There were difficulties every day, numerous and animated adversaries. As the Church of Ephesus was not purely a foundation of Paul, it counted in its bosom the Judæo-Christians, who, upon important points, resisted energetically the Apostle of the Gentiles. They were like two flocks accusing each other, and denying to each other the right of speaking in the name of Jesus. The Pagans, for their part, were discontented with the progress of the new faith, and already manifested themselves as dangerous. On one occasion, in particular, Paul ran so grave a danger that he compares the position in which he was on that day to that of a man exposed to wild beasts. Perhaps the incident happened at the theatre, which would render the expression altogether just. Aquila and Priscilla saved him, and risked their heads for him. The Apostle forgot all, however, for the word of God had become fruitful. All the western part of Asia Minor, especially the basins of the Meander and the Hermus, was covered with Churches at this time, of which, without doubt, Paul was in a manner more or less directly the founder. Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, probably Tralles, thus received the germs of the faith. These towns had already important Jewish colonies. The gentleness of manners, and the great tediousness of provincial life, in the heart of a rich and beautiful country, dead for centuries to all political life, and pacified nearly to a level, had prepared many souls for the joys of a pure life. The softness of the Ionian manners, so inimical to national independence, was favourable to the development of moral and social questions. These good populations, without military spirit, effeminate, if I dare say it, were naturally Christian. The family life appears to have been very strong among them; the habit of living in the open air, and, for the women, upon the threshold of their doors, in a delicious climate, had developed great sociability. Asia, with its Asiarchs, presidents of the games and spectacles, seemed a pleasure company, an association of diversions and fêtes. The Christian population even to-day has the charm of gaiety; the women have the clear complexion, the vague and sweet eyes, beautiful blonde hair, a retiring and modest disposition, involving the sentient life of their beauty.

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Asia became thus, in some sort, the second province of the kingdom of God. The towns of this country, apart from its monuments, did not perhaps differ essentially then from what they are to-day clusters of wooden houses without order, with open balconies covered with an inclined roof; quarters often placed in tiers one upon the other, and always intermingled with beautiful trees. The public buildings necessary in a hot country to a life of pleasure and repose were of a surprising grandeur. There were not here, as in Syria, artificial constructions, very little adapted to comfort, walled towns, rendered necessary by the predatory habits of the Bedouin. Nowhere does the fulness of a 133


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sure and satisfied civilisation show itself in more imposing forms than in the ruins of these “magnificent cities of Asia.” Every time that the beautiful countries of which we speak are crushed into pieces by fanaticism, war, or barbarity, they will become mistresses of the world by richness; they hold nearly all the sources of it, and thus force the great number of the more noble people to mass themselves up among them. Ionia, in the first century, was very populous, and covered with towns and villages. At this period, the misfortunes of the civil wars were forgotten. With powerful associations of workmen (ἐργασίαι, συνεργασαι, συμβιώσεις), analogous to those of Italy and Flanders in the Middle Ages, they name their dignitaries, raise public monuments, erect statues, construct works of public utility, found charitable institutions, give every kind of sign of prosperity, of welfare, of moral activity. Side by side with the manufacturing towns, such as Thyatira, Philadelphia, Hieropolis—principally engaged in the great industries of Asia, carpets, the dyeing of cloth, the wool, leather—was developed a prosperous agriculture. The varied products of the districts of the Hermus and the Meander, the mineral riches of Imolus and of Messogio sources of the treasures of the old Assyrian town Lydia, had produced at Tralles above all an opulent middle-class, which contracted alliances with the kings of Asia, almost even became itself royal. These upstarts ennobled themselves in a more honourable manner by their literary labours and their generosity. It is true that we must not look in their works for either delicacy or Hellenic perfection. We feel, in contemplating such parvenu monuments, that all nobleness was lost when these people were raised. The municipal spirit, however, was still very energetic. The citizen who had become king, or reached Cæsar’s favour, contended for an official position in the city, and expended his fortune in embellishing it. This movement of construction was in full force in the time of St Paul, partly on account of the earthquakes which, notably in the reign of Tiberius, had desolated the country, and which necessitated much repairing. A rich province of Southern Phrygia, in particular the little basin of the Lycus, a tributary of the Meander, was soon formed into active Christian centres. Three towns close to each other—Colossus or Colosse, Laodicæa upon the Lycus, and Hieropolis—there diffused the Word of Life. Colosse, which had formerly been of most importance, seemed to decline; it was an old city which remained faithful to the ancient manners, and which would not change them. Laodicæa and Hieropolis, on the contrary, became, under the Roman rule, very considerable towns. The summit of this beautiful country is Mount Cadmas, the father of all the mountains of Eastern Asia, massive and gigantic, full of dark precipices, and crowned with snow throughout the year. The waters which flow from it nourish upon the slopes of the valleys orchards full of fruit trees, which are traversed by rivers abounding in fish, and brightened by tame storks. The other side exhibits the strangest freaks of nature. The petrifying quality of the water of one of the tributaries of the Lycus, and the enormous mineral stream which falls in a cascade from the mountains of Hieropolis, have sterilised the plain and formed crevasses, grotesque caverns, beds of subterranean rivers, of fantastic basins, like petrified snow, serving as a reservoir to the waters, which glisten with all the colours of the rainbow; deep trenches through which roll a series of resounding cataracts. On this

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side the heat is extreme, the soil being simply a vast plain paved with limestone; but upon the heights of Hieropolis the purity of the air, the splendid light, the view of the Cadmas, floating like an Olympus in a dazzling atmosphere, the burning summits of Phrygia vanishing in the blue of heaven in a rosy hue, the opening of the Meander, the oblique sections of Messogio, the distant snowy summits of the Imolus, are absolutely dazzling. Saint Philip lived there; Paphas also; there Epictetus was born. All the valley of the Lycus offers the same character of dreamy mysticism. The population was not originally Greek; it was partly Phrygian. There was also, it would appear, around the Cadmas an ancient Semitic establishment, probably an annexe of Lydia. This peaceful valley, separated from the rest of the world, became for Christianity a place of refuge. Christianity underwent, as we shall see, grave trials.

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The evangelist of these regions was Epaphroditus or Epaphras of Colosse, a very zealous man, a friend and fellow-worker with Paul. The Apostle had only passed through the valley of the Lycus; he had never remained there; but these Churches, composed chiefly of converted Pagans, were not less completely dependent on him. Epaphras exercised upon the three villages a sort of episcopacy. Nymphadore, or Nymphas, who gathered a Church in his house at Laodicæa; the rich and benevolent Philemon, who, at Colosse, presided over a similar conventicle; Appia, deaconess of this town, perhaps the wife of Philemon; Archippus, who also filled an important function there, recognised Paul as chief. The last appears even to have worked directly with Paul. The Apostle called him his “companion in arms.” Philemon, Appia, and Archippus must have been relatives or in intimate connection with each other. Paul’s disciples travelled constantly, and reported to their master. Each one, though hardly converted, was a zealous catechist, spreading around him the faith with which he was filled. The delicate moral aspirations which prevailed in the country propapagated the movement like a train of gunpowder. The catechists went everywhere; as soon as they were received, they were jealously guarded; all and each tried to supply their wants. A cordiality, a joy, an infinite benevolence, prevailed by degrees, and touched the hearts of all. Judaism, besides, had preceded Christianity in these regions. Jewish colonies had been founded there by exiles from Babylon two centuries and a half before, and had perhaps carried there some of those industries (carpet-making, for example) which under the Roman emperors produced in the country so much wealth and so many strong associations. Did the preaching of Paul and his disciples reach Great Phrygia, the region of Azanes, of Synnades, of Colia, of Docimius? We have seen that in his two first journeys, Paul preached in Phrygia Parorea; that in his second journey he traversed Phrygia, Epicteta, without preaching; that in his third journey he traversed Apamea, Cibotos, and Phrygia, called at a later date Pacatiana. It is extremely probable that the remainder of Phrygia, as well as Bithynia, owed to Paul’s disciples

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the seeds of Christianity. About the year 112, Christianity appears in Bithynia as a worship which had taken root, which had penetrated all the ranks of society, which had invaded the villages and the rural districts, as well as the towns and cities, and had brought about a long cessation of the official worship, so that the Roman authority was reduced by it to command the restoration of Pagan sacrifices. Some of the proselytes returned to the temples, and the victims, now made slaves, found buyers here and there. About the year 112, some men, on being asked if they were Christians, replied that they had been, but they had ceased to be “more than twenty years ago”—a clear proof that the first Christian preaching took place during the lifetime of Paul. Phrygia was thenceforward, and remained for three hundred years, an essentially Christian country. There first begins the public profession of Christianity; there, from the third century, are to be found upon monuments exposed to every one’s eyes, the word ΧΡΗΣΤΙΑΝΟΣ or ΧΡΙΣΤΙΑΝΟΣ: these epitaphs, without openly avowing Christianity, exhibit Christian dogmas in a veiled form; there, from the time of Severus the Second, great towns adopted upon their coins biblical symbols, or, rather, assimilated their old traditions to biblical story. A large number of the Ephesian and Roman Christians came from Phrygia. The names which are shown oftenest upon the Phrygian monuments are old Christian names—names belonging specially to the Apostolic age, those which fill the martyrology. It is very probable that this prompt adoption of the doctrine of Jesus was natural to the race and to the former religious institutions derived from the Phrygian people. Apollonius of Tyana had, it is said, temples among these simple populations: the idea of gods clothed in human form appeared very natural to them. What remains of ancient Phrygia often breathes something of religion, of morality, of depth, of something analogous to Christianity. Some good workers, near to Cotia, made a vow “to the saintly and just God;” not far from there, another vow is addressed to “the holy and just God.” Such an epitaph in verses of this province, not very classical in style, incorrect and bad in form, seems imprinted with a very modern sentiment of a touching kind of romance. The country itself differs much from the rest of Asia. It is sad, austere, sombre, bearing the profound imprint of old geological catastrophes, burnt, or rather incinerated, and agitated by frequent earthquakes. Pontus and Cappadocia heard the name of Jesus at about the same time. Christianity illuminated all Asia Minor like a sudden fire. It is probable that the Judæo-Christians laboured on their part to spread the Gospel there. John, who belonged to this party, was received in Asia as an Apostle with authority superior to that of Paul. The Apocalypse, addressed in the year 68 to the Churches of Ephesus, of Smyrna, of Pergamos, of Thyatira, of Sardis, of Philadelphia, and of Laodicæa-upon-the-Lycus, is obviously written for Judæo-Christians. Without doubt, between the death of Paul and the composition of the Apocalypse, there was in Ephesus and in Asia a second Judæo-Christian mission. Otherwise, if Paul had been during ten years the sole chief of the Churches of Asia, we should find it difficult to understand why he had been so quickly forgotten there. St Philip and Paphias, the glories of the Church of Hieropolis; Miletum, the glory of that of Sardis, were Judæo-Christians. Neither Paphias nor Polycrates of Ephesus quote Paul; the authority of 136


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John has absorbed everything, and John is for these Churches a great Jewish priest. The Churches of Asia in the second century, the Church of Laodicæa especially, are the scene of a controversy which attacks the vital question of Christianity, and the traditional party of which shows itself very distant from the ideas of Paul. Montanism is a kind of return towards Judaism in the heart of Phrygian Christianity. In other words, in Asia, as in Corinth, the memory of Paul, after his death, appears to have suffered during one hundred years a kind of eclipse. The very Churches which he had founded abandoned him, as one who had gone too far, so that in the second century Paul appears to have been discarded. This reaction must have set in shortly after the Apostle’s death, perhaps even before. The second and third chapters of the Apocalypse are a cry of hate against Paul and his friends. This Church of Ephesus, which owes so much to Paul, is praised be-cause “it cannot bear with them which are evil,” for having known how to “try them which say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars,” for hating “the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which 1 also hate,” adds the celestial voice. The Church of Smyrna is congratulated on being the object of the insults of men “which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.” “But I have a few things against thee,” says the Divine voice to the Church of Pergamos, “because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel,—to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.” “Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee,” says the same voice to the Church of Thyatira, “because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not . . . But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden.” And to the Church of Philadelphia, “Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.” Perhaps the vague reproaches addressed by the All-Seeing to the Churches of Sardis and Laodicæa included also some allusions to the great debate which broke up the Church of Jesus. Let us say, then, if Paul had been the only missionary of Asia, one could not conceive that, so soon after his death (even supposing that he was dead when the Apocalypse appeared), his adherents could be represented as in a minority in the Churches of this country; one could not conceive that the Church of Ephesus, of which above all he was the principal founder, would have bestowed upon him an insulting nickname. Paul, as a rule, refused to trespass on the ground of others, to preach to, and to work in, the Churches which he had not established. But his enemies did not observe the same discretion. They followed him step by step, and applied themselves to destroy his works by insults and calumny.

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CHAPTER XIV. SCHISMS IN THE CHURCH OF CORINTH—APOLLOS—FIRST SCANDALS.

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AT the same time that he took his share in the vast propaganda which gained Asia to the worship of Jesus, Paul was absorbed by the gravest pre-occupations. The care of all the Churches that he had founded, weighed upon him. The Church of Corinth especially inspired him with the gravest disquiet. During the three or four years which had elapsed since the departure of the Apostle from the port of Cenchrea, trouble of every kind had incessantly agitated this Church. Greek levity had indeed produced certain phenomena which had nothing to do with the points that Christianity had touched. We have seen that Apollos, after a short stay at Ephesus, where Aquila and Priscilla had worked at his Christian education, had set out for Corinth, with urgent letters from the brethren in Asia to those of Achaia, The knowledge and the eloquence of this new doctor were much admired by the Corinthians. Apollos equalled Paul in his knowledge of the Scriptures, and he greatly surpassed him in his literary culture. The Greek which he spoke was excellent, whilst that of the Apostle was extremely defective. He had also, it seems, the exterior gifts of the orator, which failed in Paul, the imposing attitude, the easy eloquence. What is quite certain is, that at Corinth he had remarkable success. His arguments with the Jews upon the question of knowing if Jesus was the Messiah, were regarded as very strong, and he made many conversions.

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Apollos and St Paul appeared, among the new sect, in different aspects. They were the only well-instructed Jews in the Jewish manner who had embraced the doctrine of Jesus. But they came from different schools. Paul came from the Pharisaism of Jerusalem, corrected by the liberal tendencies of Gamaliel. Apollos came from the Judæo-Hellenic school of Alexandria: such things we know by Philo; perhaps he was already instructed in the theories of the logos, and was the introducer of these theories into Christian theology. Paul had the kind of feverish ardour, the intense fanaticism, which characterises the Jew of Palestine. Natures like that of Paul only change once in their life; the direction of their fanaticism once found, they press on without ever deviating or examining anything. Apollos, more curious and more critical, was ready to inquire into everything. He was a man of talent rather than an Apostle. But everything makes one believe that he joined to this talent great sincerity, and that he was a very affectionate man. At the time of his arrival at Corinth he had not seen St Paul. It was only by Aquila and Priscilla that he knew the Apostle of whom soon, without wishing it, he was going to be the rival. Among the light-hearted and brilliant populations of the shores of the Mediterranean, factions, parties, divisions are a social necessity. Life without that appears tedious. These people are bent on procuring for themselves the satisfaction of hating and of loving, of excitement, of jealousy, of

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triumphing over an opponent, even in the most trivial matters. The object of the division is insignificant; it is the division that is wanted, and that is sought for its own sake. Personal questions become, in societies of this kind, all important. When two teachers or two doctors meet in a little town of the south, the town divides into two parties on the merits of each of them. The two preachers, the two doctors, may be warm friends; they will not prevent their names from becoming the signal of keen contests, the banners of two opposing camps.

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It was thus at Corinth. The talent of Apollos turned all heads. His manner was absolutely different from that of Paul. The latter charmed by his boldness, his passion, the keen impression of his ardent soul; Apollos by his speech, which was elegant, correct, and assured. Some people, who did not greatly love Paul. and who perhaps did not owe their conversion to him, highly preferred Apollos. They treated Paul as an unpolished man, without education, a stranger to philosophy and polite learning. Apollos was their doctor; they swore only by Apollos. The disciples of Paul, doubtless, replied eagerly, and under-valued the new doctor. Although Paul and Apollos were in no wise enemies, although they regarded themselves as fellow-labourers, and although there was no difference of opinion between them, their names became thus the ensigns of two parties, who quarrelled, in spite of the two doctors, with quite sufficient vivacity. The bitterness continued, even after the departure of Apollos. He, in fact, fatigued perhaps by the zeal displayed for him, and showing himself above all these petty rivalries, left Corinth, and returned to Ephesus. He there found Paul, with whom he had long conversations, and consolidated a friendship which, without being that of the disciple or of the intimate friend, was one of two great souls, worthy of understanding and of loving each other. That was not the only cause of trouble. Corinth was a place much frequented by strangers. The port of Cenchrea saw great numbers of Jews and Syrians disembark every day, many of whom were already Christians, but of another school than that of Paul, and by no means well disposed to the Apostle. The emissaries of the Church of Jerusalem, whom we have already met at Antioch and in Galatia, upon the footsteps of Paul, had reached Corinth. These new-comers, great orators, full of boasting, fortified with letters of recommendation from the Apostles of Jerusalem, rose against Paul, scattered suspicions upon his honesty, questioned or denied his title of Apostle, and pushed their indelicacy so far as to maintain that Paul himself did not believe that he was really an Apostle, since he did not profit by the ordinary privileges of an Apostle. His disinterestedness was made use of against him. They represented him as a vain, frivolous, inconstant man, speaking and menacing without much effect; they reproached him with glorifying himself whenever opportunity offered, and of appealing to pretended favours from Heaven. They scoffed at his visions. They dwelt upon the fact that Paul had not known Jesus,—that he had not, in consequence, any right to speak of him. At the same time, they represented the Apostles of Jerusalem, especially James and Peter, as the true Apostles, the arch-apostles, in some way. The new-comers, simply because they were of

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Jerusalem, claimed a relationship with Christ after the flesh, considering the bond that they had with James and with those whom Christ had chosen in his lifetime. They held that God had established a single Doctor, who is Christ, who had instituted the Twelve. Proud of their circumcision and of their Jewish descent, they sought to impose as much as possible the yoke of legal observances. There was thus at Corinth, as there was nearly everywhere else, a “party of Peter.” The division was profound. “I am of Paul,” said some; “I am of Apollos,” said others; “I am of Cephas,” said others still. Some people, finally wishing to pose as superior spirits to these quarrellers, created a very spiritual title for themselves. They invented as the name by which they would designate themselves, that of the “party of Christ.” When the discussion got warm, and when the names of Paul, Apollos, Peter (Cephas) crossed them in the battle, they intervened with the name of that One whom they forgot. “I am of Christ,” said they, and, as these juvenilities did not exclude at the bottom a truly Christian spirit, the remembrance of Jesus had a powerful effect in restoring concord. The name of this “party of Christ” involved nevertheless something of hostility against the Apostle, and a certain ingratitude, since those who were opposed to the “party of Paul” seemed to wish to efface the trace of an apostleship to which it owed its knowledge of Christ. 196

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Contact with the Pagans caused to the young Church no small dangers. These dangers came from Greek philosophy, and from bad morals, which everywhere assailing the Church in some degree, here penetrated it and undermined it. We have already seen that at Athens philosophy had stopped the progress of the preaching of Paul. Corinth was far from being a town of as high culture as Athens; there were, however, many well-instructed men there, who received the new doctrines very ill. The cross, the resurrection, the approaching restoration of all things, appeared to them follies and absurdities. The faith of many was shaken, and the attempt to bring about an impossible reconciliation altered the gospel. The irreconcilable struggle between positive science and the supernatural elements of the Christian faith began. This contest will only finish by the complete extinction of positive science in the Christian world in the sixth century; the same contest will be revived with positive science on the threshold of modern times. The general immorality of Corinth produced upon the Church the most disastrous effects. Many Christians had not been able to break themselves away from loose habits, which, from being common, had almost ceased to be thought culpable. They talked of strange and almost unheard of scandals even in the assembly of the saints. The bad habits of the town crossed the threshold of the Church, and corrupted it. The Jewish rules about marriage, which all parts of the Christian Church proclaimed imperative and absolute, were violated: Christians even lived publicly with their mothers-in-law. A spirit of vanity, of frivolity, of disputation, of foolish pride, reigned among many. It seemed as if there was not another Church in the world, so much did this community walk in its own ways without caring for others. The gifts of the Spirit, speaking with tongues, prophesying, the gift of miracles, formerly subjects of so much edification, degenerated into shocking scenes. Hence arose strange disorders in the Church. The women, formerly so submissive, were here very bold, almost claiming equality with the men. They wished to pray aloud, to prophesy in the Church, 140


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and that without a veil, their long hair disordered, making the assembly witness of their ecstasies, of their drunken effeminacy, of their pious lubricities. But it was the agapes (love feasts) or mystic feasts above all which gave an opportunity for the most crying abuses. The scenes of rioting which followed the Pagan sacrifices were there reproduced. Instead of all things being common, each ate the part that he had brought; some went nearly drunk, others very hungry. The poor were covered with shame; the rich seemed by their abundance to insult those who had nothing. The remembrance of Jesus, and of the high significance which he had given to this repast, appeared forgotten. The corporal state of the Church was for the rest bad enough; there were many sick, and several had died. Death, in the state in which the mind of the faithful then was, caused much surprise and hesitation; sickness was held as a trial of faith or as a chastisement.

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Had four years then sufficed to take all the virtue out of the work of Jesus? Certainly not. There were still edifying families, in particular that of Stephanas, who was entirely devoted to the service of the Church, and was a model of evangelical activity. But the conditions of Christian society were already much changed. The little Church of saints of the latter day was thrown into a corrupted, frivolous world very little given to mysticism. There were already bad Christians. The time was gone by when Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead for having kept back some little property. The sacred feast of Jesus had become a debauch, and the earth did not open to devour him who went out drunk from the table of the Lord. These evil tidings reached Paul one upon another, and filled him with sadness. The first rumours only mentioned some faults against good morals. Paul wrote on this subject an epistle that we no longer have. He therein forbade to the faithful all communication with persons whose life was not pure. Some ill-intentioned men affected to give to this order a meaning which rendered it impossible to be executed. “Are we at Corinth then,” said they, “to have communications with irreproachable people only? . . . . But what is he thinking of? It is not only from Corinth, it is from the world that we must depart.” Paul was obliged to revert to this order, and explain it. He knew the divisions which agitated the Church a little later, probably in April, by the brothers whom he called “them which are of the house of Chloe.” Just at this moment he thought of leaving Ephesus. Some motives which we do not know detained him there for some time. He sent into Greece before him, with powers equal to his own, his disciple Timothy, accompanied by several brothers, amongst others a certain Erastus, probably another than the treasurer of the town of Corinth, who bore the same name. Although the principal object of their journey was Corinth, they passed through Macedonia. Paul intended to take this journey himself, and, according to his custom, he caused his disciples to precede him to announce his arrival. Shortly after the message of Chloe, and before Timothy and his companion had arrived at Corinth, new envoys from this town came to find Paul. These were the deacon Stephanas, Fortunatus, 141


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and Achaicus, three men very dear to the Apostle. Stephanas was according to the Apostle’s expression, “the first fruits of Achaia,” and since the departure of Aquila and Priscilla he had held the first rank in the community, or at least in the party of Paul. The envoys brought a letter asking for explanations with regard to the former epistle of Paul, and for solutions of divers cases of conscience, in particular touching marriage, the meats sacrificed to idols, spiritual exercises, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. The three envoys added by word of mouth details of the abuses which had been introduced. The annoyance of the Apostle was extreme, and, regardless of consolation that the pious messengers gave him, he lost his temper in the presence of such feebleness and levity. He had fixed his departure for after Easter, which was probably two months later on; but he wished to pass through Macedonia. He could not even now be at Corinth in less than three months. He immediately resolved to write to the sick Church, and to reply to the questions they had addressed to him. As Timothy was not with him, he took as a secretary a disciple unknown to the others, named Sosthenes, and, by a delicate attention, he wished that the name of this disciple should figure in the subscription of the letter along with his own. He began by an appeal to concord, and, under the appearance of humility, by an apology for his preaching,—

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“Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptised in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptised none of you but Crispus and Gaius; lest any should say that I baptised in mine own name. And I baptised also the household of Stephanas: besides I know not whether I baptised any other. For Christ sent me not to baptise, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, I will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound them which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence. . . .

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“And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect; yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought, but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory; which none of the princes of this world knew; for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, be-cause they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. . . . “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat; for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For when one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God, that giveth the increase . . . For we are labourers together with God; ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master-builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. . . . Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? . . . Let no man deceive himself. If any among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.

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“Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. . . . But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment; yea, I judge not mine own self . . . but he that judgeth me is the Lord. . . . Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

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“And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes that no one of you be puffed up for one against another . . . Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you. For I think that God hath set forth us, the Apostles, last, as it were, appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised. Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labour, working with our own hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscourings of all things unto this day! “I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you. For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me. For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways, which be in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every Church. Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power. For the Kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. What will ye? Shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness?” After this general apology, the Apostle approaches each of the abuses which had been pointed out to him, and the questions which had been put to him. It is for the incestuous an extreme severity.

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“It is reported commonly among you that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he hath done this deed might be taken away from you. For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the name of the Lord Jesus.” There can be no doubt: it is a sentence of death that Paul pronounces. Terrible legends were circulated as to the effect of the excommunications. It is to be remembered, besides, that Paul 144


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seriously believed in the working of miracles. By only delivering to Satan the body of the blameable, he doubtless believed himself to be indulgent.

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The order that Paul had given in a preceding letter (lost) to the Corinthians, to avoid the shameless, had brought about mistakes. Paul developed his idea. The Christian has not to judge the world without, but to be severe only upon those who are within. A single spot on the purity of life ought to be sufficient to exclude one from the Christian society; it is forbidden so much as to eat with a delinquent. Thus it may seem in a convent, a congregation of pious persons, occupied in watching and judging each other, much more than in a church, in the modern sense of the word. The whole Church, in the eyes of the Apostle, is responsible for the faults committed within its bosom. This exaggeration of severity had its reason for its existence in ancient society, which sinned in so many other ways. But we feel that such an idea of sanctity is narrow-minded, illiberal, contrary to the morality of him whom we formerly called “a good fellow;” a morality whose fundamental principle is to busy oneself as little as possible with other people’s conduct. The question is only to know if society can exist without censuring bad manners, and if the future will not bring back something analogous to the ecclesiastical discipline that modern liberalism has so jealously suppressed. The ideal type of moral perfection, according to Paul, is a man, gentle, honest, chaste, sober, charitable, unfettered by riches. Humility of condition and poverty are almost necessary for one who would be a Christian. The words “miser, greedy one, thief,” are nearly synonymous; at least the vices which they designate are liable to the same reproach. The antipathy of this little world for the great profane society was strange. Paul, following in that the Jewish tradition, reproves as an act unworthy of the faithful any reference to the courts of law. “Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? . . . Know ye not that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life? If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to the life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in this church. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? No, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren!”

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The relations of the sexes were a matter of the gravest difficulty. The Apostle was occupied with them constantly when he wrote to the Corinthians. The coldness of Paul gives to his morality something sensible, but at the same time monastic and narrow. The sexual attraction is in his eyes an evil, a shame. Since it cannot be suppressed, it must be regulated. Nature, for Saint Paul, is evil, and grace consists in contradicting and mastering it. He has, nevertheless, beautiful expressions as 145


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to the respect that man owes to his body: God will raise it, the bodies of the faithful are the temples of the Holy Ghost, the members of Christ. What a crime then it is to take the members of Christ to make them the members of a harlot! Absolute chastity is most valuable, virginity is the perfect state; marriage has been established as a lesser evil. But, from the time when it is contracted, the two parties have equal rights over each other. The interruption of conjugal relations ought only to be admitted for a time and in view of religious duties. Divorce is forbidden, save in the case of mixed marriages, where the unbeliever first retires.

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Marriages contracted between Christians and unbelievers may be continued. “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband,” in the same manner that the children are sanctified by the parents. One can, moreover, hope that the faithful spouse will convert the unfaithful. But new marriages can only be between Christians. All these questions will present themselves under the most singular light, since the end of the world was believed to be at hand. In the state of crisis which existed, pregnancy and the begetting of children appeared anomalies. There is little marrying in the sect, and one of the most untoward consequences for those who had associated these was the impossibility of establishing their daughters. Many murmured, finding that thing unbecoming and contrary to custom. To prevent greater evils, and out of regard for the fathers of families, who had on their hands marriageable daughters, Paul permitted marriage, but he did not conceal the contempt and disgust which he had for that estate, which he found disagreeable, full of trouble, and humiliating. “The time is short; it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world passeth away. But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife. There is a difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction.” Religious exaltation always produces such sentiments. Orthodox Judaism, which, however, showed itself opposed to celibacy, and which treated marriage as a duty, had doctors who reasoned like Paul. “Why should I marry?” said Rabbi ben Azai. “I am in love with the Law; the human race can be perpetuated by others.” Later on, as will appear, Paul expressed upon this subject much juster thoughts, and saw in the union of man and wife a symbol of the love of Christ for his Church; he placed as the supreme law of marriage the love of the man on the one hand, and the submission

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of the woman on the other; he recalled the admirable chapter of Genesis in which the mysterious attraction of the two sexes is explained by a philosophical fable of a divine beauty. 208

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The question of the meats offered to idols is resolved by St Paul with great good sense. The Judæo-Christians held that total abstinence from such meats was a duty, and it appears that it had been agreed at the Council of Jerusalem that they should be generally forbidden. Paul has broader views. According to him, the circumstance of a piece of meat having been part of a sacrificed beast is insignificant. The false gods being nothing, the meat which is offered to them is not defiled. Any meat exposed in the market may be bought freely, without there being any need for asking questions as to the origin of each morsel. A reserve, however, ought to be made: there are scrupulous consciences which take that for idolatry; and the enlightened man ought to be guided not only by principle, but also by charity. He ought to forbid himself the things which are permitted, if weak brethren are scandalised by it. Knowledge exalts, but charity edifies. “All things are lawful unto you, but all things are not expedient; but all this edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth.” It is one of the favourite ideas of Paul, and the explanation of several episodes of his life, in which one sees him subdue himself out of regard for timorous persons, to observances which he did not consider of the least value. “If the meat that I eat,” says he, “innocent as it is, scandalises my brother, I will renounce eating it for ever.” Some faithful people, however, went a little further. Constrained by family relationships, they took part in the festivities which followed the sacrifices, and which took place in the temples. Paul blames this custom, and, according to a method of reasoning familiar to him, starts on a different principle from that which he had just before admitted. The gods of the nations are devils; to participate in their sacrifices, is to have commerce with devils. One cannot at the same time participate at the table of the Lord and at the table of devils, or drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. The feasts which are held in the houses are not of the same importance: it is not necessary to go there, nor to disquiet oneself about the providing of meats; if you are told that any meat has been sacrificed to the gods, from a scandal which must result, abstain from it. In general, avoid that which can be a stumbling-block for the Jew, the Pagan, the Christian; subordinate in practice one’s own liberty to that of others, all the while maintaining one’s rights; in everything seek to please all. “Follow my example,” he continues. “Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord? If I be not an apostle unto others, yet, doubtless, I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord. Mine answer to them that do examine me is this, Have we not power to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? Or I only and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working? Who goeth a warfare anytime at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? . . . If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing that ye shall

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reap your carnal things? If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless, we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ. . . . What is my reward then? Verily, that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law; to them that are without law, as without law (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ), that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. . . . Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize. So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I; not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” As for the question of the place of women in the church, we can easily see that the Apostle will decide it with his unyielding harshness. He blames the bold efforts of the Corinthian women, and recalls them to the practice of other communities. Women ought not to speak or even ask questions in church. The gift of tongues is not for them. They ought to be submissive to their husbands. If they wish to know anything, let them ask their husbands at home. It is also shameful for a woman to appear without a veil in church, unless she be shorn or shaven. The veil is, moreover, necessary “because of the angels.” It was supposed that the angels present at divine service are capable of being tempted by the sight of the hair of women, or at least of being distracted by this sight from their duty, which is to bear to God the prayers of the saints. “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. . . . For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man . . . but all things of God.”

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The related observations on the “Supper of the Lord” have an immense historical interest. This feast became more and more the essential part of Christian worship. More and more also is spread abroad the idea that Jesus himself was eating there. That, without doubt, was metaphorical; but the metaphor in the Christian language of this time was not openly distinct from the reality. In every case this sacrament was in a great degree a sacrament of union and of love. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. Behold Israel after the flesh; are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? . . . For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, ‘Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.’ After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had

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supped, saying, ‘This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”

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The penalty incurred by not acknowledging the high sanctity of the Supper of the Lord is not eternal damnation—there are temporal trials, or even death—death being often an expiation which saves the soul. “There are perhaps,” adds the Apostle, “among you many feeble men, sick, and numerous deaths. If we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged. But the judgments of the Lord are corrections which preserve us from being judged with the world,” that is to say, condemned in eternity. For the moment the Apostle limits himself to ordaining that those who come to the agapes shall wait for each other, that they must eat at home to satisfy their appetite, and that they must guard the mystical significance of the Lord’s Supper. He will “set the rest in order” when he comes to them. The Apostle then traces the theory of the manifestations of the Spirit. Under the badly-defining names of “gifts,” “services” (offices), and “powers,” he arranges thirteen functions, constituting all the hierarchy and all the forms of supernatural activity. Three functions are openly designated and subordinated to each other. They are, 1st, the function of an apostle; 2d, that of a prophet; 3d, that of a teacher. Then come gifts, services, or powers which, without conferring so elevated a permanent character, serve for perpetual manifestations of the Spirit. These are, 1st, the word of wisdom; 2d, the word of knowledge; 3d, faith; 4th, the gifts of healing; 5th, the power of working miracles; 6th, the discerning of spirits; 7th, the gift of speaking in divers kinds of tongues; 8th, the interpretations of tongues thus spoken; 9th, the works of charity; 10th, the cares of administration. All these functions are good, useful, necessary; they ought neither to undervalue nor to envy each other. All have the same source. All the “gifts” come from the Holy Ghost, all the “services” come out from Christ, all the “powers” come from God. The body has several members, and yet is one; the division of functions is necessary in the Church as in the body. These functions can no more be divided from each other than the eye can be divided from the hand, or the head from the feet. All jealousy between them is therefore misplaced. Without doubt they are not equal in dignity, but they are justly the most feeble members which are the most necessary; they are the feeblest members which are the most honoured, the most carefully surrounded, God having wished to establish in this way a compensation, so that there might be neither schism nor jealousy in the body. The members ought to be careful of each other; if one suffers, all suffer. The advantages and the glory of one are the advantages and the glory of the other. To what good besides are these rivalries? There is a way open to all, the gift which has an immense superiority over all others.

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Borne along by a truly prophetical inspiration beyond the confused ideas and blundering which he had just exposed, Paul then wrote this admirable passage, the only one in all Christian literature which can be compared to the discourses of Jesus.

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“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” Versed in experimental psychology, Paul went a little further. He had said,—“Brethren, leave illusions. These inarticulate stammerings, these ecstasies, these miracles, are the dreams of your infancy. That which is not visionary—that which is eternal—is what I have just preached to you.” But then if he had not been of his time, he would not have done what he did. Is it not already a great deal to have indicated this capital distinction of eternal religious truths, which are infallible, and of those which, like the dreams of the first age, come to nought? Has he not done enough for immortality by having written this sentence, “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life?” Woe to him who would stop on the surface, and who, for the sake of two or three visionary gifts, would forget that in this strange enumeration—among the diaconies and the charismata of the primitive Church, are the care of those who suffer, the administration of charitable funds, reciprocal assistance! Paul enumerates these duties in the last place, and as humble things. But his piercing glance can still read the truth here. “Take care,” says he, “that our humblest members are justly the most honoured.” Prophets, speakers with tongues, doctors, you will pass. Deacons, devoted widows, administrators of the good of the Church, you will remain: you build for eternity.”

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In the laying down of rules relative to spiritual exercises, Paul shows his practical spirit. He puts preaching highly above the gift of tongues. Without absolutely denying the reality of the gift of tongues, he makes on this subject reflections which are equivalent to blaming it. The gift of tongues does not speak to men; it speaks to God. No one can understand it; it only edifies him who is speaking. Preaching, on the contrary, serves for the edification and consolation of all. The gift

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of tongues is only good if it be interpreted—that is to say, if other faithful people specially endowed for that intervene, and know that they hold the sense of it. By itself, it is like indistinct music; we hear the sound of the flute or cithara, but know not the piece that these instruments are playing. It is like a badly-blown trumpet: it makes a great noise, but as it says nothing clear, nobody obeys the uncertain signal or prepares for the combat. If the tongue does not give clearly articulated sounds, it does but beat the air; a discourse in a tongue that no one understands has no meaning. Thus much of the gift of tongues is without interpretation. Moreover, the gift of tongues in itself is barren; the meaning of it remains without fruit.

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“Else when thou shalt bless with the Spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandest not what thou sayest? For thou verily givest thanks well, but the other is not edified. I thank my God I speak with tongues more than ye all; yet in the Church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue. Brethren, be not children in understanding; howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men. . . . If therefore the whole Church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of the heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth. How is it then, brethren? When ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying. If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the Church, and let him speak to himself and to God. Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge. If anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be comforted. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints. . . . Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently and in order.” Some strange noises, which were called the gift of tongues, and in which were mixed Greek, Syriac, the words anathema maran atha, the names of “Jesus, of Lord,” greatly embarrassed simple men. Paul, when consulted on this subject, practised what was called “the discerning of spirits,” and to distinguish in this confused jargon what might come from the spirit and what might not.

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The fundamental dogma of the primitive Church, the resurrection, and the approaching end of the world, hold a considerable place in this epistle. The Apostle returns to it eight or nine different times. The renewal will be by fire. The saints will be the judges of the world, even of the angels. The resurrection, which of all Christian dogmas was the most repugnant to the Greek spirit, is the object of particular attention. Many, whilst admitting the resurrection of Jesus, his approaching

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appearance, and the restoration that he was about to accomplish, did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. When there was a death in the community, it was to them a scandal and an embarrassment. Paul had no difficulty in showing them their illogical position: “If the dead be not raised, neither is Christ raised any the more—all hope is vain.” Christians have much more cause to complain than other men; the truly wise are those who say, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” The resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee of the resurrection of all. Jesus has made the first step, his disciples will follow him in the day of his glorious manifestation. Then will begin the reign of Christ: all other power but his will be destroyed. Death will be the last enemy that he will vanquish: all will be submitted to him, God alone excepted, who has submitted all things to him. The Son, in fact, will be eager to render homage to God, and to submit himself to him, that God may be all in all.

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“But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of man, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another gory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. . . . Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? . . . But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Alas, the Christ came not. All died one after another. Paul, who was believed to be one of those who would live till near the great appearance, died in his turn. We shall see how neither faith nor hope stopped for that. No experience, however desolating it may be, appears decisive to humanity, when it is concerned with these sacred dogmas in which it finds, not without reason, its consolation and joy. It is easy for us to find that after a time that these hopes were exaggerated; it were well, nevertheless, that those who have partaken of them had not been so clear sighted. Paul tells us candidly that, if he had not counted upon the resurrection, he would have led the life of a peaceable citizen, wholly occupied with his vulgar pleasures. Some sages of the first order—Marcus Aurelius,

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Spinoza, for example—have gone further, and have practised the highest virtue without hope of reward. But the crowd is never heroic. It has needed a generation of men persuaded that they would not die, it has needed the attraction of an immense immediate reward, to draw from man that enormous sum of devotion and of sacrifice which has founded Christianity. The great chimera of the approaching kingdom of God has been thus the maternal and creative idea of the new religion. We shall soon assist at the transformation that the necessity of things will bring about in this belief. About the years 54-58 it had attained its highest degree of intensity. All the letters of Paul written about this time are, so to speak, impregnated with it. The two Syriac words Maran atha—“The Lord is at hand,” were the passwords amongst Christians,—the lively and short expression that they used to each other to encourage one another in their hopes

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CHAPTER XV. CONTINUATION OF THE THIRD JOURNEY OF PAUL—THE GREAT CONTRIBUTION—DEPARTURE FROM EPHESUS. PAUL, according to his habit, added to the end of the letter,— “The salutation of me, Paul, with mine own hand. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. MARAN ATHA.”

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He confided his letter to Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus, who had brought that of the Corinthians to him. Paul thought the three deputies would reach Corinth in nearly the same time as Timothy. He feared that the youth and timidity of his disciple were badly received in the mocking society of Corinth, and that they did not accord him enough authority. The Apostle recommended them in the most pressing way to treat Timothy as himself, and expressed a desire to see him again as soon as possible. He did not wish to leave Ephesus without his valuable companion, whose presence had become a sort of necessity to him. Paul strongly urged Apollos to join Stephanas, and to return to Corinth, but Apollos wished rather to postpone his departure. From this moment we lose sight of him. Tradition, however, continues to regard him as a disciple of Paul. It is probable, in truth, that he continued his apostolic career, putting to the service of the Christian doctrine his Jewish erudition and his elegant style. Paul, however, revolved in his mind boundless projects, in which he believed, according to his constant habit, that he saw the dictates of the Spirit. There happened to Paul, what often happens to persons accustomed to a species of activity. He could not leave what had been the occupation of his life. Travelling had become necessary to him: he sought occasions for it. He wished to revisit Macedonia, Achaia, then to visit Jerusalem anew, then to set out to try new missions in countries farther off, and not yet reached by the faith, such as Italy and Spain. The idea of going to Rome tormented him. “I must see Rome,” he often said. He foresaw that the centre of Christianity would one day be there, or at least that decisive events would happen there. The journey to Jerusalem was another project which greatly pre-occupied him far more than a year.

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To calm the jealous feelings of the Church of Jerusalem, and to fulfil one of the conditions of the peace which was signed at the time of the interview of the year 51, Paul had prepared a great contribution in the Churches of Asia Minor and of Greece. We have already seen that one of the bonds which marked the dependence of the provincial Churches on those of Judlea, was the obligation of alms. The Church of Jerusalem, partly through the fault of those who composed it, was always in distress. Mendicants abounded there. In the earliest ages, the leading characteristic of Jewish society was that there was neither poverty nor riches. For two or three centuries, there

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had been at Jerusalem rich, and consequently poor, people. The true Jew, turning his back on Gentile civilisation, became day by day more destitute of resources. The public works of Agrippa II. had filled the town with starving masons; buildings were demolished merely for the sake of not leaving thousands of workmen without work. The Apostles and their companions suffered like every one else by this state of things. It was necessary that the suffering Churches, active, laborious, should save these holy men from dying of hunger. Whilst supporting impatiently the pretensions of the brethren of Judæa, their supremacy and their titles of nobility were not doubted in the provinces. Paul had for them the greatest regard. “You are their debtors,” said he to his faithful ones; “for if the Gentiles have been made partakers of spiritual things with the saints of Judæa, their duty is all the more to minister to them in carnal things.” It was, moreover, an imitation of the custom which had for a long time obtained among the Jews of all parts of the world, to send contributions to Jerusalem. Paul thought a large alms, which he would himself carry to the Apostles, would cause him to be much better received by the old college who pardoned him with so much reluctance for doing great things without their assistance, and would be, in the eyes of these hungry nobles, the best mark of submission. How could they treat as schismatics and rebels those who gave such substantial proofs of generosity, and of fraternal and respectful sentiment? 222

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Paul began the gathering about the year 56. He wrote of it first to the Corinthians, then to the Galatians, and without doubt to other Churches. He returned to it in his new letter to the Corinthians. There were in the Churches of Asia Minor and Greece people in easy circumstances, but none with large for-tunes. Paul knew the economical habits of the world in which he had lived. The insistence with which he presents his maintenance as a heavy charge with which he was not desirous of burdening the Churches, proves that he himself suffered from the petty embarrassments of poor men, obliged to be careful about trifles. He thought that if, in the Churches of Greece, they waited his arrival before collecting the alms, the business would be a failure. He still wished each one on Sunday to put aside an amount, proportioned to his means, for this pious end. This little treasure of charity thus constantly added to, must wait his arrival. Then, the Churches would elect deputies, whom Paul would send with letters of recommendation to bear the offering to Jerusalem. Perhaps even, if the result was worth the trouble, Paul would go in person, and in that case the deputies would accompany him. So much honour, and so much happiness, to go to Jerusalem, to travel in company with Paul, greatly agitated the believers. An emulation in well-doing, skilfully encouraged by the great master in the art of the direction of souls, kept everybody on the alert. This contribution was, during some months, the thought which sustained life, and made all hearts to beat. Timothy soon returned to Ephesus, as Paul had desired him. He brought the news later than that of the departure of Stephanas; but there is reason to believe that he had left the town before Stephanas went there on his return; for it is by Titus that Paul learnt later the effect that his new letter had produced. The situation at Corinth was always very strained. Paul modified his projects, resolved to touch first at Corinth, to remain there a little time, afterwards to accomplish his journey from Macedonia, to make a second and longer sojourn at Corinth, and afterwards, resuming his 155


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first plan, to set out for Jerusalem, accompanied by Corinthian deputies. He believed that he ought to inform the Church of Corinth immediately of his change of resolution. He charged Titus with a message and the most delicate communications for the rebellious Church. The disciple was at the same time to press for the realisation of the contribution that Paul had ordered. Titus, it would seem, at first declined; he feared, like Timothy, the giddy and inconsiderate temper of the men of Corinth. Paul reassured him,—told him what he thought of the qualities of the Corinthians, extenuated their faults, dared to promise him a warm reception. He gave him for a companion a “brother” whose name is not known to us. Paul was near the last days of his stay at Ephesus; nevertheless it was agreed that he should wait in this town for the return of Titus. But new trials had just compelled him anew to modify his designs. Few periods in the life of Paul were so troubled as this. For the first time he found the limit overrun, and avowed that all his strength had departed. Jews, Pagans, Christians, hostile to his supremacy, appeared to be sworn together against him. The situation of the Church of Corinth gave him a kind of fever; he sent messenger after messenger to it; he daily changed his resolution with regard to it. Sickness, probably, befell him there: he believed he was about to die. A riot which had taken place at Ephesus still further complicated the situation, and obliged him to set out without awaiting the return of Titus.

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The temple of Diana offered a terrible obstacle to the preaching of the new cult. This gigantic establishment, one of the wonders of the world, was the life and reason for existence of the entire town, by its colossal riches, by the number of strangers whom it attracted, by the privileges and celebrity which it conferred upon the city, by the splendid festivals of which it was the occasion, by the trades which it maintained. Superstition had here the most sure of guarantees, that of material interest, never so happy as when it can disguise itself under the pretext of religion. One of the industries of the town of Ephesus was that of the silversmiths, who made little shrines of Diana. Strangers carried away with them these objects, which, placed afterwards upon their tables or in the interior of their houses, represented to them the celebrated sanctuary. A great number of craftsmen were employed in this work. Like all manufacturers living by the piety of pilgrims, these workmen were very fanatical. To preach a religion opposed to that which had enriched them, appeared to them a piece of frightful sacrilege; it was as if in our days one were to declaim against the worship of the Virgin at Fourvières or La Salette. One of the formulas in which were summed up the new doctrine was: “The gods made with hands are not gods.” This doctrine had become sufficiently public to cause anxiety to the silversmiths. Their chief, named Demetrius, excited them to a violent manifestation, maintaining that he himself acted before all for the honour of the temple that Asia and the whole world worshipped. The workmen rushed into the streets, crying, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” and in a short time all the town was filled with confusion. The crowd was borne along to the theatre, the ordinary place of assembly. The theatre of Ephesus, whose immense outline, despoiled of nearly all its completeness—still to be seen on the

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flanks of Mount Prion—was perhaps the greatest in the world. It is estimated that it must have held at least 56,000 people. As the immense seats were formed in the side of the hill, an enormous crowd could in an instant spread itself over from the top and completely inundate it. The lower part of the theatre, moreover, was surrounded by colonnades and open porticoes; and being in the neighbourhood of the forum, of the market, of several gymnasia, the whole place was always open. The tumult was at its height in an instant. Two Christians of Thessalonica, Caius and Aristarchus, who had joined Paul at Ephesus, and were attached to him as companions, were in the hands of the rioters. Great was the trouble among the Christians. Paul wished to enter into the theatre and harangue the people; his disciples begged him to do nothing of the kind. Some of the rulers who knew him also persuaded him not to commit such an imprudence. The most diverse cries were heard in the theatre; the majority did not know why they had come. There were many Jews, who put forward a certain Alexander, who made a sign with his hand demanding silence; but when they recognised him as a Jew, the noise was redoubled; during two hours, no other cry was heard but “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” It was with difficulty that the chancellor of the town could make them listen to him. He represented the honour of the great Diana as beyond all reproach; besought Demetrius and his workmen to have a trial of those who he believed had displeased them, begged everybody to return to the legal ways, and showed the consequences that such seditious movements might bring upon the town, if they could not justify themselves in the eyes of the Roman authority. The crowd dispersed. Paul, who had fixed his departure some days from that time, did not wish to prolong this perilous situation. tie resolved to take his departure as soon as possible. In terms of the letter which he had sent by Titus to the Christians of Corinth, Paul would first of all embark for that town. But he was cruelly perplexed: the anxieties that he had because of Achaia rendered him undecided. At the last moment, he again changed his route. The time did not appear to him opportune for a visit to Corinth; there was much discontent, and a disposition to proceed with vigour. Perhaps his presence might provoke revolt and schism. He did not know what effect his letter had produced, and he was very anxious about it. He believed himself, moreover, to be stronger at a distance than near at hand: his presence impressed people very little; his letters, on the contrary, were his triumph. In general, men who have a certain timidity prefer to write rather than speak. He preferred then not to go to Corinth until he had seen Titus again, but rather to write anew to the indocile Church. Thinking that severity is exercised better at a distance, he hoped that his new letter would bring his adversaries to a better state of mind. The Apostle resumed, therefore, his former plan of travelling. He summoned the faithful, addressed his farewells to them, gave orders that, when Titus should arrive, he should be sent to Troas, and set out for Macedonia, accompanied by Timothy. Perhaps he took, as assistants from thence, the two deputies of Ephesus, Tychicus and Trophimus, charged to bear to Jerusalem the offerings of Asia. This must have been in the month of June in the year 57. Paul’s sojourn at Ephesus had lasted three years. During so long an apostleship, he had had time to give to this Church a strength proof against all trials. Ephesus will be henceforth one of the metropolitan cities of Christianity, and the place 157


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in which its most important transformations will occur. It was necessary, moreover, that this Church should be exclusively Pauline, like the Churches of Macedonia, and the Church of Corinth. There were those who worked against him at Ephesus, enemies there were for certain, and in ten years we shall see the Church of Ephesus cited as a model for having known how to do justice to “those who call themselves apostles without being so,” for having unmasked their imposture, and for the vigorous hate that it bore to the “Nicolaitans,” that is to say, to the disciples of Paul. The Judæo-Christian party existed without doubt at Ephesus from the first year. Aquila and Priscilla, the assistants of Paul, continued after his departure to be the centre of the Church. Their house, in which the Apostle had dwelt, was the place of meeting of all that was most pious and zealous. Paul was pleased to celebrate every-where the merits of this respectable couple, to whom he recognised that he owed his life. All the Churches of Paul had for them a great veneration. Epænetus, the first Ephesian whom they converted, came after them; then a certain Mary, who appears to have been a deaconess, an active and devoted woman; then Urbane, whom Paul names his co-operator; then Apelles, to whom Paul gives the title “approved in Christ;” then Rufus, “chosen in the Lord,” who had an aged mother, whom the Apostle, out of respect, called “My mother.” Besides Mary, other women, true sisters of charity, were vowed to the service of the faithful. These were Tryphena and Tryphosa, “who labour in the Lord;” then Persis, particularly dear to Paul, and who had valiantly worked with him. There were still Ampliatus or Amplias, the Jew Herodion, Stachys, beloved by Paul; a Church or conventicle composed of Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, and many others; another Church or a little society composed of Philologus and Julia, of Nereus and “his sister” (that is to say, probably his wife), of Olympas, and of several others. Two great houses of Ephesus, those of Aristobulus and of Narcissus, counted among their slaves several of the faithful. Finally, two Ephesians, Tychicus and Trophimus, were attached to the Apostle, and were henceforth in the number of his companions. Andronicus and Junia were also at this time at Ephesus. These were members of the primitive Church of Jerusalem; St Paul had the greatest respect for them “because they had been in Christ before him.” He calls them “of note among the Apostles.” It is a new detail that in the trial that Paul calls “his battle against the beasts,” they probably had shared of his prison. At a much more perilous time appeared Artemas, who is said to have been a companion of Paul; Alexander the coppersmith, Phygellus Hermogenus, who seems to have left an evil reputation behind him,—provoked schisms or excommunications, and to have been considered as traitors in the school of Paul; Onesiphorus and his house, who, on the contrary, would have shown themselves more than once full of love and devotion towards the Apostle. Several of the names which have just been enumerated are the names of slaves; thus much we see in their peculiar designations, in which is the ironical emphasis which make them so like to the grotesque names that are given to negroes in the colonies. It is not improbable that there were already among the Christians many persons of servile condition. Slavery, in many cases, did not

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induce so complete an attachment to the master’s house as our modern domesticity. The slaves of certain categories were free to mix together, to associate to a certain extent, to form brotherhoods, a kind of tontine or club, in view of their funerals. It is not impossible that several of the pious men and women who had given themselves up to the service of the Church were slaves, and that the hours that they gave to the diaconate were those that their masters allowed them. At the time in which these events happened, the servile class comprised many polished, resigned, virtuous, well-instructed persons. The highest lessons on morality came from slaves; Epictetus passed a great part of his life in servitude. The Stoics, the sages, spoke as did St Paul to the slave: “Remain as thou art; do not think of setting thyself free.” It is not necessary to judge of the lower classes in the Greek towns by our populace of the same age, dull, brutal, sensual, incapable of distinction. This refined, delicate, polished something that one feels in the relations of the first Christians is a tradition of Greek elegance. The humble workmen of Ephesus, whom St Paul salutes with so much cordiality, were without doubt persons of a gentle nature, with a touching honesty, relieved by excellent manners, and by the peculiar charm that there is in the civility of the poorer classes. Their serenity of soul, their content, were perpetual sermons. “See how these Christians love one another!” was the exclamation of the Pagans, surprised at this innocent and tranquil air, at this profound and attractive gaiety. After the preaching of Jesus, it is the divine work of Christianity; it is his second miracle,—a miracle drawn truly from the living forces of humanity, and of that in it which is best and most holy.

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CHAPTER XVL CONTINUATION OF THE THIRD JOURNEY OF PAUL—SECOND STAY OF PAUL IN MACEDONIA.

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PAUL, on leaving Ephesus, probably went by land, for at least part of the way. He had calculated, in fact, that Titus, going by sea from Ephesus to Troas would have reached this latter point before him. This calculation was not verified. Arrived at Troas, he did not meet Titus there, which caused him a lively concern. Paul had already passed by Troas; but it does not appear that he had preached there. This time he found very favourable dispositions. “A door was opened unto me of the Lord.” Troas was a Latin town in the style of Antioch in Pisidia and of Philippi. A certain Carpus welcomed the Apostle, and lodged him at his house; Paul employed the days during which he was waiting for Titus in founding a Church. He succeeded admirably, for, some days afterwards, a company of the faithful accompanied him to the shore, when he set out for Macedonia. It was about five years since he had embarked from the same port, at the demand of a Macedonian man whom he had seen in a vision. Never assuredly had a dream counselled greater things or brought about more beautiful results. This second stay of Paul in Macedonia must have occupied six months, from June to November 57. Paul employed himself all this time in confirming his beloved Churches. His principal residence was at Thessalonica; he was constrained, however, to dwell also for some time at Philippi and at Beræa. Troubles which had filled the last months of his stay at Ephesus seemed to pursue him. During the first days after his arrival he had no rest. His life was a continual struggle: the gravest apprehensions stood in his way. These cares and afflictions did not assuredly come from the Churches of Macedonia. There could not be more perfect Churches, more generous, more devoted to the Apostle; nowhere had he met with so much heart, nobleness, and simplicity. He found a good many bad Christians—sensual, earthly—on whose account the Apostle expressed himself with much vivacity, calling them “enemies of the Cross of Christ whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things,” and upon whom he denounces eternal ruin; but it is doubtful if they belonged to the actual flock of the Apostle. It is from the side of the Church of Corinth that these great anxieties come. He fears more and more lest his letter may not have stirred up the indifferent, and may have armed his enemies. Titus at last rejoined him, and consoled him for all his griefs. He brought, in a word, good news, although the clouds were far from being wholly dissipated. The letter had produced the most profound effect. At its reading, Paul’s disciples had listened in tears. Nearly all had testified to Titus, whilst shedding tears, the profound affection that they bore for the Apostle, sorrow for having grieved him, the desire of seeing him again, and of obtaining pardon from him. These Greek natures, unsteady and inconstant, came back to the right path as quickly as they had left it. His expressions

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frightened them. They supposed that the Apostle was armed with the most terrible powers; before his threats, all those who owed their faith to him, trembled and sought to exculpate themselves. They had not indignation enough against the guilty; each sought by his zeal against others to justify himself, and to turn aside the severity of the Apostle. Titus was overwhelmed by Paul’s disciples with the most delicate attentions. He came back enchanted by the reception that they had given him, by the fervour, by the docility, by the goodwill that he had found in the spiritual family of his master. The subscription was not much advanced, but there was a hope that it would be fruitful. The sentence pronounced against the incestuous had been softened, or rather Satan, to whom Paul had given them up, did not execute the decree. The sinner was allowed to live on; the Apostle had the credit of giving an indulgent consent to what was after all a mere following of the course of nature. They did not even chase him absolutely from the Church, but they avoided having relations with him. Titus had conducted all this business with consummate prudence, and as skilfully as Paul would have done it himself. The Apostle never experienced keener joy than at the reception of this news. During some days, he altogether lost his self-command. He repented of having grieved such good souls; then, on seeing the admirable effect that his severity had produced, he became full of joy. This joy was not unmixed. His enemies were far from yielding; the epistle had exasperated them, and they made the keenest criticisms upon it. They noted that it was hard and insulting to the Church; they accused the Apostle of pride and vanity; “His letters,” said they, “are severe and energetic; but his figure is mean, and his speech without authority.” They attributed to personal hate his rigour towards the incestuous. They treated him as a foolish, extravagant, conceited, and indiscreet man. The changes in his plans of journey were presented as proofs of instability. Agitated by this double news, the Apostle set about dictating to Timothy a new letter, destined, on the one hand, to lessen the effect of the first, and to bear to his beloved Church, which he believed himself to have wounded, the expression of his paternal sentiments; on the other, to reply to the adversaries who had failed for the moment to carry away the hearts of his children from him.

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As for his enemies, Paul knew that he had not disarmed them. At each instant there are lively and smart allusions to these people “which corrupt the word of God,” above all, to those letters of recommendation which they have turned to his detriment. His enemies are false apostles, deceitful workers, who disguise themselves as the apostles of Christ. Satan sometimes changes himself into an angel of light; therefore is it astonishing if his ministers transform themselves into ministers of righteousness? Their end shall be according to their works. They pretend that he has not known the Christ. He does not agree with them; because for him his vision on the road to Damascus has been a true personal relationship with Jesus. But, after all, what does it matter? Since Christ is dead, all are dead with Christ, to carnal considerations. For himself, he no longer knows any one according to the flesh. If he has known Christ after the flesh, he knows him no more. Let them not force him to be other than he is. When he is amongst them, he is humble, timid, embarrassed; but he hopes they will not oblige him to use the arms which have been given to him to destroy every fortress 161


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opposed to Christ, to destroy all scorners who raise themselves against the knowledge of God, and to submit every thought to the yoke of Jesus; it is easy to see that he knows how to punish disobedience. Those who describe themselves as of the party of Christ ought to remember, that he, Paul, is also of the school of Christ. The power that the Lord has given him to edify, do they wish to oblige him to use it to destroy? They try to make the Corinthians believe that he seeks to frighten them by his letters. Let those who use this language take care lest he be forced to write to them in even severer terms. It is not of the number of men who vaunt themselves and who have just hawked about right and left their letters of recommendation. His letter of recommendation is the Church of Corinth. This letter, he bears in his heart; it is legible for all; it is not written in ink, but by the Spirit of the living God, not upon tables of stone, but upon the tables of the heart. He only measures it in its proper proportion, he only compares it himself. He only arrogates to himself authority over the Churches which he has founded; he is not like men who wish to extend their power over countries in which they have not shown themselves in their own person, and who, after having yielded to him, Paul, the Gospel of the Circumcision, have just now gathered the fruit of a work which they had at first opposed. Each to his own ground. He need not boast of the works of others, nor vaunt him-self verbosely and without measure; the portion that God apportioned to him is beautiful enough, since it has been his lot to bear the Gospel to Corinth; and still he hopes to go farther away. But it is in God alone that he finds his glory. This modesty was not feigned. But it is difficult for a man of action to be modest; he runs the risk of being taken literally. The least egotistical of the Apostles is incessantly compelled to speak of himself. He calls himself an abortion, the least of the saints, the least of the Apostles, unworthy of that name, since he has persecuted the Church of God; but do not believe that for all that he resigns his prerogative. “But by the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. . . . “For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest Apostles. But though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge; but we have been thoroughly made manifest among you in all things. Have I committed an offence in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely? I robbed other Churches, taking wages of them to do you service. And when I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man: for that which was lacking to me, the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied: and in all things I have kept myself from being burdensome unto you, and so will I keep myself. As the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia. Wherefore? because I love you not? God knoweth. But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them which desire occasion; that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we. . . .”

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Arming himself with the accusation of madness, that his adversaries raised against him, he accepts for a moment this position which they have lent him, and, under the mask of oratorical irony, he makes the madman throw in the face of his adversaries the harshest truths. 2

“I am a fool, it is agreed; very well, bear with my folly for a moment. You that are wise, ought to be indulgent to fools. And then, you shew so much tolerance for men who put you into servitude, who devour you, who extort your money, and who, after that, are puffed up with pride, and strike you in the face. Let us go on, since it is the fashion to sing one’s own glory, let us sing ours. All that can be said in this kind of folly, I can say like them. They are Hebrews; so am I. They are Israelites; so am I They are of the race of Abraham; so am I. They are ministers of Christ (ah I speak as a fool), I am more. In labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. And outside of these accidents, snail I recall my daily anxieties, the care of all the Churches? Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not? . . . . But I only wish to glory in my infirmities . . . . it is in our infirmities that the strength of Christ is more manifest. That is why I glory in my infirmities, in my injuries, in my necessities, in my persecutions, in my sufferings for Christ, for when I am weak in the flesh I am strong in Christ. 236

“Truly I am become a fool in glorying; you have compelled me. I should have been exempt from it, if you had wished to charge yourselves with my apology to those who attack me. I am nothing; but I yield in nothing to the very chiefest Apostles. Truly I have wrought the signs of an Apostle among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds. For what is it wherein ye were inferior to other Churches, except it be that I myself was not burdensome to you? Forgive me this injustice. It is the third time that I have announced my approaching arrival to you. This time I will not be burdensome to you; for I seek not yours, but you. For the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. And, I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you the less I be loved. “But if it be so, it may be said I have not been directly in your charge, but, crafty rogue that I am, I have skilfully swindled you of the silver that I refused to accept. Did I gain anything by any of those whom I have sent to you? I sent Titus to you, and with him a brother whom you know. Did Titus make a profit out of you? Walked we not in the same spirit and in the same steps? . . . For I fear lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found unto you such as ye would not: lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings,

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This is the latter part of the 2d Epistle to the Corinthians, freely rendered. No literal translation gives the sense.—TRANS.

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swellings, tumults. And lest when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed. This is the third time I am coming unto you . . . I told you before, and warn you, absent as present, the second time; and being absent now I write to them which heretofore have sinned, and to all other, that, if I come again, I will not spare: since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me . . . Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me.” Paul, we see, had reached that great state of exaltation in which the religious founders of the first order lived. His thoughts lifted him out of himself. The manner in which to execute the contribution for the poor of Jerusalem was at this time his consolation. Macedonia showed an exemplary zeal in it. Those excellent souls gave with a joy, with an eagerness, which ravished the Apostle. Nearly all the members of the sect had suffered in their little way through having adhered to the new doctrine; but in their poverty they still knew how to find something for a work which the Apostle designated as excellent. The hopes of Paul were more than fulfilled; the faithful nearly went down on their knees, to beg the Apostle to accept the necessarily small donations which they were able to offer. They would have given themselves, if the Apostle would have accepted them. Paul, pushing his delicacy almost to exaggerated refinement, and wishing, as he said, to be irreproachable not only before God but before men, requiring that they should choose at the election deputies charged to carry the offering of each Church, carefully sealed, so as to disperse the suspicions that malevolence would certainly cast upon him concerning his management of considerable funds. These deputies followed him already everywhere, and formed around him a kind of escort always ready to execute his missions. They were those whom he calls “the envoys of the Churches, the glory of Christ”

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Cleverness, suppleness of language, the epistolary dexterity of Paul, were employed entirely in this work. He employed to recommend it to the Corinthians the most moving and tenderest phrases; he commanded nothing; but, knowing their charity, he allowed himself to give them advice. It was a year since they had begun; he was now anxious himself to finish; goodwill did not suffice. It is not a question of worrying oneself to put others at ease. The rule in such affairs is equality, or rather reciprocity. For the moment, the Corinthians are rich and the saints of Jerusalem are poor, it is for the former to help the latter, the latter will help the former in turn. Thus he himself will verify the saying: “He that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack.” Paul prayed the faithful Titus to return to Corinth and to continue the work of charity there which he had so well begun. Titus had desired this mission, and received it with eagerness. The Apostle gave him two companions, whose names we do not know. One was of the number of the deputies who had been elected to bear the offering from Macedonia to Jerusalem; “his praise,” says Paul, “is in the Gospel throughout all the Churches.” The other was a brother “whom Paul had oftentimes proved diligent in many things, but now much more diligent, upon the great confidence

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which he had in the Church of Corinth.” Neither of those indications suffices to settle who is meant. Paul prayed the Corinthians to keep up the good opinion which he had tried to give of them to these three persons, and employs to excite their generosity a little charitable manœuvre which raises a smile.

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“For I know the forwardness of your mind, for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia was ready a year ago; and your zeal hath provoked very many. Yet have I sent the brethren, lest our boasting of you should be vain in this behalf; that, as I said, ye may be ready: lest haply if they of Macedonia come with me, and find you unprepared, we (that we say not, ye) should be ashamed in this confident boasting. Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren, that they would go before unto you and make up beforehand your bounty, whereof ye had notice before, that the same might be ready as & matter of bounty, not as of covetousness. But this I say, he which soweth sparingly, shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully, shall reap also bountifully. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. . . . Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your. seed sown, and increase the fruits of righteousness. . . . For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God; whilst by the experiment of this ministration they glorify God for your professed subjection unto the Gospel of Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto them, and unto all men; and by their prayer for you, which long after you for the exceeding grace of God in you. Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift!” This letter was carried to Corinth by Titus and by the two brethren who accompanied him. Paul remained still for some months in Macedonia. The times were still very hard. Scarcely ever has there been a Church which has not had to contend with ever-recurring difficulties. Patience is the recommendation that the Apostle addresses the oftenest. “Tribulations, distresses, pangs, cudgellings, prisons, bad treatment, vigils, fastings,—purity, long-suffering, honesty, sincere charity, such is our life; sometimes honoured, sometimes despised, sometimes slandered, sometimes respected; held as impostors, as well as truthful ones; as unknown, yet well known (of God); as dying, whilst we live; as men whom God chastises and yet we do not die; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; for poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” Joy, concord, hope without limit, made suffering light, and inaugurated that delicious reign of “the God of love and peace” that Jesus had announced. Above a thousand meannesses, the spirit of Jesus shines in these groups of saints with infinite brightness and sweetness.

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CHAPTER XVII. CONTINUATION OF THE THIRD MISSION—SECOND STAY OF PAUL AT CORINTH—THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.

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PAUL, according to our calculation, set out from Macedonia, and came to Greece at the end of November or the beginning of December 57. He had with him the delegates chosen by the Churches of Macedonia to accompany him to Jerusalem, and to carry himself and the alms of the faithful, amongst others Sopater or Sosipater, son of Pyrrhus of Beræa, a certain Lucius, a certain Tertius, Aristarchus, and Secundus of Thessalonica. Jason of Thessalonica, his host since his first voyage, accompanied him also, it seems. Perhaps, finally, the deputies of Asia—Tychicus, and Trophimus of Ephesus, Gaius from Derbe, were already with him. Timothy about this time did not leave him. All these made a kind of apostolic caravan of a very imposing aspect. When they had rejoined Titus and the two brothers who had accompanied him, Corinth really possessed all the leaders of the new movement. Paul, conformably to his former plan, which he had several times modified, but which he finished by carrying out in its essential lines, passed in this town three months of the winter 57-58 (December 57, January and February 58). The Church of Athens was so small that Paul, according to all appearance, did not visit it, or at least hardly stopped there. The Apostle, not having any longer at his disposal the kindly hospitality of Aquila and Priscilla, lodged this time at the house of Caius, whose house served for the meetings of the whale Church, and to whom he was attached by a bond then held very sacred. Stephanas was perhaps dead or absent. Paul always observed at Corinth much reserve, for he did not feel himself to be on very firm ground. Seeing the danger that association with the world offered in a town so corrupted, he reverted always to broad principles, and advised avoiding all relations with the Pagans. The welfare of the souls at such a time was his only rule, the only end which he proposed to himself. It is probable that the presence of Paul at Corinth calmed altogether the dissentients, who, for several months, gave him much anxiety. A bitter allusion which he made about this time to “those who vaunt themselves of works that Christ has not done by them,” and of others, “who build upon another man’s foundations,” shows, however, that a vivid impression of the evil works of his adversaries remained with him. The business of the subscription had gone forward as he desired—Macedonia and Achaia had contributed a large sum. The Apostle had at last an interval of repose; he utilised it by writing, always under the form of an epistle, a kind of summing up of his theological doctrine. As this great document interested all Christianity equally, Paul addressed it chiefly to the Churches which he had founded, and with which he could communicate at this time. The Churches favoured with such an address were four in number at the least. One was the Church of Ephesus;

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a copy was also sent into Macedonia; Paul even had an idea of addressing this piece to the Church of Rome. In all his copies the body of the epistle was nearly the same; the moral recommendations and the salutations varied. In the copy destined for the Romans, in particular, Paul introduced some varied readings suited to the taste of this Church, which he knew was very much attached to Judaism. It is the copy addressed to the Church of Rome which served as the basis of the constitution of the text when the collection of the epistles of St Paul was made. Hence the name that the epistle in question bears to-day. The publishers (if we may be permitted so to call them) only copied at one time the parts common to all; however, as they would themselves be scrupulous not to lose anything which came from the pen of the Apostle, they gathered together at the end of the copy princeps, the parts which varied in the different copies, or which they themselves found in more than one of them. This precious writing, the foundation of all Christian theology, is mainly that in which the ideas of Paul are exposed in better order. There appears in full daylight the great idea of the Apostle: there the law is put on one side; works are of no value; salvation comes only from Jesus, Son of God, raised from the dead. Jesus, who, in the eyes of the Judæo-Christian school, is a great prophet, come to fulfil the law, is, in the eyes of Paul, a divine apparition, rendering useless all that has preceded him, even the Law. Jesus and the Law are for Paul two opposite things. He who accords to the Law excellence and efficacy is a traitor to Jesus. To overthrow the Law, is to exalt Jesus. Greeks, Jews, Barbarians, all are equal; the Jews are first called, then the Greeks: all are saved only by faith in Jesus.

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What can man do, indeed, if he be left to himself? One thing only—he can sin. And at first, in that which concerns Pagans, the spectacle of the visible world and the natural law written in their hearts would suffice to reveal to them the true God and their duties. By a voluntary and inexcusable blindness, they have not worshipped the God whom they knew well; they have lost themselves in their vain thoughts; their pretended philosophy has only been idle speculation. To punish them, God has abandoned them to the most shameful vices, to sins against nature. The Jews are no more innocent; they have received the Law, but they have not observed it. Circumcision does not make the true Jew; the Pagan who observes the natural law well is worth much more than the Jew who does not observe the Law of God. Have not the Jews then some prerogative? Without doubt, they have one: it is to them that the promises have been made; the unbelief of many among them does not prevent these promises from being fulfilled. But the Law by itself cannot bring about the reign of justice; it has served merely to create the offence and to put it in evidence. In other words, the Jews, like the Gentiles, have lived under the dominion of sin. Whence then does justification come? From faith in Jesus, without distinction of race. All men were sinners; Jesus has been the propitiatory victim; His death has been the redemption that God has accepted for the sins of the world, the works of the law not having been able to justify the world. God is not only the God of the Jews, He is also the God of the Gentiles. It was by faith that Abraham

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was justified, since it is written, “He believed, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Justification is free; one has no right to it by merit; it is an imputed grace and an all-merciful act of the Divinity.

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The fruit of justification is peace with God, hope, and consequently patience, which enables us to show our glory and our happiness in tribulation, according to the example of Christ, who has died for sinners, and by whose blood we have been justified. If God has so loved men that He has given His son to die for them when we were sinners, what will He not do now that they are reconciled? Sin and death were brought into the world by one man, Adam, in whom all have sinned. Grace and salvation were brought into the world by one Man, Christ, in whom all are justified. Two typical men have existed, “the first Adam,” or the earthly Adam, the origin of all disobedience; “the second Adam,” or the heavenly Adam, the origin of all justice. Humanity divides itself between these two leaders of the human race, some following the earthly Adam, others the spiritual Adam. The Law has served only to multiply offences, and to make sinners conscious of them. It is grace which, superabounding where offence has abounded, has effaced all, so that one may almost say that, thanks to Jesus, sin has been happiness, and has only served to bring to light the mercy of God.

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But, it will be said, let us sin then that grace may abound; let us do evil, that good may come. That, says Paul, is what they assert of me, thus falsifying my doctrine. Nothing is further from my thoughts. Those who have been baptised in Christ are dead to sin, buried with Christ, to rise again and live with Him—that is to say, lead a new life. Our “old man,” that is to say, the man that we were before baptism, has been crucified with Christ. Because the Christian is not under the Law, it does not follow that he may sin. From the slavery of sin, he has passed to the service of righteousness; from the way of sin unto death, to the way of life. The Christian, moreover, is dead to the Law; for the Law created sin. In itself, it was good and holy, but it made sin known; it aggravated it, so that the commandment which should have created life, created death. A woman is an adultress if, whilst living with her husband, she fails to keep her marriage vow; but after the death of her husband, adultery is no longer possible. Christ, in breaking down the letter of the Law, has taken us from under the Law, and won us to himself. Dead to the flesh, which was in sin, being dead to the Law, he who cast off sin, the Christian has only to serve God “in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.” The Law was spiritual, but man is carnal. There are two parts in man—one which loves and wishes to do well, the other which does evil, without that other man wishing to do it. Does it not often happen that we do not that we would, while the evil that we would not, that we do? Is it that sin, innate in man, acts in him without his wishing it. “The inner man,” that is to say, reason, would obey the law of God; but concupiscence is ever at war with reason and the law of God. “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

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The true Christian, being delivered from the Law and from concupiscence, is then safe from damnation, by the mercy of God, who has sent His only Son to take upon Him a body of sinful flesh like our own, to destroy sin. But this deliverance does not take place if he destroy not his life according to the flesh, and live according to the Spirit. The wisdom of the flesh is the great enemy of God; it is even death. The Spirit, on the contrary, is life. By Him we have been made the adopted sons of God, whereby we cry Abba, that is to say, “Father.” But, if we are the sons of God, we are also His heirs, and joint heirs with Christ. After having partaken of His sufferings, we shall also partake of His glory. What are all the sufferings of this present time compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us? The whole creation waits for this great revelation of the sons of God. It hopes, I say, to be delivered from the bondage under which it groans, subject as it is to infirmity and corruption, and to pass into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. We also, who have received the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the moment in which our elevation to the position of the sons of God shall be complete, and when our body shall be delivered from its frailty. It is hope which saves us; but we do not hope for that which we see. Let us persevere patiently in this hope for the invisible, with the help of the Spirit. We know not what we should pray for; but the Spirit makes up for our weakness, and makes intercession for us with God with groanings which cannot be uttered. God, who seeth the heart, knoweth how to divine the desires of the Spirit, and to separate its indistinct and inarticulate sighs. What a motive of assurance, moreover! It is by a direct act of God that we are destined for the metamorphosis which will make us like His Son, and who will make of all living a body of brethren of whom Jesus will be the first born. By His foreknowledge, God knows His elect beforehand; those whom He knows, He predestinates; those whom He predestinates, He calls; those whom He calls, He justifies; those whom He justifies, He glorifies. Let us be tranquil: if for us God has not spared His only Son, but has delivered Him to death, what can He refuse us? Who will be in the day of judgment the accuser of the elect? God, who has justified them? Who will condemn them? Christ, who has died and risen again, who is seated at the right hand of God, who intercedes for us? Impossible! “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For I,” adds Paul, “am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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We see to what a complete rupture with Judaism Christianity has reached in the hands of Paul. Jesus has not been so far off assuredly. Jesus has boldly proclaimed that the reign of the Law is ended, that the worship in spirit and in truth of God the Father only remains. But, with Jesus, poetry, sentiment, imagery, and style are essentially Jewish. He continues in a direct line Isaiah, the psalmists, the prophets of the time of the captivity, the author of the Song of Songs, and sometimes the author of Ecclesiastes. Paul only continues Jesus, not as he was by the side of the lake of Gennesareth, but Jesus such as he conceives him, such as he has seen him in his inner vision. For 169


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his old co-religionists he has only pity. The “perfect” Christian, the “enlightened” Christian, is in his eyes the one who knows the vanity of the Law, its uselessness, the frivolity of its pious practices. Paul would wish to be anathema for his brothers in Israel; it is for him a great sadness, a continual heartache to dream of this noble race, raised so high in glory, which had the privilege of adoption, of alliance, of the Law, of the true worship, of the promises,—which has had patriarchs out of whom Christ has come in the flesh. But God will not fail in His promises. Even though one is of the seed of Israel, he is not necessarily a true Israelite; he is heir to the promises by the choice and calling of God, not by the accident of birth. There is no injustice in that. Salvation is the result, not of human efforts, but of the mercy of God. God is free to have mercy on whom He will, and to deal hardly with whom he will. Who will dare to ask of God the reason for His choice? Can the vessel of clay say to the potter: Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter the power, with the same lump, to make two vessels, one for honourable uses, the other for dishonourable? If it please God to prepare man to show His power by crushing him, as He did Pharaoh, He is the master, the rather that thereby He shows forth His mercy towards those whom He has prepared and called to glory. But He makes this choice, without stopping for any consideration of race or of blood. If the Jewish people, moreover, see themselves supplanted, it is their own fault. They have too much confidence in the works of the Law; they believe that they will by these works be justified. The Gentiles, disembarrassed of this stone of stumbling, have entered more easily into the true doctrine of salvation by faith. Israel has sinned by too much zeal for the Law, and by having placed too much reliance upon the personal justification which it acquires by works. Thus it has been made to forget that justification is from God only,—that it is the fruit of grace and not of works; which has made it misunderstand the instrument of that justification which is Jesus.

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Has God then cast off his people? No. God, it is true, has found it good to blind and to harden the greater part of the Jews. But the corner-stone of the elect has been taken out of the breasts of Israel. Besides, the perdition of the Hebrew people is not definitive. This perdition has had for its only object the salvation of the Gentiles and the creation of a salutary emulation between the two branches of the elect. It is a happiness for the Gentiles that the Jews had for a time failed in their vocation, since it is through their fault, and thanks to their weakness, that the Gentiles have been substituted for them. But if the falling away of the Jewish people, if a moment of delay on its part has been the salvation of the world, what will be its introduction in a mass into the Church? This will truly be the resurrection. If the first-fruits be holy, the whole mass is holy also; if the root be holy, the branches are holy also. Some branches have been cut off, and in their place have been grafted branches of the wild olive, which have thus become partakers of the root and of the sap of the olive tree. Take care, O wild olive! lest thou grow proud at the expense of the branches which have been cut off! It is not thou that bearest the root; it is the root that bears thee! Yes, thou wilt say, but the branches have been cut off so that I may be grafted. Doubtless; they have been cut off for want of faith; it is to faith that thou owest all; beware lest thou grow proud; tremble. If thou dost not persevere, thou also wilt be cut off. If they come to the faith, God is perfectly well able to 170


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regraft them on their own trunk. Israel has been blinded till the crowd of the Gentiles can be received into the Church; but after that, Israel will be saved in turn. The gifts of God are without repentance. The friendship of Israel and of God has suffered an eclipse, so that the Gentiles may in the interval receive the Gospel; but the calling of Israel, the promises made to the patriarchs, will have their effect none the less. God will use the incredulity of some for the salvation of others; then those whom He has rendered faithless, He will save in their turn; all which goes to prove that salvation on His part is purely an act of mercy, and not a result at which one will arrive by right of birth, or by works, or by the free choice of his reason. God will not take counsel of any one; He has not any account to render to any one. “O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? . . . For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”

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The Apostle, according to his habit, ends by moral applications. The worship of the Christian is the worship of reason, without other sacrifice than that of himself. Each must present to God a pure sacrifice, and worthy of being favourably accepted. The spirit of the Church must be modesty, concord, mutual responsibility; all the gifts, all the duties are intimately associated with it. The body has many members; all the members have not the same office, but all have need of each other. Prophets, deacons, doctors, preachers, benefactors, superiors, delegates, for works of mercy are equally necessary, provided that they exhibit in the discharge of their functions the simplicity, zeal, and cheerfulness that these functions require. Charity without hypocrisy, brotherly kindness, politeness and kind attentions, activity, fervour, joy, hope, patience, amiability, concord, humility, pardon for injuries, love of our neighbours, eagerness to assist the needs of the saints; to bless those who persecute you, to rejoice with those who rejoice, to weep with those who weep, to conquer evil, not by evil, but by good: such is the moral, in part inculcated in the ancient Hebrew books, that Paul preached after Jesus. It would seem that at the period in which Paul wrote this epistle, various Churches, above all the Church of Rome, reckoned amongst their number certain disciples of Judah the Gaulonite, who denied the legitimacy of the Roman tribute, and who preached revolt against the Roman authority; possibly also the Ebionites, who absolutely opposed the reign of Satan and the reign of the Messiah to each other, and who identified the present world with the empire of the devil. Paul replied to them, as a true disciple of Jesus: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid: for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For, for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, 171


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attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.”

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This was written in the fourth year of Nero. This prince had not yet afforded a reason for every subject to curse him. His government had been the best since the death of Augustus. At the moment when Paul, with much good sense, took up the defence of the tax against the Jewish theocracy, Nero softened its rigour, and even sought to apply to it the most radical reforms. The Christians at this date had not themselves complained of him, and it may readily be believed that at a time when the Roman authority served his plan rather than made an obstacle to it, Paul had sought to prevent tumultuous movements which might lose all, but to which the Jews of Rome were much inclined. These seditions, the arrests, and the punishments which were its consequences, threw the new sect into the greatest disfavour, and made the adepts confound them with thieves and the disturbers of public order. Paul had too much tact to be a rioter: he wished that credit should be given to the name of Christian, that a Christian should be a man of order, in good odour with the police, of good reputation in the eyes of Pagans. This was what made him write that page, equally singular in the eyes of a Jew and of a Christian. Yet in it may be seen, however, with a rare simplicity, that there was in the very essence of this nascent Christianity some-thing politically dangerous. The theory of the divine right of all the powers that be is candidly laid down. Nero has been proclaimed by St Paul a minister, an officer of God, a representative of Divine authority. The Christian, whilst he is allowed to practise his religion openly, will be a subject, by no means a citizen. I do not intend to utter any censure here; but no one can do two things at once; policy is not everything, and the true glory of Christianity is to have created a whole world out of itself. But see to what we expose ourselves with these absolute theories! “The minister of God,” of whom all honest men must seek approbation, whose sword is only terrible to the wicked, will become in a few years the Beast of the Apocalypse, the Anti-Christ, the persecutor of the saints. The strange situation of the spirits, the persuasion which they held that the end of the world was close at hand, explain for the remainder this haughty indifference. “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in clambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” The contest of Paul against his adversaries, who were more or less Ebionites, can be traced in part in his letter relating to the abstinence from meats, and to the observance of new moons, of Sabbaths, and of days. Ebionism, which at this period had its principal centre at Rome, held greatly

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to these external practices, which were in truth only a continuation of the practices of the Essenes. They were scrupulous, ascetic persons, who not only practised the legal ordinances with regard to meats, but who obliged themselves to eat only vegetables and to drink no wine. It is necessary to remember that Christianity recruited itself among very pious persons, and, as such, much given to devotional practices. In becoming Christians, these persons remained faithful to their ancient habits; or rather, the adoption of Christianity was for them only an act of devotion (religio) the more. Paul, in this new epistle, remained faithful to the excellent rules of conduct which he had already traced among the Corinthians. In themselves, these practices are perfectly vain. But what is of the greatest importance, is not to offend these feeble consciences, not to trouble them, not to argue with them. He whose conscience is enlightened must not despise him whose conscience is feeble. The timorous conscience must not be permitted to judge the large conscience. Let each follow his own judgment, the right thing is what one believes to be right before God. How shall one dare to judge his brother? It is Christ who will judge us all; each will only have to answer for him-self. The distinction of meats rests upon nothing; all things are pure. But what is of importance is that no one should cause scandal to his brother. If, in eating the permitted meats, you aggrieve your brother, take care; for the sake of the question of meats, do not lose a soul for whom Christ died. The kingdom of heaven has nothing to do with eating and drinking; it sums itself up in justice, peace, joy, edification. The disciples of Paul were occupied for several days in copying this manifesto, addressed to different Churches. The epistle to the Churches of Macedonia was written by Tertius. The Macedonians who accompanied Paul, and the Corinthians who had relations with the Churches of the north of Greece, profited by the occasion to salute their brethren. The Epistle to the Ephesians contained the nominal salutation of Paul to nearly all the Christians of this great Church. As there was little communication between Corinth and Macedonia on the one hand, and Ephesus on the other, the Apostle does not speak to the Ephesians of the world which surrounds him; but he vigorously recommends to them Phœbe, who probably carried the letter to them. This poor woman set out on a painful voyage in winter across the archipelago, without any other resource than the recommendation of Paul. The Church of Ephesus was begged to receive her in a manner worthy of the saints, and to provide for all her needs. Paul had probably some anxieties about the intrigues of the Judæo-Christian party at Ephesus; for, at the end of the letter, he added in his own handwriting:— “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad, therefore, on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good and simple concerning evil. And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.”

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We have seen that St Paul in writing this most important epistle had intended to send it to the Church of Rome. This Church had reformed itself since the Edict of Claudius, and much that was good had been said of it. It was not very numerous, and was chiefly composed of Ebionites and Judæo-Christians; it also contained in its ranks Proselytes and converted Pagans. The idea of addressing a dogmatic writing to a Church which he had not founded, was bold, and altogether contrary to the habit of Paul. He much feared lest they should see in his attempt something indiscreet; he forbade himself all that might recall the tone of a master speaking with authority; he made no personal salutations. With these precautions, he thought that his title, henceforth recognised as the Apostle of the Gentiles, gave him the right to address a Church which he had never seen. The importance of Rome as capital of the Empire pre-occupied him: for several years he nourished the project of betaking himself thither. Not being able to execute his design as yet, he wished to give a mark of sympathy to this illustrious Church, which contained a class of the faithful of whom he considered himself the pastor, and announced to it the good news of his future arrival. The composition and despatch of the epistle written “to the Romans” occupied the greatest part of the three months of the winter, which Paul passed this year at Corinth. They were, in a sense, the best employed weeks of his life. This epistle became, later on, the summing up of dogmatic Christianity, the declaration of war by theology against philosophy, the chief inducement to a class of eager spirits to embrace Christianity as a means of setting reason at defiance, whilst proclaiming the sublimity and credibility of the absurd. It is the application of the merits of Christ which justifies; it is God who works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. Here is the overthrow of reason, which, essentially Pelagian, has for its fundamental dogma, liberty, and the personality of merit. Very well, then, the doctrine of Paul, opposed to all merely human sense, has been really liberty and salvation. It has separated Christianity from Judaism; it has separated Protestantism from Catholicism. Pious observances, persuading the devotee that by them he is justified, have a double disadvantage: in the first place, they kill morality by making the devotee believe that there is a sure and easy way of entering Paradise in despite of God. The hardest-hearted Jew—a selfish and malicious usurer, let us say—imagined that by observing the Law he would force God to save him. The Catholic of the time of Louis XI. imagined that with masses he took proceedings against God as by a bailiff’s summons, so that, rogue though he might be, he had the game in his own hands, he could compel Almighty God to admit him into His company. To this impiety, in which Judaism was upset by Talmudism, in which Christianity was upset by the Catholicism of the Middle Ages, Saint Paul has adminstered the most efficient antidote. According to him, we are justified, not by works, but by faith; it is faith in Jesus which saves. That is why this doctrine, apparently so paltry, has been that of all the reformers—the lever by means of which Wycliff, John Huss, Luther, Calvin, St Cyran, have overthrown the ancient tradition of blind confidence in the priest, and in a kind of exterior justice, which has nothing to do with a change of heart. The other practical inconvenience is the multiplication of scruples. Practices, supposed to have a value by themselves, ex opere operato, independently of the state of the soul, open the door to 174


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all the subtleties of a meticulous casuist. Legal work becomes a prescription, the success of which depends upon its punctual execution. Here again Talmudism and Catholicism are agreed. The despair of the Jewish devotees of the time of Jesus and of St Paul was the fear of not observing the whole Law—the apprehension of not being in order. It was believed that the holiest man sins,—that it is impossible not to prevaricate. They almost regretted that God had given the Law, since it only served to bring about transgressions; they confessed to the singular idea, that God had laid down all these laws with the sole purpose of creating sin, and making all the world sinful. Jesus, in the opinion of his disciples, had made easy the entrance to this kingdom of God which the Pharisees had made so difficult, to enlarge the door of that Judaism which they had narrowed so much. Paul, at least, does not imagine any other way of sup-pressing sin than by suppressing the Law. His reasoning has something of that of the Probabilists: to multiply obligations is to multiply offences; to relax rules, to render them as broad as possible, is to prevent offences, since we do not violate precepts by which we do not consider ourselves bound. The great torment of delicate souls is scrupulousness: he who eases them of it is all-powerful over them. One of the most common customs of devotion amongst the pious sects in England, is to think of Jesus as of him who disemburdens the conscience, reassures the guilty, calms the sinning soul, delivers it from the thought of evil. Overwhelmed by the consciousness of sin and of condemnation, Paul in the same way finds peace in Jesus only. All are sinners, even to the last, by reason of their descent from Adam. Judaism, by its sacrifices for sin, had established the idea of accounts as it were opened between man and God,—of remission and of debts; a false enough idea, for sin does not remit itself,—it carries its punishment with it; a crime committed will last until the end of time, only the conscience which has committed it can atone for it and produce altogether contrary acts. The power of remitting sins was one of those that they believed to have been conferred by Jesus on his disciples. The Church had nothing more precious than it. To have committed a crime, to have a tormented conscience, was a motive to make oneself a Christian. “Here is a law which delivers you from sin, from which you could not be delivered by the Law of Moses.” What could be more tempting to the Jews? One of the reasons which confirmed Constantine in Christianity was, it is said, the belief that Christians alone could absolve the soul of a father who had killed his son. The merciful Jesus, pardoning all, according even a kind of preference for those who have sinned, appeared in this troubled world as the great comforter of souls. They took it upon themselves to say that it was well to have sinned, that all remission was gratuitous, that faith alone justified. One peculiarity of the Semitic tongues explains such a misunderstanding, and excuses this morally incomplete psychology. The form hiphil signifies at the same time the effective and the declarative, so that hasdik can say equally “to render justice,” and “to declare justice,” to remit a sin which has been committed, and to declare that he has not committed it. “Justice” is, according to this idiom, not only that he who is absolved from a sin, but that he who is calmed in his own eyes, need no more trouble himself with the sins which he may have committed, or with precepts which he may have violated unknown to himself. 175


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When Paul despatched this terrible epistle, he had early fixed the day of his departure. The gravest anxieties assailed him: he had a presentiment of grave accidents, and he applied to himself often the verse of the psalm, “Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.” Some very precise accounts, which were only too certain, represented to him the dangers he was likely to meet with from the Jews of Judæa. He was not even confident as to the disposition of the Church of Jerusalem. He had found this Church so many times ruled by mean prejudices, that he feared a cold reception, which, seeing the number of half-confirmed believers who accompanied him, would produce a disastrous effect. He constantly asked for the prayers of the faithful, that God would cause his offering to be favourably received by the saints. To place timid provincial neophytes thus in immediate contact with the aristocracy of the capital, was an idea of supreme temerity. Guided by his admirable integrity, Paul none the less persisted in his project. He believed himself bound by an order of the Spirit. He said with emphasis that he was going to Jerusalem to serve the saints; he represented himself as the deacon of the poor of Jerusalem. His principal disciples and the deputies, each bearing the offering of his Church, were around him, ready to set out. They were, we shall remember, Sopater of Beræa, Aristarchus and Secundus of Thessalonica, Gaius of Derbe, Tychicus and Trophimus of Ephesus, and finally Timothy. At the moment when Paul was going to embark for Syria, the reasonableness of his fears became visible. A plot formed by the Jews was discovered to carry him off or kill him during the journey. In order to disconcert this project, Paul privately changed his route, and decided to return by Macedonia. The departure took place about the month of April of the year 58. Thus ended this third mission, which, in the opinion of Paul, finished the first part of his apostolic projects. All the oriental provinces of the Roman Empire, from its extreme limit towards the east near to Illyria, Egypt always excepted, had heard the Gospel. Not once had the Apostle departed from his rule of preaching only in the countries where Christ had not yet been named, that is to say, where other Apostles had not passed; all his work had been original and belonged to him alone. The third mission had had for its field the same countries as the second; Paul turned a little in the same circle, and began to find himself in the right. He now delayed the accomplishment of the second part of his projects, that is to say, of proclaiming the name of Jesus in the western world, for we may say that the mystery hidden from eternity was known to all nations.

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At Rome he had been anticipated, and, moreover, those of the circumcision formed the majority in the Church. It was as universal pastor of the Churches of the Gentiles, and to confirm the converted Pagans, and not as founder, that he wished to appear in the capital of the empire. He only wished to go thither that he might enjoy for a time the company of the faithful, and rest and edify himself among them, after which he would take, according to custom, new companions who should follow him in the latter part of his journey. Beyond, it was to Spain that he carried his eyes. Spain had not yet received Israelitish emigrants; the Apostle wished, this time, to abandon the rule which he had

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observed, until now, of following the track of the synagogues and of the earlier Jewish establishments. But Spain was considered as the western boundary of the world; so that as Paul believed himself authorised to conclude that since he had been in Achaia and in Macedonia, and that he had reached Illyria in the same way, when he will have been into Spain he would be able to say with truth that the name of Jesus has been preached in all the ends of the earth, and that the preaching of the Gospel was fully accomplished.

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We shall see that circumstances independent of his will prevented Paul from realising the second part of the grand plan that he had proposed to himself. He was from forty-five to forty-eight years of age; he had certainly still found time and strength to found in this Latin world one or two of those missions that he had conducted in the Greek world with so much success; but the fatal journey to Jerusalem upset all his designs. Paul felt the perils of this journey: everybody around him felt them. He could not, nevertheless, renounce a project to which he attached much . importance. Jerusalem must lose Paul. It was one of the most unfavourable of conditions for nascent Christianity to have its capital in a home of such exalted fanaticism. The incident which, ten years later, completely destroyed the Church of Jerusalem, rendered to Christianity the greatest services that it has ever received in the course of its long history. The life-or-death question was to know if the growing sect would or would not disengage itself from Judaism. Now if the saints of Jerusalem, grouped around the temple, might always remain the aristocracy, and, so to speak, “the Court of Rome” of Christianity, this great rupture would not have occurred; the sect of Jesus, like that of John, would have died out obscurely, and Christians would have been lost amongst the sectarian Jews of the first and second century.

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CHAPTER XVIII. RETURN OF PAUL TO JERUSALEM. PAUL and the deputies of the Churches set out then from Cenchrea, having with them the contributions of the faithful for the poor of Jerusalem, and took their way towards Macedonia This was in some sort the first pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the first journey of a troop of converted pious people to the cradle of their faith. It seems that the ship, during a part of the voyage, was chartered at their expense, and that it obeyed their orders; but it must have been a simple decked boat. They made fifteen or twenty leagues a day; each evening they stopped to pass the night amongst the islands or the ports which bestrew the coast, and slept in the taverns near the shore. There were often many people there, and amongst the number good men who were not far from the kingdom of God. The barque, meanwhile, with its elevated poop and prow, was drawn upon the sand or anchored under some shelter. 262

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We do not know if the Apostle touched at Thessalonica this time; but it is not probable that he did, since it would have been far out of his way. At Neapolis Paul wished to visit the Church of Philippi, which was a very short distance from it. He went forward with his companions, and asked them to wait for him at Troas. As for himself, he went to Philippi, celebrated Easter there, and rested with the persons whom he loved the most in the world, during the seven days in which they ate unleavened bread. At Philippi Paul again found the disciple who, at the time of his second mission, had directed his first steps in Macedonia, and who, most probably, was none other than St Luke. He took him with him again, and thus added to the journey a chronicler who has transmitted to us impressions of it with infinity of charm and of truth. When the days of unleavened bread were finished, Paul and Luke re-embarked at Neapolis. They had evidently contrary winds, for they took five days to go from Neapolis to Troas. In this last town, all the apostolic company was complete. There was, as we have already said, a Church at Troas; the Apostle passed seven days with it, and consoled it much. An incident added to the general emotion. The morning of departure was a Sunday; in the evening the disciples met together according to custom, to break bread. The room in which they were was one of those lofty chambers which are so agreeable in the East, especially in the seaports. The meeting was numerous and solemn. Paul saw everywhere signs of his future trials. In his sermon he spoke much of his approaching end, and declared to those present that he bade them an eternal farewell. This was in the month of May; the window was open, and numerous lamps lighted the room. Paul spoke all the evening with an indefatigable enthusiasm; at midnight he was still speaking, and they had not broken bread, when suddenly a cry of horror was raised. A young man named Eutychus, seated upon the ledge of the window, had allowed himself to fall into a profound sleep, and dropped from the third floor upon the ground. They raised him, and they believed him to be dead. Paul, convinced 178


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of his miraculous powers, did not hesitate to do what Elisha is said to have done: he stretched himself upon the fainting man, he put his chest upon his chest, his arms upon his arms, and soon announced in an assured tone that he for whom they wept was still alive. The young man, in truth, had only been bruised by the fall; he did not take long to come to himself again. The joy was great, and all believed it a miracle. They remounted into the upper room, broke bread, and Paul continued their conversation until sunrise.

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Some hours afterwards the ship set sail. The deputies and the disciples only were on board, Paul preferring to travel on foot, or at least by land, from Troas to Assos (about eight leagues). Assos was to be their meeting-place. From this time forth, Paul and his companions never separated. On the first day, they went from Assos to Mitylene, where they put in; on the second, they followed the Straits between Chios and the Peninsula of Clazomenes; on the third they touched at Samos; but, for a reason which we do not know, Paul and his companions preferred to pass the night at the anchorage of Trogyle, under the promontory of the neighbouring Cape, at the foot of Mount Mycala. They had thus passed before Ephesus without landing there. It was the Apostle who had wished it: he feared lest the friendship of the faithful of Ephesus might hinder him, and that he could not tear himself away from a town which was very dear to him; but he much wished to celebrate Pentecost at Jerusalem, and twenty-three or twenty-four days having elapsed since Easter, there was no time to be lost. On the morrow, a short sail brought the faithful company from Trogyle to one of the ports of Miletus. There Paul felt deep misgiving as to the propriety of having passed without giving any sign of his existence to his beloved community of Ephesus. He sent one of his companions to inform it that he was some leagues from it, and to invite the elders or wardens to come to him. They came with eagerness, and when they were re-united, Paul addressed to them a touching discourse, which was a summary, and the last words of his apostolic life. “Since the day when I first came into Asia, you know what I have been for you. You have seen me serve God in humility, in tears, in temptations, and using all my strength to preach unto the Jews and Gentiles the return to God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem. I know not what awaits me; I only know that, from town to town, the spirit announces to me that bonds and afflictions wait upon me. But it matters little to me; I am going to sacrifice my life voluntarily, provided that I finish my course, and that I accomplish the mission that I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God. Oh, you to all of whom I have preached the Kingdom of God, I know that you will no more see my face; I protest then from this day, that I am innocent of the loss of those who will perish; for I have never neglected to make known to you the will of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers; be true pastors of the Church that the Lord has purchased with his own blood; for I know that after my departure shall grievous wolves enter in, not sparing the flock. And from the midst of you shall men arise, speaking perverse things,

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to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn everyone night and day with tears. And now, I recommend you to the grace of God, who is able to give you a place among the heavenly bodies. I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel. You know that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and unto those of my companions. I have shown you how by work one can still support the weak, and to justify the words of the Lord Jesus: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” All then fell on their knees and prayed. Only stifled sobs were heard. The words of Paul, “You will see my face no more,” had pierced them to the heart. The elders of Ephesus in turn approached the Apostle, bent their heads on his neck, and embraced him. They then conducted him to the port, and only left the shore when the ship set sail, taking the Apostle far from that Ægean sea which had been the scene of his contests, and the theatre of his prodigious activity. A good wind abaft carried the apostolic company from the port of Miletus to Cos. On the morrow they reached Rhodes, and on the third day Patara, upon the coast of Lycia. There they found a ship loading for Tyre. The little coasting that they had done along the coast of Asia had much delayed them, and their journey would have been indefinitely protracted if they were to continue along the coasts of Pamphylia, Cilicia, Syria, and Phœnicia. They therefore preferred to take the shorter route, and, leaving their first ship there, they embarked on that which was about to sail for Phœnicia. The western coast of Cyprus was directly in their way. Paul could see from afar that Neo-Paphos, which he had visited thirteen years before, at the beginning of his apostolic career. He left it upon his left, and after a voyage of probably six or seven days, he arrived at Tyre.

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Tyre had a church, dating from the first missions which followed the death of Stephen. Although Paul had had nothing to do with its foundation, he was known and loved there. In the quarrel which divided the rising sect, in that great rent between Judaism and the strange child to which Judaism had given birth, the Church of Tyre was decidedly of the party of the future. Paul was very well received, and passed seven days there. All the faithful of the place dissuaded him strongly from going to Jerusalem, and asserted that they had manifestations of the Spirit absolutely contrary to the plan. But Paul persisted, and chartered a ship for Ptolemais. On the day of his departure, all the faithful, with their wives and children, conducted him out of the town to the shore. The pious company knelt down on the sand and prayed. Paul bade them farewell; the Apostle and his companions re-embarked, and the people of Tyre returned sadly to their homes. They reached Ptolemais the same day. There also were some brethren; he saluted them and stayed for a day with them. Then the Apostle left the sea. Going round Carmel, he reached in one day Cæsarea in Palestine. They stayed at the house of Philip, one of the seven primitive deacons, who for many years had been settled at Cæsarea. Philip had not taken, like Paul, the title of Apostle, although in reality he had exercised the functions of one. He contented himself with the name of “Evangelist,” which designated apostles of the second rank, with the much more coveted title of “one of the seven.” 180


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Paul found here much sympathy, and remained several days at Philip’s house. Whilst there, the prophet Agabus arrived from Judæa. Paul and he had known each other at Antioch fourteen years before. Agabus imitated the manners of the ancient prophets, and affected to act in a symbolical fashion. He entered in a mysterious manner, approached Paul, and took from him his girdle. They followed his movements with curiosity and terror. With the girdle of the Apostle that he had taken, Agabus bound his own legs and hands. Then suddenly breaking the silence, he said, in an inspired tone,—“Thus saith the Holy Ghost, so shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.” The emotion was of the liveliest kind. The companions of Paul and the faithful of Cæsarea with one voice begged the Apostle to give up his journey. Paul was inflexible, and declared that chains could not frighten him, since he was ready to die at Jerusalem for the name of Jesus. His disciples saw plainly that he would not yield, and finished by saying,—“The will of the Lord be done.” Then they began their preparations for departing. Many of the faithful of Cæsarea joined themselves to the caravans. Mnason, of Cyprus, a very old disciple, who had a house at Jerusalem, but who at this moment was at Cæsarea, was of the number. The Apostle and his following should lodge at his house. They mistrusted the welcome they would receive from the Church: there was much trouble and apprehension in all the company.

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CHAPTER XIX. LAST STAY OF PAUL AT JERUSALEM—HIS APPREHENSION.

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PAUL entered into that fatal town of Jerusalem for the last time, some days, it seems, after the feast of Pentecost (July 58). His company, formed of delegates from the Churches of Greece, of Macedonia, and of Asia, of his disciples, and of the faithful of Ceesarea who had wished to accompany him, were sufficient to give a warning to the Jews. Paul began to be well known. His arrival had been waited for by the fanatics, some had probably received from Corinth and Ephesus notice of his return. Jews and Judæo-Christians appeared to have agreed to slander him. They everywhere represented him as an apostate, as the desperate enemy of Judaism, as a man who ran all over the world to destroy the law of Moses and the biblical traditions. His doctrine upon meats sacrificed to idols everywhere excited angry passions. They maintained that he disobeyed the decrees of the Council of Jerusalem as to the observances connected with meats and marriage. They represented him as a second Balaam, sowing scandal before the sons of Israel, teaching them to practise idolatry, and to cohabit with Pagans. His doctrine of justification by faith and not by works was energetically repudiated. Whilst they admitted that converted Pagans were not obliged under the Law in its entirety, they maintained that nothing could exempt a Jew from the duties inherited by him. But Paul thought nothing of this view; he gave himself the same liberties as his converts; he was no longer a Jew in any degree. The first brethren that the new arrivals met on the day of their arrival had welcomed them cordially. But it is already very remarkable that neither the apostles nor the elders came to meet the one man, who, accomplishing the boldest oracles of the prophets, had brought the nations and the far-off isles tributaries to Jerusalem. They waited for his visit with a coldness more politic than Christian, and Paul had to pass alone, with some humble brethren, the first evening of his last stay at Jerusalem.

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St James the Great was, as we have already seen, the sole and absolute head of the Church of Jerusalem. Peter was certainly absent, and very probably established at Antioch; it is probable that John, according to his custom, had accompanied him. The Judæo-Christian party reigned thus without any counterbalances at Jerusalem. James, blinded by the respect of every one who surrounded him, proud, moreover, of the bond of relationship which united him to Jesus, represented a conservative principle of weighty solemnity, a kind of obstinate papacy in his narrow mind. Around him, a numerous party, more Pharisaical than Christian, carried the taste for the observances of the Law to nearly the same degree as the zealots, and imagined that the new movement had for its essence a redoubling of devotion. These exalted ones gave themselves the name of “the poor,” Ebionim, πτωχδι, and gloried in it. There were many rich people in this community, but they were unpopular; they were considered to be as proud and tyrannical as the Sadducees. Fortunes, in the 182


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East, scarcely ever have an honest origin; of every rich man it may be said, without much chance of mistake, that he or one of his ancestors has been a conqueror, or a thief, a usurer, or a rogue. The association of ideas which, especially amongst the English everywhere collocates honesty with richness, has never been found in the East. Judæa, at least, thought of things in the opposite sense. For the saints of Jerusalem “rich” was synonymous with “enemy” and “evil-doer.” The ideal of impiety was in their eyes the opulent Sadducee, who persecuted them, dragged them before the tribunals. Passing their life around the temple, they were like good little brotherhoods, occupied in praying for the people. They were, in every case, pronounced Jews and certainly Jesus would have been surprised if he could have seen what his doctrine had become in the hands of those who boasted kinship with him both in the Spirit and in the Flesh.

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Paul, accompanied by the deputies of the Churches, went to see James on the morning after his arrival, All the elders were assembled in the house of St James. They gave each other the kiss of peace. Paul presented the deputies to James: they gave the money which they had brought. Then he recounted the great things that God had done in the Pagan world by his ministry; the elders gave thanks to God for them. Was the reception, however what they had a right to expect? We may doubt if it were. The author of the Acts has so completely modified, in view of his system of conciliation, the recital of the assembly of Jerusalem in 51, that one must believe that he has in like manner greatly modified in his recital the events which he himself took part in. In the first place, his inaccuracy is shown by comparing his accounts with the Epistle to the Galatians. In the second, there are grave reasons for supposing that he has in like manner sacrificed truth to the necessities of policy. At first, the apprehensions that Paul showed beforehand as to the temper with which the saints of Jerusalem would receive his offering could not have been without some foundation. In the second place, the account of the author of the Acts contains more than one suspicious feature. The Judæo-Christians are there represented as the enemies of Paul, almost as much so as the pure Jews. These Judæo-Christians have the worst opinion of him; the elders did not conceal the fact that the report of his arrival was annoying to them, and might provoke a manifestation on their part. The elders do not say that they share in these prejudices; but they excuse them, and in every case it is easy to see from their words that a great proportion of the Christians of Jerusalem, so far from being ready to welcome the Apostle, needed to be calmed and reconciled to him. It is remarkable, also, that the author of the Acts speaks only of the collection after a time and in the most indirect fashion. If the offering had been welcomed as it should have been, why does he not say so, when Paul in three of his epistles devotes entire pages to this object? It is hardly to be denied that Simon Magus, in the majority of the cases in which Christian tradition refers to him, may be the pseudonym of the Apostle Paul. The story according to which this impostor wished to buy apostolic powers with money, may very possibly be a translation of the ungracions reception accorded by the Apostles of Jerusalem to the collection of Paul. It would perhaps be dangerous to affirm so much, but it is quite conceivable that an assembly of ill-disposed elders may have represented the generous act of one who was not of their opinion as an attempt at corruption.

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If the elders of Jerusalem had not been narrow-minded in the extreme, how is the strange discourse which the author of the Acts attributes to them, and which betrays all their embarrassment, to be explained? The presentation, in fact, was scarcely complete, when they said to Paul,—“Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the Law: and they are informed of thee that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs. What is it therefore? From all sides they come to learn of thy arrival. Do therefore this that we say to thee: We have four men which have a vow on them; them take, and purify thyself with them, and be at charges with them, that they may shave their heads: and all may know that those things whereof they were informed concerning thee are nothing, but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the Law.”

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Thus to him who brought to them the homage of a world, these narrow souls replied only by a mark of defiance. Paul ought to expiate by a mummery his prodigious conquests. It was necessary that he should give some satisfaction to this littleness of mind. He must do this in company with four mendicants, too poor to afford to have their heads shaven at their own expense. They were under a vow, and, according to the superstition, he must recognise them as his companions. Such is the strange condition of humanity, that no one need be astonished at such a spectacle. Men are too numerous for it to be possible to establish anything in this world, without making concessions to mediocrity. To conquer the scruples of the weak, one must be either utterly disinterested, or very powerful. Those whose position obliges them to reckon with the crowd are led to demand of great men independent of singular inconsequences. Every thought vigorously avowed is in the government of the world an embarrassment. Apology, proselytism themselves, when they imply a little genius, are, for conservative folk, suspected things. See those eloquent laymen who in our days have attempted to enlarge Catholicism and to reconcile it with the sympathies of a part of society which was until then closed to Christian feeling; what have they obtained from the Church to which they have brought crowds of new adherents? A disavowal. The successors of St James the Great have found it prudent to condemn them, even whilst profiting by their success. They have accepted their offering without thanks; they have said to them as to Paul, “Brethren, ye see these thousands of old believers who hold to things that you pass by in silence: when you speak to men of the world, take care, leave the novelties which scandalise them, and sanctify yourselves with us.” What was Paul to do, placed thus between his great principle of the inutility of works, and the immense interest he had in not breaking with the Church of Jerusalem? His position was cruel. To submit himself to customs that he held to be useless and almost an insult to Jesus—since if he had allowed it to be believed that salvation is obtainable by anything other than the merits of Christ, he would have to put himself in flagrant contradiction with the doctrine which he had everywhere preached, and which in his great general epistle especially he had developed with an unparalleled force. Why, besides, did they ask him to put in force a disused rite, one devoid of all efficacy, and nearly an absolute negation of the new dogma? To show that he is really a Jew,—to refute in a 184


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peremptory fashion the rumour spread abroad that he has ceased to be a Jew, that he no more holds by the Law and traditions? Now, assuredly, he admits them no more. Was not connivance at this misunderstanding unfaithfulness to Christ? All that must have caused Paul to hesitate, and agitated him profoundly. But a higher principle, which dominated his life, made him conquer his repugnance. Above his opinions and private sentiments, Paul placed charity. Christ has delivered us from the Law; but if in profiting by the liberty that Christ has given us, we offend our brother, it is much better to renounce this liberty and to return to slavery. It is in virtue of this principle that Paul, as he says, makes himself all things to all men,—a Jew with the Jews, a Gentile with the Gentiles. In accepting the proposition of James and of the elders, he applies his favourite principle; he submits himself then. Never, perhaps, in the life of the Apostle, did he make a more considerable sacrifice to his work. The heroes of practical life have other duties than those of contemplative life. The first duty of the latter is to sacrifice action to ideas, to say what they think, or do not think, in the exact measure in which they think it; the first duty of the others is frequently to sacrifice their ideas, sometimes even their most definite principles, for the good of the cause the triumph of which they have at heart.

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What they asked Paul, besides, was less to shave his head and become a Nazarite himself, than to pay the expenses of four Nazarites, who had nothing wherewith to pay for the sacrifices offered on occasions of this kind. This was a work much esteemed among the Jews. There were around the temple troops of poor men who had made vows, and who expected some rich man to pay for them. “To shave a Nazarite” was an act of piety, and occasions are cited in which powerful personages, as an expressing of thankfulness for a blessing from heaven, made thousands of them shave; much the same as in the Middle Ages it was meritorious to pay men to make pilgrimages and to enter into monastic life. Paul, in the midst of the poverty which reigned in the Church of Jerusalem, passed for a rich man. He was asked as a rich devotee, and to prove publicly that he remained faithful to the practices of his country. James, much inclined towards exterior observances, was probably the inspirer of this grotesque idea. They urged, furthermore, that such observances had nothing to do with converted Pagans. His only motive in complying was that they should not allow it to be believed that the frightful scandal of a Jew not practising the Law of Moses was possible. So great was the fanaticism inspired by the Law, that such a phenomenon appeared more extraordinary than the overturning of the world and the total overthrow of creation. Paul then placed himself in the company of the four poor men. Those who accomplished such vows began by purifying themselves, afterwards they entered into the temple, remained shut up there for a certain number of days, according to the vow that they had made—a period of from seven to thirty days—abstained from wine, and cut off their hair. When the term of days was reached, they offered sacrifices that were paid for at a sufficiently high price. Paul submitted himself

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to all. On the morrow of his visit to James’s house, he betook himself to the temple, and got his name inscribed for seven days; and then fulfilled all the customary rites, greater during these days of humiliation, in which, by a voluntary weakness, he accomplished with men in rags an obsolete action of devotion, which when at Corinth or at Thessalonica he had denounced with all the force and independence of his genius. Paul was already at the fifth day of his vow, when an incident which was only too easy to foresee decided the remainder of his career, and engaged him in a series of troubles, which he ended only with his death.

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During the seven days which had elapsed since his arrival at Jerusalem, the hate of the Jews against him was terribly exasperated; they had seen him walk in the town with Trophimus of Ephesus, who was one of the uncircumcised. Some Jews of Asia, who recognised Trophimus, spread the rumour that Paul had introduced him into the temple. That was assuredly false, besides to have done so would have exposed him to certain death. Paul had undoubtedly not for a moment thought of making his Christians share in the religious practices of the temple. These practices were for him absolutely barren: their continuation was almost an insult to the merits of Christ. But religious hate needs little stimulus when a pretext is wanted for acts of violence. The populace of Jerusalem were soon persuaded that Paul had committed a crime which could only be washed out in blood. Like all the great revolutionists, Paul discerned the impossibility of living. The enmities that he had raised began to league themselves: the chasm was deepening around him. His companions were strangers at Jerusalem; the Christians of that city held him for an enemy, and opposed themselves to him nearly as bitterly as did the fanatical Jews. In analysing carefully certain features of the account as given in the Acts, in taking notice of the reiterated warnings which, during all his return voyage, exposed to Paul the snares prepared against him at Jerusalem, we ask ourselves if these Judæo-Christians, whose malevolent temper was asserted by the elders, and from whom they feared a hostile demonstration, did not contribute to increase the storm which was about to burst upon the Apostle. Clemens Romanus attributes the loss of the Apostle “to envy.” It is frightful to think so, but it agrees well with the iron law which will rule human affairs until the day of the final triumph of God. I perhaps deceive myself, but when I read the twenty-first chapter of the Acts, an invincible suspicion rises within me; something, I do not know what, tells me that Paul was lost by these “false brethren” who overran the world in his footsteps, to oppose his work, and to represent him as another Balaam. Be that as it may, the signal of the riot came from the Jews of Asia who had seen him with Trophimus. They recognised him in the temple whilst he accomplished the proscribed rite with the Nazarites. “Help, help! children of Israel!” cried they. “Here is the man who preaches everywhere against the Jewish people, against the Law, against this holy place. Here is the profaner of the temple—he who has introduced Pagans into the sanctuary.” The whole town was soon in an uproar. A great crowd assembled. The fanatics seized Paul; their resolute intention was to kill him. But to

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shed blood in the interior of the temple would have been a pollution of the holy place. They dragged Paul then outside the temple, and had scarcely got there when the Levites closed the doors behind him. They took it to be their duty to beat him. Such indeed would have been his fate if the Roman authority, who alone maintained any shadow of order in this chaos, had not intervened to tear him from the hands of the madmen.

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The procurator of Judæa, ever since the death of Agrippa the First, resided habitually at Cæsarea, a Roman town, ornamented with statues, an enemy of the Jews, and opposed in all ways to Jerusalem. The Roman power at Jerusalem was, in the absence of the procurator, represented by the tribune of the cohort, who resided with all his armed force in the tower of Antonia, at the north-west angle of the temple. The tribune, at this time, was a certain Lysias, Greek or Syrian by birth, who, by protections bought with money, had obtained from Claudius the title of Roman citizen, and had since then added to his name that of Claudius. At the news of the tumult, he ran with some centurions and a detachment, by one of the staircases which placed the tower in communication with the outer courts. The fanatics then ceased to strike Paul. The tribune seized and bound him with two chains, asked him who he was, and what he had done; but the tumult prevented a word being heard. The Jewish riot was something frightful. Those strong irritated figures, those large eyes starting from their sockets, those gnashings of teeth, those vociferations, those men flinging dust into the air, tearing their clothes, or throwing themselves about convulsively, gave the looker-on the idea of demons. Although the crowd was unarmed, the Romans were not altogether free from a certain fear of such madmen. Claudius Lysias gave the order to lead Paul to the tower. The excited crowd followed them, uttering cries of death. At the foot of the staircase, the press was such that the soldiers were obliged to take Paul in their arms and to carry him. Claudius Lysias tried in vain to calm the tumult. He somewhat hastily concluded, or it was perhaps suggested by ill-informed persons, that the man whom he had arrested was the Jew of Egypt who, a short time before, had led out with him into the desert some thousands of zealots, announcing to them that he would immediately realise the kingdom of God. They did not know what had become of this impostor, and at any riot they fancied they might see him re-appear among the agitators. When they had reached the door of the tower, Paul spoke in Greek to the tribune, and begged him to let him speak to the people. The latter, surprised that the prisoner knew Greek, and recognising at least that he was not the Egyptian false prophet, granted his request. Paul then, standing upon the staircase, made a sign with his hand that he wished to speak. Silence was obtained, and, when they heard him speak Hebrew (that is to say, Syro-Chaldean), they redoubled their attention. Paul recounted, in the form which was habitual to him, the history of his conversion and of his calling. They soon interrupted him; the cries, “Kill him! kill him!” began again; the anger was at its height. The tribune commanded the prisoner to enter the citadel. He understood nothing of this affair; though a brutal and mean soldier, he thought to explain it by torturing him as being the cause of all the trouble. They seized Paul, and had already tied him upon the post to receive the blows of

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the scourge, when he declared to the centurion who presided at the torture that he was a Roman citizen. The effect of this word was always very great. The executioners receded; the centurion referred to the tribune; the tribune was very much surprised. Paul had the appearance of a poor Jew. “Is it true that thou art a Roman citizen?” Claudius asked him. “Yes.” “But I paid a large sum to obtain that title.” “But I was free born,” replied Paul. The stupid Claudius began to be afraid; his poor brain tortured itself to find any meaning in this business. Outrages against the rights of Roman citizens were punished very severely. The very fact of having tied Paul to the post with the view of flagellation was an offence,—an act of violence which would have remained unknown if it had been done by an obscure man, might now become a very grievous matter. Finally Claudius hit upon the idea of convoking for the morrow the high priest and the Sanhedrim, in order to know what complaint they made against Paul, because he himself could find none. The high priest was Ananias, son of Nébédés, who by a rare exception had filled this high office for ten years. He was a man very much respected, in spite of his gluttonous habits, which were proverbial among the Jews. Independently of his office, he was one of the first men of the nation; he belonged to that family of Hanan, which one is sure to find upon the judicial bench whenever it is a case of condemning the Christians, the popular saints, the innovators of all kinds. Ananias presided over the assembly. Claudius Lysias ordered Paul to be released from his chains, and caused him to be brought in: he himself looking on. The discussion was extremely tumultuous. Ananias flew into a passion, and, for a word which appeared to him blasphemous, ordered his assessors to smite Paul upon the mouth. “God shall smite thee, thou whited wall,” replied Paul, “for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law?” “What! revilest thou God’s high priest?” said the assistants. Paul, changing his mind, said, “I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest, for if I had known I should not have spoken thus; for it is written, ‘Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.’” This moderation was skilfully calculated. Paul had remarked, indeed, that the assembly was divided into two parties, animated by very diverse sentiments towards him: the high Sadducee clergy were absolutely hostile to him; but he could make himself understood to a certain point by the Pharisee middle-class. “Brethren,” cried he, “I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. Do you know why they accuse me? For my hope in the resurrection of the dead.” It was putting the finger upon an open sore. The Sadducees denied the resurrection, the existence of angels and of spirits; the Pharisees admitted all. The stratagem of Paul succeeded marvellously; war was soon in the assembly. Pharisees and Sadducees were more eager to fight amongst themselves than to destroy their common enemy. Many Pharisees even took up the defence of Paul, and affected to find the recital of his vision probable. “Finally,” said they, “what complaint have you against this man? Who knows if a spirit or an angel has not spoken to him?” Claudius Lysias assisted open-mouthed at this debate, utterly unmeaning as it was for him. He saw the moment when, as on the night before, Paul was about to be torn to pieces. He therefore gave orders to a squadron of soldiers to descend into the hall, to rescue Paul from the hands of those 188


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present, and to reconduct him to the tower. Lysias was much embarrassed. Paul, however, rejoiced in the glorious witness that he had just borne to Christ. The following night he had a vision. Jesus appeared to him and said, “Be of good cheer: for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness to me also at Rome.”

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The hate of the fanatics, during this time, did not remain inactive. A certain number of these zealots or hired murderers, always ready to draw the dagger in defence of the Law, conspired to kill Paul. They bound themselves by a vow, under the most terrible anathemas, neither to eat nor to drink whilst Paul remained alive. The conspirators were more than forty in number; they took their oath on the morning of the day which followed the assembly of the Sanhedrim. To gain their ends, they went to the priests, explained to them the plan which they had formed, agreed with them to intervene with the Sanhedrim to ask the tribune for a new appearance of Paul on the morrow. The conspirators proposed to seize their opportunity and kill Paul on the way. But the secret of the plot was ill kept; it came to the knowledge of a nephew of Paul, who lived in Jerusalem. He ran to the barrack and revealed all to Paul; Paul had him led to Claudius Lysias by a centurion. The tribune took the young messenger by the hand, led him aside, obtained from him all the details of the plot, and sent him away, commanding him to keep silence. From this time Claudius Lysias no longer hesitated. He resolved to send Paul to Cæsarea; on the one hand, to do away with all pretext for disturbances in Jerusalem, and, on the other, to extricate himself by transferring this difficult affair to the procurator. Two centurions received orders to form an escort capable of resisting any attempts at carrying Paul off. It was composed of two hundred soldiers, of seventy cavalry, and of two hundred of those policemen who served at what were called the custodia militaris, that is to say, men who guarded prisoners, fastened to them by means of a chain going from the right hand of the captive to the left hand of his guardian. Horses were also ordered for Paul, and the whole were to be ready by the third hour of the night (nine o’ clock in the evening). Claudius Lysias wrote at the same time to the procurator Felix an elogium, that is to say, a letter, to explain the affair to him, declaring that, for his part, he only saw in all that some trifling questions of religion, without anything that deserved death or imprisonment; that, moreover, he had announced to the accusers that they were also to present themselves before the procurator.

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These orders were promptly executed. A forced march was made in the night, and in the morning the troop reached Antipatris, which is more than half-way from Jerusalem to Cæsarea. There, all danger of surprise having disappeared, the escort divided itself: the four hundred infantry, after a halt, returned to Jerusalem; the detachment of cavalry alone accompanied Paul to Cæsarea. The Apostle thus re-entered as a prisoner (beginning of August 58) the town which he had left twelve years before, in spite of sinister forebodings that his habitual courage prevented him from listening to. His disciples rejoined him after a little time.

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CHAPTER XX. CAPTIVITY OF PAUL AT CÆSAREA OF PALESTINE. FELIX then governed Judæa with the powers of a king and the soul of a slave. He was the freedman of Claudius, and brother of that Pallas who had made the fortune of Agrippina, and of Nero. He had all the immorality of his brother, but not his administrative talents. Named, by the influence of Pallas, procurator of Judæa, in 52, he there showed himself cruel, debauched, greedy. Nothing was above his ambition. He was successively married to three queens, and kinsman by marriage of the Emperor Claudius. At the period at which we are, his wife was Drusilla, sister of Herod Agrippa II., whom he had carried off by infamous practices from her first husband, Aziz, King of Emesus. There was no crime of which he was not considered capable; people even went as far as accusing him of practising brigandage on his own account, and of using the dagger of the assassin to gratify his hatreds. Such were the men upon whom the highest functions had devolved since Claudius gave up everything to the freedmen. They were no longer Roman knights, grave functionaries like Pilate, or Coponius; they were covetous lackeys, proud, dissolute, profiting by the political abasement of that poor old Oriental world to gorge themselves at their ease, and to wallow in the mud. Never since has anything so horrible and so shameful been seen. 283

The chief of the squadron who had led Paul away, delivered up to Felix, on his arrival, the elogium and the prisoner. Paul appeared for an instant before the procurator, who asked him of what country he was. The elogium, assigned to the accused a privileged situation. Felix said that he would hear the cause when the accusers should have arrived. Whilst waiting, he commanded that Paul should be guarded, not in the prison, but in the ancient palace of Herod the Great, which had now become the residence of the procurators. At this moment, doubtless, Paul was trusted to a soldier (frumentarius), who was placed over him to guard him and to present him whenever required. At the end of three days, the Jewish accusers arrived. The high priest Ananias had come in person, accompanied by some elders. Hardly knowing how to speak Greek and Latin, and full of confidence in the official rhetoric of the time, they had taken as an assistant a certain Tertullus, an advocate. The hearing took place immediately. Tertullus, according to the rules of his profession, began by the captatio benevolentiæ. He impudently praised the government of Felix, spoke of the happiness that they enjoyed under his administration, of the public gratitude, and he begged him to listen with his habitual kindness. Then he approached his subject, treated of Paul as a pest, as a disturber of Judaism, as the chief of the heresy of the Nazarenes, as a busybody, ever occupied in exciting sedition amongst his co-religionists throughout the world. He insisted upon the alleged violation of the temple, which constituted a capital crime, and maintained that in seeking to take possession of Paul, they had only wished to judge him according to the Law. 190


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Upon a sign from Felix, Paul then began to speak. He argued that his conduct in the temple had been that of the most peaceful Jew,—that he had not disputed there or brought the mob together,—that he had not preached once at Jerusalem,—that he was, indeed, heretical if it be heretical to believe all that is written in the Law and the Prophets, and to hope for the resurrection of the dead; at bottom, the only crime of which they accused him was believing in the resurrection; “but,” added he, “the Jews themselves believe in that. . . .” With regard to the Jews, it was a skilful apology, clever rather than sincere, since, avoiding the real difficulty, it sought to make out that there was an understanding when there was nothing of the kind, thus evading the question at issue in a fashion which has since been often imitated by Christian apologists. Felix, who interested himself very little about the dogma of the resurrection, remained indifferent. He abruptly broke up the sitting, declaring that he would not decide anything until he had been better informed, and had seen Claudius Lysias. In the meantime, he ordered the centurion to treat Paul with gentleness, that is to say, to leave him unchained, in the state of custodia libera, and to permit his disciples as well as his friends to approach him and to serve him. Some days after, Felix and Paul again met. Drusilla, who was a Jewess, desired, it is said, to hear the Apostle expound the Christian faith. Paul spoke of justice, of temperance, of judgment to come. The subjects were not altogether agreeable to these new catechumens. Felix, himself, appears to have been afraid: “That is enough for the moment,” said he to Paul; “I will make you come to me at the proper time.” Having learned that Paul had brought with him a considerable sum of money, he hoped to obtain from him or his friends a heavy bribe for his release. It appears that he saw him several times, and he sought to suggest this idea to him. But the Apostle not lending himself to it, Felix wished at least to gather some profit, for his popularity was much shaken. The greatest pleasure that one could do for the Jews was to persecute those whom they regarded as their enemies. He therefore kept Paul in prison, and even put him in chains. Paul passed two years in this way. The prison, even with the augmentation of the chain and of the soldier (frumentarius), was far from being then what it is to-day, a total privation of liberty. Every one who had pecuniary resources could arrange with his gaoler, and might attend to his business. In any case, he saw his friends, he was not rigorously confined; in short, he might do pretty much as he pleased. There is no doubt, consequently, that Paul, although a prisoner, continued his apostleship at Cæsarea. Never had he had with him such disciples. Timothy, Luke, Aristarchus of Thessalonica, Tychicus, and Trophimus, carried his orders in all directions, and helped with the correspondence that he kept up with his Churches. In particular, he charged Tychicus and Trophimus with a mission for Ephesus. Trophimus, it appears, fell ill at Miletus. As a consequence of the stay that they thus made in Palestine, the most intelligent members of the Churches of Macedonia and of Asia found themselves in prolonged relations with the Churches of Judæa. Luke, in particular, who until then had not left Macedonia, was initiated into the traditions of Jerusalem. He was without doubt vividly impressed by the majesty of Jerusalem, and he imagined

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the possibility of a reconciliation between the principles maintained on the one side by Paul, on the other by the elders of Jerusalem. He thought that the best thing was to forget reciprocal injuries, to prudently veil these wrongs, and to speak no more of them. The fundamental ideas which must preside at the editing of his great manuscript probably then developed themselves in his mind. By these various contacts, a uniform tradition was established. The Gospels were elaborated by the intimate communication of all the parties which constituted the Church. Jesus had created the Church; the Church created him in its turn. That grand ideal which was to dominate humanity for centuries, truly went out from the bowels of humanity by a kind of secret agreement amongst all those to whom Jesus had bequeathed His Spirit. Felix finally succumbed, not under the indignation that his crimes must have produced, but before the difficulties of a situation against which not even a procurator could make head. The life of a Roman governor at Cæsarea had become insupportable; the Jews and the Syrians or Greeks fought incessantly; the most honest man could hardly hold the balance between such ferocious hatreds. The Jews, according to their custom, complained at Rome. They there exercised a sufficiently strong influence, especially with Poppæa, and, thanks to the intrigues which Herod Agrippa II. directed, Pallas had lost much of his credit, above all since the year 55. He could not prevent the disgrace of his brother: he only succeeded in saving him from death. They gave as a successor to Felix a firm and just man, Porcius Festus, who arrived in the month of August of the year 60 at Cæsarea.

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Three days after his disembarkation, he betook himself to Jerusalem. The high priest Ismael, son of Phabi, and all the party of the Sadducees (that is to say, the high priesthood), surrounded him, and one of the first demands that they addressed to him was relative to Paul. They wished him to be brought back to Jerusalem, and they had arranged for an ambuscade to kill him on the way. Festus replied that he was about shortly to set out for Cæsarea, that it was consequently better that Paul should remain there, but that, as the Romans never pronounced a sentence without the accused being confronted with his accusers, it would be necessary that those of the notables who wished to charge Paul should come with him. At the end of eight or ten days he returned to Cæsarea, and, on. the morrow, he caused Paul and his adversaries to appear before his court. After a confused debate, Paul maintaining that he had done nothing against the Law, or against the temple, or against the Emperor, Festus proposed to him that he should re-conduct him to Jerusalem, where he could, under his surveillance and his high jurisdiction, defend himself before a Jewish court. Festus undoubtedly did not know of the project of the conspirators; he hoped, by this dismissal, to disembarrass himself of a tedious cause, and to do an agreeable thing for the Jews, who asked from him so urgently for the transfer of the prisoner. But Paul carefully guarded himself from accepting. He was possessed by the desire of seeing Rome. The capital of the world had for him a powerful and mysterious charm. He maintained his right to be judged by a Roman tribunal, protested that no one had any right to deliver him to the

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Jews, and pronounced the solemn words:—“I appeal unto Cæsar.” These words pronounced by a Roman citizen, did away with all provincial jurisdictions. The citizen, in whatever part of the world he was, had the right of being taken to Rome to be judged. The governors of provinces, moreover, often referred to the Emperor and his council the causes of religious law. Festus, surprised at first by this appeal, conversed for a moment with his assessors, then replied by the formula:—“Hast thou appealed unto Cæsar? unto Cæsar shalt thou go.”

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The sending of Paul to Rome was from this time decided, and they only waited for an opportunity for him to set out. A singular incident occurred in the interval. Some days after the return of Festus to Cæsarea, Herod Agrippa II. and his sister Bernice, who lived with him, not without a suspicion of infamy, came to salute the new procurator. They remained for several days at Cæsarea. In the course of the conversations that they had with the Roman functionary, the latter spoke to him of the prisoner whom Felix had left him. “His accusers,” said he, “have not charged against him any of the crimes that I was waiting to see established. There is nothing in all this business but subtleties relative to their superstitions, and of a certain Jesus who is dead, and whom Paul affirms to be living.” “Truly,” said Agrippa, “I have for a long time wished to hear this man speak.” “Thou shalt hear him to-morrow,” replied Festus. On the morrow, then, Agrippa and Bernice came to the tribunal with a brilliant suite. All the officers of the army, and the chief people of the town, were present. No official procedure could take place after the appeal to the Emperor, but Festus declared that, according to his principles, the sending of a prisoner to Rome must be accompanied by a report. He pretended to wish for fuller information for the report that he had to make in this case; he alleged his ignorance of Jewish affairs, and declared that he wished to follow in this matter the advice of King Agrippa, Agrippa invited Paul to speak. Paul then made, with a certain oratorical complacency, one of those discourses that he had repeated a hundred times. He esteemed himself happy in having to plead his cause before a judge as well instructed in Jewish questions as was Agrippa. He intrenched himself more strongly than ever in his ordinary system of defence, asserted that he said nothing that was not in the Law and the Prophets,—maintained that he was persecuted only because of his belief in the resurrection, the faith which is that of all the Israelites, which gives a moving motive for their piety, a foundation for their hopes. He explained, by quotations from the Scriptures, his favourite propositions—the knowledge that Christ must suffer, that he must be the first to rise from the dead. Festus, a stranger to all these speculations, took Paul for a dreamer, a clever man in his way, but wandering and chimerical. “Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.” Paul invoked the witness of Agrippa, who was more versed in Jewish theology, knowing the prophets, and whom he supposed instructed in the facts relative to Jesus. Agrippa replied evasively. A grain of pleasantry mixed itself, it seems, in the conversation. “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian,” said Agrippa. Paul, with his usual wit, took the tone of the court, and finished by wishing that they all resembled him. “Except these bonds,” replied he, with a gentle irony.

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The effect of this courteous sitting, so different from the audiences in which the Jews figured as prosecutors, was finally favourable to Paul. Festus, with his Roman good sense, declared that this man had done nothing wrong. Agrippa was of opinion that, if he had not appealed to the Emperor about it, they might have released him. Paul, who wished to go to Rome conducted by the Romans themselves, did not withdraw his appeal. They then put him, with some other prisoners, in the guard of a centurion of the cohort prima Augusta Italica, named Julius, who must have been an Italian. Timothy, Luke, and Aristarchus of Thessalonica were the only disciples who travelled with Paul. 290

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CHAPTER XXI. PAUL’ S VOYAGE AS A PRISONER. THE party embarked upon a ship of Adramyttium in Mysia, which was returning thither. At one of the intermediate ports, Julius counted on finding a ship about to sail for Italy, and on taking passage in it. It was about the time of the autumnal equinox, so that they had a rough voyage in prospect. On the second day they arrived at Sidon. Julius, who treated Paul very kindly, allowed him to go down into the town, to visit his friends and to receive their attentions. The route had been to take the open sea and to gain the south-west point of Asia Minor; but the winds were contrary. It was necessary to run to the north, sailing close to Phœnicia, then to go to the coast of Cyprus, leaving it on the port hand. They followed the channel between Cyprus and Cilicia, traversed the gulf of Pamphylia, and arrived at the port of Myra in Lycia. There they left the Adramyttium ship. Julius having found one of Alexandria which was about to sail for Italy, made a bargain with the captain, and transported his prisoners thither. The ship was very full: there were on board 276 persons.

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Navigation from this time was most difficult. After several days they had only reached Cnidus. The captain wished to enter the port, but the north-east wind did not allow him, and it was necessary to allow himself to be carried under the isle of Crete. They soon recognised Cape Salmone, which is the eastern point of the island. The island of Crete forms an immense barrier, making of the portion of the Mediterranean that it covers at the south a kind of large port, sheltered from the tempest coming from the archipelago. The captain had the very natural idea of profiting by this advantage. He still followed the eastern side of the island, not without great perils; then, getting the island on the windward side, he entered the calm waters of the south. There was a little port there very deep, shut in by an islet, and bordered by two sandy beaches between which a point of rocks juts out, so that it seems divided into two parts. It is what is called Kali-Limenes (the Fair Havens); near to it was a town named Lasæa or Alassa They took shelter here; the crew and passengers were excessively fatigued, so that they made a rather pro-longed stay in this little port. When it was a question of setting out again, the season was far advanced. The great fast of the Atonement (Kippour), in the month of Pisri (October), had passed; this fast marked for the Jews the limit after which maritime journeys were not safe. Paul, who had acquired much authority upon the ship, and who, moreover, had had long experience of the sea, gave his opinion. He predicted great dangers and disasters if they re-embarked. “Nevertheless the centurion” (we cannot be as much surprised by the fact as the narrator of the Acts) “believed the master and the owner of the ship, more than those things which were spoken 195


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by Paul.” The port of Kali-Limenes was not a good one to winter in. The general opinion was that they must try, in order to pass the winter months there, to gain the port of Phœnice, situated upon the southern coast of the island, where the men who knew those regions promised good anchorage. A day when there was a breeze from the south they believed to be the favourable one; they weighed anchor, and tacked along the side of the island, as far as Cape Littinos; then they sailed with a fair wind towards Phœnice.

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The crew and the passengers believed themselves at the end of their troubles, when suddenly one of those sudden hurricanes from the east, that the sailors of the Mediterranean call Euroclydon, smote the island. The ship was soon unable to keep her head to the wind: the seamen had to run before it. They passed near a little isle named Clauda; they put themselves for a moment under the shelter of this isle, and profited by the short respite to hoist up with great difficulty the boat, which every moment ran the risk of breaking up. They then took precautions, in view of that shipwreck which all held to be inevitable. They bound the hull of the ship with cables, they struck the yards, and abandoned themselves to the wind. The second day, the tempest was quite as great; wishing to lighten the ship, they threw the cargo overboard. On the third day, they disencumbered themselves of the furniture and utensils that were not necessary for working the ship. The following days were frightful, they did not see the sun for a moment, or a single star; they did not know where they were going. Besides being strewn with islands, the Mediterranean presents between Sicily and Malta, to the west, Pelponnesus and Crete; to the east, southern Italy and Epiræus; to the north, the coast of Africa; to the south, a large square of open sea, where the wind meets with no obstacle, and rolls the sea into enormous waves. It was that place that the ancients often called the Adriatic. The general opinion of the men on board was that the ship was running upon the Syrtes of Africa, where loss of life and goods was certain. All hope seemed gone; no one dreamt of taking any food; it was, moreover, impossible to prepare it. Paul alone remained confident. He was convinced that he should see Rome, and that he would appear before the tribunal of the Emperor. He encouraged the crew and passengers; he even said, it appears, that a vision had revealed to him that not a person should perish, God having granted to him the life of all, in spite of the mistake that they had made in leaving the Fair Havens against his advice. On the fourteenth night, indeed, after leaving this port, towards the middle of the night, the sailors believed that they recognised the land. They cast the lead, and found twenty fathoms; a short time after it was fifteen fathoms. They believed that they were about to run upon the rocks; at once four anchors were thrown from the poop; they lashed the rudders, that is to say, the two large paddles which projected from the two sides of the quarter-deck; the ship stopped; they waited anxiously for the day. The sailors then, profiting by their skill in the work, wished to save themselves at the expense of the passengers. Under the pretext of throwing the anchors from the bow, they launched the boat, and tried to get on shore. But the centurion and the soldiers, warned, it is said by Paul, of this disloyal conduct, opposed themselves. The soldiers cut the cables which held the sloop, and let it go adrift. Paul, however, spoke consolingly to all, and assured them that no one 196


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would suffer in his body. During these crises of maritime life, existence is as it were suspended; when they are ended, we perceive that we are dirty and hungry. For fourteen days scarcely any one had taken any nourishment; it might have been from emotion; it might have been from sea-sickness. Paul, in waiting for the day, advised all to eat, in order to give them-selves strength, in view of the work which remained to be done. He set the example himself, and, like a pious Jew, broke bread, according to custom, after a prayer of thanksgiving, which he offered in the presence of all. The passengers imitated him, and took heart again. They still lightened the ship, throwing into the sea all the corn which remained.

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Day at last appeared, and they saw the land. It was deserted: no one could make out where he was. They had before them a bay, having at its extremity a sandy beach. They resolved to run aground upon the sand. The wind was in their favour. They then cut the cables of the anchors, and allowed them to get lost in the sea; they loosed the ropes which bound the rudders. hoisted the foresail, and steered towards the shore. The ship fell upon a neck of land beaten on two sides by the sea, and there remained. The prow sank into the sand and remained immovable; the poop, on the contrary, beaten by the waves, bumped and dislocated itself at each blow from the sea. Safety under these conditions is easy enough upon the shores of the Mediterranean, the ebb and flow of the tide being inconsiderable. The grounded ship made a shelter, and it was easy to establish communication with the land. But the presence of prisoners where there were so many passengers aggravated the situation. They might save themselves by swimming, and escape their guardians; the soldiers, therefore, proposed to kill them. The honest Julius rejected this barbarous notion. He ordered those who knew how to swim to cast themselves into the sea and to gain the land, in order to aid the escape of the others. Those who did not know how to swim escaped upon planks and wreckage of every kind; nobody was lost. They soon learnt that they were at Malta. The island, having submitted to the Romans for a long time, and already much Latinised, was rich and prosperous. The inhabitants showed themselves humane, and lighted a large fire for the unfortunate castaways. The latter, indeed, were shivering with cold, and the rain continued to fall in torrents. A very simple incident, exaggerated by the disciples of Paul, then took place. In taking a bundle of sticks to throw into the fire, Paul at the same time took up a viper. They believed that it had bitten his hand. The idea got into their heads that this man was a murderer, followed by Nemesis, who not having been able to overtake him by means of the tempest, had pursued him on land. The men of the country, as it appears, waited to see him any moment swell and fall dead. As nothing happened, they decided, it is said, to look upon him as a god.

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Near the bay in which the ship had got wrecked were the lands of a certain Publius, princeps of the municipality that the island formed with Gaul. This man came to find that the castaways, or at least a party of them, of whom were Paul and his companions, had gathered in his homestead, and he treated them during three days with much hospitality. Here soon happened one of those

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miracles that the disciples of Paul believed they saw at every instant. The Apostle cured, they say, the father of Publius by the imposition of hands, he suffering from fever and dysentery. His reputation of wonder-worker spread in the island, and they brought to him sick people from all sides. It is not said, however, that he founded a Church there. These low African populations could not raise themselves above their sensuality and gross superstition. The ancient coasting trade of the Mediterranean came to a standstill during the winter. The frightful voyage that they had just made offered no encouragement to take to the sea again. They remained for three months at Malta, from the 15th of November 60 to the 15th of February 61 or thereabouts. Then Julius negotiated for the passage of his prisoners and of his soldiers upon another Alexandrian ship, the Castor and Pollux, which had wintered in the port of the island. They reached Syracuse, where they remained for three days; then sailed with a fair wind towards the straits, and touched at Rhegium. On the morrow, a good wind blew from the south, and bore the ship in two days to Puteoli.

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Puteoli, as we have already said, was the port of Italy most frequented by the Jews. It was there also that ships from Alexandria discharged their cargoes. There had been formed there, at the same time as at Rome, a little Christian society. The Apostle was very warmly welcomed by it, and entreated him to stay for seven days, which, thanks to the kindness of the good centurion Julius, who was much attached to him, was possible. They subsequently set out for Rome. The rumour of Paul’s arrival was spread amongst the faithful of that city, to some of whom he was already, since the sending of his epistle, a known and respected master. At the relay, at the stage called Appii Forum, forty-three miles from Rome, upon the Appian Way, the first deputation reached him. Ten miles further on, to set out from the Pontine Marshes, near a spot called “The Three Taverns,” on account of the hostelries which were established there, a new group came to join. The joy of the Apostle declared itself by lively expressions of thanks. The holy flock traversed not without emotion the eleven or twelve leagues which separated “The Three Taverns” from Port Capena, and always following the Appian Way, by Aricia and Albania, the prisoner Paul entered Rome in the month of March in the year 64, in the seventh year of the reign of Nero, under the consulship of Cæsennius Pætus and Petronius Tarpilien.

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CHAPTER XXII. A GLANCE OVER THE WORK OF PAUL.

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PAUL had still three years to live, and those three years were not the least busy of his laborious existence. We shall even see that his apostolic career had in all probability an extension. But these new journeys he made in the west, not in the countries which he had already visited. These journeys, if they really took place, were, besides, without appreciable results for the propagation of Christianity. At this point we can therefore estimate the work of Paul. Thanks to him, a part of Asia Minor had received the seed of Christianity. In Europe, Macedonia has been very deeply penetrated, Greece breaks upon its borders. If we add to that Italy, from Puteoli to Rome, already furrowed by Christians, we shall have the picture of the conquests effected by Christianity in the sixteen years that this book embraces. Syria, we have seen, had previously received the word of Jesus, and possessed organised Churches. The progress of the new faith had been really marvellous, and although the world at large occupied itself very little with it, the followers of Jesus were already important to those without. We shall see them, towards the middle of the year 64, occupy the attention of the world, and play a very important part in its history. In all this history, nevertheless, it is important to avoid a mistake which the reading of the Epistles of Paul, and the Acts of the Apostles, almost necessarily produces. One would be tempted from such a reading to imagine conversions en masse of numerous Churches of entire countries adopting the new religion. Paul, who often speaks to us of rebellious Jews, never speaks of the immense majority of Pagans who had no knowledge of the faith. In reading the journeys of Benjamin of Tudela, one would also believe that the world of his time was peopled only with Jews. Sects are subject to these optical illusions; for them, nothing exists besides themselves; the events which happen amongst them appear to them to be the only events interesting to the universe. Persons who have had relations with ancient St Simonians are struck with the facility with which they consider themselves the centre of humanity. The first Christians lived so shut up in their own (little) circle, that they knew scarcely anything of the profane world. A country was accounted evangelised when the name of Jesus had been pronounced there, and when a tenth of the people were converted. A Church often did not number more than twelve or fifteen persons. Perhaps all the converts of St Paul in Asia Minor, in Macedonia, and Greece, did not much exceed a thousand. That small number, that spirit of secret companionship, of a little spiritual family, was truly what constituted the indestructible strength of those Churches, and made of them so many fertile germs for the future. One man contributed more than any other to the rapid extension of Christianity. That man has torn up the swaddling clothes so narrow and so prodigiously dangerous by which he was surrounded from his birth; he has proclaimed that Christianity was not a simple reform of Judaism, but that it was a complete religion, existing by itself. To say that he deserves to be placed in a very elevated 199


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rank in history, is to say what is self-evident; but it is not necessary to call him a founder. Paul well said that he was the least of the Apostles. He had not seen Jesus, he had not heard His voice. The divine logic, the parables, he scarcely knew. The Christ who personally revealed himself to him is his own ghost; he listens to himself, thinking that he hears Jesus.

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Even to speak only of his exterior character, Paul must have been in his lifetime less important than we think him. His Churches were either not very solid, or else they denied him altogether. The Churches of Macedonia and of Galatia, which are truly his own work, were not very important in the second and third century. The Churches of Corinth and of Ephesus, which were not so exclusively his, went over to his enemies, or are not founded canonically enough if they have been founded only by him. After his disappearance from the scene of his Apostolic contests, we shall see him almost forgotten. His death was probably held by his enemies as the death of a firebrand. The second century hardly speaks of him, and seems systematically to seek to efface his memory. His epistles are read little, and are only considered authoritative by a much reduced group of Churches. His partisans themselves greatly weaken his pretensions. He left no celebrated disciples; Titus, Timothy, and those others who made for him a kind of court, disappear without any noise. To tell the truth, Paul had too energetic a personality to form an original school. He always crushed his disciples; they only played around him the part of secretaries, of servants, of couriers. Their respect for their master was such that they never dared to teach freely. When Paul was with his flock, he existed alone; all others were crushed or seen only through him. In the third, fourth, and fifth centuries Paul will grow singularly: He will become the doctor in an eminent degree, the founder of Christian theology The true president of those great Greek Councils, which made of Jesus the keystone of metaphysics, was the Apostle Paul.

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But in the Middle Ages, everywhere in the west, his fortune will undergo a strange eclipse. Paul will scarcely say anything to the heart of the barbarians; out of Rome, he will not be remembered. Latin Christianity will scarcely pronounce his name, except as coupled with that of his rival. St Paul, in the Middle Ages, is in some sort lost in the glory of St Peter. Whilst St Peter moved the world and made it tremble and obey, the obscure St Pou plays a secondary part in the grand Christian poesy which fills cathedrals and inspires popular chants. Scarcely anybody before the sixteenth century utters his name; he scarcely appears in monumental inscriptions; he has no devotees, they build hardly any churches to him, they burn no wax-tapers to him. His associates Titus, Timothy, Pheebe, Lydia, have little place in public worship, especially in that of the Latins. They have no legend which is worth anything. To have a legend, it is necessary to have spoken to the heart of the people—to have struck their imagination. Now, what does salvation by faith say, or justification by the blood of Christ? Paul was too little sympathetic with the popular conscience, and also perhaps too well known in history for a halo of fables to form around his head. Talk to me of Peter, who bends the necks of kings, breaks empires, walks upon the asp and the basilisk, treads under foot the lion and the dragon, holds the keys of heaven!

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The Reformation opens for St Paul a new era of glory and authority. Catholicism itself returns, by studies more extended than those of the Middle Ages, to juster views upon the Apostle of the Gentiles. From the sixteenth century, the name of Paul is everywhere. But the Reformation, which has rendered so many services to science and reason, has not been known to create a legend. Rome, throwing an obliging veil upon the rudenesses of the Epistle to the Galatians, elevates Paul upon a pedestal nearly equal to that of Peter. Paul nevertheless does not become the saint of the people. What place will criticism give to him? What rank will be assigned to him in the hierarchy of those who serve the ideal.

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The ideal is served by doing good, by discovering the true, by realising the beautiful. At the head of the sacred procession of humanity walks the good man, the virtuous man; the second rank belongs to the man of truth, knowledge, philosophy; then comes the man of beauty, the artist, the poet. Jesus appears to us, under his celestial halo, as an ideal of goodness and beauty. Peter loved Jesus, understood him, and was, it seems, in spite of some failings, an excellent man. What was Paul? He was not a saint. The dominating feature of his character is not goodness. He was proud, unbending, unsociable; he defends himself; self-assertive (as we say to-day); he uses harsh words; he believes himself right; he holds to his opinions; he quarrels with various people. He was not a scholar; one can even say that he has injured science by his paradoxical contempt of reason, by his eulogy of apparent folly, by his apotheosis of transcendental absurdity. Neither was he a poet. His writings; works of the highest originality, are without charm: the form is harsh and almost devoid of grace. What was he then? He was eminently a man of action, a strong soul—invading, enthusiastic, conquering—a missionary, a propagator, all the more ardent because he had at first displayed his fanaticism on the opposite side. Now, the man of action, noble as he is when he acts for a noble aim, is less near to God than one who has lived for the pure love of truth, of the good and the beautiful. The Apostle is naturally rather narrow-minded; he wished to succeed, he made sacrifices for that end. Contact with reality always soils one a little. The first places in the kingdom of heaven are reserved to those whom a ray of grace has touched, to those who have only adored the ideal. The man of action is always- a feeble artist, for he has not for his only aim that of reflecting the splendour of the universe. He could not be a scholar, for he regulates his opinions on grounds of political utility; he is not even a very virtuous man, for he is never irreproachable, the folly and wickedness of men forcing him to make a compact with them. Above all things, he is not amiable; the most charming of virtues, reserve, is forbidden to him. The world favours the daring, those who help themselves Paul, so great, so honest, is obliged to bestow on himself the title of Apostle. He is strong in action through his faults; he is weak through his virtues. In short, the historical personage who has most analogy with St Paul is Luther. Both alike were violent in language, both displayed the same passion, the same energy, the same noble independence, the same frantic attachment to a proposition once embraced, as infallible truth.

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I still persist in maintaining, that in the creation of Christianity the part of Paul ought to be treated as much inferior to that of Jesus. It is necessary even, according to my idea, to put Paul on a lower plane than Francis of Assisi, and the author of the “Imitation,” who both saw Jesus very nearly. The Son of God is unique. To appear for a moment to make a sweet and profound impression, to die very young, that is the life of a god. To wrestle, to dispute, to conquer, that is the life of a man. After having been for three hundred years the Christian doctor in an eminent degree, thanks to orthodox Protestantism, Paul seems in our days near the end of his reign: Jesus, on the contrary, is more living than ever. It is no more the Epistle to the Romans which is the recapitulation of Christianity, it is the Sermon on the Mount. True Christianity which will last eternally comes from the Gospels, not from the Epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a stumbling-block, the cause of the chief faults of Christian theology. Paul is the father of the subtle Augustine, of the arid Thomas Aquinas, of the sombre Calvinist, of the bitter Jansenist, of the ferocious theology which condemns and predestinates to damnation. Jesus is the father of all those who seek in dreams of the ideal the repose of their souls. That which gives life to Christianity, is the little that we know of the word and of the person of Jesus. The man devoted to the ideal, the divine poet, the great artist, defies alone time and revolution. Alone he is seated at the right hand of God the Father for eternity. Humanity, thou art sometimes just, and certain of thy judgments are good!

THE END.

COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

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Indexes Index of Scripture References Acts 13:46 14:27 14:28 17:22-31 19:8 19:10 19:21 19:22 20:1 20:1 20:3 20:4 20:16 20:25 20:29 20:31 24:27 Romans 1:7 1:15 12:1-21 14:1 14:1-23 14:2 14:3-16 14:3-16 14:3-20 14:17-20 14:21-24 14:24 15:1-3 15:1-3 15:1-13 15:1-13 15:8 15:14-33 15:19 15:33 15:33 15:33 16:1 16:2 16:2 16:3 16:3-20 16:5 16:20 16:21-24 16:24 16:24 16:25-27 16:25-27 16:27 16:40 1 Corinthians 2:1 2:16 8:6 16:4 16:7 2 Corinthians 1:1 2:1 6:14 8:1 8:1 11:23-27 12:14 12:21 Galatians 2:6 Ephesians 6:21 Colossians 4:16 5:10 5:14 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12 1 Timothy 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:20 3:14 3:14 3:16 4:13 6:13 2 Timothy 1:8 1:12 1:15 1:15-18 1:16 1:16-18 1:16-18 1:17 2:9-10 2:17 2:17 3:10-11 4:6-8 4:9 4:9-22 4:10 4:10 4:10 4:10 4:11 4:11 4:11 4:12 4:12 4:13 4:13 4:14-15 4:14-15 4:16 4:17 4:17-18 4:19 4:19-21 4:19-21 4:20 4:20 4:20 4:21 4:21 17 18 Titus 1:5 1:5 1:5 1:6 1:6 1:10 1:12 1:12 1:13 1:13 3:12 3:13 Philemon 1:24 Hebrews 2:3 5:12 10:32 13:7 13:7 13:7 13:13

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Index of Greek Words and Phrases • ἀρχιερεῖς: 1 • ἐν Ἐφέσῳ: 1 2 • ἐργασίαι, συνεργασαι, συμβιώσεις: 1 • ἐφ᾽υμῖν καὶρω: 1 • ὁ χατέχωυ: 1 • ΑΓΗΩΣΤΩΙΘΕΩΙ: 1 • Παραχαλῶ: 1 • Παρθενιχός: 1 • Πρὸς Ἐφεσίους: 1 • Πρὸς Εβραίους: 1 • Σχολὴ Τυράννου: 1 • Τοῦ γὰρ χαὶ γένος ἐσμέν: 1 • ΧΡΗΣΤΙΑΝΟΣ: 1 • ΧΡΙΣΤΙΑΝΟΣ: 1 • δάχουος Περιτογης: 1 • οὖσιν: 1 2 • παραχαλῶ: 1 • πτωχδι: 1 • σύμβιος: 1 • τοῖς αγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν, χαὶ πιστοῖς: 1 • τοῖς οὖσιν: 1

Index of Latin Words and Phrases •Christus vincit, Christus regit, Christus imperat: 1 •Dominus Vobiscum.: 1 •Emporium: 1 •Oremus: 1 •Schola Tyranni: 1 •Sursum Corda!: 1 •Taberna: 1 •captatio benevolentiæ: 1 •convictum atque confessum id se amore Pauli fecisse.: 1 •custodia libera: 1 •custodia militaris: 1 •dulcis Gallio: 1 •ecclesia: 1 204

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•editio princeps: 1 •elogium: 1 2 3 •episcopi: 1 •ex opere operato: 1 •frumentarius: 1 2 •græculus esuriens: 1 •in Asia Minori, Aquilæ et Priscillæ uxoris ejus.: 1 •in medias res: 1 •indulgere genio: 1 •jus italicum: 1 •ministerium: 1 •paganus: 1 •presbyteri: 1 •prima Augusta Italica: 1 •princeps: 1 2 •propter styli sermonis que distantiam: 1 •proseuchæ: 1 •qui claudit: 1 •religio: 1 •scholæ: 1 2 •seriatim: 1 •unus multorum: 1 •vicus: 1

Index of French Words and Phrases •amour propre: 1 •au courant: 1 2 •au fond de nous: 1 •blasé: 1 •chef-d’œuvre: 1 •compagnon de voyage: 1 •en fête: 1 •en famille: 1 •en rapport: 1 2 •en se passant: 1 •esprit de famille: 1 •et suivi: 1 •fêtes: 1 2 •jeunesse dorée: 1 •le moine hibernais: 1

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•personnel: 1 •point d’appui: 1 •protégé: 1 •que suit: 1 •raison d’être: 1 2 3 •spirituelle: 1 •suivi: 1

Index of Pages of the Print Edition vii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xx xxi xxii xxiii xxiv xxv xxvi xxvii xxviii xxix xxx xxxi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303

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The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book IV. The Antichrist. by

Ernest Renan


About The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book IV. The Antichrist. by Ernest Renan Title: URL: Author(s): Publisher: Publication History: Rights: Date Created: CCEL Subjects:

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book IV. The Antichrist. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/renan/antichrist.html Renan, Ernest (1823-1892) Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library London: Mathieson & Company: 1890 (?) Copyright Christian Classics Ethereal Library 2005-05-20 All; History

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book IV. The Antichrist.

Ernest Renan

Table of Contents About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. ii Title Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 4 Chapter I. Paul Captive at Rome.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 21 Chapter II. Peter at Rome.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 28 Chapter III. State of the Churches in Judea.—Death of James.. . . . . . . . p. 33 Chapter IV. Final Activity of Paul.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 41 Chapter V. The Approach of the Crisis.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 52 Chapter VI. The Burning of Rome.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 56 Chapter VIII. Death of St. Peter and St. Paul.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 73 Chapter IX. The After the Crisis.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 77 Chapter X. The Revolution in Judea.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 85 Chapter XI. Massacres in Syria and Egypt.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 93 Chapter XII. Vespasian in Galilee—The Terror at Jerusalem—Flight of the Christians.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 98 Chapter XIII. The Death of Nero.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 109 Chapter XIV. Plagues and Prognostics.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 115 Chapter XV. The Apostles in Asia.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 120 Chapter XVI. The Apocalypse.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 131 Chapter XVII. The Fortune of the Book.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 152 Chapter XVIII. The Accession of the Flavii.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 161 Chapter XIX. Destruction of Jerusalem.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 167 Chapter XX. Consequences of the Destruction of Jerusalem.. . . . . . . . . p. 174 Appendix. Concerning the Coming of St. Peter to Rome and the Residence of St. John at Ephesus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 182 Indexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 191 Index of Scripture References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 191 Greek Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 191 Latin Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 192 French Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 193 Index of Pages of the Print Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 195

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THE HISTORY

i

OF THE


BOOK IV. THE ANTICHRIST.

BY

ERNEST RENAN Member of the French Academy.

London:

MATHIESON & COMPANY 25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE E.C.

CONTENTS.

iii ii

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INTRODUCTION

i-xvi CHAPTER I.

PAUL CAPTIVE AT ROME

1 CHAPTER II.

PETER AT ROME

13 CHAPTER III.

CONDITION OF THE CHURCH JUDEA—DEATH OF JAMES

OF 22

CHAPTER IV. FINAL ACTIVITY OF PAUL

35 CHAPTER V.

THE APPROACH OF THE CRISIS

53 CHAPTER VI.

THE BURNING OF ROME

60 CHAPTER VII.

MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS—THE 76 ÆSTHETICS OF NERO CHAPTER VIII. DEATH OF ST PETER AND ST PAUL

91

CHAPTER IX. iv

THE DAY AFTER THE CRISIS

98 CHAPTER X.

THE REVOLUTION IN JUDEA

111 CHAPTER XI.

MASSACRES IN SYRIA AND IN EGYPT

125

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VESPASIAN IN GALILEE—THE TERROR 134 AT JERUSALEM—FLIGHT OF THE CHRISTIANS CHAPTER XIII. THE DEATH OF NERO

154 CHAPTER XIV.

PLAGUES AND PROGNOSTICS

165 CHAPTER XV.

THE APOSTLES IN ASIA

174 CHAPTER XVI.

THE APOCALYPSE

193 CHAPTER XVII.

THE FORTUNE OF THE BOOK

229 CHAPTER XVIII.

THE ACCESSION OF THE FLAVII

244 CHAPTER XIX.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM

255

APPENDIX

282

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THE ANTICHRIST. INTRODUCTION. REVIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL DOCUMENTS USED IN THIS WORK. AFTER the three or four years of the public life of Jesus, the period which the present volume embraces wise the moat extraordinary the whole development of Christianity. We shall see by a strange play of that grand unconscious artist who seems to preside over the apparent caprices of history, Jesus and Nero, the Christ and the Antichrist, opposed and facing each other, if I dare say it, like Heaven and Hell. The Christian conscience is complete. Up till now it has scarcely known to do ought but love; the persecutions of the Jews, although bitter enough, have been unable to change the bond of affection and recognition which the budding church keeps within its heart for its mother the synagogue, from which she is scarcely separated. Now the Christian has somewhat to hate. In front of Jesus there appears a monster who is the ideal of evil even as Jesus is the ideal of good. Reserved like Enoch or like Elias to play a part in the final tragedy the universe, Nero completes the Christian mythology, inspires the first sacred book of the new canon, founds, by a hideous massacre, the primacy of of the Roman Church, and prepares the revolution which shall make Rome a Holy City, a second Jerusalem. At the same time, by one of those mysterious coincidences which are not rare in the moments of the great crises of humanity, Jerusalem is destroyed, the temple disappears, Christianity, disembarrassed from what has been irksome to it, emancipates itself more and more, and follows outside of conquered Judaism its own destinies. The last epistles of St. Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the epistles attributed to Peter and James, and the Apocalypse among the canonical writings the principal documents of this history. The first epistle of Clemens Romanus, Tacitus and Josephus furnish us also with valuable indications. On a large umber of points, notably on the death of the Apostles and the relations of John with Asia, our picture will remain in semi-obscurity; upon others we shall be able to concentrate real rays of light. The material facts of the Christian origins are almost all obscure; what is clear is the ardent enthusiasm, the superhuman boldness, the sublime contempt for reality which makes this movement the most powerful effort towards the ideal whose memory has been preserved to us. In the introduction to our St. Paul we have discussed the authenticity of all the epistles which have been attributed to the Great Apostle. The four epistles which are connected with this volume, the epistles to the Philippians, Colossians, Philemon and the Ephesians are those which suggest certain doubts. The objections raised against the epistle to the Philippians are of such little value

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that we need scarcely dwell upon them. We have seen and we shall see in what follows that the epistle to the Colossians gives much more ground for reflection, and that the epistle to the Ephesians, although well authenticated, presents a separate aspect in the work of Paul. Nothwithstanding the great difficulties which can be raised, I hold the epistle to the Colossians as authentic. The interpolations which in these last times some skilful critics have proposed to see there are not clear. The system of M. Holtzmann on this point is worthy of its learned author; but what dangers are there in this method too much accredited in Germany, where they start from an a priori figure which must serve as a fixed criterion for the authorship of the works of a writer! That the interpolation and supposition of apostolic writings had been often practised during the first two centuries of Christianity cannot be denied. But to make in such a matter a strict discernment between the true and the false, the apocryphal and the authentic is a task impossible to carry out. We see with certainty that the Epistle to the Romans, the Corinthians, and the Galatians are authentic. We see with the same certainty that the Epistles to Timothy and Titus are apocryphal. In the interval, between these two poles of critical evidence we hesitate. The great school led by Christian Baur has as principal defect, its representing the Jews of the first century as complete characters, fed upon dialectics and obstinate in their arguments. Peter, Paul, Jesus even, in the writings of this school, resemble some Protestant theologians of a German University having all one doctrine, having but one, keeping always the same. Now, what is true is that the wonderful men who are the heroes of this history changed and contradicted themselves much. They accepted during their lives three or four theories; they made borrowings from those of their adversaries against whom at another time they had been most severe. These men, looked at from our point of view, were susceptible, personal, irritable, mobile; what makes fixity of opinion, science, and rationalism was foreign to them. They had among them, like the Jews, in all times, violent disagreements; but, nevertheless, they made up very solid body. To understand them we must place ourselves at a great distance from the pedantry inherent in every scholastic; we must study rather the little coteries of a pious society, the English and American congregations, and, principally, what has passed since the foundation of all the religious orders. Under this view the faculties of theology in the German Universities, which can alone supply the amount of work necessary to arrange the chaos of documents relative to these curious origins, are the places, in all the world, in which the true history of it could be written. Now, history is the analysis of a life which develops itself, of a germ which expands, and theology is the inverse of life. Only attentive to what confirms or weakens his dogmas, the theologian, even the most liberal, is always, without thinking it, an apologist; he seeks to defend or to refute. The historian only seeks to recount. Facts materially false, documents even apocryphal, have for him a value, for they paint the soul, and are often more true than the dry truth itself. The greatest error in his eyes is to transform into factors of abstract theory those good and artless missionaries whose dreams have been the consolation and the joy of so many centuries. What we are about to say of the Epistle to the Colossians, and especially of the Epistle to the Ephesians, must be said with stronger reason of the first epistle attributed to St. Peter and the epistles

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attributed to James and Jude. The second epistle, attributed to Peter, is certainly apocryphal. We recognise at the first glance an artificial composition, an imitation composed of scraps of apostolic writings, especially from the Epistle of Jude. We do not dwell upon this point, for we do not believe that II. Peter has among true critics a single defender But the falseness of II. Peter, an epistle whose principal object is to encourage patience among the faithful who are wearied by the long delay of the reappearance of Christ, proves in a sense the authenticity of I. Peter. For, to be apocryphal, II. Peter is a writing old enough; now the author of II. Peter thoroughly believed that I. Peter was the work of Peter, since he refers to it, and represents his writing as a “second epistle,” making a sequence to the first (iii., 1-2). I. Peter is one of the writings of the New Testament which are most anciently and most unanimously quoted as authentic. One grave objection only is drawn from the borrowings which may be remarked there from the Epistles of St. Paul, and in particular from that to the Ephesians. But the secretary whom Peter used to write the letter, if he really wrote it, might well be allowed to make such borrowings. At all times preachers and publicists have been unscrupulous in appropriating to themselves those phrases which have become public property, and which are in a sort of way “in the air.” We see, likewise, Paul’s secretary, who has the epistle called to the Ephesians copying largely from the Epistle to the Colossians. One of the features which characterizes the literature of the epistles is to present many borrowings from writings of the same kind composed previously. The first four verses of Chapter v. of I. Peter excite, indeed, some suspicions. They recall the pious recommendations, a little insipid, impressed upon a hierarchical mind which fill the false epistles to Timothy and Titus. Besides, the affectation which the author shows in representing himself a “witness of the suffering of Christ,” raises apprehensions analogous to those which the pseudo-Johannine writings cause by their persistence in representing themselves as the accounts of an actor and spectator. We do not require, however, to stop at that, Many features also are favourable to the hypothesis of authenticity. Thus the progress towards hierarchy is scarcely sensible in I. Peter. Not only is there no mention of Episcopos, each Church has not even a Presbyteros; it has some presbyteri or “elders,” and the expressions which the author uses do not imply that these elders formed a distinct body. A circumstance which deserves to he noted is that the author, while seeking to exalt the abnegation of which Jesus gives proof in his passion, omits an essential feature recorded by Luke, and gives us also to believe that the legend of Jesus had not yet arrived, at the time he wrote, at its full development. As to the eclectic and conciliatory tendencies which we observe in the Epistle of Peter, they only constitute an objection for those who, with Christian Baur and his pupils, represent the diversity between Peter and Paul as an absolute opposition. If the hatred between the two parties in primitive Christianity had been as deep as this school believes, the reconciliation would never have been made. Peter was not an obstinate Jew like James. It is not necessary in writing this history to consider only the pseudo-Clementine Homilies and the Epistle to the Galatians. It is necessary to take take account of the Acts of the Apostles. The art of the historian should consist in presenting things in 6


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a manner which should in nothing lessen the divisions of parties (these divisions were deeper than we can imagine), and which, nevertheless, permits of explaining how such divisions have been able to weld themselves into a fine unity.

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The Epistle of James presents itself to criticism very nearly under the same conditions as the Epistle of Peter. The difficulties of detail which can be opposed to that have not much importance. What is serious is that general objection drawn from the facility of the suppositions of writings at a time when there existed no guarantee of authenticity, and which there would be no scruple as to pious frauds. As to writers like Paul, who have left us by universal admission certain writings, and whose biography is well enough known, there are two certain criteria for discerning false attributions; it is (1st) to compare the doubtful work with the universally admitted works, and (2nd) to see if the matter in dispute answers to the biographical data we possess. But if it concerns a writer of whom we have some disputed pages, and whose biography is little known, we have often to decide only on the grounds of sentiment which do not weigh with us. By showing one’s self easy certainly risk taking as serious things that are false; by showing one’s self rigorous we risk rejecting as false things that are true. The theologian who believes that he proceeds upon certainties is, I repeat, a bad judge of such questions. The critical historian has a conscience at rest when he sets himself to investigate thoroughly the different degrees of certain, probable, plausible, and possible. If he has skill he will know what so true as much by the general colour, while he is prodigal of particular allegations, the signs of doubt and the “may-bes.” A consideration which I have found favourable to these writings (the 1st Epistle of Peter, the Epistles of James and Jude), very rigorously excluded by a certain criticism, is the fashion in which they are adapted to an organically received recital. While the 2nd Epistle attributed to Peter; the pretended Epistles of Paul to Timothy and Titus, are excluded from the limits of a logical history, the three epistles which we have named enter these, so to speak, of themselves. The features of circumstances which one meets there seem anticipative of facts known through evidence from without, and are embraced in it. The Epistle of Peter answers well to what we know, especially through Tacitus, as to the situation of the Christians at Rome about the year 63 or 64. The Epistle of James, on the other hand, is the perfect picture of the state of the Ebionim, at Jerusalem in the years which preceded the revolt. Josephus gives us some statements of the some kind. The hypothesis which attributes the Epistle of James to a James different from the Lord’s brother has no advantage. This epistle, it is true, was not admitted in the first centuries in a manner as unanimous as that of Peter; but the motives for these hesitations appear to have been rather dogmatic than critical; the small taste of the Greek fathers for the Judeo-Christian writings was the principal cause of it. A remark that at least applies with clearness to the small apostolic writings of which we speak is that they had been composed before the fall of Jerusalem. That event introduced into the situation of Judaism and Christianity such changes that one can easily discern a writing subsequent to the catastrophe of the year 70, from a writing contemporaneous with the third temple. Pictures evidently

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relating to the anterior struggles among the different classes of Jerusalem society, like that which the Epistle of James presents to us (v., 1, & ff), could not be conceived after the revolt of the year 66, which put an end to the reign of the Sadducees. From what there is in the pseudo-apostolic epistles, such as the epistles to Timothy, Titus, II. Peter, the epistle of Barnabas, works where we have as a rule an imitation or expansion of the more ancient writings; it follows, then, that there were some writings really apostolic, surrounded by respect, and whose number it was desired to augment. Just as each Arabic poet of the classical period has had his kasida, the complete expression of his personality; in like manner each apostle has his epistle more or less authentic, in which it was believed that the fine flower of his thought was preserved. We have already spoken of the Epistle to the Hebrew. We have proved that this work is not by St. Paul, as has been believed in certain branches of Christian tradition, but we are shown that the date of its composition allows it to be fixed with considerable verisimilitude about the year 66. It remains for us to examine whether it can be known who was the true author, where it was written, and who are those “Hebrews” to whom, according to the title, it was addressed. The circumstantial features which the epistle present are the following:—The author speaks to the Church named as a master well-known to it. He takes as his point of view almost a tone of reproach. That Church has received the faith a long time back, but it has so sunk in the matter of doctrine that it has need of elementary instruction, and is not capable of comprehending a high theology. This Church, besides, has shown, and shows still, much courage and devotion, especially in serving the saints. It had suffered cruel persecutions about the time when it received the full light of the faith. At that time it had been as a spectacle. That was but for a short period, for those who at that time actually composed the Church had had part in the merits of that persecution by sympathising with the confessors, by visiting the prisoners, and especially by courageously enduring the loss of their goods. In the trials, moreover, there were found some renegades, and the question was mooted as to whether those who by weakness had apostatised could re-enter the Church. At the time when the apostle wrote, it appears that there were still some members of the Church in prison. The believers of the Church in question had some illustrious heads who had preached to them the word of God, and whose death had been specially edifying and glorious. The Church had, notwithstanding, still some leaders with whom the author of the letter was on intimate relations. The author of the letter, in fact, has known was on the Church in question, and has exercised there a distinguished ministry. He has the intention of returning to it, and he desires that his return shall be brought about as quickly as possible. The author and those whom he addresses knew Timothy. Timothy has been imprisoned in a different town from that where the author is residing at the time he writes. Timothy had just been set at liberty. The author hopes that Timothy will go to rejoin him, then both of them will set forth together to visit the Church addressed. The author finishes with these words—ἀσπάζονται ὑμᾶς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας, words which can scarcely describe any other than Italians residing for the time being outside of Italy. As to the author himself, his ruling feature is a perpetual use of the Scriptures, a subtle and allegorical exegesis, a most copious Greek style, very classical, a little dry, but at least as natural

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as that of most of the apostolic writings. He has a medium acquaintance with the worship which is practised at Jerusalem, and yet this cult inspires him with much pre-possession. He only uses the Alexandrian version of the Bible, and he founds some arguments upon the errors of Greek copyists. He is not a Jerusalem Jew; he is a Hellenist in sympathy with Paul’s school. The author, in short, does not give himself out for an immediate hearer of Jesus, but for a hearer of those who had seen Jesus—for a spectator of the apostolic miracles, and the first manifestations of the Holy Spirit. He no less holds an elevated rank in the Church; he speaks with authority; he is much respected by the brethren to whom he writes. Timothy appears to be subordinate to him. The single fact of addressing an epistle to a great Church indicates an important man, one of those personages who figure in the apostolic history, and whose name is celebrated.

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All this, nevertheless, is not sufficient for us to pronounce with certainty as to the author of our epistle. It has been attributed, with more or less likelihood, to Barnabas, Luke, Silas, Apollo, and to Clemens Romanus. The attribution to Barnabas is the most likely. It has for it the authority of Tertullian, who represents the fact as recognised by everyone. It has especially in its favour this circumstance, that not one of the special features which the epistle presents are opposed to such an hypothesis. Barnabas was a Cypriote Hellenist, at that time associated with Paul, and independent of Paul. Barnabas was known by all and esteemed by all; it may be conceived, in short, how in this hypothesis the epistle has been attributed to Paul; it was, in fact, the lot of Barnabas to be always lost in some sense in the rays of the glory of the Great Apostle, and if Barnabas has composed some writing, as appears very probable, it is among the works of Paul that it is natural to seek for the pages really from his pen. The determination of the Church addressed may be made with as much likelihood. The circumstances which we have enumerated scarcely permit of any choice but between the Church of Rome and that of Jerusalem. The title Πρὸς Ἐβραίους makes us think at once of the Church at Jerusalem, but it is impossible to be stopped by each a thought. Some passages—such as v., 11-14, vi., 11-12, and even 6 and 10—are nonsense if we suppose them addressed by a pupil of the apostle’s to that mother Church—the source of all instruction. What said of Timothy is not better conceived; people as much engaged as the author, and as Timothy in Paul’s party, would not have been able to address to the Church at Jerusalem a communication, supposing intimate relation. How can we admit, for example, that the author, with that exegesis, only founded on the Alexandrian version, that incomplete Jewish knowledge, that imperfect acquaintance with the affairs of the temple, would have dared to give a lesson so lofty to the masters par excellence, to people speaking Hebrew, or nearly so, living every day about the temple, and who knew much better than he all that he could tell them? How can we admit especially that he could treat them as catacumens scarcely initiated and incapable of a strong theology? On the contrary, if we suppose that the persons to whom the epistle was addressed are the faithful at Rome, everything is wonderfully arranged. The passages, vi., 10, x., 32 verse and ff., 3-7, are allusions to the persecutions of the year 64; the passage xiii., 7, applies to the death of the Apostles Peter and Paul; in short, οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας are then perfectly 9


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justified; for it is natural that the author should bear to the Church of Rome the salutations of the colony of Italians who were around him. Let us add that the 1st Epistle of Clemens Romanus (a work certainly Roman) makes from the Epistle to the Hebrews some distinct borrowings, and follows its mode of exposition very distinctly. A single difficulty remains to be solved: Why the title of the epistle Πρὸς Ἐβραίους? Let us recall the fact that these titles are not always of apostolic origin, that they have sometimes been inserted later and falsely, as we have seen in the epistle called Πρὸς Ἐφεσίους. The epistle called to the Hebrews was written under the blow of persecution to the Church which was the most persecuted. In many passages (for example, xiii., 23) we feel that the author expresses himself in covert words. Perhaps the vague title Πρὸς Ἐβραίους was a password to save the letter from becoming a compromising matter. Perhaps, also, this title comes from this, that, in the second century, they looked upon the writing in question as a refutation of the Ebionites whom they called Ἐβραῖοι. A fact remarkable enough is that the Church of Rome had always, as to this epistle, some quite special lights; it is from thence it emerges, it is from thence that the first use is made of it. While Alexandria allows it be be attributed to Paul, the Church of Rome maintained always that it is not by that apostle, and that it is wrong to add it to his writings. xi

From whet city was the Epistle to the Hebrews written? It is more difficult to say. The expression Οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας shows that the author was out of Italy. One thing again, certainly, is that the town from which the epistle was written was a great city where there was a colony of Christians from Italy closely allied with those of Rome. These Christians of Italy were probably believers who escaped in the persecution of the year 64. We shall see that the current of Christian emigration fleeing from these terrors of Nero was directed towards Ephesus. The Church of Ephesus, besides, had had for the nucleus of its primitive formation two Jews come from Rome, Aquila and Priscilla; it remained always in direct relation with Rome. We are, therefore, led to believe that the epistle in question was written from Ephesus. Verse 23 of chap. xiii., it must be confessed, in that case, is singular enough. In what town other than Ephesus or Rome, and yet in relation with Ephesus and Rome, could Timothy have been imprisoned? What hypothesis we should adopt is an enigma difficult to explain. The Apocalypse is the principal feature of this history. The persons who will read attentively our chapters xv., xvi., and xvii., will realise, I believe that there is no single writing in the Biblical canon which can be fixed with so much precision. We may determine this date to nearly a few days. The place where the work was written we are also at liberty to fix with probability. The question of the author of the book is, however, subject to greater uncertainty. Upon this point we cannot in my view express ourselves as fully assured. The author names himself at the head of the book (i., v. 9): “I, John, your brother and your companion in persecution for the kingdom and patience in Christ.” But two questions arise here. First, is the assertion sincere, or is it not one of those pious frauds of which all the authors of apocalypses, without exception, have been found guilty Is the book, in other terms, not by an unknown person, who would be taken for a man of the

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first order in the opinion of the Churches for John the Apostle—a vision agreeable to his own ideas? Second, having admitted that verse 9 of chapter i. of the Apocalypse is sincere, may this John not be a namesake of the Apostle?

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Let us discuss first this second hypothesis, for it is the easier to dispose of. The John who speaks, or who is reputed to speak in the Apocalypse, expresses himself with such vigour, supposes so clearly that he will be known, and that people will have no difficulty in distinguishing him from any of his namesakes; he knows so well the secrets of the Churches, he enters into them with such a resolute air, that they can scarcely refuse to see in him an apostle or an ecclesiastical dignitary all along the line. Now, John the Apostle had not in the second half of the first century any namesake who approached him in rank. Although M. Hitzig speaks of John Mark, he has really no place here, and was never on relations so intimate with the Churches of Asia that he should dare to address them in this tone. There remains a doubtful personage, that Presbyteros Johannes, a sort of likeness of the Apostle, who troubles like a spectre all the history of the Church of Ephesus, and causes critics so much embarrassment. Although the existence of this personage has been denied, and although we cannot peremptorily refute the hypothesis of those who see in him a shade of the Apostle John taken for a reality, we incline to believe that Presbyteros Johannes had, in fact, a separate identity; but that he had written the Apocalypse in 68 or 69, as M. Ewald still maintains, we absolutely deny. Such a personage would be known otherwise than by an obscure passage of Papias and an apologetic thesis of Dionysius of Alexandria. We should find his name in the Gospels, in the Acts, or in some epistle. We should we him leaving Jerusalem. The author of the Apocalypse is the best versed in the Scriptures, the most attached to the Temple, the most Hebraizing of the New Testament writers; such a personage could not have been introduced in the provinces; he must be originally from Judea; he holds with the chords of his heart to the Church of Israel. If Presbyteros Johannes existed, he was a disciple of the Apostle John, in the extreme old age of the latter. Papias appears to have been near enough to him, or at least to have been his contemporary. We admit, even, that sometimes he takes the pen for his master, and we regard as plausible the opinion which attributes to him the editing of the fourth gospel and of the first epistle called of John. The second and third epistles called “of John,” where the author designs himself by the the words ὁ πρεσβύτερος, appear to us to be his personal work, and avowed as such. But, certainly, supposing that Presbyteros Johannes may have some position in the second class of Johannine writings (which include the fourth gospel and the three epistles), he has none in the composition of the Apocalypse. If anything is clear, it is that the Apocalypse, on the one hand, and the gospel and the three epistles on the other hand, do not come from the same pen. The Apocalypse is the most Jewish, the fourth gospel is the least Jewish of the writings of the New Testament. While admitting that the Apostle John may he author of some one of the writings which tradition attributes to him, it is assuredly the Apocalypse and not the Gospel. The Apocalypse answers well to the decisive opinion he appears to have adopted in the contest between the Judeo-Christians and Paul; the Gospel does not answer to it. The efforts which, in the third century, a party of the fathers of the Greek Church made to attribute the

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Apocalypse to the Presbyteros, came from the repulsion which the book then inspired in the orthodox doctors. They could not endure the thought that a writing whose style they found barbarous, and which appeared to them deeply impressed by Jewish hatred, should be the work of an apostle. Their opinion was the result of an induction a priori without value, not the expression of a tradition or of a critical reasoning.

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If the ἐγὼ Ἰωάννης of the first chapter of the Apocalypse is sincere, the Apocalypse is then most assuredly by the Apostle John. But the essence of apocalypses is to be pseudonymous. The authors of the Apocalypses of Daniel, Enoch, Baruch, and Esdras represent themselves as being Daniel, Enoch, Baruch, and Esdras in person. The Church of the second century admitted upon the same footing as the Apocalypse of John an Apocalypse of Peter, which was decidedly apocryphal. If, in the Apocalypse which has remained canonical, the author gives his true name, there is there a surprising exception to rules of the kind. Well, that exception we believe must be admitted. An essential difference, indeed, separates the canonical Apocalypse from the other analogous writings which have been preserved to us. The greater number of the apocalypses are attributed to authors who have flourished, or have been reputed to flourish five or six hundred years—sometimes thousands of years back. In the second century they attributed apocalypses to the men of the apostolic century. The Shepherd and the pseudo-Clementine writings are 50 or 60 years later than the personages to whom they are attributed. The Apocalypse of Peter was probably in the same position; at least, nothing proves that it had anything special, topical, or personal. The canonical Apocalypse, on the contrary, if it is pseudonymous, would have been attributed to the Apostle John, in his lifetime, or a very short time after his death. Were it not for first three chapters, that would be barely possible; but is it conceivable that the falsifier would have the boldness to address his apocryphal work to the seven Churches which had been in relation with the apostle? And if one were to deny those relations, with M. Scholten, they would fall into a still greater difficulty, for it would be necessary to admit, then, that the falsifier, by an inaptness which has never been equalled, writing to churches which had never know John, presents his pretended John as having been at Patmos, quite near Ephesus, and knowing their deepest secrets, and as having full authority over them. Those churches, which, in the hypothesis of M. Scholten, knew well that John had never been in Asia, nor near Asia—could they be deceived by such a gross artifice? One thing which appears from the Apocalypse, in all hypotheses, is that the Apostle John was for some time head of the Churches of Asia. That being established, it is very difficult not to conclude that the Apostle John was really the author of the Apocalypse, for, the date of the book being fixed with absolute precision, we do not find the space of time necessary for a false one. If the apostle, in January 69, lived in Asia, or only had been there, the first four chapters are incomprehensible on the part of a falsifier. In supposing, with M. Scholten, that the Apostle John died at the beginning of the year 69 (which does not appear to agree with the truth), we are not without embarrassment. The book is written, in fact, if the recorder was still living; it is intended to spread at once in the Churches of Asia; if the apostle had been dead the fraud would have been too evident. What would they have said at

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Ephesus, in February 69, on receiving a book reputed to proceed from an apostle whom they knew no longer to exist, and whom, according to M. Scholten, they had never seen?

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The critical examination of the book, far from weakening this hypothesis, strongly maintains it. John the Apostle appears to have been after James the most ardent of the Judeo-Christians; the Apocalypse, on its side, breathes out a terrible hatred against Paul, and against those who were relaxed in their observance of the Jewish law. The book answers wonderfully to the violent fanatical character which seems to have been that of John. It is indeed the work of the “son of thunder” the terrible Boanerges, of him who wished that the name of his master might be used only by those who belonged to the circle of the most strict of the disciples; of him who, if he could, would have made fire and brimstone to rain on the inhospitable Samaritans. The description of the heavenly court, with its quite material pomp of thrones and crowns, is indeed that of him who, when young, had set his ambition on being seated, with his brother, on thrones to the right and left of the Messiah. The two grand prepossessions of the author of the Apocalypse are Rome (ch. xiii. and ff.) and Jerusalem (ch. xi. and xii.). It appears that he had seen Rome, its temples, its statues, and the grand imperial idolatry. Now, a journey to Rome the part of John, accompanying Peter, can be easily supposed. What regards Jerusalem is more striking still. The author always reverts to “the beloved city;” he thinks only of it; he is acquainted with all the adventures of the Jerusalemite Church during the revolution of Judea (which calls forth the fine symbol of the woman and her flight into the desert); we feel that he has been one of the pillars of that Church, a devoted enthusiast of the Jewish party. That agrees well with John. The tradition of Asia Minor appears likewise to have preserved his memory an that of a severe Judaizer. In the Passover controversy, which troubled the Churches so deeply during the latter half of the second century, the authority of John is the principal argument which makes the Asian Churches maintain the celebration of Easter, conformably to Jewish law, on the 14th Nisan. Polycarpus, in the year 160, and Polycrates in 190, made appeal to his authority to defend their ancient usage against the innovators who, resting upon the fourth Gospel, would not have it that Jesus, the true passover, should have eaten the Paschal Lamb the evening before his death, and who transferred the festival to the day of the resurrection. The language of the Apocalypse is likewise a reason for attributing the book to a member of the Church of Jerusalem. That language is quite apart from the other writing. of the New Testament. There is no doubt that the work has been written in Greek; but it is a Greek thought out in Hebrew, and which could be only understood and appreciated by people who knew Hebrew. The author has fed upon prophecies and apocalypses prior to his own to a degree which is astonishing; he evidently knows them by heart. He is familiar with the Greek version of the Sacred Books; but it is in the Hebrew texts the Biblical passages present themselves to him. What a difference from the style of Paul, Luke, or the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, or even the synoptical Gospels! A man having passed some years at Jerusalem in the schools which surrounded the Temple could alone be impregnated to that extent with the Bible, or participate thus in a lively manner in the passions of the revolutionary people, and in its hopes and its hatred against the Romans. 13


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Lastly, a circumstance which must not be neglected is that the Apocalypse presents some features which are in sympathy with the fourth Gospel and with the epistles attributed to John. Thus the expression ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ so characteristic of the fourth Gospel is found, for the first time, in the Apocalypse. The image of “living waters” is common to the two works. The expression Lamb of God in the fourth Gospel recalls the expression of the Lamb which is common in the Apocalypse as designating Christ. The two books apply to the Messiah, the passage in Zechariah xii. v. x., and translate it in the same manner. Far from us be the thought to conclude from these facts that the same pen has written the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse, but it is not immaterial that the forth Gospel, whose author could not but have some connexion with the Apostle John, presents in its style and its images some sympathy with a book attributed for various reasons to the Apostle John. Ecclesiastical tradition is hesitating upon the question which occupies us. Up to about the year 150 the Apocalypse appears not to have had in the Church the importance which, according to our ideas, ought to have attached to a writing if they had been assured that in this writing they possessed a solemn manifesto coming from the pen of an apostle. It is doubtful if Papias admitted it as having been written by the Apostle John. Papias was a millenarian in the same style as the Apocalypse, but it appears that he declares that he holds this doctrine “from unwritten tradition.” If he had alleged the Apocalypse as his ground, Eusebius would have said so, he who receives with so much enthusiasm all the quotations which that ancient father makes from the apostolic writings. The author of the Shepherd of Hermas knew, it would seem, the Apocalypse and copies it, but It does not follow from that that he held it to be a work of John the Apostle. It is St. Justin who, about the middle of the second century, declares as the first, distinctly, that the Apocalypse really is a composition of the Apostle John. Now, St. Justin, who did not come from the bosom of any of the great churches, is a mediocre authority on the question of traditions. Melito, who comments upon certain parts of the work, Theophilus of Antioch, and Apollonius, who used it much in their polemics, appear, nevertheless, like Justin, to have attributed it to the Apostle. As much must be said as to the Canon of Muratori. At the beginning of the year 200 the opinion is widespread that John of the Apocalypse was indeed the apostle. Irenæus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, the author of the Philosophumena, have not on this point any hesitation. The contrary opinion was always firmly held. To those who shook themselves free from Judeo-Christianity and from primitive millenarianism, the Apocalypse was a dangerous book, impossible to defend, unworthy of an apostle since it contained some prophecies which were not fulfilled. Marcion, Serdo, and the Gnostics rejected it absolutely. The Apostolic Constitutions omitted it in their canon, the old Peshito does not contain it. The enemies of the Montanist reveries, such as Caïus the Priest, and the Alogi, pretended to see it work of Cerinth. Lastly, in the second half of the third century, the School of Alexandria, in hatred of the millenarianism arising afresh in consequence of the persecution of Valerian, criticised the book with a severity and an undisguisedly bad disposition; the Bishop Dionysius demonstrated thoroughly that the Apocalypse could not have been by the same author as the fourth Gospel, and put in fashion the hypothesis of the presbyteros. In the fourth century the Greek Church was quite divided. Eusebius, although hesitating, is in the main unfavourable to the 14


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theory which attributes the work to the son at Zebedee. Gregory of Nazianzus, and nearly all the educated Christians of the same period, refuse to see an apostolic writing in a book which contradicts so keenly their taste, their ideas of apologetics, and their prejudices of education. We may say that if this party had been successful it would have relegated the Apocalypse to the rank of the Shepherd and the ἀντιλεγόμενα, whose Greek text has nearly disappeared. Fortunately, it was too late for such exclusions to be successful. Thanks to a skilful opposition, a book which includes some cruel accusations against Paul has been preserved alongside of the very works of Paul, and forms with them a volume reputed to come from a single inspiration.

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This persistent protestation, which constitutes a fact so important in ecclesiastical history, is it really of considerable weight in the eyes of independent critics! We cannot tell. Certainly Dionysius of Alexandria is right when he establishes that the same man could not have written the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse. But, placed in this dilemma, modern criticism has replied quite otherwise than the criticism of the third century. The authenticity of the Apocalypse has appeared to it more admissible than that of the Gospel, and if in the Johannine work it were necessary to give a share to this problematical presbyteros, it is indeed less the Apocalypse than the Gospel and the epistles which might properly be attributed to him. What motive could these adversaries of Montanism in the third and fourth centuries, those Christians educated in the Hebrew schools of Alexandria, Cesarea, and Antioch, have to deny that the author of the Apocalypse was the Apostle John? A tradition, a souvenir preserved in the churches? In no degree. Their motives were motives of theology, a priori. At first the attribution of the Apocalypse to the Apostle made it nearly impossible for an educated and sensible man to admit the authenticity of the fourth gospel, and they would have believed that they were giving up Christianity if they doubted the authenticity of this latter document. Besides, the vision attributed to John would appear an unceasing source of renewed errors; it went forth in perpetual recrudensces of Judeo-Christianity, of intemperate prophecy, of audacious millenarianism? What reply could one make to the Montanists and mystics of the same kind, disciples quite consistent with the Apocalypse, and to those troops of enthusiasts who ran to martyrdom, intoxicated as they were by the strange poetry of the old book of the year 69? One only; to prove that the book which served as a text for their chimeras was not of apostolic origin. The reason which led Caius and Dionysius and so many others to deny that the Apocalypse was really by the Apostle John is therefore just that which leads us to the opposite conclusion. The book is Judeo-Christian and Ebionite; it is the work of an enthusiast drunk with hatred against the Roman Empire and the profane world; it excludes all reconciliation between Christianity on the one hand, the empire and the world on the other; Messianism to entirely material there; the reign of the martyrs during 1,000 years is affirmed in it; and the end of the world is declared to be very near. These principles, in which the national Christians, led by the direction of Paul, then by the School of Alexandria, saw insurmountable difficulties, are for us works of ancient date and apostolic authenticity. Ebionism and Montanism do not make us afraid any longer; as simple historians, we even affirm that the adherents of these sects, repulsed by orthodoxy, were the true successors of

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Jesus, of the Twelve, and the family of the Master. The reasonable direction which Christianity took through moderate Gnosticism, by the tardy triumph of Paul’s School, and, above all, by the influence of men such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen, ought not to make us forget its true beginnings. The chimeras, the impossibilities, the materialistic conceptions, the paradoxes, the enormities which made Eusebius impatient when he read those ancient Ebionite and millenarian authors, such at Papias, were the true primitive Christianity. That the dreams of those sublime enlightened ones should become a religion capable of living, it was necessary that men of good sense and fine spirit, as were the Greeks who became Christians at the beginning of third century, should take up the work of the old visionaries, and by taking it up should have singularly modified, corrected, and lessened it. The most authentic monuments of the artlessness of the first age became then embarrassing evidence which they tried to place in the shadow. There happened what occurs usually in the origin of all religious creations, that which is particularly observable during the first centuries of the Franciscan order; the founders of the house were ousted by the new comers; the true successors of the first fathers soon became “suspects” and heretics. Hence arises what we have had often occasion to remark, namely, that the favourite books of Ebionite and millenarian Christianity are much better preserved in the Latin and Oriental translations than in the Greek text, the Greek orthodox Church having always shown itself very intolerant in regard to those books and having systematically suppressed them.

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The reasons which led to the attribution of the Apocalypse to the Apostle John remain therefore very strong, and I believe that the person who shall read our statement will be struck with the manner in which everything, in this hypothesis, is explained and connected. But, in a world where the ideas of literary ownership were so different from those of our days, a work could belong to an author in many ways. Did the Apostle John himself write the manifesto of the year 69? We may certainly doubt that. It is sufficient for our argument that he had cognizance of it, and that having approved it, he had seen it, without displeasure, passing from hand to hand under his name. The first three verses of chapter i., which have the appearance of another hand than that of the seer, may then be explained. By this would be explained also passages such as xviii., 20, and xxi., 4, which lead us to believe that he who held the pen was not the Apostle. In Ephesians ii., 20, we find an analogous feature, and there we are sure that between Paul and us there was the intermediary of a secretary or an imitator. The abuse which has been made of the name of the apostles to give value to certain apocryphal writings might to make us very suspicious. Many features of the Apocalypse do not suggest an immediate disciple of Jesus. We are surprised to see one of the members of the little party where the Gospel was elaborated presenting his old friend as a Messiah in glory, seated on the Throne of God, governing the peoples, and so totally different from the Messiah of Galilee that the seer trembles at his appearance and falls half-dead. A man who had known the true Jesus could with difficulty, even at the end of thirty-six years, have undergone such a modification in his remembrances. Mary of Magdala, on seeing Jesus risen, cried out, “O my Master!” and John saw the heavens opened only to discover Him whom he had loved transformed into Christ terrible! . . .

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Let us add that we are not less astonished to see coming from the pen of one of the principal personages of the Evangelical idyl an artificial composition, a veritable copy, in which the cool imitation of the visions of the old prophets shows itself in every line. The picture of the fishermen of Galilee which is presented to us by the synoptical evangelists scarcely answers to that of scribes, assiduous readers of ancient books of the learned Rabbis. It remains to enquire if it is not the picture of the synoptists which is false, and if the surroundings of Jesus were not more pedantic, scholastic, more analogous to the scribes and Pharisees than the narrative of Matthew, Mark, and Luke might lead one to suppose. If we admit the hypothesis of which we have spoken, and according to which John rather accepted the Apocalypse as his, than written it with his own hand, we obtain another advantage, that is, of explaining how the book was so little known during the three-quarters of a century which followed its composition. It is probable that the author, after the year 70, seeing Jerusalem taken, the Flavii solemnly established, the Roman Empire reconstituted, and the world determined to last, in spite of the term of three years and a-half he had assigned to it, himself arrested the publicity of his work. The Apocalypse, in fact, only attained its complete importance in the middle of the second century, when millenarianism became a subject of discord in the Churches, and especially when the persecution gave some meaning and reference to the invectives pronounced against the Beast. The future of the Apocalypse was then attached to the alternatives of peace and trials which passed over the Church. Every persecution gave it a fresh popularity; it was when the persecutions were over that the book ran through real dangers, and we see it on the point of being expelled from the canons as a lying and seditious pamphlet.

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Two traditions whose plausibility I have admitted in this volume, viz., the coming of Peter to Rome and the residence of John at Ephesus, having given cause for great controversies, I have made them the subject of an appendix at the end of the volume. I have specially discussed the recent memoir of M. Scholten the sojourn of the apostles in Asia as carefully as all the writings of the eminent Dutch critic deserve. The conclusions at which I have arrived, and which I only hold, besides, as probable, will certainly call forth, as did the use I have made of the fourth Gospel in writing the Life of Jesus, the disdain of a young presumptuous school, in whose eyes every statement is proved if it is negative, and which treats peremptorily as ignorant those who do not admit its exaggerations at first sight. I beg the serious reader to believe that I respect him enough to neglect nothing which can serve to the discovery of the truth in the order of studies which I undertake. But I hold, as a principle, that history and dissertation should be distinct from each other. History ought not to be written until after scholarship has accumulated whole libraries of critical essays and memoirs; but, when history comes to act, it only owes to the reader the original source on which each assertion rests. The notes occupy the third of each in those volumes which I dedicate to the origins of Christianity. If I had been obliged to set down the bibliography there, the quotations from modern authors, the detailed discussion of opinions, the notes would have filled at least three quarters of the page. It is true that the method I have followed supposes readers versed in researches 17


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in the Old and New Testament, which is the case with few people in France. But how would serious books have the right to exist if, before writing them, the author was bound to be certain that he would have a public to understand him? I affirm, besides, that even a reader who does not know German, if he is acquainted with what has been written in our language on these matters, can quite easily follow my discussion. The excellent collection entitled Revue de Theologie, which was printed up to a few years ago in Strasbourg is an encyclopædia of modern exigesis which does not dispense certainly with a reference to German and Dutch books, but where all the discussions of learned theology for half a century back have their echo. The writings of MM. Reuss, Reville, Scherer, Kienlen, Coulin, and generally the theses of the faculty of Strasbourg, will likewise present to readers desirous of more ample instruction, a solid acquisition. It “goes without saying” that those who can read the writings of Christian Baur, the father of all these studies; of Zeller, of Schougler, of Voltemar, Hitgenfeld, de Lucke, Lipsius, Holtzman, Ewald, Kelm, Hansrath, and Scholten, are much more edified still. I have declared all my life that Germany has acquired an eternal glory in founding the critical science of the Bible and the studies which are connected with it. I have spoken plainly enough to prevent myself being accused of passing silently over obligations which I have recognised a hundred times. The German School of exegetes has its defects; there defects are those which a theologian, however liberal he may be, cannot avoid; but the patience, the tenacity of mind, and the good faith which have been displayed in this work of analysis are truly admirable. Among many very beautiful stories which Germany has placed in the edifice of the human mind, erected at the common expense by all peoples, Biblical science is perhaps the block which has been cut with the greatest care, and which bears in the highest degree the stamp of the workman. In regard to this volume, as in regard to the preceding, I owe much to the ever-ready scholarship and to the inexhaustible kindness of my learned confreres and friends, MM. Egger, Léon Renier, Derenbourg, Waddington, Bossier, de Longpérier, de Witte, Le Blant, Dulaurier, who have been quite willing that I should consult them constantly upon points connected with their special studies. M. Neubauer has reviewed the Talmudic portion. In spite of his labours in the Chamber M. Noel Parfait has been desirous not to discontinue his labours as an accomplished corrector. Lastly, I ought to express my extreme gratitude to MM. Amari, Pietro Rosa, Fabio Gori, Fiorelli, Minervini, and de Luca, who, during a journey in Italy which I made last year, were the most invaluable of guides to me. We shall see how this journey will connect itself on many sides with the subject of the present volume. Although I had already known Italy, I was longing to salute once more that land of great memories, the learned mother of all Renaissance. According to a Rabbinical legend, there was at Rome during that long mourning of beauty which is called the middle ages an antique statue preserved in a secret place, and so beautiful that the Romans came by night to kiss it by stealth.

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The fruit of these profane embraces was, it is said, the Anti-Christ. This son of the marble statue was certainly at least a son of Italy. All the great protests of the human conscience against the extremes of Christianity have come in former times from that land; and thence they will still come in the future. I should not conceal that the taste for history, the incomparable delight which one feels in seeing the spectacle of humanity unrolled, has especially enthralled me in this volume. I have had too much pleasure preparing it to ask for any other reward than that of having done so. Often I have reproached myself with so much enjoyment of it in my study while poor country is consuming itself in a prostrated agony, but I have had a tranquil conscience. At the time of the elections of 1869, I offered myself to the suffrages of my fellow citizens; all my addresses bore in large letters: “No Revolution; no War; a war will be as fatal as a revolution.” In the month of September, 1870, I implored the enlightened spirits of Germany and Europe to think of the frightful misfortunes which were threatening civilization. During the siege in Paris, in the month in November, 1870, I exposed myself to much unpopularity by counselling the calling together of an Assembly having powers to treat for peace. At the the elections of 1871 I replied to the overtures which were made to me: “Such a mandate can be neither sought for nor refused.” After the re-establishment of order I applied as much attention as I could to the reforms which I considered the most urgent to save our country. I have therefore done what I could. We owe our country to be sincere with here; we are not obliged to apply charlatanism to make her accept our services or agree with our ideas. Yet perhaps this volume, although addressed above all to the curious and the artistic, will contain much instruction. We shalt see crime pushed to its height, and the protest of the saints raised in the most sublime accents—such a spectacle shall not be without religious fruit. I never believed so thoroughly that religion is not a subjective duping of our nature, that it responds to an exterior reality, and that he who shall have followed its inspirations will have been the best inspired. To simplify religion is not to shake, it is often to fortify it. The little Protestant sects of our own day, like budding Christianity, are there to prove it. The great error of Catholicism is to believe that it can struggle against the progress of materialism with a complicated dogmatism, encumbering itself every day with a fresh addition of the marvellous. People cannot longer bear a religion founded on miracles; but such a religion might be very living still if it took a part of the dose of positivism which has entered into the intellectual temperament of the working classes. The people who have charge of souls should reduce dogma as much as possible, and make out of worship a means of moral education, of beneficent association. Beyond the family and outside of the State man has need of the Church. The United States of America could not have made their wonderful democracy last but through their innumerable sects. If, as one might suppose, Ultramontane Catholicism cannot succeed longer in the great cities in drawing people to its temples, there needs only the individual initiative created by the little centres where the weak find lessons, moral succour, patronage, and sometimes material assistance. Civil society, whether it calls itself a commune, a canton or a province, a State or father land, has many duties towards the improvement of the individual; but

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what it does is necessarily limited. The family ought to do much more, but often it is insufficient; some tunes it is wanting altogether. The association created in the name of moral principle can alone give to every man coming into this world a bond which unites him with the past, duties as to the future, examples to follow a heritage of virtue to receive and to transmit, and a tradition of devotion to continue. THE ANTICHIRIST.

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CHAPTER I. PAUL CAPTIVE AT ROME. The times were strange, and perhaps the human race had never passed through a more extraordinary crisis. Nero was in his twenty-fourth year. The head of this wretched young man, placed by a wicked mother at the age of seventeen at the head of the world, finished by losing itself. For a long time some indications had disquieted those who knew him. His was a terribly declamatory mind, a bad, hypocritical, light, and vain nature; an incredible compound of false intelligence, deep wickedness, atrocious and cunning egotism, with unheard of refinements of subtlety; to make of him that monster who has no equal in history, and whose analogue is only found in the pathological annals of the scaffold, special circumstances were necessary. The school of crime in which he had grown up, the execrable influence of his mother, the obligation by which that abominable woman made him nearly begin life as a parricide, caused him soon to look on the world as a horrible comedy in which he was the principal actor. At the time we have reached, he has completely withdrawn himself from the philosophers his masters; he has killed nearly all his relations, and set the most shameful follies in the fashion; a portion of Roman society, by his example, has gone down to the last degree of depravity. The ancient harshness had reached its height; the reaction of popular and just instincts began. At the time when Paul entered Rome, the story of the day was this:—

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Pedanius Secundus, prefect of Rome, a consular personage, had been assassinated by one of his slaves, not without extenuating circumstances being alleged in favour of the culprit. According to the law, all the slaves who, at the moment of the crime, had dwelt under the same roof as the assassin, ought to be put to death. There were nearly four hundred unfortunates in this case. When it became known that the atrocious execution was about to take place the feeling of justice which sleeps under the conscience of the most debased people was revolted. There had been an emeute; but the senate and the emperor decided that the law must take its course. Perhaps among these four hundred innocents, destroyed in virtue of an odious law, there had been more than one Christian. Men had touched the bottom of the abyss of evil; they could only re-ascend. Certain moral facts of a singular kind took place even in the most elevated ranks of society. Four years before this there had been much talk of an illustrious lady, Pomponia Græcina, wife of Aulius Plautius, the first conqueror of Britain. They accused her of “foreign superstition.” She always dressed in black, and never ceased her austerity. They attributed this melancholy to some horrible recollections, especially to the death of Julia, daughter of Drusus, her intimate friend, whom Messalina had put to death; one of her sons appears also to have been the victim of one of Nero’s most monstrous enormities. But it was evident that Pomponia Græcina bore in her heart a deeper sorrow, and perhaps some mysterious hopes. She was remitted according to the ancient custom to her husband’s judgment. Plautius assembled the relatives, examined the affair in a family

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council, and declared his wife innocent. That noble lady lived a long time afterwards tranquil under the protection of her husband, always sad—much respected. She appears to have told her secret to no one. Who knows if the appearances which superficial observers took for gloomy disposition were not the great peace of soul, the calm composure, the resigned waiting for death, disdain of a foolish and wicked society, the ineffable joy of renouncing joy? Who knows if Pomponia Græcina may not have been the first saint of the great world, the elder sister of Melania, Eustochia, and of Paula? This extraordinary situation, if it exposed the Church of Rome to the opposing influence of politics, gave it on the other hand an importance of the first order, although it was not numerous. Rome under Nero in no way resembled the provinces. Whoever aspired to a great action must go there. Paul had in this point of view a sort of deep instinct which guided him. His arrival at Rome was an event in his life nearly as decisive as his conversion. He believed that he had attained to the summit of his apostolic career, and doubtless recalled to mind the dream in which after one of his days of struggle Christ appeared to him and said, “Courage! as thou hast borne witness of me in Jerusalem, thou shall also bear witness of me at Rome.”

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From the time when he approached the walls of the eternal city, the Centurion Julius conducted his prisoners to the Castra prætoriana, built by Sejan, near the Nomentan way, and handed them over to the prefect of the prætorium. The appellants to the Emperor were, on entering Rome, regarded as prisoners of the Emperor, and as such were entrusted to the imperial guard. The prefects of the prætorium were ordinarily two in number, but at this moment there was only one. This high office had been since the year 51 A.D., in the hands of the noble Afranius Burrhus, who a year afterwards, by a most miserable death, expiated the crime of having wished to do good by reckoning with evil. Paul had doubtless no direct communication with him. Perhaps, however, the humane fashion in which the apostle would appear to have been treated was due to the influence which this just and virtuous man exercised around him. Paul was appointed to the condition of custodia millitaris, that is to say entrusted with a prætorian guard to whom he was chained, but not in an inconvenient or continuous fashion. He had permission to live in rooms hired at his own expense, perhaps in the enceinte of the castra prætoriana, where all came freely to see him. He awaited for two years in this condition the appeal of his case. Burrhus died in March 62 A.D., and was replaced by Fenius Rufus and the infamous Tigellinus, the companion of Nero’s debauches—the instrument of his crimes. Seneca just at this moment retired from public life. Nero had no longer any council save the Furies. The relations of Paul to the believers in Rome had begun, we have seen, during the last stay of the apostle at Corinth. Three days after his arrival he wished, as was his habit, to put himself in communication with the principal hakamim; it was not in the bosom of the synagogue that the Christianity of Rome was formed; it was believers disembarking at Ostia or Puzzoli who, grouping themselves together, had constituted the first church of the capital of the world; this church had 22


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scarcely any affinities with the different synagogues of the same city. The immense size of Rome, and the mass of strangers who met there, were the reasons why they knew little of each other there, and why some very contrary ideas could be produced side by side without actual contact. Paul was thus led to follow the rule, which he had adopted from his first and second mission in the towns to which he brought the germ of the faith. He begged some of the heads of the synagogue to come to see him. He represented his situation to them in the most favourable light and protested that he had done nothing, and wished to do nothing against his nation—that he was actuated by the hope of Israel’s faith in the resurrection. The Jews replied to him that they had never heard him spoken of nor received any letter from Judea on the subject, and expressed a desire to hear him expound his opinions himself. “For,” added they, “we have heard it said the sect of which you speak provokes everywhere the most lively disputations.” They fixed the hour for the discussion, and a considerable number of Jews met in the little room occupied by the apostle in order to hear him. The conference lasted nearly a whole day; Paul quoted all the texts from Moses and the prophets which proved, according to him, that Jesus was the Messiah: some believed, the greater number remained incredulous. The Jews of Rome piqued themselves upon a very strict observance. It was not there that Paul could have a very large success. They separated in great confusion; Paul, displeased, quoted a passage from Isaiah, very common among the Christian preachers, as to the wilful blindness of hardened men who shut their eyes and ears that they might not see or hear the truth. He closed, it is said, with his ordinary menace that he would carry to the Gentiles, who would receive him better, the kingdom of God which the Jews would not have. His apostolate among the Pagans was in fact crowned with a very great success indeed. His prisoner’s cell became a theatre of ardent preaching. During the two years which he passed there he was not interfered with; he was not annoyed a single time in this exercise of proselytism. He had about him certain of his disciples, at least Timothy and Aristarchus. It appears that each of his friends in turn remained with him and shared his chain. The progress of the gospel was surprising. The apostle did miracles, and was believed to order heavenly power and spirits. Paul’s prison was thus more fertile than his free activity had been. His chain, dragged along the prætorium, and which he showed everywhere with a sort of ostentation, was to them alone like a discourse. From his example, and animated by the manner in which he bore his captivity, his disciples and the other Christians of Rome preached boldly. They did not encounter at first any great obstacle. The Campagna and the towns at the foot of Vesuvius received, perhaps from the Church of Puzzoli, the germs of Christianity which found there the conditions in which it was accustomed to increase, I mean with a first Jewish soil to receive it. Some strange conquests were made. The chastity of the believers was a powerful attraction. It was through this virtue that many noble Roman ladies were drawn to Christianity; the good families preserved still as to women an unbroken tradition of modesty and honour. The new sect had some adherents in the household of Nero, perhaps among the Jews, who were numerous in the lower ranks of the service, among those slaves and freed men, banded in guilds, whose condition bordered

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upon what had been basest and most elevated, the most brilliant and most miserable. Some vague indications would lead us to believe that Paul had certain relations with members of the Annœa family. A thing beyond doubt in any case, is that from this time the most sharp distinction between Jews and Christians was made at Rome among well informed persons. Christianity appeared a distinct “superstition” arising from Judaism, an enemy of its mother, and hated by its mother. Nero especially was sufficiently acquainted with what was going on, and took account of it with a certain animosity. Perhaps already some of the Jewish intriguers who surrounded him had inflamed his imagination from the Oriental point of view, and he had had promised to him that kingdom of Jerusalem, which was the dream of his last hours, his latest hallucination. We do not know with any certainty the names of any of the members of this Church of Rome at the time of Nero. A document of doubtful value enumerates as friends of Paul and Timothy, Eubulus, Pudens, Claudia, and that Linus whom ecclesiastical tradition will represent later on as the successor of Peter in the bishopric of Rome. The elements are likewise wanting to us to estimate the number of the faithful even in an approximate manner. Everything appeared to go on in the best manner; but the implacable school, which had assumed as its task opposition to the ends of the world to the apostleship of Paul was not dormant. We have seen the emissaries of those ardent conservatives follow in a manner upon his track, and the Apostle of the Gentiles leaving behind him in the seas through which he passed a long streak of hatred. Paul, pictured as a baneful man, who teaches to eat meat sacrificed to idols, to fornicate with Pagans, is announced before in advance and marked for the vengeance of all. We scarcely believe it, but we cannot wholly doubt it, since it is Paul himself who states it. Even at this solemn and decisive moment, he found still in front of him some mean passions. Certain adversaries, members of that Judæo-Christian school which ten years previous he found everywhere in his footsteps, undertook to raise against him a species of counter-preaching to the gospel. Envious and bitter disputers, they sought occasions to contradict him, to aggravate his position as a prisoner, to enflame the Jews against him, and to lower the merit of his chains. The goodwill, the love, the respect which others manifested towards him, their loudly proclaimed conviction, that the chains of the apostle were the glory and best defence of the gospel, comforted him in all these vexations. “What does it matter, besides,” wrote he about this time—

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Provided that Christ be preached, whether the preacher be sincere, or the preaching be a pretext for him, I rejoice. I will always rejoice. As for me, I have the firm hope that, even at this time things will turn to my great benefit, to the liberty of the Church, and that my body, whether I live, or whether I die, shall be used to the glory of Christ. On the one hand, Christ is my life, and to die for me is an advantage; on the other hand, if I live, I shall see my work bring forth fruit; thus I know not which to choose. I am pressed by two opposing desires; on the one hand, to quit this world and to go to re-join Christ; on the other to remain with you. The first would be better for me, but the second would be better for you.

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This greatness of soul gave him a marvellous assurance, gaiety, and strength. “If my blood,” wrote he in one of his gospels, “is the libation by which the sacrifice of your faith must be watered, so much the better—so much the better. And you also say ‘so much the better’ with me.” He, nevertheless, believed very willingly in his acquittal, and even in a prompt acquittal: he saw in that the triumph of the gospel, and he dated from that new projects. It is true that we no more see any of his thoughts directed to the West. It is to the Philippians and Colossians that he dreams of withdrawing himself until the day of the coming of the Lord. Perhaps had he acquired a more accurate knowledge of the Latin world, and had he seen beyond Rome and the Campagna countries becoming by Syrian immigration very analogous to Greece and Asia Minor, he would have met, had it only been because of the language, with great difficulties. Perhaps he knew a little Latin; but not enough for a fruitful preaching. Jewish and Christian proselytism in the first century was little exercised in the really Latin towns; it was confined to such towns as Rome and Puzzoli, where, in consequence of constant arrivals of Orientals, Greek had become wide-spread. Paul’s programme was sufficiently full; the Gospel had been preached in the two worlds, it had attained, according to the wide pictures of the prophetic language, to the extremity of the earth, to all the nations which are under heaven. What Paul now dreamed of doing was to preach freely in Rome and then to return to his churches of Macedonia and Asia, and to wait patiently with them in prayer and extasy the advent of Christ. 9

In short, few years in the life of the Apostle were more happy than these. Immense consolations came from time to time to him; he had nothing to fear from the malevolence of the Jews. The poor lodging of the prisoner was a centre of marvellous activity. The follies of profane Rome, its spectacles, its scandals, its crimes, the disgraceful acts of Tigellinus, the courage of Thraseas, the horrible fate of the virtuous Octavia, and the death of Pallas, little moved our enlightened pietists. “The fashion of this world passeth away,” they said. The great picture of a divine future made them shut their eyes to the blood-soaked soil in which their feet were plunged. Certainly the prophecy of Jesus had been accomplished. In the midst of outer darkness where Satan reigns; in the midst of tears and gnashing of teeth the little paradise of the elect is founded. They were there in their secluded world, clothed internally with light and a clear sky in the kingdom of God their father, but without them what a hell!!! Oh, God, how frightful it is to remain in this kingdom of the Beast, where the worm never dies and the fire is never extinguished! One of the greatest joys which Paul experienced at this period of his life was the arrival of a message from his dear Church of the Philippians, the first which he had founded in Europe and in which he had left so many devoted admirers. The rich Lydia whom he calls “his true spouse,” did not forget him. Epaphroditus sent by the church brings him a sum of money, of which the apostle must have had great need, considering the expenses of his new condition. Paul, who had always made an exception of the Philippian Church and received from her what he did not wish to owe to any other, accepted it again with happiness. The news as to the church was excellent. A few quarrels

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which had occurred between the two deaconesses Euodia and Syntyche had come to trouble the peace. Some scandals awakened by evil-disposed persons and from which resulted imprisonments, only served to show the patience of the faithful. The heresy of the Judæo-Christians, the pretended necessity for circumcision, hung around them without disrupting them. Some bad examples of worldly and sensual Christians, of whom the apostle speaks with tears, did not come as it would appear from their church. Epaphroditus remained some time beside Paul, and had a sickness, the result of his devotion, which nearly brought him to death’s door. A lively desire to see the Philippians possessed this excellent man; he sought himself to calm the disquietudes of his friends. Paul on his part wishing to make cease as soon as possible the fears of those pious ladies, quickly dismissed him, sending by him to the Philippians a letter full of tenderness written by the hand of Timothy. Never had he found such sweet expressions to describe the love which he bore to these entirely good and pure churches, which he carried in his heart. He felicitated them not only on having believed in Christ, but on having suffered for him. Those among them who were in prison ought to be proud of enduring the treatment which they had seen before inflicted upon their apostle, and which they knew he had actually endured. They are like a little chosen group of the children of God, in the midst of a corrupted and perverse race—light in the midst of a dark world. He warned them against the example of less perfect Christians, that is to say, of those who were not released from all Jewish prejudices. The apostles of the circumcision are treated with the greatest hardness.

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Beware of dogs, evil workers, of all these circumcised! It is we who are the true circumcised, we who worship according to the Spirit of God, who place our glory and confidence in Christ Jesus, not in the flesh. If I wished to exalt myself by these carnal distinctions, I should have a better right than anyone; I, circumcised the eighth day, of the pure race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew and son of the Hebrews, formerly a Pharisee, formerly a persecutor, formerly a jealous observer of legal righteousness. Ah, well; all these advantages, I hold them from the point of view of Christ as inferiorities, as dust, since I have apprehended what is transcendent in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. To gain Christ I have lost all the rest, I have exchanged my own righteousness, arising from the observation of the law, against the true righteousness according to God, which comes from the faith in Christ, in order that I may participate in his resurrection and to rise again, I also, among the dead, as I have participated in his sufferings, and as I have taken upon me the image of his death. I am far from having attained this goal, but I pursue it. Forgetting what is behind, always reaching forth to that which is before, I aspire, like the racer, for the prize of the victory, placed at the extremity of the course. Such is the feeling of the perfect.

And he adds:— Our country is in heaven, from whence we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall transform our wretched body and make it like his glorious body, by the extension of his power, and thanks to the divine decree, which has submitted every thing to him. Behold, brethren whom I love

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and regret to see no longer, you, my joy and crown, this is the doctrine which should be held, my dearly beloved.

He especially exhorts them to concord and obedience. The form of life which he has given them, the manner in which they ought to practice Christianity, is good; but, after all, each believer has his revelation, his personal inspiration, which also comes from God. He prays “his true spouse” (Lydia) to reconcile Euodia and Syntyche, to go to help them and second them in their duties as servants of the poor. He wished that they should rejoice; “THE LORD IS AT HAND.” His thanks for the sending of money on the part of the rich ladies of the Philippians, is a model of good grace and lively piety:

12

I have experienced a great joy in the Lord in connection with this late flourishing of your friendship, which has at last made you think of me: you thought well in that: but you had not an occasion. I do not say this to dwell upon my poverty. I have taught myself to be content with what I have. I know what it is to be in penury, and to have abundance. I am accustomed to everything, to be full and to suffer hunger, to have an overplus, and to want even what is necessary. I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. But you—you have done well to contribute so as to relieve my distress. It is not to the gift I look, but to the profit which will result from it to you. I have everything which is needful: I even abound, since I have received by Epaphroditus your offering, a sacrifice of a good odour, an offering most welcome, agreeable to God!

He recommends humility which makes us look on others as our superiors, charity which makes us think of others more than ourselves, according to the example of Jesus. Jesus had in Him all divinity and power; He could have, during His terrestrial life, shown himself in His divine splendour, but the economy of redemption would then have been reversed. Thus does He strip Himself of His natural distinction, to take the appearance of a slave. The world has seen Him like a man; looked at from without He would have been taken for a man. “He humbled Himself, making Himself obedient even to death, and that the death of the cross. Wherefore God has exalted Him and given Him a name above every other, willing that at the name of JESUS every knee shall bend in heaven, on the earth and under the earth, and in hell, and that every tongue shall confess the Lord Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father.” Jesus, we see, grew hour by hour greater in the consciousness of Paul. If Paul does not admit yet his full equality with God the Father, he believes in his divinity, and represents all His earthly life as the execution of a divine plan. Prison produced on him the effect which it usually produces on strong minds. It elevated him, and incited in his ideas some lively and deep resolutions. A little after having sent the letter to the Philippians, he sends Timothy to inform him of their condition, and to bear some new instructions to them. Timothy would return promptly enough. Luke would appear also at this time to have made an absence of short duration.

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CHAPTER II. PETER AT ROME. Paul’s chain, his entrance into Rome, quite triumphal according to Christian ideas, the advantages which his residence in the capital of the world gave him, did not allow of any repose for the party at Jerusalem. Paul was for that party a sort of stimulant, an active rival, against whom they murmured, and whom, nevertheless, they sought to imitate. Peter, in a remarkable degree, always hesitated, towards his audacious brother, between a lively personal admiration and the position his surroundings imposed on him; Peter (I say) passed his life, full also of numerous trials, in copying Paul, in following him at a distance in his course, in finding after him those strong positions which could assure the success of the common work. It was probably from the example of Paul that he settled, about the year 54, at Antioch. The report spreading into Judea and Syria in the second half of the year 61, of the arrival of Paul at Rome, was of itself enough to inspire him with the idea of a journey to the West.

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It appears that he came with quite an apostolic company. First, his interpreter, John Mark, whom he called “his son,” followed him usually. The apostle John, we have more than once observed, appeared likewise generally to have accompanied Peter. Some indications even lead us to believe that Barnabas was of the party. Lastly, it is not improbable that Simon of Gitton on his part might be drawn to the capital of the world, attracted by the kind of charm which that city exercised over all leaders of sects, charlatans, magicians, and thaumaturgists. Nothing was more common among the Jews than a journey to Italy. The historian, Josephus, came to Rome in the year 62 or 63 to obtain the deliverance of the Jewish priests, very holy personages, who, so as to eat nothing impure, lived in foreign countries on nuts and figs, and whom Felix had sent to give account to the emperor for some offence which is not known. Who were these priests? Was their affair entirely disconnected with Peter and Paul? The want of historic proof leaves us in much doubt as to all these points. The very fact on which modern Catholics base the edifice of their faith is far from being certain. We, however, believe that the Acts of Peter, such as the Ebionites recount, are only fabulous in detail. The fundamental idea of these Acts, Peter journeying through the world after Simon, the magician, to refute him, bearing the true gospel, which should overturn the gospel of the impostor, “coming after him like the light after the darkness, like knowledge after ignorance, like healing after sickness”—this conception is true when we put Paul’s name in place of Simon’s, and when, instead of the ferocious hatred which the Ebionites always exhibited against the preacher of the Gentiles, we picture between the two apostles a simple opposition of principle, excluding neither sympathy nor agreement on the fundamental point—the love of Jesus. In the journey undertaken by the old Galilean disciple to follow the track of Paul, we even willingly admit that Peter, following Paul closely, touched at Corinth, where he had, before his coming, a considerable party, and that he there much strengthened the Judæo-Christians, so much so that later on the Church of Corinth could 28


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pretend to have been founded by the two apostles, and to maintain, by making a slight error as to date, that Peter and Paul had been there at the same time, and from thence went forth in company to find death at Rome. 15

16

What were the relations of the two apostles at Rome? Certain indications would lead us to believe that they were good enough. We shall soon see Mark, Peter’s secretary, charged with a mission from his master, to go to Asia with a recommendation from Paul; besides, the epistle, attributed to Peter, a writing of a very tenable authenticity, presents numerous borrowings made from Paul’s epistles. Two truths must be maintained in this whole history; the first is that deep divisions (deeper indeed than those which were in the after history of the Church the ground of any schism) existed between the founders of Christianity, and that the form of the polemics, according to the usages of such people, was singularly bitter; the second is that a higher thought united them, even during their life, those brother-enemies, while wanting the great reconciliation which the Church should, of its own accord, make between them after their death, that is often seen in religious movements. There must also, in appreciating these debates, be great account taken of the Jewish character, quick and susceptible, given to violent language. In these little pious coteries, people quarrel and are reconciled continually; they have bitter words and, notwithstanding, love each other. A party of Peter, a party of Paul—these divisions did not possess more importance than those which in our day separate the different fractions of the Puritan Church. Paul had an excellent motto on this matter: “Let each one remain in the type of instruction which he has received,” an admirable rule which the Roman Church did not much follow later on. The adherence to Jesus was sufficient; the confessional divisions, if one may so describe them, were a simple question of origin independent of the personal merits of the believer. One fact, however, which is important, and which would lead us to believe that good relations had not been re-established between the two apostles is that, in the memory of the next generation, Peter and Paul are the leaders of opposing parties in the bosom of the Church; it is that the author of the Apocalypse, from the day of the death of the apostles, or at least of Peter, is, of all the Judæo-Christians, the most bitter against Paul. Paul looked on himself as the leader of the converted heathen wherever he found them; there was in this his interpretation of the agreement of Antioch; the Judæo-Christians regarded him evidently in a different manner. It is probable that this last party, which had always been very strong at Rome, drew from Peter’s arrival a grand ground of preponderance. Peter became its leader and leader of the Church of Rome. Now the unequalled prestige of Rome gave to such a title the greatest importance. We can see something providential in the part played by this extraordinary city. Following the reaction which was thus produced against Paul, Peter became more and more, in virtue of a sort of opposition, the leader of the apostles. Reconciliation is quickly made between minds easily impressed. The chief of the apostles in the capital of the world! What more could be said? The grand association of ideas which was to dominate the destinies of humanity during thousands of years was being made. Peter and Rome became inseparable; Rome is predestined to be the capital of Latin Christianity; the legend of Peter, first 29


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Pope, is written in advance; but it will require four or five centuries to unwind itself. Rome in any case could scarcely doubt the day on which Peter set foot in it, that that day ruled its future, and that the poor Syrian who had entered within its walls had taken possession of it for centuries.

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The moral, social, and political situation became graver day by day. People spoke only of signs and misfortunes; the Christians were more affected by these than any; the idea that Satan is the god of this world rooted itself among them more and more. The spectacles appeared to them devilish. They never went to them; but they heard the people around them speaking of them. One Icarus, who, in the wooden amphitheatre in the Field of Mars, pretended to be able to fly in the air, and who fell in front of Nero’s own stall, covering him with his blood, struck them greatly and became the principal element in one of their legends. The crime of Rome attained the last bounds of the infernal sublime; it was already a custom in the sect—it may have been a precaution against the police, or from a taste for mystery—to call this city only by the name of Babylon. The Jews had the habit thus of applying to modern things some symbolical proper names borrowed from their ancient sacred literature. This little disguised antipathy for a world which they did not understand became the characteristic feature of the Christians. “Hatred of the human race” passed as the résumé of their doctrine. Their apparent melancholy was an injury to the “happiness of the age;” their belief in the end of the world went against the official optimism, according to which everything renewed its youth. The signs of repulsion which they made while passing before the temples gave the idea that they only thought of burning them. These old sanctuaries of the Roman religion were extremely dear to patriots; to insult them was to insult Evander, Numa, and the ancestors of the Roman people, and the trophies of its victories. They charged the Christians with all misdeeds; their worship passed for a gloomy superstition, fatal to the empire, a thousand atrocious or shameful stories circulated about them; the most enlightened men believed them, and looked on those who were thus pointed out to their hatred as capable of all crimes.

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The new sectaries gained scarcely any adherents except among the lower classes; well educated people avoided pronouncing their name, or, when they were obliged to do so, always excused themselves; but among the people the progress was extraordinary: they were like an inundation dammed up for a while which made an irruption. The Church of Rome was already quite a people. The court and the city began seriously to speak about it; its progress was for some time the news of the day. Conversatives thought with a sort of terror of this cloaca of impurity which they pictured to themselves in the depths of Rome; they spoke with anger of those kinds of evil ineradicable plants which they always snatched at and which always resisted. As to the malevolent populace, it dreamed of impossible crimes to attribute to the Christians. They were rendered responsible for all public evils. They accused them of preaching rebellion against the emperor, and seeking to excite the slaves to insurrection. The Christian came to be looked on like the Jew of the middle ages, the scapegoat of all calamities, the man who only thinks 30


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of evil, the poisoner of wells, the child-eater, the incendiary when a crime was committed; the slightest indication was sufficient for the arrest of a Christian, and for putting him to the torture. Often the simple name of a Christian was sufficient to lead to arrest. When they were seen keeping back from heathen sacrifices they were blamed. The era of persecutions was really opened; it will continue with short intervals until Constantine. In the thirty years which had rolled away since the first Christian preaching, the Jews alone had persecuted the work of Jesus: the Romans had protected the Christians against the Jews: now the Romans became persecutors in their turn. From the capital, these terrors and hatreds spread into the provinces, and provoked the most clamant injustices. Many atrocious pleasantries mingled with him; the walls of the places where the Christians met were covered with caricatures and hateful and obscene inscriptions against the brothers and sisters. The habit of representing Jesus under the form of a man with the head of an ass was perhaps already established. 19

20

No one doubts at this day that these accusations of crimes and infamy were calumnious; a thousand reasons lead us even to believe that the directors of the Christian Church did not give the least pretext for the ill-will which soon produced such cruel violence against them. All the heads of the parties which divided the Christian society were agreed as to the attitude that should be taken against the Roman functionaries. They might well at heart hold the magistrates as emissaries of Satan, since they protected idolatry, and were the supports of a world given up to Satan; but in public the brothers were full of respect for them. The Ebionite faction alone showed the enthusiastic feelings of the zealots and other fanatics of Judea. In politics, again, the apostles were essentially legitimist and conservative. Far from encouraging the slave to revolt, they desired the slave to be submissive to his master, even if he was most harsh and unjust, as if he personally were serving Jesus Christ, and that not of necessity, to escape punishment, but for conscience, and because God would have it so. Behind the master was God Himself. Slavery was so far from seeming to be against nature, that the Christians had slaves, and Christian slaves. We have seen Paul repressing the tendency to political revolutions which was manifested about the year 57, preaching to the faithful of Rome, and doubtless of other countries, submission to the powers that be, whatever their origin, establishing in principle that the police is a minister of God, and that it is only the wicked who resist him. Peter, on his side, was the most peaceable of men; we shall soon find the doctrine of submission to the powers taught under his name, nearly in the same terms as by St. Paul. The school which connected itself later with John shared the same feelings on the divine origin of sovereignty. One of the greatest fears of the leaders was to see the faithful compromised in evil matters, whose odium fell on the whole church. The language of the Apostles, at this supreme moment, was of an extreme prudence. Some unfortunates put to the torture, some scourged slaves, were allowed to endure insult, calling their masters idolaters, menacing them with the wrath of God. Others, by excess of zeal, declaimed loudly against the heathen and reproached them with their vices; the reasonable brethren wittily called them “bishops,” or “overseers of those without.”

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Cruel misfortunes came upon them; the wise directors of the community, far from praising them, told them plainly enough that they had received what they deserved.

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All kinds of intrigues, which the insufficiency of documents do not permit us to disentangle, aggravated the position of the Christians. The Jews were very powerful about the emperor and Poppea. The “mathematicians,” that is, the soothsayers, among others a certain Balbillus, of Ephesus, surrounded the emperor, and, under pretext of exercising that portion of their art which consisted in turning away plagues and evil omens, gave him atrocious advices. Has the legend which has mixed with all this world of sorcerers the name of Simon the magician any foundation? That doubtless may be so; but the reverse may be also the case. The author of the Apocalypse is much pre-occupied about a “false prophet,” whom he represents as an agent of Nero, as a thaumaturgist making fire fall from heaven, giving life and speech to statues, marking men with the stamp of the Beast. It is perhaps of Balbillus he speaks: we must however observe that the prodigies attributed to the False Prophet by the Apocalypse resemble much the juggling peculiarities which the legend attributes to Simon. The emblem of a lamb-dragon, under which the False Prophet is pointed out in the same book, agrees better likewise with a false Messiah such as Simon of Gitton was than a simple sorcerer. On the other hand, the legend of Simon falling from the sky is not without an analogue in the accident which happened in the ampitheatre under Nero to an actor who played the part of Icarus. The plan taken by the author of the Apocalyse of expressing himself in enigmas throws all these events greatly into obscurity; but we should not be deceived if we searched behind every line of that strange book for some allusion to the most minute anecdotal circumstances of Nero’s reign. Never, besides, has the Christian conscience been more oppressed, more out of breath, than at that moment. They believed in a provisional condition very short in duration. Each day they expected the solemn appearance. “He comes! Yet an hour longer! He is at hand!” were the words they said every moment. The spirit of martyrdom which thought that the martyr glorifies Christ by his death and that this death is a victory, was universally spread. For the heathen, on the other hand, the Christian became a body naturally devoted to punishment. A drama which about this time had much success was that of Laureolus, where the principal actor, a sort of rascal Tartuffe, was crucified on the stage amid the applause of the audience, and eaten by bears. This drama was prior to the introduction of Christianity to Rome; we find it represented in the year 41; but it appears as if at least they made an application of it to the Christian martyrs, the diminutive of Laureolus answering to Stephanos might suggest these allusions.

22

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CHAPTER III. STATE OF THE CHURCHES IN JUDEA.—DEATH OF JAMES.

23

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 name 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?

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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 debased. 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! Plague take them because of their cudgels! Plague take the house of Hanan! Plague take them because of their conspiracies! Plague take the house of Cantheras! Plague take them became of their Kalams! Plague take the family of Ishmael, son of Phabi! Plague take them because of their fists! They are high-priests, their sons are treasurers, their sons-in-law are customs officers, and their servants beat us with their cudgels.”

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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 34


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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.”

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We feel in these pages that there is already fermenting the spirit of those social revolutions which some years 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. 35


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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.”

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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 themselves, 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

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to a certain point for that of the Resurrection, but not for the parables 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.

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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 to 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 37


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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.

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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 fact 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 38


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(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

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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 like 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 39


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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. 35

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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.

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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 on 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

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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, shall find its definitive form in the writings attributed to John. 37

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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. 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

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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.

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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 rejoice 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. 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 43


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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 being, into a sort of metaphysical archon whom they would say had never lived. 41

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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 and 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

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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 through 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

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connected themselves 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 the 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.

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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

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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 him 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,

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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!”

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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 it 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.

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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.

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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 for 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 49


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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; our 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.

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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 and 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

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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. 53

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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.

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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 of 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

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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 certain 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, according 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

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again in the blood of Jesus, are a people of saints, a spiritual temple, a royal priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices.

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“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. Servants, 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

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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.

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“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 insult 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 these 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.

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CHAPTER VI. THE BURNING OF ROME.

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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 man 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 56


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marked by his crimes; Burrhus is no more, 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 the 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, 57


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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 tenor 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, speaking 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 58


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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 rare 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 surrounded 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 59


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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

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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 had 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 of 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.

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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 philosophers, 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

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surrounded by 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.

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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 features 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.

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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 districts 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.

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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 is 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.

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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 religlon 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.

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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

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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 gods. 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.

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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

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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 pious 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

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effectual. Clemens Romanus, or the author (certainly a Roman) of the epistle 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 did 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 67


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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

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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 utility 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 68


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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.

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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 why 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.

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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

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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.

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Those of the brethren who were not tortured had in some sort their part in the sufferings of the others by the 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

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attraction is alone sufficient to make 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.

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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.”

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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, intoxicated 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 debauches 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.

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CHAPTER VIII DEATH OF ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL.

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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 now 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, 73


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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 has 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.

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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 memoriæ 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

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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 frightful 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 place 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

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Way), forms the region around which appears to concentrate, in the time of Nero, the history of the budding church.

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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 unknown; 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.

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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.

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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, forced 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.

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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 of 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.

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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 subject 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

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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.

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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 months 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

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in his Epistle to the Romans; later on, the Epistle to the Ephesians had been his most advanced 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 miracles, 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.”

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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.

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The feeling of the dangers which surrounded the Church fills the author’s mind. He has before his eyes only 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.

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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 took 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

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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 beset 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 . . .?”

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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 great 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 82


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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!’”

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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 to 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 goats 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

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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. 111

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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.

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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 Tyre, 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 85


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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 the 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 after 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 86


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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.

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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, that 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. There 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 87


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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.

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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 Judea. 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.

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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 of 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

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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.

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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 nearing 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 89


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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.

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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 when 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.

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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 efforts 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, 90


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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 time 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 Agrippa 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,

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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.

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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 first 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.

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CHAPTER XI. MASSACRES IN SYRIA AND EGYPT.

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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 the 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

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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 possession 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!

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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 as 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

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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 remains 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 indulgent 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

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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

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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 of 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, 96


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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.

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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 sounded. 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.

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CHAPTER XII. VESPASIAN IN GALILEE—THE TERROR AT JERUSALEM—FLIGHT OF THE CHRISTIANS.

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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 become 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 98


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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 by 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 be the masters of the empire’s fate were thus found gathered together in the East.

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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

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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.

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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 crisis, 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 they 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 100


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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.”

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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; in 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, followed 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;

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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.

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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 or 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

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better than to submit. It is more often thus; people obtain a great sacrifice from a nation without a dynasty 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, Ben Gamaliels, the Josephs, Ben Gorions were wounded in what was dearest to them.

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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

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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 haughty, 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 thing 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

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the righteousness of the heart I wish,” material worship was an old-fashioned routine which must disappear.

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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 priest 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 words which the evangelists attribute to Jeans as to the terrors of the last days.

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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

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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 conservative 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

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very near, with the political situation through which they were passing, It was not much later 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.

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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 the 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 ransom. A circumstance which is only indicated to us in covert words saved the 107


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fleeing people. “The dragon vomited after the woman (the Church of Jerusalem) a river to overwhelm and drown her; but the earth helped the woman, opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon had vomited towards her, and the dragon was full of anger against the woman.” Possibly the zealots were among those who wished to throw the whole body of the faithful into the Jordan, and that they succeeded in escaping by passing through a part where the water was low; perhaps the party sent to destroy them wandered and also lost the tracks of those whom they pursued. The place chosen by the heads of the community to serve as the primitive seat for the fugitive church was Pella, one of the towns of the Decapolis, situated near the left bank of the Jordan, in an admirable site commanding on one side the plan of the Ghor, on the other some precipices, below which rolled a torrent. They could not have made a better choice. Judea, Idumea, and Perea, were concerned in the insurrection; Samaria and the coast were profoundly troubled by war; Scythopolis and Pella were the two most neutral towns near Jerusalem. Pella, by its position beyond the Jordan, could afford more tranquility than Scythopolis, which had become one of the military stations of the Romans. Pella was a free city like all the places in the Decapolis, but it appears that it was given to Agrippa II. To take refuge there was to express strongly their horror of the revolt. The importance of the town dated from the Macedonian conquest; a colony of veterans from Alexandria was established there and changed the Semitic name to another which recalled their native country to the old soldiers. Pella was taken by Alexander Janneus; the Greeks who lived there refused to be circumcised and suffered much from Jewish fanaticism. Doubtless the heathen population had become rooted again there, for in the massacre of 66 Pella figures as a town of the Syrians and found itself again sacked by the Jews. It was in this Anti-Jewish town that the church of Jerusalem had its retreat during the horrors of the siege. It was well placed, and the church looked upon this locality as a safe abode, as a desert which God had prepared for it in which to wait in quietness, far from the torments of mankind, the home of the reappearance of Jesus. The community lived upon its savings, and they believed that God himself would take care to nourish it, and many saw in such a fate, so different from that of the Jews, a miracle which the prophets had foretold. Doubtless the Christians of Galilee on their side had passed to the East of the Jordan and the lake into Batanea and the Gaulonites. In this manner the lands of Agrippa II, were a country of adoption for Judeo-Christians of Palestine. What gave a special importance to this Christian body in retirement is that it carried with it the remainder of the family of Jesus, surrounded by the most profound respect, and designated in Greek by the name of Deposyni, the relations of the Master. We shall soon see indeed the Trans-Jordanic Christianity continued in Ebionism, that is to say the very tradition of the word If Jesus. The synoptical gospels were the product of it.

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CHAPTER XIII. THE DEATH OF NERO. Since the first appearance of the spring of the year 68, when Vespasian undertook the campaign, his plan, we have already said, was to crush Judaism step by step, proceeding from the north and west towards the south and east, to force the fugitives to shut themselves up in Jerusalem, and there to slay without mercy that seditious multitude. He advanced as far as Emmaus, seven leagues from Jerusalem, at the foot of the great acclivity which stretches from the plain of Lydda to the Holy City. He did not consider that the time had yet come for this latter plan. He ravaged Idumea and Samaria, and on the 3rd of June he established his general quarters at Jericho, when he sent to massacre the Jews of Perea. Jerusalem was besieged on all sides, a circle of extermination surrounded it. Vespasian returned to Cesarea to assemble his entire forces, where he received news which made him stop short, and whose effect was to prolong by two years the resistance and the revolution at Jerusalem.

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Nero died on the 8th of June. During the great struggles in Judea which we are relating, he had carried on in Greece the life of an artist; he only returned to Rome at the end of 67. He had never enjoyed himself so much; for his sake they had made all the games coincide in one year, all the towns sent him the prizes of their games, at every moment deputations came to seek him, to beg him to sing to them. The great child ninny, or perhaps jester, was entranced with joy. The Greeks alone know how to hear, said he, the Greeks alone are worthy of me and of my efforts. He extended to them great privileges, he proclaimed the liberty of Greece to the two isthmuses, paid liberally the oracles who prophecied to his taste, suppressed those who did not please him, and it is said caused to be strangled a singer who did not use his voice so that it did not appear better than his own. Hellius, one of the wretches to whom at his departure he had left full powers over Rome and the Senate, pressed him to return. The gravest political symptoms began to show themselves. Nero replied that his reputation was the first thing to be considered, and it obliged him to harbour his resources for a time when he should have no empire. His constant prepossession was indeed that if fortune should ever reduce him to a private condition he would be able quite well to make his art sufficient for him; and when they made the remark to him that he was fatiguing himself too much, he said that the exercise which for him was only the pastime of a prince, would perhaps be his bread winner. One of those things which most flatters the vanity of people of the world who occupy themselves a little in art or literature, is to imagine that if they should become poor they could live by their talents. As to that he had a voice which was weak and hollow, although he observed, in order to preserve it, medical prescriptions; his phonasque did not quit him and ordered him at every moment the most puerile precautions. We blush to think that Greece stained itself by this ignoble masquerade. Some towns indeed received him very well. The wretch did not dare to enter Athens; he was not asked. The most alarming news was brought to him; it was nearly a year 109


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since he had quitted Rome; he gave the order for return. In every town they gave him triumphal honours; they levelled the walls to let him enter. At Rome there was an extraordinary carnival. He mounted the car on which Augustus had his triumph; beside him was seated the musician Diodorus; upon his head he had the Olympic crown; in his right hand the Pythic crown, before him they bore the other crowns, and upon some placards the roll of his victories; the names of those he had conquered, the titles of the pieces in which he had played, the claquers, trained in three kinds of claque, and the knights of Augustus followed. They pulled down the arch of the grand circus to allow him to enter, and cries were heard: “Long live the Olympian! the Pythi hero Augustus! Augustus! Nero-Hercules! Nero-Apollo! only Periodonicist! The only one who has ever been Augustus! Augustus! So sacred voice! Happy those who could hear it!” The thousand eight hundred and eight crowns, which he had brought back from Greece, were placed in the grand circus and attached to the Egyptian obelisk, which Augustus had placed there to serve as a meta. At last the conscience of the noble portions of human nature awoke. The East, with the exception of Judea, bore without a blush this shameful tyranny and contented themselves with it; but the feeling of honour still lived in the West. It is one of the glories of France that the overthrow of such a tyranny was its work. While the German soldiers, full of hatred against the republicans and slaves for their principle of fidelity, played in regard to Nero as to all the emperors, the part of good Swiss and gardes du corps; the cry of revolt was raised by an Aquitanian, a descendant of the ancient kings of the country. The movement was truly French. Without calculating the consequences the Gallican regions threw themselves into the revolution with enthusiasm. The signal was given by Vindex about the 15th of March, 68. The news came quickly to Rome. The walls were soon chalked over with scandalous inscriptions, “By the dint of singing, say vile scoffers, he has awakened the cocks (Gallos).” Nero at first laughed. He felt quite glad, that he had been furnished with an occasion of enriching himself by pillaging the Gauls. He continued to sing to amuse himself until the moment when Vindex began to post proclamations in which he was treated as a wretched artist. The actor wrote then from Naples, where he was, to the Senate to demand justice, and took the route for Rome. He affected only however to interest himself in some musical instruments newly invented, and especially in a kind of hydraulic organ, upon which he solemnly consulted the Senate and the Knights. The news of the defection of Galba (3rd April) and the alliance of Spain with Gaul, which he received while he was at dinner, came upon him like a thunder-clap. He overturned the table where he ate, tore up the letter and smashed two engraved vases of great value, out of which he was accustomed to drink.. In the ridiculous preparations which he began, his principal care was for his instruments, the theatrical baggage for his women, whom he had dressed as Amazons, with targets and hatchets, and having their hair cut short. There were strange alternations of depression and buffoonery, which we hesitate sometimes whether to take as serious, or rather to treat as absurd; all the acts of Nero floating between the black wickedness of a cruel booby and the irony of a roué. He had not an idea which was not childish. The pretended world of art in which he lived had

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rendered him completely silly. Sometimes he thought less of fighting than going to weep without arms before his enemies. Thinking to touch their hearts, he composed already the epinicium which he should sing with them on the morning of the reconciliation; at other times he wished to have all the senate massacred, to bum Rome a second time, and to let loose the beasts of the amphitheatre upon the city. The French especially were the objects of his rage; he spoke of causing those who were in Rome to be killed, as being implicated with their compatriots and wishing to join them. At intervals he had the thought of changing the seat of his empire and retiring to Alexandria. He remembered that some prophets had promised him the empire of the east and especially the throne of Jerusalem, and he dreamed that his musical talent would give him a means of livelihood, and this possibility, which would be the better proof of his talents, afforded him a secret joy. Then he consoled himself with literature; he made the remark that his position had something particular about it, all that had happened to him was quite unheard of; never had any prince lost alive such a great empire. Never in the days of his most bitter anguish did he change any of his habits. He spoke more of literature than of the affairs of the French; he sang, he made jests, he went to the theatre incognito, wrote with his own hand to an actor who pleased him: “Keep a man so busy, it is bad.” The little agreement in the armies of Gaul, the death of Vindex, and the weakness of Galba would perhaps have adjourned the deliverance of the world, if the Roman army in its turn had not made itself heard. The praetorians revolted and proclaimed Galba; on the evening on the 8th of June Nero saw that all was lost. His ridiculous mind suggested to him nothing but grotesque ideas. Clothing himself in mourning habits he went to harangue the people in this dress, employing all his scenic power to obtain thus a pardon of the past, or, for want of better, prefecture of Egypt. He wrote his speech. He was told before he arrived at the forum he would be torn in pieces. He lay down; awaking in the middle of the night he found himself without guards. They already had pillaged his room. He rose and struck at different doors and no one replied. He came back, wished to die, and asked for the myrmillon Spicullus, a brilliant slayer, one of the celebrities of the amphitheatre. Everyone deserted him. He went out wandering alone in the streets, thought of throwing himself into the Tiber, and then retraced his steps. The world appeared to make a void about him. Phaon, his freed man, offered him then his villa residence, situated between the Salarian and Nomentan ways, about a league and a half off. The unfortunate man, slightly clothed, covered with a poor mantle, mounted on a wretched horse, his face covered so as not to be recognised, went forth, accompanied by three or four of his freed men, among whom were Phaon, Sporus, Epaphroditus, his secretary. It was not yet quite light; in going through Colline gate he heard in the camp of the Prætorians, near which he passed, the cries of the soldiers who cursed him and proclaimed Galba. A start of his horse caused by the stench of a corpse thrown in the way, caused him to be recognised. He was able to reach Phaon’s villa by gliding flat on his belly under the bushwood, and concealing himself behind the rose trees. His comical mind and vulgar slang did not abandon him. They wished him to squat in a hole like a pouzzalana, as is often seen in some places. This was for him the occasion of a joke. “What 111


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a fate, to go to live under the earth.” His reflections were like a running fire intermixed with dull pleasantries and wooden-headed remarks. He had upon each circumstance a literary reminiscence, a cool antithesis; “he who once was proud of his numerous suite, has now no more than three freed men.” Sometimes the memory of his victims would come back to him, but only struck him as figures of rhetoric, never led to a moral act of repentance. The comedian survived through all. His situation was for him nothing but a drama—a drama which he had recited. Recalling the parts in which he had figured as a patricide or princes reduced to the condition of beggars, he remarked that now he played all that on his own account and would sing this verse, which a tragedian had placed in the mouth of Œdipus:

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"My wife, my mother, my father Pronounce my death warrant.” Incapable of a serious thought, he wished them to dig his grave the size of his body, and made them beat pieces of marble, some water and wood at his funeral procession, weeping and saying. “What an artist this is who has died!” The courier of Phaon meanwhile brought a despatch. Nero tore it from him; he read that the senate had declared him the public enemy and had condemned him to be punished according to the ancient custom. “What is that custom?” asked he. They told him that the head of the culprit, quite bare, was stuck into a fork while they beat it with rods until death followed. Then the body was drawn by a hook and thrown into the Tiber. He trembled, took two poignards which he had on him, tried their points, sheathed them again, saying the fatal hour had not yet come. He engaged Sporus to begin his funeral dirge, tried hard to kill himself and could not. His awkwardness, this kind of talent which he had for making all the fibres of the soul vibrate falsely, that laugh at once brutal and infernal, that pretentious stupidity which made his whole life resemble the memory of Agrippa’s Sabbat, attained to the sublime of absurdity. He could not succeed in killing himself. “Is there no one here to set an example to me?” he said. He redoubled his quotations, spoke in Greek, and made some bits of verse. All at once they heard the noise of a detachment of cavalry which came to take him alive. The steps of the heavy horses fall upon my ears, said he. Epaphroditus then took his poignard and plunged it into his neck. The centurion came in nearly at the same moment. He wished to stop the blood, and sought to make him believe he had come to save him. “Too late!” said the dying man, whose eyes rolled in his head and glazed with horror, “Behold where fidelity is found!” added he, expiring. It was his last comic feature. Nero giving vent to a melancholy complaint upon the wickedness of his century, upon the disappearance of good faith and virtue! Let us applaud, the drama is complete! Once more, Nature, with the thousand faces, thou hast known how to find an actor worthy of such a part!

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He had held much to this, that they should not deliver his head to insults, and that they should not burn him entirely. His two nurses and Actea, who loved him still, hound him secretly in a rich white shroud, embroidered with gold and with all the luxury they knew he loved. They laid his ashes in the tomb of Domitius, a great mausoleum which commanded the gardens (The Pincio) and made a fine effect from the Campus Martius. From thence his ghost haunted the Middle Ages like a vampire; to conquer the apparitions which haunted the district, they built the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo.

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Thus perished, at thirty-one years of age, after having reigned thirteen years and eight months, the sovereign —not the most foolish or the most wicked, but the vainest and the most ridiculous, whom the chance of events had brought into the first ranks of history. Nero is beyond everything a literary perversion; he was far from being destitute of all talent or of all honesty; this poor young man, intoxicated with bad literature, drunk with acclamations, who forgot his empire for Terpnos, who, receiving the news of the revolt of the Gauls did not withdraw from the spectacle at which he assisted, shewed his favour to the athlete, and did not think during many days of anything but his lyre and his voice. The most culpable in all of this were the people most greedy of pleasure, who exacted above all that their sovereign should amuse them, and also the false taste of the time, which had inverted the order of greatness, and gave too large a value to the man of renown in letters and the artist. The danger of literary education is that it inspires an inordinate love of glory without ever affording a serious moral, which fixes the meaning of true glory. It was destined that a natural and subtle vanity, longing for the immense and the infinite, but without any judgment, should make a deplorable shipwreck. But his qualities, such as aversion to war, became fatal, by leaving him with no taste but for ways of shining which should not have been his. At least, as he was not a Marcus Aurelius, it was not good to be so far removed from the prejudices of his caste and his condition. A prince is a soldier, a great prince can and should protect letters. He ought not to a literateur. Augustus, Louis XIV., presiding over a brilliant development of mind, are, after the cities of genius like Athens and Florence, the finest spectacle of history. Nero, Chilperic, King Louis of Bavaria, are caricatures. In the case of Nero the enormous nature of the imperial power, and the harshness of Roman manners, caused that caricature to appear outlined in blood. It is often asserted, to shew the irremediable nature of the masses, that Nero was popular in some points of view. The fact is that he had upon his own account two currents of opposite opinion. All those who were serious and honest detested him, the lower people loved him, some artlessly and by the vague sentiment which makes the poor plebeian love his prince if he has a brilliant exterior, the others because he intoxicated them with feasts. During those fêtes they saw him mixing with the crowd, dining, eating in the theatre in the midst of the mob. Did he not besides hate the Senate, the Roman nobility, whose character was so harsh and so little popular? The companions who surrounded him were at least amiable and polite. The soldiers of the guard always preserved their affection for him. For a long time his tomb was found always ornamented with fresh flowers, and portraits of him were placed in the rostra by unknown hands. The origin of the good fortune 113


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of Otho was that he had been his confidant and that he imitated his manners. Vitellius, to make himself acceptable at Rome, affected openly to take Nero as his model, and to follow his methods of government. Thirty or forty years after, all the world wished he were still living, and longed for his return.

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This popularity, in reward to which there is no need to be too much surprised, had in fact a singular result. The report was spread abroad that the object of so many regrets was not really dead. During the life of Nero, there had been seen to dawn in the staff of the emperor, the idea that he would be dethroned at Rome, but that there would commence for him a new reign, Oriental and almost Messianic. People have always had a difficulty in believing that men who have a long time occupied the attention of the world disappear for ever. The death of Nero at Phaon’s villa in the presence of a small number of witnesses had not had a very public character. All that concerned his burial had passed among three women, who were devoted to him. Icellus almost alone had seen the corpse; nothing recognisable remained of his person. They might believe in a substitution; some affirmed that the body had never been found, others declared that the gash he had made in his neck had been bandaged and healed. Nearly all maintained that at the instigation of the Parthian ambassador at Rome, he had taken refuge among the Arsacides, his allies, eternal enemies of the Romans, or that he had gone to the king of Armenia, Tiridatus, whose journey to Rome in 66, had been accompanied by magnificent fêtes, which had struck the people. There he was planning the ruin of the empire. Soon they would see him return at the head of the cavaliers of the East to torture those who had betrayed him. His partisans lived in that hope. Already they raised statues to him, and made edicts even to be current in his signature. The Christians, on the contrary, considered him as a monster, and, when they heard such reports, in which they believed as much as the other people, were smitten with terror. The imaginations which he kindled lasted for a very long time, and, according to what occurs nearly always in similar circumstances, there were many false Neros. We shall see soon the counterpart of that opinion in the Christian church, and the place which it holds in the prophetic literature of the time. The strangeness of the spectacles in which they has taken part left few winds in their sober senses. Human nature had been pushed to the limits of the possible, there remained the vacuum which follows fits of fever;—everywhere spectres and visions of blood. It was said that at the moment when Nero came out through the Colline gate to take refuge in Phaon’s villa, a flash struck his eyes, and that at the same moment the earth trembled as if it were opening, and that the souls of all those whom he had killed threw themselves upon him. There was in the air as it were a thirst for vengeance. Soon we shall assist at one of the interludes of the grand heavenly drama, where the souls of the slain, lying under God’s altar, cry with a loud voice “Oh Lord, how long till thou shalt demand our blood from those who inhabit the earth,” and there shall be given to them a white robe because they have to wait a little longer!

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CHAPTER XIV. PLAGUES AND PROGNOSTICS.

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The first impression on the Jews and Christians at the news of the revolt of Vindex had been that of extreme joy. They believed that the empire would end with Cæsar’s house, and that the revolted generals, full of hatred to Rome, would not think of anything except rendering themselves independent in their respective provinces. The movement of the Gauls was accepted in Judea as having a significance analogous to that of the Jews themselves. There war was a deep error. No part of the empire, Judea excepted, wished to see broken up that great association which gave to the world peace and material prosperity. All the countries on the borders of the Mediterranean, once at enmity, were delighted to live together. Gaul itself, although less peaceful than the rest, limited its revolutionary desires to the overthrow of the bad emperors, to demanding reform, and to seeking for a liberal government. But we can imagine that people, accustomed to the ephemeral kingdoms of the East, should have regarded as finished an empire whose dynasty was about to be extinguished, and should have believed that the different nations subjugated one or two centuries before would form separate States under the generals who held the command. For eighteen months, in fact, none of the leaders of the revolted legions succeeded in putting down his rivals in a permanent way. Never had the world been seized with such a trembling; at Rome the nightmare of Nero scarcely dispelled; at Jerusalem a whole nation in a state of madness; the Christians under the stroke of the fearful massacre of the year 64; the earth itself a prey to the most violent convulsions; the whole world was as in a vertigo. This planet appeared to be shaken and unable to endure. The horrible degree of wickedness which heathen society had reached, the extravagances of Nero, his golden house, his absurd art, his colossi, his portraits more than a hundred feet in height, had literally made the world mad. Some natural plagues broke out in all directions, and held men’s minds in a kind of terror. When we read the Apocalypse without knowing the date or having its key, such a book appears the work of the most capricious and individual fancy; but when we replace the strange vision in this interregnum from Nero to Vespasian, in which the empire passed through the gravest crisis it had known, the work appears in the most extraordinary sympathy with the state of men’s minds; we may add with the state of the globe, for we shall soon see that the physical history of the world at the same period furnishes its elements. The world really dotted on miracles; never had it been so impressed by omens. The God-Father appeared to have veiled his face; certain unclean larvæ, monsters coming forth from a mysterious slime, appeared to be wandering through the air. Everyone believed that the world was on the eve of some unheard-of event, Belief in the signs of the times and prodigies was universal; scarcely more than a few hundreds of educated men saw their absurdity. Some charlatans, more or less authentic depositaries of the old chimeras of Babylon, played on the ignorance of the people and pretended to explain omens. These wretches became personages; the 115


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time was passed in expelling and then recalling them; Otho and Vitellius especially were entirely given up to them. The highest politics did not disdain to take note of these puerile dreams.

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One of the most important branches of Babylonian divination was the interpretation of monstrous births, considered as implying certain indications of coming events. This idea more than any other had overrun the Roman world; the many-headed fœtus especially was considered as an evident omen, each head, according to a symbolism we shall see adapted by the author of the Apocalypse, representing an emperor. There were some real or pretended hybrid forms In that matter also the unwholesome visions and incoherent images of the Apocalypse are the reflection of the popular tales with which peoples’ minds were filled. A pig with a hawk’s talons was held to be the very picture of Nero. Nero himself was very curious in regard to these monstrosities. Men were also preoccupied with meteors and signs in the sky. The bolides made the greatest impression. It is known that the frequency of the bolides is a periodic phenomenon, which occurs nearly every thirty years. On these occasions there are some nights when, literally, the stars have the appearance of falling from heaven. Comets, eclipses, parhelia, and aurora borealis, in which were seen crowns, swords, and stripes of blood; burning clouds of plastic forms, in which were designed battles and fantastic animals; were greedily remarked and never appear to have been observed with such intensity as during these tragic years. People spoke only of showers of blood, astonishing effects of lightning, streams flowing upwards to their course, and rivers of blood. A thousand things to which people had paid no attention obtained through the feverish emotion of the public an exaggerated importance. The infamous charlatan, Balbillus, took advantage of the impression which these events sometimes made on the emperor, to excite his suspicions against the most illustrious, and to draw from him the cruellest orders.

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The plagues of the period, besides, justified up to a certain point these madnesses. Blood ran in floods on all sides. The death of Nero, which was a deliverance in many points of view, began a period of civil wars. The battle of the legions of Gaul under Vindex and Virginius had been frightful; Galilee was the theatre of an unexampled extermination; the war of Corbulon among the Parthians had been most murderous. There was still worse than that in the future; the fields of Bedriac and Cremona soon exhaled an odour of blood. Punishments made the amphitheatre like hell. The cruelty of the military and civil manners had banished all pity from society. Withdrawing themselves trembling to their humble abodes, the Christians doubtless again repeated the words they attributed to Jesus: “When ye hear of wars and rumours of wars, be not troubled, for this must be; but the end is not yet. Nation shall be seen rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom; there shall be great earthquakes, shakings, famines, pestilences on all sides, and great signs in the heavens. These are the beginnings of sorrows.” Famine, indeed, was added to the massacres. In the year 68 the arrivals from Alexandria were insufficient. At the beginning of March, 69, an inundation of the Tiber was most disastrous. The wretchedness was fearful; a sudden eruption of the sea covered Lycia with mourning. In the year 116


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65, a horrible pestilence afflicted Rome; during the autumn the dead were reckoned at 30,000. In the same year everybody spoke of the fearful fire at Lyons. And the Campagna was ravaged by water-spouts and cyclones, whose outbreaks were heard even at the gates of Rome. The order of nature seemed reversed; fearful storms spread terror in all directions.

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But what struck people most was the earthquakes. The globe underwent a convulsion parallel to that of the moral world; it seemed as if the world and the human race had fever at the same time. It is a peculiarity of popular movements to mix together all that excites the imagination of the crowds, at the time when they are carried out. A natural phenomenon, a great crime, a crowd of things accidental or without apparent connection, are linked together in the grand rhapsody which humanity composes from age to age. It is thus that the history of Christianity is incorporated with everything which at different periods has shaken the people. Nero and the Solfatara had as much importance there as theological argument; a place must be given to geology, and the Solfatara and the catastrophes of the planet. Of all natural phenomena besides earthquakes are those which most cause men to abase themselves before unknown forces. The countries where they are frequent, Naples and Central America, have superstition in an endemic condition; there must be said as much for the ages in which they raged with a peculiar violence. Now never were they more common than in the first century. No time could be remembered when the surface of the old continent had been so greatly agitated. Vesuvius was preparing for its terrible eruption of 79. On the 5th February, 63, Pompeii was nearly engulfed by an earthquake. A great number of the inhabitants would not re-enter it. The volcanic centre of the Bay of Naples at the time of which we speak was near Pouzzoles and Cuma. Vesuvius was still silent, but that series of little craters which constitute the district to the west of Naples and which are called the Phlegrean Fields, shewed everywhere the mark of fire. Avernus, the Acherusia palus (the lake Fusaro), the lake Aguano, the Solfatara, the little extinct volcanoes of Astroni, Camaldoli, Ischia, and Nisida, present to-day something squalid; the traveller takes away an impression of them rather more pleasant than frightful. Such was not the sentiment of antiquity. These stoves, these deep grottoes, these thermal springs, those bubblings up, those miasmas, those hollow sounds, those yawning mouths, (bocche d’inferno) vomiting out sulphur and fiery vapours, inspire Virgil. They were likewise one of the essential factors in the Apocalyptic literature. The Jew who disembarked at Pouzzoles to proceed to business or intrigue at Rome, saw this ground smoking in all its pores, shaking without ceasing, as if its bowels were peopled by giants and agonies. The Solfatara especially appeared to him the pit of the abyss, the airhole scarcely shutting out hell. Was the continuous jet of sulphurous vapour which escapes through this opening not in his eyes the manifest proof of a subterranean lake of fire destined plainly, like the lake of Pentapolis, for the punishment of sinners? The moral spectacle of the country did not astonish him less. Baïa was a town of waters and baths, the centre ot luxury and pleasure, the favourite residence of light society. Cicero aid himself harm among grave people by having his villa in the midst of this kingdom of brilliant and dissolute manners. Propertius only wished his mistress dwelt there; 117


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Petronius placed there the debauches of Trimalcion, Baïa, Bauli, Cuma, Misena, saw, in fact, all follies and all crimes. The basin of azure blue waves included in the contour of this delicious bay was the bloody naumachia, into which they cast thousands of victims in the fêtes of Caligula and Claudius. What a reflection would arise in the mind of the pious Jew, of the Christian who called with fervour for the conflagration of the world at sight of this nameless spectacle, the absurd construction, in the midst of the waves, those baths, the object of horror to the puritans? Only one. “Blind that they are,” they would say, “their future dwelling is under these; they dance over the hill which is to swallow them up.”

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Nowhere is such an expression which is applied to Pouzzoles or other places of the same character more striking than in the book of Enoch. According to one of the authors of that bizarre Apocalypse, the residence of the fallen angels is a subterraneous valley situated in the west near the “mountain of metals.” This mountain is filled with flames of fire, it breathes an odour of sulphur; there go forth from it bubbling and sulphurous streams (thermal waters) which are used to cure diseases and near which the kings and great men of the earth gave themselves up to all sorts of pleasures. The fools! they see every day the chastisement which they are preparing for themselves, and nevertheless they do not pray to God. This valley of fire is perhaps the valley of Gehenna, to the east of Jerusalem, bounded at the depression of the Dead Sea by the Quadi en-nâr (the valley of fire), then there are the springs of Callirrhoe, the pleasure place of the I3erods, and the entire demoniacal region of Machero, which is in the neighbourhood. But thanks to the elasticity of the apocryphal topography the baths can also be those of Baïa and Cuma. In the valley of fire there can be recognised the Solfatara of Pouzzoles or the Phlegrean fields in the mountain of metals, Vesuvius, such as it was before the eruption of 79. We shall soon see these strange places inspiring the author of the Apocalypse, and the pit of the abyss revealing itself to him ten years before nature, by a singular coincidence, reopened the crater of Vesuvius. For the people, that was no chance occurrence. It caused that the most tragic country in the world, that which was the theatre of the great reigns of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, was found at the same time the country par excellence of phenomena, which nearly the whole world then considered as infernal. could not be without result. It was besides not only Italy, it was the eastern regions of the Mediterranean which trembled. For two centuries Asia Minor was in one continual quake. The towns were unceasingly occupied in reconstructing themselves; certain places like Philadelphia experienced shocks every day. Tralles was in a condition of perpetual falling down; they were obliged to invent for the houses a system of mutual support. In the year 17 he destruction of fourteen towns in the district of Timolus and Messogis took place; it was the most terrible catastrophe of which mention had ever been made till then. In the years 23, 34, 37, 46, 51 and 53 there were partial misfortunes in Greece, Asia and Italy.

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Thera tans in a condition of active labour, Antioch was incessantly shaken. From the year 59, indeed, there was scarcely a year which was not marked by some disaster. The valley of the Lycus in particular, with its Christian cities of Laodocea and Colosse, was engulfed in the year 60. When we reflect that exactly there was the centre of the millenarian ideas, we are persuaded that a close connection existed between the revelation of Patmos and the overturnings in the globe, so much so that there is here one of the rare examples which can be quoted of a reciprocal influence between the material history of the planet and the history of mental development. The impression of the catastrophes in the valley of the Lycus is found likewise in the Sibylline poems. These earthquakes in Asia spread terror everywhere; people spoke about them over the world, and the number of those who did not see in those accidents the signs of an angry divinity was very small All this made a sort of gloomy atmosphere, in which the imagination of the Christians found a strong excitement. Now, in view of the commotion of the physical and moral world, would not the believers cry with more assurance than ever, Maranatha, Maranatha! “Our Lord is coming, our Lord is coming.” The earth appeared to them to be crumbling, and already they believed they saw the kings and powerful men and the rich fleeing as they cried “Mountains, fall upon us, bills, conceal us.” A constant habit of mind of the old prophets was to take occasion by some natural plague to announce the near approach of the “day of Jehovah.” A passage in Joel which was applied to Messianic times gave as certain prognostications of the great day signs in heaven and on the earth, prophets arising from all parts, rivers of blood, fire, pillars of smoke, the sun darkened, the moon bloody. They believed likewise that Jesus had announced earthquakes, famines, and pestilences as the overtures to the great day; then, as foregoing indexes of his coming, eclipses, the moon obscured, the stars falling from the firmament, the whole heaven troubled, the sea foaming, the people flying despairing, without knowing on which side was safety or death. Fear became thus an element of the whole Apocalypse; the idea of persecution was associated with it. It was admitted that the Evil one before being destroyed would redouble his rage and give proof of a skilful art in order to exterminate the saints.

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CHAPTER XV. TUE APOSTLES IN ASIA.

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The province of Asia was that most agitated by those terrors. The church at Colosse had received a mortal blow by the catastrophe of the year 60. Hierapolis, although built in the midst of the most bizarre dejections of a volcanic eruption, did not suffer, it seems. It was perhaps there that the Colossian believers took refuge. Everything shows us from that time Hierapolis as a city apart. The profession of Judaism was public there. Some inscriptions still existing among the wonderfully preserved ruins of that extraordinary city mention the annual distributions which should be made to some corporations of workmen, from “the feast of unleavened bread,” and from “the feast of Pentecost.” Nowhere were good works, charitable institutions, and societies for mutual help among people following the same trade of so much importance. Kinds of orphanages, créches or children’s homes, evidence philanthropic cares singularly developed. Philadelphia presents an analogous aspect; the state bodies there became the basis of political divisions. A peaceful democracy of workmen, associated among themselves and not occupied with politics, was the social form of almost all those rich towns of Asia and Phrygia. Far from being forbidden to a slave, virtue was considered to be the special portion of the man who suffers. About the time we are writing of, was born at Hierapolis an infant even so poor that they sold it in its cradle, and never knew it except under the name of the “bought slave,” Epictetus, a name which, thanks to him, has become the synonym of virtue itself. One day there shall come forth from his instructions, the wonderful book, a manual for strong souls who reject the supernatural of the Gospel, and who believe that duty is falsified by creating in it any other charm than that of its austerity. In the eyes of Christianity Hierapolis had an honour which far surpassed that of having given birth to Epictetus. It gave hospitality to one of the few survivors of the first Christian generation, to one of those who had seen Jesus, the Apostle Philip. We may suppose that Philip came into Asia after the crises which rendered Jerusalem uninhabitable for peaceful people, and expelled the Christians from its midst. Asia was the province where the Jews were most at peace; thither flowed the others. The relations between Rome and Hierapolis were likewise easy and regular. Philip was a priestly personage and belonged to the old school, very analogous to James. It was pretended that he wrought miracles, even the raising of the dead. He had four daughters, who were prophetesses. It appears that one of these died before Philip came into Asia. Of the three others, two grew old in their virginity; the fourth married during her father’s life, prophesied like her sisters, and died at Ephesus. These strange women were very famous in Asia. Papias, who was bishop of Hierapolis about the year 130, had known them, but he had never seen the Apostle himself. He heard from these old enthusiastic women some extraordinary facts and marvellous recitals of their father’s miracles. They also knew many things as to the other Apostles or Apostolic personages, especially a Joseph Barnabus, who, according to them, had drank a deadly poison without being harmed. 120


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Thus, on John’s side, there was constituted in Asia a second centre of authority and Apostolic tradition. John and Philip elevated the countries which they had chosen to reside in nearly to the level of Judea. “These two great stars of Asia,” as they were called, were for some years the lighthouse of the church, deprived of its other pastors. Philip died at Hierapolis and was buried there. His virgin daughter arrived at a very advanced age and was laid near him; she that was married was interred at Ephesus; all the graves, it was said, were visible in the second century. Hierapolis had thus Apostolic tombs, rivals of those at Ephesus. The province would appear to be ennobled by those holy bodies, which they imagined they could see rising from the dead on the day in which the Lord should come, full of glory and majesty, to raise his elect from the dead. The crisis in Judea, by dispersing, about 68, the apostles and apostolic men, would yet bring to Ephesus and into the valley of the Meander, other considerable personage in the nascent Church. A very great number of disciples, in any ease, who had seen the Apostles at Jerusalem, were found in Asia, and appear to have led that wandering life from town to town which was much to the taste of the Jews. Perhaps the mysterious personages called Presbyteros Johannes and Aristion were among the emigrés. Those listeners to the Twelve spread throughout Asia the tradition of the Church of Jerusalem, and succeeded in giving Judeo-Christianity the preponderance there. They were eagerly questioned as to the sayings of the apostles and the authentic words of Jesus. Later on those who had seen them were so proud of having drunk from the pure source, that they despised the little writings which claimed to report the discourses of Jesus.

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There was something very peculiar about the state of mind in which these churches lived buried in the depths of a province whose peaceful climate and profound heaven appeared to lead to mysticism. In no place did the Messianic ideas so much preoccupy men’s attention. They gave themselves up to extravagant imaginations, the most absurd parabolic language, coming from the traditions of Philip and John, were propagated. The gospel which was formed on this coast had something mythical and peculiar about it. It was imagined generally that after the resurrection of the bodies which was nigh at hand there would be a corporeal reign of Christ upon the earth which should last a thousand years. The delights of this paradise were described in a thoroughly materialistic way; they actually measured the size of the grapes and the strength of the ears of corn under Messiah’s reign. The idealism which gave to the simplest words of Jesus such a charming velvety aspect was for the most part lost. John at Ephesus strengthened daily. His supremacy was recognised throughout the whole province, except perhaps at Hierapolis, where Philip lived. The churches of Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodocea had adopted him as their head, listening with respect to his statements, his councils, and his reproaches. The Apostle, or those whom he gave the right to speak for him, generally assumed a severe tone. A great rudeness, an extreme intolerance, a hard and gross language against those who thought otherwise than he did appeared to have been a part of John’s character. It is, it was said, in regard him that Jesus promulgated this principle, “whosoever

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is not for us is against us.” The series of anecdotes which were told of his sweetness and indulgence seem to have been invented agreeably to the model which is visible in the Johannine epistles, epistles whose authenticity is very doubtful. Features of an opposite kind, and which show much violence, accord better with the evangelical records and with the Apocalypse, and prove that the hastiness which had gained him the surname of Son of Thunder had only grown greater with age. It may be, however, that these qualities and contradictory defects might not be so exclusive of each other as one might think. Religious fanaticism often produces in the same person the extremes of harshness and goodness; just as an inquisitor of the middle ages, who made thousands of unfortunates burn for insignificant subtleties, was at the same time the gentlest, and in one sense the humblest, of men. It was especially against the little conventicles of the disciples of him whom they called the new Balsam that the animosity of John and his followers appeared to have been lively and deep. Such was the injustice inherent in all parties, such was the passion which filled these strong Jewish natures, that probably the disappearance of the “Destroyer of the law” was hailed with cries of joy by his adversaries. To many the death of this blunderer, this mar-plot, was a relief. We have seen that Paul at Ephesus felt himself to be surrounded by enemies; the last discourses which are attributed to him in Asia are full of sad forebodings. At the beginning of the year 69, we find the hatred against him bitter still; then the controversy shall grow calm, silence shall fall around his memory. At the point we have reached no one appears to have upheld him, and there is precisely in this what vindicated him later on. The reserve, or if it must be said, the weakness of his partisans, brought about a reconciliation: the boldest thoughts finished by gaining acceptance on condition that they yielded a long time without reply to the objections of the conservatives. Rage against the Roman empire, delight in the misfortunes which befel it, the hope of soon seeing it dismembered, were the innermost thoughts of all the believers. They sympathized with the Jewish insurrection, and were persuaded that the Romans had not quite reached their end. The time was distant since Paul, and perhaps Peter, preached the acceptance of the Roman authority, attributing even to that authority a sort of divine character. The principles of the enthusiastic Jews in the refusal to pay taxes, as to the diabolic origin of all profane power, as to the idolatry implied in acts of civil life according to the Roman usages, carried them away It was the natural consequence of persecution; moderate principles had ceased to be applicable. Without being so violent as in 64, persecution continued secretly. Asia was the province where the fall of Nero had made the deepest impression. The general opinion was that the monster, cured by Satanic power, kept himself concealed somewhere and was about to re-appear. One could imagine what kind of effect these rumours would produce among the Christians. Many of the faithful at Ephesus, beginning perhaps with their head, had escaped from the great butchery of 64. What! The horrible beast saturated with luxury, fatuity, going to return! The thing was clear, those continued to think who still supposed that Nero was Anti-Christ. See him, this mystery of iniquity who would appear to be assassinated, making everybody martyrs before the luminous advent. Nero is that Satan incarnate who shall accomplish the slaughter of the saints, A little time yet and the solemn moment shall comb! The

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Christians adopted this idea so much the more willingly that the death of Nero had been too mean for an Antiochus; persecutors of that species usually perished with greater éclat. It was concluded that the enemy of God was reserved for a more splendid death which should be inflicted on him in sight of the whole world and the angels gathered together by the Messiah.

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This idea, which gave birth to the Apocalypse, took every day more distinct forms; the Christian conscience had arrived at the height of its enthusiasm when a matter which took place in the neighbouring isles of Asia gave body to what up till then had been only imagination. A false Nero appeared and inspired in the provinces of Asia and Achaia, a lively sentiment of either curiosity, hope, or fear. He was, it would appear, a slave from Pontus, according to others an Italian of servile rank. He much resembled the deceased emperor; he had his large eyes, his strong hair, his haggard look, his theatrical and fierce face; he knew like him how to play the guitar, and to sing. The impostor found around him a first nucleus composed of deserters and vagabonds, and attempting to reach by sea Syria and Egypt, was cast by a tempest on the island of Cythnos, one of the Cylades. He made that island the centre of a propaganda, increased his band by enrolling some soldiers who were returning from the east, did some bloody deeds, pillaged the merchants and armed the slaves, The excitement was great, especially among the kind of people who from their credulity were open to the most absurd reports. From the month of December, Asia and Greece had no other subject of talk. The waiting and the terror increased every day. That name whose fame had filled the world turned heads anew, and made people believe that what they had seen was nothing like to what they would see. Other things which took place in Asia or in the Archipelago, and whose date we cannot fix for want of sufficient indications, increased the agitation still more. An ardent Neronian who joined to political passion some marks of a sorcerer, declared himself loudly for either the Cythnian impostor or for Nero, who was thought to have taken refuge among the Parthians. He apparently forced peaceable people to recognise Nero. He re-established his statues and ordered them to be honoured; we are sometimes even tempted to believe that a coin was struck with the legend Nero redux. What is certain is, that the Christians imagined they would be forced to honour Nero’s statues, the money, token, or stamp in the name of “the beast” “without which one could neither sell nor buy,” and thus caused them insurmountable scruples; the gold marked with the sign of the great head of idolatry burned their fingers. It appears that rather than lend themselves to such acts of apostasy some of the believers in Ephesus were exiled; we can suppose that John was of that number. This incident, obscure for us, plays a large part in the Apocalypse, and was perhaps its prime origin. “Attention” said the seer, “there is here the end of the patience of the saints who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” The occurrences in Rome and Italy gave reason for this feverish expectancy. Galba did not succeed in establishing himself, up till Nero, the title of dynastic legitimacy created by Julius Cæsar and by Augustus, had stifled the thought of a competition for Empire among the generals; but since that title had been barred by limitation, every military chief could aspire to the heritage of Cæsar. Vindex was dead, Virginius had loyally 123


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submitted; Nymphidius Lavinus, Macer, Fonteius, Capito, had expiated by death their revolutionary ideas; nothing was done, however. On the 2nd January, 69, the legions of Germany proclaimed Vetillius, on the 10th Galba adopted Piso, on the 15th Otho was proclaimed at Rome. For some hours there were three emperors; in the evening Galba was killed. Faith in the empire was terribly shaken, people did not believe that Otho could manage to reign alone; the hopes of the partisans of the false Nero of Cythnos and those who imagined every day to see the emperor’s so much regretted return from beyond the Euphrates, could not be concealed. It was then, at the end of January, in the year 69, that there was spread among the Christians of Asia a symbolic manifesto representing itself as a revelation of Jesus Christ himself. Did the author know of the death of Galba or had he only foreseen it? It is as much more difficult to say that a feature of the Apocalypses is that the writer puts forward sometimes, to the profit of his pretended foresight, some recent news which, he believes, he alone knows. Thus the publicist, who composed the book of Daniel, appears to have had a hint of the death of Antiochus. Our Seer appears to be possessed of special information on the political condition of his time. It is doubtful if he knew Otho; he believed that the restoration of Nero would immediately follow the fall of Galba. This latter appears to him already condemned. The eve of the Beast’s return is, therefore, reached. The ardent imagination of the author then appears to him a collection of views “upon what must arrive in a little while,” and thus the successive chapters of a prophetic book are unrolled, the object of which is to make clear the conscience of the believers in the crisis through which they are passing, and reveal to them the meaning of a political situation which disturbed the strongest spirits, and especially to reassure them as to the fate of their brethren already slain. It must be remembered that the credulous sectaries, whose sentiments we seek to discover, were a thousand miles from the ideas of the immortality of the soul, which have come forth from Greek philosophy. The martyrdoms of the last year were a terrible crisis for a society which trembled artlessly when a saint died, and asked if that one would see the Kingdom of God. People showed an unconquerable need to represent the faithful already passed into rest and blessed, although with a provisory in the midst of the plagues which struck the earth. Their cries of vengeance were heard; they considered their saints impatient, they called for the day on which God would arise and avenge his own elect. The form of “Apocalypse” adopted by the author was not new in Israel. Ezekiel had already inaugurated a considerable change in the old prophetic style, and we may in a sense regard it as the creator of the Apocalyptic class. To fervent preaching, accompanied sometimes by extremely allegorical acts, he had substituted, doubtless under the influence of Assyrian art, the vision, that is to say, a complicated symbolism, where the abstract idea was presented by means of chimerical beings conceived outside of all reality. Zachariah continues to walk in the same path; a vision becomes the necessary framework of all prophetic instruction. Indeed, the author of the book of Daniel, by the extraordinary popularity he obtained, fixed absolutely the rules of the class. The book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses and certain sibylline poems were the fruit of his powerful initiative. The prophetic instinct of the Semites, their tendency to group facts in view of a certain

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philosophy of history, and to present their individual thought ender the form of s divine absolute, their aptitude for seeing the great lines of the future, finding in this fantastic framework some singular facilities. In every critical situation of the people of Israel, they, in fact, demanded an apocalypse. The persecution by Antiochus, the Roman occupation, the profane reign of Herod had excited some ardent visionaries. It was inevitable that Nero’s reign and the siege of Jerusalem should have their apocalyptic protest, as later on had the severities of Domitian, Hadrian, Septimus Severus, Decius, and the invasion of the Goths in 250 called forth for themselves. The author of this bizarre writing, which a still more bizarre fate destined to such different interpretations, laid down in it the whole weight of the Christian conscience, then addressed it under the form of an epistle to the seven principal Churches of Asia. He asked that it should be read, as was the custom with all apostolic epistles, to the assembled faithful. There was perhaps in that an imitation of Paul, who preferred to act by letters than personally. Such communications in any case were not rare, and it was always the coming of the Lord which was their object. Some pretended revelations on the nearness of the last day circulated under the name of different apostles, so much so that Paul was obliged to warn his churches against the abuse which might be made of his writing to support such frauds. The work begins by a title which was worthy of its origin and its lofty theme:— THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST which God gave him to show unto his servants, even the things which must shortly come to pass: and he sat and signified it by his angel unto his servant John, who bare witness of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, even of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the prophecy and keep the things which are written therein, for the time is at hand.

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JOHN, TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES which are in Asia, Grace to you, and peace from him which is, and which was, and which is to come, and from the seven spirits which are before his throne: and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the first born of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood: and he made as to be a kingdom to be priests unto his God and Father, to him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever, Amen. Behold he cometh with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they which pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth shall mourn over him, even so, Amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, which is and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. John, your brother and partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and patience which are in Jesus, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, What thou seest write in a book, and send it to the seven churches, unto Ephesus and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamum, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea. And I turned to see the voice which spake unto me, and having turned I saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto a son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle. And his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace, and his voice as the voice of many waters, and he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him I fell at his feet as one dead. And he

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laid his right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last and the living one. And I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades Write therefore the things which thou sawest and the things which are and the things which shall come to pass hereafter; the mystery of the seven stars which thou rawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks are seven churches.

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In the Jewish conceptions, among the Gnostics and Cabbalists who were dominant about this time, every person, and indeed every moral being, such as death or grief, has its angel; there was thus the angel of Persia and the angel of Greece; the angel of the waters, the angel of fire, and the angel of the abyss. It was therefore natural that each church should have thus its heavenly representative. It is to this kind of fervour or genius of each community that the Son of Man addresses his statements one after the other:— To the angel of the church of Ephesus; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks I know thy works and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou can et not bear them which are evil, and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars. And hest borne and had patience, and for my name’s sake hast laboured and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hest left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I will tome unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate. He that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches; to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

And unto the angel of the church of Smyrna: These things saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive. I know thy works and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer, behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

And to the angel of the church of Pergamum:

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These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges: I know thy works and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is; and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balsam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols and to commit fornication. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate. Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.

And unto the angel of the church of Thyatira:

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These things saith the son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass. I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience and thy works; and the last to be more than the first. Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I give her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not. Behold I will cast her into a bed and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts; and I will give unto every one of you according to your works. But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine and which have not known the depths of Satan as they speak, I will put upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come. And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers, even as I received of my father. And I will give him the morning star. He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

And unto the angel of the church of Sardis:

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These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die; for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

And to the angel of the church of Philadelphia: These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth. I know thy works; behold I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it; for thou hast a little strength and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of Satan, which say they are Jews and are not, but do lie; behold I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold I come quickly, hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take my crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem; which cometh down out of Heaven from my God, and I will write upon him my new name. He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

And unto the angel of the church of Laodicea:

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These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear, and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve that thou mayest see. As many as I love I rebuke and chasten: if any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and will sup with, him and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with

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me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

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Who is this John who dares to make himself the interpreter of these celestial mandates, who speaks to the Churches of Asia with such authority, who boasts that he has passed through the same persecutions as his readers? It is either the Apostle John or a homonym of the Apostle John, or some one who has a desire to pass for the Apostle John. It is scarcely admissible that in the year 69, during the apostle’s life or a little after his death, some one had usurped his name without his consent for such searching counsels and reprimands. Among the apostle’s homonyms, no one would have dared to take up such a position. The Presbyteros Johannes (the only person who is alleged to have done so), if he ever existed, was, it would seem, of a later generation. Without denying the doubts which rest on nearly all these questions as to the authenticity of the apostolic writings, seeing the emit scruple which is made in attributing to apostles and holy persons the revelations to which they wished to give authority, we regard it as probable that the Apocalypse is the work of the Apostle John, or at least that it was accepted by him and addressed to the Churches of Asia under his patronage The prong impression of the massacres of the year 64, the feeling of the dangers through which the author has run, the horror of Rome, appear to us to point to the apostle who, according to our hypothesis, had been at Rome and could say, in speaking of those tragic events: Quorum pars magna fui. Blood stifled him, filled his eyes, and prevented him from seeing nature. The images of the monstrosities of Nero’s reign take hold of him as a fixed idea. But some grave objections here render the task of criticism very difficult. The taste for mystery and apocrypha which the first Christian generations possessed has covered with an unpenetrable mystery all the questions of literary history relating to the New Testament. Fortunately the soul shines out in those anonymous and pseudonomic writings in accents which cannot lie. The part of each man, in popular movements, it is impossible to discern—it is the sentiment of all which constitutes the true creator spirit. Why did the author of the Apocalypse, whoever he was, choose Patmos for the place of his vision? It is difficult to say. Patmos or Pathos is a little island about four leagues in length, but very narrow. It was in the antiquity of Greece, flourishing and very populous. In the Roman period, it kept all the importance which its smallness warranted, thanks to its fine port, formed in the centre of the island by the isthmus which joins the massive rocks of the north to those of the south. Patmos was, according to the habits of the coasting trade then, the first or the last station for the traveller who went from Ephesus to Rome or from Rome to Ephesus. It is wrong to represent it as a rock or a desert, Patmos was and will become again one of the most important maritime stations of the Archipelago: for it is at the branching off of many lines. If Asia should renew its youth, Patmos would be for it something analagous to what Syra is for modern Greece, to what Delos and Rhenia among the Cyclades, a sort of emporium in the eyes of the merchant marine, a point of “correspondence” useful to travellers.

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It was probably this which caused this little island to be selected—a selection from which has resulted later on such a high Christian celebrity to the spot. Whether the apostle had retired thither to escape some persecuting measure of the Ephesian authorities; or whether, returning from a voyage to Rome, or on the eve of seeing his faithful people again, he had prepared, in one of the cauponæ which would be on the shore of the port; the manifesto he wished to precede him in Asia; or whether, taking a kind of step backward to strike a heavy blow, and being of opinion that the place for the vision could not be made Ephesus itself, he had chosen the island in the Archipelago which, removed by about a day’s journey, was connected with the metropolis of Asia by a daily sailing; or whether he desired to keep the recollection of the last stoppage on the voyage, full of emotions, which he made in 64; or whether it was a simple accident of the sea which had obliged him to spend several days in this little port. Those navigations of the Archipelago are full of danger; the crossing of the ocean cannot give any idea of it: for in our seas there are constant winds ruling which help us, even when they are contrary. There, there are one after another dull calms, and when the narrow straits are being sailed through, violent winds. One has no control over one’s movement: he stops where he can and not where he will. Men so ardent as those bitter and fanatical descendants of the old prophets of Israel carried their fancies wherever they went, and that imagination was so completely shut in within the circle of the old Hebrew poetry that the nature which surrounded them did not exist for them. Patmos resembles all the islands of the Archipelago: an azure sea, limped air, a serene sky, rocks with jagged peaks, only occasionally clad with a light downy verdure, The aspect is naked and sterile; but the forms and colour of the rock, the living blue of the sea, pencilled by beautiful white birds, opposed to the reddish tints of the rocks, are something wonderful. Those myriads of isles and islets of the most varied forms which emerge like pyramids or shields on the waves, and dance an eternal rondo around the horizon, resemble a fairy world in a circle of marine gods and oceanides, leading a brilliant life of love, youth and sadness, in grottoes of a glancous green, on shores without mystery, alternately sweet and terrible, luminous and sombre. Calypso and the Sirens, the Tritons and the Nereides, the dangerous charms of the sea, its caresses at once voluptuous and sinister, all these fine sensations which have their inimitable expression in the Odyssey, escaped the dark visionary. Two or three peculiarities, such as the great preoccupation of the sea, the image of “a mountain burning in the midst of the sea,” which seem borrowed from the Thera, have alone some local reference. From a small island, used as the basis of the picture in the delicious romance of Daphnis and Chloe, or of pastoral scenes like those of Theocistus and Moselms, he makes a black volcano, belching forth ashes and fire. Yet he must have tasted more than once upon these waves the silence full of serenity, of nights on which one hearing nothing but the groaning of the halycon and the dull whisper of the dolphin. For whole days he was facing Mount Mycale, without thinking of the victory of the Greeks over the Persians, the finest which has ever been accomplished after Marathion and Thermopylæ. At this central point of all the great Greek creations, at some leagues from Samos, Cos, Miletus, Ephesus, he was dreaming of something else than the prodigious genius of Pythagoras,

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Hippocrates, Thales, and Heraclitus: the glorious memories of Greece had no existence for him. The poem of Patmos ought to have been some Hero and Leander, or rather a pastoral in the style of Longus, telling of the play of beautiful children on the threshold of love. The gloomy enthusiast, thrown by chance on these Ionian shores, never quitted his Biblical recollections. Nature for him was the living chariot of Ezekiel, the monstrous cherub, the deformed Nineveh bull, an uncouth zoology, setting statuary and painting at defiance. This strange defect, which the eye of the Orientals has for altering the images of things, a defect which made all the pictured representations coming from their hands appear fantastic and bereft of the spirit of life, was with him at its height. The disease which had possession of his entrails tinged everything with its hues; he saw with the eyes of Ezekiel, with those of the author of the Book of Daniel, or rather he saw nothing but himself, his sufferings, his hopes, and his anger. A vague and dry mythology, already cabalistic and gnostic, wholly founded upon the transformation of abstract ideas in the divine hypostases, put him beyond the plastic conditions of art. Never has anyone been more isolated from his surroundings; never has anyone denied more openly the tangible world to substitute for the harmonies of reality the contradictory chimera of a new earth and a new heaven.

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CHAPTER XVI. THE APOCALYPSE.

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After the message to the seven churches, the course of the vision unrolls itself. A door is opened in heaven; the Seer is wrapped in spirit, and through this opening his look penetrates to the very heart of the heavenly court. All the heaven of the Jewish cabala reveals itself to him. A single throne exists, and upon that throne, around which is the rainbow, is seated God himself, like a colossal ruby, darting forth its fires. Around the throne are twenty-four secondary seats, upon which are seated four-and-twenty elders clothed in white, having upon their heads crowns of gold. It is humanity represented by a senate of its élite, who form the permanent court of the Eternal; in front burn seven lamps, which are the seven spirits of God (the seven gifts of the divine wisdom). Behind are four monsters, composed of features borrowed from the cherubs of Ezekiel, and seraphs of Isaiah. These are: the first in the form of a lion, the second in the form of a calf, the third in the form of a man, the fourth in the form of an eagle with outspread wings These four monsters in Ezekiel formerly represented the attributes of the divine being: wisdom, power, omniscience, and creation. They have six wings and are covered with eyes over their whole bodies. The angels, creatures inferior to the great supernatural personifications which had been spoken of, a sort of winged servants, surround the throne in thousands of thousands and myriads of myriads. An eternal rolling of thunder comes forth from the throne. In the foreground there stretches an immense azure surface, like crystal (the firmament). A sort of divine liturgy proceeds without end. The four monsters, organs of universal life (nature), never sleep, and sing night and day the heavenly trisagion, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and shall be.” The four-and-twenty elders (humanity) unite in this canticle by prostrating themselves and casting their crowns at the feet of the throne of the creator. Christ has not figured up till now in the court of heaven; the Seer makes us assist at the ceremony of his enthronement. At the right of him who is seated on the throne there is seen a book in the form of a roll, written on both sides and sealed with seven seals. It is the hook of the divine secrets, the great Revelation. No one either in earth or heaven has been found worthy to open it or even to look upon it. John then begins to weep; the future, the only consolation of the Christian, is not there to be revealed to him. One of the elders encourages him. In fact he who should open the book is soon found. It may be divined without difficulty that it is Jesus, for in the very centre of the great assembly at the foot of the throne in the midst of the animals and elders upon the crystalline altar appears a slain lamb. It was the favourite image under which the Christian imagination loved to picture Jesus to itself; a Iamb slain became a Paschal victim and always with God. He has seven horns and seven eyes, symbols of the seven spirits of God, whose fulness Jesus has received, and who are through him about to be spread over the whole world. The Lamb rises, goes right up to the throne of the Eternal, and takes the Book. A wondrous emotion then fills heaven. The four 131


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animals, the four-and-twenty elders fall on their knees before the Lamb. They hold in their hands harps and vials of gold full of incense (the prayers of saints) and sing a new song: “Thou, thou alone art worthy to take the book and to open its seals; for thou hast been slain and with thy blood hast thou gained unto God a company of elect out of every tribe and tongue and people and race, and thou hast made of them a kingdom of priests, and they shall reign on the earth. The myriads of angels join in this canticle and discern in the Lamb the seven great prerogatives (power, riches, wisdom, strength, honour, glory, and blessing); all the creatures who are in heaven, on the earth, or under the earth, and in the sea, join in this heavenly ceremony and cry: “To him who is seated upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing, and honour, and glory, and strength through the ages of ages.” The four animals representing nature, with their deep voice say Amen; the elders fall down and worship. Thus is Jesus introduced in the highest rank of the celestial hierarchy. Not only the angels, but also the four-and-twenty elders, and the four animals who are superior to the angels, prostrate themselves before him. He has mounted the steps of the throne of God and has taken the book placed at the right hand of God, which no one could even look upon. He opens the seven seals of the book and the grand drama begins. The début is brilliant. According to a conception of the most righteous people, the author places the origin of the Messianic agitation at the moment in which Rome extends its empire to Judea. At the opening of the first seal a white horse comes forth. The rider who is mounted on him carries a bow in his hand, a crown surrounds his head, he gains victory everywhere. This is the Roman Empire, which up till the time of the Seer none could resist, but this triumphal prologue is of short duration; the signs coming before the brilliant appearance of Messiah shall be unheard-of plagues, and it is by the most terrific images that the celestial tragedy is carried out. We are at the beginning of what is called “the period of the sorrows of the Messiah.” Each seal which is opened henceforth brings upon humanity some horrible misfortunes.

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At the opening of the second seal a red horse comes forth. To him who rides upon it is given power to take away peace from the earth and to make men slay each other; there is put into his hand a great sword. It is War. Since the revolt of Judea, and especially since the insurrection of Vindex, the world was in fact nothing but a field of carnage, and peaceable men knew not where to flee. At the opening of the third seal a black horse leaps forth. His rider holds a balance. In the midst of the four animals the voice which tariffs in heaven the prices of commodities for poor mortals, says to the horseman, “A bushel of wheat for a penny, three bushels of barley for a penny, and touch not the oil or the wine.” That is famine, not to speak of the great dearth which took place under Claudius; the scarcity in the year 68 was extreme. At the opening of the fourth seal a yellow horse comes forth. His rider was called Death. Sheol followed him, and there was power given to him to kill the quarter of the world by the sword, pestilence, and wild beasts. 132


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Such are the great plagues which announce the approaching advent of the Messiah. Justice wills it that immediately the divine wrath shall be lit against the world. In fact at the opening of the fifth seal the Seer is witness of a touching spectacle. He recognises under the altar the souls of those who have been slain for their faith, and for the witness they have rendered to Christ (certainly the victims of the year 64). These holy souls cry out to God, and say to Him, “How long, O Lord, holy and true. Wilt Thou not do justice and demand our blood from those that dwell upon the earth?” But the time is not yet come, the number of the martyrs who should fill up the overflowing of wrath has not yet been reached. To each one of the victims who are under the altar, is given a white robe, a pledge of future justification and triumph, and they are told to wait a little while until their fellow-servants and brethren who should be slain like them should bear witness in their turn. 197

After this fine interlude, we do not return to the period of precursory plagues, but the phenomena of the last judgment. At the opening of the sixth seal a great shaking of the universe takes place. The heaven becomes black like sackcloth of hair, the moon takes the colour of blood, the stars fall from heaven to earth like the fruit of a fig tree shaken with the wind. The sky draws itself back like a book that is rolled up, the mountains and hills are hurled from their places. The kings and the great men of the earth, the military tribunes, and the rich and the strong, slaves and free men, hide themselves in the caves and among the rocks saying to the mountains, “Fall upon us, and save us from the glance of Him who sits upon the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” The great execution is then to be accomplished. The four angels of the winds are placed at the four corners of the earth; they have only to give bridle to the elements which are entrusted to them, that these, following their natural fury, should destroy the world. All power is given to these four actors. They are at their posts; but the fundamental idea of the poem is to show the great judgment adjourned without ceasing till the moment it appears it must take place. An angel bearing in his hand the seal of God (a seal which has for a legend, like all royal seals, the name of him to whom it belongs, ‫)ליהוה‬, comes forth from the east. He cries to the four angels of the destroying winds

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to keep back for some time yet the forces which they wield, until the elect, who presently live, are marked in the forehead, by the stamp, by which, as was done by the blood of the Paschal Lamb in Egypt, they should be preserved from these plagues. The angel impresses then the divine signet upon a hundred and forty-four thousand persons belonging to the twelve tribes of Israel. It is not really said that these hundred and forty-four thousand elect are only Jews. Israel is here certainly the true spiritual Israel, “the Israel of God,” as St. Paul calls it, the elect family, embracing all those who are connected with the race of Abraham through faith in Jesus and by the practice of the necessary rites. But there is here a category of the faithful which is already introduced in the time of peace, they are those who have suffered death for Jesus. The prophet sees them under the figure of a numberless crowd, of every race, tribe, people, and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb clothed in white robes and carrying palms in their hands, and singing to the glory of God and the Lamb. One of the elders explains to him what this crowd is: These are the people 133


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who have come out of great persecution and they have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and they adore him night and day in his temple, and he who is seated on the throne shall dwell eternally among them. They shall hunger no more, they shall thirst no more, nor shall they suffer any more from the heat. The Lamb shall lead them to pastures and shall guide them to the waters of life, and God himself shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. The seventh seal is opened. They are waiting for the grand spectacle of the consummation of time. But, in the poem, as in reality, this catastrophe always recedes; we believed it was coming, but it has not. In place of the final dénoûement which ought to be the effect of the opening of the seventh seal, there is silence in heaven for half-an-hour, indicating that the first act of the mystery has ended, and that another is about to begin. After the sacramental silence the seven archangels which are before the throne of God, and of whom mention has just been made, enter on the scene. To them are given seven trumpets, which each uses as a signal of other prognostics. John’s gloomy fancy was not satisfied; this time it is in the plagues of Egypt that his anger against the world seeks types for punishments. Some natural phenomena occurring about the year 68, and with which popular opinion is preoccupied, affords him apparent justification for such comparisons. 199

Before the blast of the seven trumpets begins, a silent scene of great effect comes in. An angel advances toward the golden altar which is before the throne, having in his hand a golden censer. Some lumps of incense are turned over the coals of the altar and send up perfumes before the Eternal. The angel then refills his censer with coals from the altar and throws them on the ground. These coals, in striking the surface of the earth, produce thunders and lightnings, voices and earthquakes. The incense, the author himself tells us, are the prayers of saints. The sighs of these pious persons, rising before God, and calling for the destruction of the Roman empire, become burning coals to the profane world, which strikes it, rends it, and consumes it, without it knowing whence the attack comes. The seven angels then prepare to place their trumpets to their lips. At the sound of the first angel’s trumpet a hail mingled with fire and blood falls on the earth. The third of the earth is burned, the third of the trees is burned; all green herbage is burned. In 63 and 68 and 69, there was, in fact, a great terror caused by storms in which men saw something supernatural At the sound of the second angel’s trumpet, a great mountain, incandescent, is thrown into the sea; the third of the sea is turned into blood, the third of all fishes die, the third of ships is destroyed. There is here an allusion to the aspects of the isle of Thera, which the prophet could almost see on the horizon of Patmos, and which resembles an extinct volcano. A new island had appeared in the

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midst of its crater in the year 46 or 47. In its moments of activity one can see in the neighbourhood of Thera flames on the surface of the sea.

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At the blast of the third angel’s trumpet, a great star falls from heaven, burning like a faggot; it extinguishes the third of rivers and streams. Its name is “Wormwood;” the third of the waters are turned into wormwood (that is to say, they become bitter and poisonous), and many men die from this. One is led to suppose that there is here an allusion to a certain borealis whose fall was placed in connection with an infection which might be produced in some reservoir of water by altering its quality. We must recollect that our prophet sees nature through the artless stories and popular conversations of Asia, the most credulous country in the world. Phlegon, of Tralles, half a century later, was to pass his life in compiling some absurdities of this kind. Tacitus, on every page, is prepossessed by them. At the blast of the fourth angel’s trumpet the third of the sun, the third of the moon, and the third of the stars are extinguished, so that the third of the world’s light is darkened. This may be connected with eclipses which terrified people during those years, or the terrible storm of 10th January, 69. These plagues are not over yet. An eagle flying in the zenith uttered three cries of misfortune, and announced to men some unheard-of calamities for the three trumpet blasts which remain.

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At the sound of the fifth trumpet a star (that is to say, an angel) falls from heaven; the key of the bottomless pit (hell) is given to him. The angel opens the bottomless pit; then comes up from it a smoke like that of a great furnace; the sun and the heavens are darkened. From this smoke come forth locusts, who cover the earth like squadrons of cavalry. These locusts, led by their king, the angel of the abyss, who is called in Hebrew Abaddon, and in Greek Apollyon, torment men during five months (a whole summer). It is possible that the plague of the locusts may about this time have been very intense in some provinces; in any case the imitation of the plagues of Egypt is evident here. The bottomless pit is probably the Solfatara of Pouzzuoli (what is termed the Forum of Vulcan) or the ancient crater of the Somma conceived of as mouths of hell. We have said that the crisis in the suburbs of Naples was then very violent. The author of the Apocalypse, who may be allowed to claim a voyage to Rome, and consequently to Pouzzuoli, may have witnessed such phenomena. He connects the clouds of locusts with volcanic exhalations! for the origin of these clouds being obscure, the people would be led to see there the outcome of hell. At this day, moreover, an analogous phenomena is seen yet at Solfatara. After a heavy rain the water pools which are in the warm portions cause some rapid and abundant spawning of locusts and frogs. That this generation, apparently spontaneous, would be considered by the vulgar as emanations from the infernal mouth itself, was much more natural than that the eruptions, being ordinarily the result of heavy rains which covered the country with marshes, should appear to be the immediate cause of the clouds of insects which came forth from these marshes.

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The sound of the sixth trumpet brings another plague: it is the invasion of the Parthians, which everybody believed imminent. A voice comes from the four horns of the altar, which is before God, and orders the release of four angels who are chained on the banks of the Euphrates. The four angels (perhaps the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians), who were ready for the day, the hour, the month, and the year, were placing themselves at the head of terrible cavalry amounting to two hundred millions of men. The description of the horses and horsemen is quite fantastical. The horses, which kill with the tail, are probably an allusion to the Parthian cavalry, who shot arrows while flying. A third of humanity is exterminated. Nevertheless those who survive do not repent. They continue to worship devils, idols of gold and silver, who can neither see, nor hear, or walk. They are obstinate in their homicides, their evil deeds, their fornications, their robberies. 202

They wait for the seventh trumpet to sound; out here, as in the act of the opening of the seals, the Seer appears to hesitate, or rather to place himself in a position to wait the result. He stops himself at the solemn moment. The terrible secret cannot yet be entirely made known. A gigantic angel, his head girt with a rainbow, one foot on the earth, another on the sea, whose voice seven thunders repeat, says certain mysterious words, which a voice from heaven forbids John to write. The gigantic angel then lifts his hands towards heaven and swears by the Eternal that there shall be no more delay, and that at the sound of the seventh trumpet will be accomplished the mystery of God announced by the prophets. The apocalyptic drama therefore is about to finish. To prolong his book, the author gives himself a new prophetic mission. Rejecting an energetic symbol employed before by Ezekiel, John receives a fatidic book from the gigantic angel, and eats it. A voice says to him: “It is necessary that thou shouldst prophecy still before many races, and peoples, and tongues, and kings.” The framework of the vision, which is to be closed by the seventh trumpet, enlarges itself thus, and the author begins a second part, when he will unveil his views on the destinies of the kings and peoples of his time. The first six trumpets, in fact, like the opening of the first six seals, are connected with the facts which had taken place when the author wrote. What follows, on the contrary, is connected for the most part with the future.

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It is upon Jerusalem first that the looks of the Seer are cast. By a plain symbolism, he gives it to be understood that the city should be delivered to the Gentiles; to see that in the opening months of 69, needed no great prophetic effort. The portico and the court of the Gentiles shall even be polluted by the feet of the profane; but the imagination of a Jew so fervent cannot conceive of the temple destroyed, the temple being the only place in the world where God can receive a worship (a worship of which that of heaven is but the reproduction). John cannot imagine the earth without the temple. The temple shall therefore be preserved, and the faithful, marked in the forehead by the sign of Jehovah, can continue to adore him there. The temple shall thus be like a sacred space, a spiritual residence of the whole Church; this will last forty-two months, that is to say, three years

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and a half (a half-schemitta or week of years). This mystic cipher, borrowed from the book of Daniel, will often recur in the sequel. It is the space of time which yet remains for the world to live.

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Jerusalem, during this time, shall be a theatre of a partly religious battle analogous to the struggles which have filled history in all times. God will give a mission to “his two witnesses” who shall prophecy during two hundred and sixty days (that is, three years and a half) clothed in sackcloth. These two prophets are compared to two olive trees and to two candles before the Lord. They shall have the powers of a Moses and an Elias; they will be able to shut heaven and keep back the rain, to turn water into blood, and to smite the earth with whatever plague they will. If any one tries to do them harm, a fire shall come out of their mouths and devour their adversaries. When they shall have finished giving their witness, the beast who comes up from the abyss, the Roman power, (or rather Nero reappearing as Antichrist) shall slay them. Their bodies will remain three days and a half stretched out without burial in the streets of the great city which is symbolically called “Sodom” and “Egypt,” and where their master was crucified. The worldly shall rejoice, and shall felicitate each other, and send each other presents; for these two prophets had become insupportable by their austere preaching and by their temple miracles. But at the end of three days and a half, behold, the spirit of life shall re-enter the two saints: they shall rise to their feet, and a great terror shall seize all those who see them. Soon they mount heavenwards on the clouds, in the sight of their enemies. A fearful earthquake takes place at this moment; the tenth of the city falls; 7,000 men are killed; the others, terrified, are converted. We have already often met this idea that the solemn hour shall be preceded by the appearance of the two witnesses, who are most often believed to be Enoch and Elias in prison. These two friends of God passed, indeed, for not being dead. The first was reported to have uselessly predicted the deluge to his contemporaries, who would not listen to him. He was the type of a Jew preaching repentance among the heathen. Sometimes also, the witnesses seem to resemble Moses, whose death was equally uncertain, and Jeremiah. Our author appears, moreover, to consider the two witnesses two important personages in the church of Jerusalem, two apostles of a great holiness, who shall be slain, then raised again, and shall ascend to heaven like Elias and Jesus. It is not impossible that the vision had for its first portion a retrospective value and is connected with the murder of the two Jameses, especially with the death of James, the Lord’s brother which was considered by many at Jerusalem as a public misfortune, a fatal event and a sign of the times. Perhaps also one of these preachers of repentance is John the Baptist, the other Jesus. As to the persuasion that the end shall not take place till the Jews shall be converted, it was general among the Christians; we find it likewise in St. Paul. The remainder of Israel having come to the true faith, the world has only to end. The seventh angel places his trumpet to his lips. At the sound of that last trumpet great voices cry out: “Behold! the hour has come when our Lord with his Christ shall reign over the world to all eternity.” The four-and-twenty elders fall on their faces and worship. They thank God for having inaugurated his

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kingdom, in spite of the powerless rage of the Gentiles, and proclaim the hour of recompense for the saints, and of extermination for those who pollute the earth. Then the gates of the heavenly temple open: there is perceived in the centre of the temple the bow of the new covenant. This scene is accompanied by earthquakes, thunders and lightnings. All is finished; the believers have received the great revelation which should comfort them. The judgment is at hand; it shall be held in a sacred half-year, equivalent to three years and a half. But we have already seen the author, little careful as to the unity of his work, reserving to himself the means of continuing it, when it should be finished. The book, in fact, is only half of the course; a new series of visions is about to he unrolled before us.

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The first is one of the finest. In the midst of heaven appears a woman (the Church of Israel) clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet, and around her head a crown of twelve stars (the twelve tribes of Israel). She cries as if she was in the throes of labour, pregnant as she is with the ideal Messiah. Before her is set an enormous red dragon, with seven crowned heads and ten horns, and whose tail, sweeping the sky, draws down a third of the stars and casts them on the earth. It is Satan, in the features of the most powerful of his incarnations, the Roman empire, the red pictures the imperial purple. The seven crowned heads are the seven Cæsars who have reigned up till the time the author writes: Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero and Galba; the ten horns are the ten pro-consuls who govern the provinces. The dragon waits for the birth of the child to devour it. The woman brings into the world a son, destined “to rule the nations with a rod of iron”—a feature characteristic of the Messiah. The child (Jesus) is raised to heaven by God. God places him at his side upon his throne. The woman flees into the desert, where God has prepared a retreat for her for 1,260 days. There is here an evident allusion either to the flight of the Church from Jerusalem and to the peace which it should enjoy within the walls of Pella during the three years and a half which remain until the end of the world, or to the residence which the Judaizing Christians and some Apostles had in the province of Asia. The image of the “desert” agrees better with the former explanation than with the latter. Pella, beyond Jordan, was a peaceable country, bordering upon the deserts of Arabia, and where the sound of war scarcely ever came. Then a great battle takes place in heaven. Up till then Satan, the Katigor, the malevolent critic of the creation, had his entrées into the divine court. He profits by them, according to an old habit which he had not lost since the age of the patriarch Job, to hurt pious men and especially the Christians, and to bring upon them frightful troubles. The persecutions of Rome and Ephesus have been his work. Now he will lose this privilege. The archangel Michael (the guardian angel of Israel) with his angels, gives battle to him. Satan is defeated, chased from heaven, cast to the earth as well as his supporters; a song of victory arises, when the celestial beings see precipitated from height to depth the caluminator, the detractor of all good, who does not cease day and night to accuse and to blacken their brethren dwelling on the earth. The church of heaven and that below fraternize over the defeat of Satan. That defeat is due to the blood of the Lamb and also to the courage of the

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martyrs who have carried their sacrifice even up to death. But woe to the profane world The Dragon has descended to his own place, and they can all wait for his despair; for he knows that his days are numbered.

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The first object against which the Dragon cast on the earth turns his rage, is the woman (the church of Israel) who has brought into the world this divine fruit whom God has made to sit at his right hand. But protection from on high covers the woman; there are given to her the two great wings of an eagle, bearing herself on which she goes to the place prepared for her, that is Pella. She is nourished there three years and a half, far from the sight of the Dragon. His fury is now at its height. He vomits out of his mouth after the woman a river to hurt her and stop her, but the earth comes to the help of the woman; it opens and absorbs the river (an allusion to some circumstance of the flight to Pella which is unknown to us). The Dragon, seeing his powerlessness against the woman (the mother-church of Israel) turns his anger against “the rest of her race,” that is, against the churches of the Dispersion who keep the precepts of God and are faithful to the testimony of Jesus. There is here an evident allusion to the persecutions of the last days, and especially to that of the year 64. Then the prophet sees coming up from the sea a beast which in many points resembles the Dragon. It has ten horns, and seven heads and diadems on its ten horns, and on each of its heads a blasphemous name. Its general aspect is that of the leopard; his feet are those of a bear, his mouth that of a lion. The Dragon (Satan) gives him his strength, his throne and his power. One of his heads has received a mortal blow; but the wound has been healed. The whole earth falls in wonder before this powerful animal, and all men begin to worship the Dragon because he has given power to the beast; they also worship the beast, saying: “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against him?” And there is given to him a mouth speaking words full of blasphemy and pride, and the duration of his omnipotence is fixed at forty-two months (three years and a half). Then the beast begins to vomit forth blasphemies against God, against his name and the tabernacle, and against those who dwell in heaven. And it was given to him to make war on the saints and to conquer them, and power was ceded to him over every tribe and tongue and race. And all men worshipped him except those whose name is written from the beginning of the world in the book of life of the Iamb who has been slain: “Let him hear who hath ears, he who makes captive shall be made captive in his turn, he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword. This is the secret of the patience and the faith of the saints.” This symbolism is very clear. Already in the Sibylline poem, composed in the second century B.C., the Roman power is qualified by having “numerous heads.” The allegories drawn from polycephalous beasts were very much in vogue; the principal interpretation of these emblems was to consider each head as signifying a sovereign. The monster of the Apocalypse, is besides, composed by the reunion of the attributes of the four empires of Daniel, and that alone shows it concerns a new empire, absorbing in itself the former empires. The beast which comes forth from the sea is

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therefore the Roman empire, which, to the people of Palestine, appeared to come from beyond the seas. This empire is only a form of Satan (the dragon) or rather, it is Satan himself with all his attributes; he holds his power to cause Satan to be adored, that is, to maintain idolatry, which, to the authors mind, is nothing but the worship of demons. The ten crowned are the ten provinces, whose pro-consuls are real kings; the seven heads are the seven emperors who have succeeded each other from Julius Cæsar to Galba; the blasphemous name written on each head is the title of Σεβαστός, or Augustus, which appeared to the seven Jews to imply an injury to God. The whole world is given up by Satan to this empire, in return for the homage which the said empire procures Satan; the greatness and the pride of Rome, the imperium which it has decreed, its divinity, an object of a special and public worship, are a perpetual blasphemy against God, sole real sovereign of the world. The empire in question is naturally the enemy of the Jews and Jerusalem. He made a fierce war with the saints (the author appears on the whole favourably to the Jewish revolt): he will conquer them; but he has only three and a-half years to last. He with the head wounded to death, but whose wound has been healed, is Nero, lately overthrown, saved miraculously from death, and who was believed to have taken refuge with the Parthians. The adoration of the beast is the worship of “Rome and Augustus,” so much spread over all the province of Asia, and which was made the basis of the religion of the country. The symbol which follows is far from being as transparent to us. Another beast goes forth from the earth; it has two horns like those of a lamb, but it speaks like the Dragon (Satan). It exercises all the power of the first beast in its presence and under its eyes; it fills in its turn the rôle of delegate, and employs all its authority to cause the inhabitants of the earth to worship the first beast, “whose mortal hurt has been cured.” This second beast works great miracles; it goes so far as to bring the fire of heaven upon the earth in presence of numerous spectators; it seduces the world by the prodigies which it executes in the name and for the service of the first beast (of that beast, adds the author, which has received a stroke of the sword and nevertheless lives). And there was given (to the second beast) to put the breath of life into the image of the first beast, so that that image spoke. And it had the power to cause after this that all those who refused to adore the first beast should be put to death. And it established as a law that all, small and great, rich and poor, free and slaves, should bear a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. And it commanded besides that no one should be able to buy or sell if he did not bear the sign of the beast, or his name in all its letters, that is, the number made up by the letters of his name added together like figures. “Here is wisdom!” cries the author. “Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast. It is the number of a man This number is 666.”

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In reality, if we add together the letters of the name of Nero, transcribed in Hebrew ‫קסו‬

‫נררן‬

(Νέρων Καῖσαρ) according to their numerical value we obtain the number 666. Neron Kesar was indeed the name by which the Christians of Asia designated the monster; the coins of Asia bore as a legend: ΝΕΡΟΝ, ΚΑΙΣΑΡ. Those kinds of reckonings were familiar to the Jews, and made a 140


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cabbalistic puzzle which they called ghematria; the Greeks of Asia even were no longer strangers to it; in the second century the Gnostics affected it.

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Thus the Emperor, who was represented by the head wounded to death, but not killed (the author himself tells us), is Nero—Nero who, according to a popular opinion widespread in Asia, still lived. But who is this second beast, this agent of Nero, who has the manners of a pious Jew, and the language of Satan, who is the alter ego of Nero, toils for his profit, and even causes a statue of Nero to speak, persecutes the believing Jews who do not wish to render Nero the same honour as the heathen, nor to bear the mark of affiliation to his party, renders life impossible, and forbids them to do the most necessary things, to buy and sell? Certain peculiarities would apply to a Jewish functionary, such as Tiberius Alexander, devoted to the Romans and held by his compatriots as an apostate. The mere fact of paying the impost to the empire might be called “an adoration of the beast,” tribute in the eyes of the Jews having the character of a religious offering, and implying a worship of the sovereign. The sign or mark of the beast (Νέρων Καῖσαρ) that it would be needful for him to enjoy the common law, must have been either the brevet of a Roman citizenship, without which in some countries life was difficult, and which for the enthusiastic Jews constituted the crime of association with a work of Satan; or the coin with the effigies of Nero, a coin held by the revolted Jews as execrable because of the images and blasphemous inscriptions they found there, so that they hastened, when they were free at Jerusalem, to Substitute an orthodox coin for it. The partisan of the Romans who is in question, by maintaining the money with Nero’s stamp as having a forced course in transactions, would appear to have been held to be wicked. Money with Nero’s stamp alone passed in the market, and those who by religious scruple refused to touch it were put outside the law. The pro-consul of Asia at this time was Fonteius Agrippa, a grave functionary, to whom we cannot look to take us out of our embarrassment. A high priest of Asia, zealous for the worship of Rome and Augustus, and accustomed to vex the Jews and the Christians by the delegation of civil power which was granted him, meets some of the exigencies of the problem. But the features which the second beast presents as a seducer and a wonder-worker do not agree with such a personage. These features lead us to think of a false prophet, an enchanter, notably Simon the Magician, imitator of Christ, become in the legend the flatterer, the parasite and the wizard of Nero, or to Balbillus of Ephesus, or to the Antichrist, of whom Paul speaks obscurely in the second epistle to the Thessalonians It is probable that the personage seen here by the author of the Apocalypse is some impostor of Ephesus, a partisan of Nero, probably an agent of the false Nero or the false Nero himself. The same personage, in fact, is later on called “the False Prophet” in the sense that he is the proclaimer of a false god who is Nero. It is necessary to take account of the importance held at this time by the Magi, the Chaldean and “Mathematicians,” pests of whom Ephesus was the principal home. We recall also that Nero dreamed once of “the kingdom of Jerusalem,” that he was much mixed up with the astrological movements of his age, and that, nearly alone of all the emperors, he was worshipped while he lived, which was the sign of the Antichrist. During his travels in 141


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Greece, especially, the adulation of Achaia and Asia went beyond all conceivable bounds. Lastly, we cannot forget the seriousness which in Asia and the islands of the Archipelago attached to the movement of the false Nero. The circumstance that the second beast came from the earth, and not like the first from the sea, shows that the incident spoken of took place in Asia or Judea, not at Rome. All this is not sufficient to remove the obscurities of this vision, which no doubt would have in the mind of the author the same material precision as the others, but which, connecting itself with a provincial fact which the historians have not mentioned, and which has only an importance in the personal impression of the Seer, remains a puzzle to us. In the midst of the waves of wraths there now appears a grassy islet. In the most violent of the frightful struggles of the last days, it shall be a place of refreshment: it is the church—the little family of Jesus. The prophet sees, resting on Mount Sion, the 144,000 sealed out of the whole world, bearing the name of God written on their foreheads. The Lamb dwells peacefully in the midst of them. Some celestial chords of harps descend on the assembly; the musicians sing a new song, which no ether than the 144,000 elect can repeat. Chastity is the sign of those blessed ones; all are virgin, without stain; their mouth has never uttered a lie: they also follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes, as firstfruits of the earth and the nucleus of the future world.

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After this brief glance at a residence of innocence and peace, the author returns to his terrible visions. Three angels rapidly cross the sky. The first flies in the zenith holding the everlasting Gospel. He proclaims in the face of all nations the new doctrine, and announces the day of judgment. The second angel celebrates in advance the destruction of Rome. “She has fallen, she has fallen, the great Babylon which has made all nations drunk with the wine of her fornication.” The third angel forbids the adoration of the beast and the images of the beast borne by the false prophet. “Those who shall worship the beast or his image, who shall receive the mark of the beast on their forehead or hand, shall drink of the burning wine of God, of the pure wine pressed within the cup of his anger; and they shall be tormented in the fire and brimstone before the angels and before the Lamb; and the smoke of their torments shall mount through the ages of ages, and they shall have no rest day nor night, those who adore the beast or his image, and who receive on them the sign of his name.” It is here that the patience of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, shines forth. To reassure the faithful as to a doubt which sometimes relatively torments them as to the lot of the brethren who die every day, a voice orders the prophet to write: “Blessed from henceforth are the dead who die in the Lord, yea, saith the Spirit, they rest from their labours and their works follow them.” Pictures of the great judgment present themselves to the imagination of the Seer. A white cloud comes from the sky: on this cloud is seated like a Son of Man an angel like the Messiah having on his bead a golden crown and in his hand a sharp sickle. The harvest of the earth is ripe. The Son of Man puts forth his sickle and the earth is reaped. Another angel comes to the vintage; he throws it all into the great winepress of the wrath of God. The winepress is trodden under-foot outside the

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city; the blood which comes forth from it rises up to the horse bridles, over a space of six hundred stadii.

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After these different episodes, a celestial ceremony, analogous to the two mysteries of the opening of the seals and the trumpet unrolls itself before the Seer. Seven angels are charged to quiet the earth with seven different hurts, by which the wrath of God may be exhausted. But first we are reassured as to what concerns the fate of the elect. Upon a vast crystalline sea, mingled with fire, are seen the conquerors of the beast, that is, those who have refused to adore his image and the number of his name, holding in their hands the harps of God, singing the song of Moses after the passage of the Red Sea and the song of the Lamb. The door of the heavenly tabernacle is opened and seven angels are seen coming out of it clothed in linen and their bosoms girt with girdles of gold. One of the four living creatures gives them seven cups of gold full to the brim of the wrath of God. The temple is then filled with the smoke of a divine majesty, and no one can enter till the seven cups are emptied. The first angel empties his cup on the earth and a pernicious ulcer strikes all men who bear the mark of the beast and who adore his image. The second empties his cup upon the sea and it is changed into blood, and all the animals living in its bosom die. The third angel empties his cup upon the rivers and streams and they are changed into blood. The angel of the waters does not complain of the loss of his element. He says: “Thou art just, oh Lord, and art holy, who art and who west, thou shalt do whatsoever is right. They have shed the blood of the saints and the prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; they are worthy of it.” The altar says from its side: “Yea, Lord God Almighty, thy judgments are true and just.” The fourth angel empties his cup upon the sun and the sun burns men like a fire. Men, far from being penitent, blaspheme God, who has power to smite them with such plagues. The fifth angel empties his cup upon the throne of the beast (the city of Rome) and all the kingdom of the beast (the Roman empire) is plunged into darkness. Men gnaw their tongues in pain; in place of repenting they insult the God of heaven.

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The sixth angel empties his cup into the Euphrates, which dries up at once to prepare the way for the king’s coming from the East. Then, from the mouth of the dragon (Satan), from the mouth of the beast (Nero), and from the mouth of the False Prophet (?) proceed three unclean spirits like frogs. These are the spirits of devils, working miracles. These three spirits would find the kings of the whole earth, and assemble them for the battle of the great day of God. (“I come as a thief,” cries the voice of Jesus in the midst of all this. “Blessed is the man who watches and keeps his garments lest he should need to go naked and men should see his shame.”) They gather together, and say, in the place which is called in Hebrew, Armageddon. The general thought of all this symbolism is

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clear enough. We have already formed with the Seer the opinion universally adopted in the province of Asia that Nero, after having escaped from Phaon’s villa, had taken refuge among the Parthians, and that from thence he would return to crush his enemies. It is believed, not without apparent grounds, that the Parthian princes, friends of Nero during his reign, maintained him yet, and it is the fact that the court of the Arsacides was for more than twenty years the refuge of the false Neros. All this seems to the author of the Apocalypse an infernal plan, conceived between Satan, Nero, and this counsellor of Nero, who has already figured under the form of the second beast. These condemned creatures are occupied in forming in the East a league, whose army shall soon pass the Euphrates and crush the Roman empire. As to the special puzzle in the name Armageddon, it is to us undecipherable. The seventh angel empties his vial into the air; a cry comes forth from the altar, “It is done'” And there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake such as has never been seen, while the great city (Jerusalem) is broken into three parts; and the cities of the Decapolis are destroyed, and the great Babylon (Rome) comes up in remembrance before God, who is prepared at length to make her drink of the cup of His wrath. The islands fled, and the mountains disappeared: hail of the weight of a talent fell on men, and men blasphemed because of this plague. 216

The cycle of the preludes is completed, and there remains nothing more but to see the judgment of God unroll itself. The Seer makes us first look on at the judgment of the greatest of all the culprits, the city of Rome. One of the seven angels who has emptied the vials approaches God and says to him: “Come, and I will show thee the judgment of the great whore who sits on the great waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication.” John then saw a woman seated on a beast like that which, coming forth from the sea, figured in its entirety the Roman empire, by one of its heads, Nero. The beast is scarlet, covered with names of blasphemy, it has seven heads and ten horns. The prostitute wears the dress of her profession; clothed in purple, covered with gold, pearls, and precious stones, she holds in her hand a cup full of the abomination and impurities of her fornication. And upon her forehead is written a name, a mystery, “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, and the abomination of the earth.” And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with a great wonder, and the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou wonder? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, they whose name hath not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not and shall come. Here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the Roman sitteth: and they are seven kings, the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come; and when he cometh he must continue a little while. And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition. And the ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings, which have received

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no kingdom as yet; but they receive authority as kings, with the beast for one hour. These have one mind, and they give their power and authority unto the beast. These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings; and they also shall overcome that are with him, called and chosen and faithful. And he saith unto me, the waters which thou sawest where the harlot sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate, and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her bitterly with fire. For God did put in their hearts to do his mind, and to come to one mind, and to give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God should be accomplished; and the woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.

This is quite clear. The harlot is Rome, who has corrupted the world, who has employed her power to propagate and to uphold idolatry, who has persecuted the saints, and who has made the blood of the martyrs to flow in streams. The beast is Nero, who was believed to be dead; who shall return, whose second reign shall be ephemeral and be followed by complete destruction. The seven heads have two meanings; they are the seven hills on which Rome is set; but they are especially the seven emperors: Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero and Galba. The first five are dead. Galba reigns for the moment; but he is old and feeble; he soon falls. The sixth, Nero, who is at once the beast and one of the seven kings, is not really dead; he will reign still, but for a short time; he will be thus the eighth king, and then perish. As to the ten horns; these are the pro-consuls and the imperial legates of the ten principal provinces who are not real kings, but who receive power from the emperor for a limited time, ruling agreeably to one thought, that which is conveyed to them from Rome, and are perfectly submissive to the empire, from whom they derive their power. These partial kings are all as malevolent against the Christians as Nero himself. Representing provincial interests, they will humble Rome, and take from her the right of conducting the empire, which she has enjoyed till then, maltreating her, setting her on fire, and sharing in her ruins. Yet God will not allow the dismemberment of the empire yet; he inspires the generals, commandants of the provincial armies, and all those who should have one by one the fate of the empire in their hands (Vindex, Virginius, Nymphidius, Sabinus, Galba, Macer, Capito, Otho, Vitellius, Mucian, and Vespasian), to act in harmony for the reconstitution of the empire, and instead of establishing it under independent sovereigns, which appears to the Jewish author the most natural position, to do homage for their kingdom to the beast. We see at what point the pamphlet by the head of the churches of Asia enters into the life of a position which, for an imagination so easily struck as that of the Jews, would appear strange; in fact, Nero by his wickedness and folly of a special kind, had thrown reason out of doors. The empire at his death was as if escheat. After the assassination of Caligula, there was still a republican party; besides, the adopted family of Augustus had all his prestige; after Nero ’s assassination, there was no longer a republican party, and the family of Augustus was extinct. The empire fell into the hands of eight or ten generals who held high commands. The author of the Apocalypse, not understanding anything as to the Roman matters, is astonished that ten leaders, who appeared to him as kings, should not be declared independent and form a concert, and has attributed this result to an act of the divine will. It is clear that the Jews of the east, oppressed by the Romans for two years back, 145


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and who feel themselves feebly compact since July 68, because Mucian and Vespasian were absorbed by general affairs, believed that the empire was about to be dissolved, and triumphed for a while. There was in this not such a superficial view as we might believe. Tacitus, beginning the recital of the events of the year on the threshold of which the Apocalypse was written, calls it annum reipublicæ prope supremum. It was to the Jews a great astonishment when they saw the “ten kings” come before the “beast” and put their kingdoms at his feet. They had hoped that the result of the independence of the “ten kings” would be the ruin of Rome; antagonistic to a great central State organisation they thought the pro-consuls and the legates would hate Rome, and judging them according to themselves, they supposed that these powerful leaders might act like the satraps, or indeed like the Hyrcani kings exterminating their enemies. They had relished at least like spiteful provincials the great humiliation which the city had endured, when the right of making the sovereigns passed to the provinces, and Rome received within her walls masters whom she had not first called to power. Such was the relation of the Apocalypse with the singular episode of the false Nero, who just at the moment when the Seer of Patmos wrote filled Asia and the islands of the Archipelago with emotion. Such a coincidence is assured by the most singular facts. Cythnos and Patmos are only forty leagues from each other, and news circulates quickly in the Archipelago. The days of the Christian prophet were those when most was spoken of the impostor, hailed by some with enthusiasm, looked upon with terror by others. We have shown that he established himself at Cythnos in 69, or perhaps in December 68. The centurion Sisenna who touched at Cythnos in the first days of February, coming from the East and bringing to the Pretorians of Rome some pledges of agreement on the part of the army of Syria, had much difficulty in escaping from them. A few days after, Calpurnius Asprenas, who had received from Galba the government of Galatia and Pamphylia, and who was accompanied by two galleys of the fleet of Misena, arrived at Cythnos. Some emissaries of the pretender tried the magical effect of the name of Nero on the commanders of the ships; the knave, affecting a sorrowful air, appealed to those who were formerly “his soldiers.” He begged them at least to conduct him to Syria or Egypt, countries on which he founded his hopes The commanders, whether from cunning or whether they were moved by this, asked for time. Asprenas, having heard of everything, took the impostor by surprise and caused him to be killed. His body was taken to Asia, then brought to Rome, so as to refute those of his partisans who would have wished to raise doubts as to his death. Would it be to this wretch that allusion is made in these words: “The beast thou sawest was and is no more, and it is coming forth from the abyss, and it hastens to its destruction . . . the other being is not yet, and when he shall come, he will remain a little?” It is possible. The monster rising from the abyss would be a lively image of ephemeral power which the sagacious writer saw coming forth from the sea in the horizon of Patmos. One cannot pronounce on this with certainty, for the opinion that Nero was among the Parthians was sufficient to explain everything; but this opinion did not exclude belief in the false Nero of Cythnos, since it could be supposed that his reappearance might be the return of the monster, coinciding with

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the passage of the Euphrates of his Eastern allies. In any case, it appears to us impossible that these lines had been written after the murder of the false Nero by Asprenas. The sight of the impostor’s corpse carried from city to city, the contemplation of his features marked by death, would have spoken very plainly against the apprehensions of the beast’s return, by which the author is possessed. We admit therefore willingly that John, in the isle of Patmos, had cognisance of the events in the isle of Cythnos, and that the effect produced upon him by some strange rumours was the principal cause of the letter he wrote to the Churches of Asia, to convey to them the great news of Nero risen again. 221

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Interpreting the political events to the taste of his hatred, as a fanatic Jew, he predicted that the commandants of the provinces, whom he believed full of rancour against Rome, and up to a certain accord with Nero, should ravage the city and burn it Taking the fact now as accomplished, he sings of the ruin of his enemy. He has for that only to copy the declamations of the ancient prophets against Babylon and Tyre. Israel has marked the history of its curses. To all the great profane States he said: “Blessed is he who shall render thee for the evil which thou hest done us!” A bright angel descends from heaven, and with a strong voice: “Fallen, fallen,” said he, “is the great Babylon, and it is no longer anything but a dwelling for devils, a place for unclean spirits, a refuge for abominable birds, because that all the nations have drunk of the wine of her fornication, with whom the kings of the earth have polluted themselves, and by whom the merchants of the earth have been enriched by her wealth.” Another voice was heard from heaven saying: Come out of her, my people, lest be ye partakers of her crimes and be struck by the plagues which will fall on her. Her abominations have come up even to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Render her what she has done to others; pay her back double for her works; return her the double of the cup she has poured out to others. For as much glory and wealth as she had, so give her as much torment and affliction. I sit as a queen, said she in her heart; and shall never know sorrow. Behold why her chastisements shall come all in the same day: death, desolation, famine and fire; for powerful is the God who judges her. And there shall be seen weeping over her the kings of the earth who have partaken of her uncleanness and her debaucheries. At the sight of the smoke of her burning; “Woe woe!” shall her companions in debauchery exclaim, keeping at a distance, struck with terror. “What! the great, the powerful Babylon! In one hour her judgment has come!” And the merchants of the earth shall bewail her, for no one longer buys their merchandise. Vessels of gold and silver, precious stones, pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, scarlet, thyinewood, ivory, brass, iron, marble, incense, wine, oil, flour of wheat, corn, beasts, sheep, horses, chariots, bodies and souls of men; . . . the merchants of all these things, who were enriched by her, standing at a distance in fear of her torments: “Woe! Woe!” they will say, “What! is that great city which was clothed in scarlet, purple, and fine linen, and adorned with gold, precious stones and pearls destroyed? In one hour have so much riches perished?” And the sailors who came to her and all those who traffic at sea, standing at a distance, at sight of the smoke of her burning, throwing ashes on their heads, give forth cries, weeping and lamentations. “Woe Woe!” they say, “The great city which enriched with its treasures all those who had vessels on the sea, behold in an hour has been changed into a desert.” Rejoice over her ruin, O heaven; rejoice, ye saints, apostles and prophets; for God has judged your cause and has avenged you of her.”

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Then an angel of strong power seized a great stone, like n millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying: Then shall Babylon be thrown down, and there shall be found no longer a trace of her; and the voice of the harp players and the musicians, the sound of the flute and the trumpet shall be heard no more at all in thee, and the light of a lamp shall shine no more at all in thee, and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee, for thy merchants were the princes of the earth, for with thy sorcery were all the nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that have been slain upon the earth.

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The ruin of this chief enemy of the people of God is the object of great festival in heaven. A voice like that of an innumerable multitude makes itself heard and cries “Alleluia! salvation, and glory and power to our God; for his judgments are righteous, and he has judged the great whore who has polluted the earth by her whoredom, and he has revenged the blood of his servants shed by her.” And another chorus replies: “Alleluia! the smoke of her burning shall ascend in the ages of ages.” Then the four-and-twenty elders and the four beasts prostrate themselves and adore God, seated on the throne, saying: “Amen! Alleluia!” A voice comes forth from the throne chanting the inaudible song of the new kingdom, “Praise our God all ye who are his servants and who fear him small and great;” a voice like that of a crowd or like that of great waters, or like the sound of a mighty thunder replied, “Alleluia, it is now that the Lord God Almighty reigns; let us rejoice and free ourselves quickly and render him the glory, for behold the hour of the Lamb’s marriage is come, and the garments of his bride are ready; and it has been given her to be clothed in a robe of fine linen of brightness sweet and pure. “The fine linen,” adds the author, “is the virtuous acts of the saints.” Delivered in fact from the presence of the great whore (Rome) the earth is ripe for the heavenly marriage, for the reign of Messiah. The angel says to the Seer, write: “Blessed are those invited to the festival of the marriage of the Lamb.” Then the heaven opens, and Christ, called there for the first time by his mystic name “The Word of God,” appears as a conqueror, mounted upon a white horse. He comes to trample with pressure the grapes of the wrath of God, to inaugurate for the heathen the reign of the sceptre of iron. His eyes sparkle. His garments are tinged with blood; he wears upon his head many crowns with an inscription in mysterious characters. From his mouth goes forth a sharp sword to strike the Gentiles; upon his thigh is written his title, KING OF KINGS, LORD OF LORDS. The whole army of heaven follows him on white horses and clothed in white linen. They look for his peaceful triumph, but it is not yet time. Although Rome may be destroyed, the Roman world, represented by Nero the Antichrist, is not annihilated. An angel above the sun cries with a strong voice to all the birds which fly in the zenith: “Come, assemble yourselves for the great festival of God, come and eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of tribunes, and the flesh of the strong, and the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of free men and slaves, of great and small.” The prophet then sees the beast (Nero) and the kings of the earth (the provincial generals, almost independent) and their armies banded together to make war upon him who is seated upon the horse. And the beast (Nero) is seized and with him the false prophet who works miracles before him; both are thrown alive into the brimstone pit, which burns eternally. Their armies are 148


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exterminated by the sword which comes forth from the mouth of him who is seated on the horse, and the birds are satiated with the flesh of the dead. The Roman armies, the grand instrument of the power of Satan, are conquered; Nero, the Antichrist, their last head, is shut up in hell; but the dragon, the old serpent, Satan, exists still. We have seen how he was cast from heaven to the earth; the earth must now in turn be delivered from him. An angel descends from heaven holding the key of the abyss and having in his hand a great chain. He seizes the dragon, binds him for a thousand years, precipitates him into the abyss, closes with his key the opening of the gulf and seals it with a seal. For a thousand years the devil remains chained; moral and physical evil, which are his productions, are suspended, not destroyed. Satan cannot any longer seduce the peoples, but he is not destroyed for all eternity.

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A tribunal is established to proclaim those who should take part in the reign of a thousand years. This reign is reserved for the martyrs. The first place there belongs to the souls which have been smitten by the axe to render testimony to Jesus and to the word of God (the Roman martyrs of 64); then come those who have refused to worship the beast and his image, and who have not received his mark upon their foreheads nor in their hands (the confessors of Ephesus, of whom the Seer was one). The elect of this first kingdom are raised from the dead and reign upon the earth with Christ for a thousand years. It is not that the rest of humanity had disappeared, nor even the whole world had become Christian; the millenium is in the centre of the earth like a little paradise. Rome no longer exists; Jerusalem has replaced it in its position as the capital of the world, the faithful constitute there a kingdom of priests; they serve God and Christ, there is no longer a great profane empire of civil power hostile to the church; the nations come to Jerusalem to render homage to the Messiah who maintains them by terror. During these thousand years the dead who have not had part in the first resurrection do not live, they wait. The participants in the first kingdom are therefore the privileged; beyond eternity, in the infinite, they shall have the millenium on the earth with Jesus. No death shall touch them. When the thousand years shall have been accomplished, Satan shall be loosed from his prison for some time; evil shall begin again upon the earth. Satan unchained shall wander anew among the nations, shall drive them from one end of the world to the other by frightful wars; Gog and Magog, mythical personages of the barbarian invasions, lead to battle armies as numerous as the sand of the seashore. The church shall be as if drowned in this deluge. The barbarians shall besiege the camp of the saints, the beloved city, that is to say this Jerusalem, terrestrial still, but entirely holy, where the faithful friends of Jesus are; the fire of heaven shall fall upon them and devour them. Then Satan, who has seduced them, shall be cast into the flaming brimstone furnace, where are already the beast (Nero) and the false prophets (?) and where all the cursed go thenceforth to be tormented night and day through the ages of ages. Creation has now accomplished its task. There remains nothing more but to proceed to the last judgment. A throne shining with light appears, and upon this throne the supreme judge. At sight 149


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of him the heaven and the earth fled away, there was no more place found for them. The dead, great and small, are raised again. Death and Sheol give up their prey; the sea on its side gives up the drowned, which, devoured by it, had not regularly descended into Sheol. All appear before the throne. The great books are opened, and in them there is a rigorous account kept of the actions of every man. They open also another book, “the Book of Life,” wherein are written the names of those fore-ordained. Then all are judged according to their works. Those whose names are not found written in the Book of Life are cast into the furnace of fire. Death and hell are likewise cast into it. Evil being destroyed without recovery, the reign of absolute good begins. The old earth and the old heaven have disappeared; a new earth and a new heaven succeed them, and “there was no more sea.” That earth and that heaven are nothing, nevertheless, but a regeneration of the present earth and heaven, and even Jerusalem, which was the pearl, the gem of the whole earth, this same Jerusalem shall still be the radiant centre of the new. The apostle saw this new Jerusalem ascending out of heaven from God, clothed like a bride prepared for her husband. A great voice comes forth from the throne, “Behold the tabernacle of God will dwell with men.” Men shall be still henceforth his people and he shall be present always in the midst of them, and he shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be any more grief, nor cries, nor sorrows, for all that has passed away. Jehovah himself takes the word to promulgate the law of this eternal world. “It is done, behold, I make all things new, I am the Α and Ω, I am the beginning and the end. To him who is athirst I will give to drink freely of the water of life. The conqueror shall possess all these good things and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. As to the fearful, the unbelieving, the abominable, murderers, fornicators, authors of wicked deeds, idolaters, and liars, their part shall be in the lake of brimstone and fire.” An angel approached the Seer and said to him, “Come I will shew thee the bride of the Lamb,” and he led him in spirit to a high mountain from which he shewed him in detail the ideal Jerusalem, permeated and clothed with the glory of God. His appearance was that of a crystalline jasper Its form is that of a perfect square, of three thousand stadia each side, orientated according to the four winds of heaven, and surrounded by a wall forty-four cubits high, pierced by twelve gates. At each gate watches an angel, and above is written the name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The foundation of the wall has twelve settings of stones; upon each of the foundations shines the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Each of these foundations is ornamented with precious stones, the first of jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth cornelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth aquamarine, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprasus, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth an amethyst. The wall itself is of jasper, the city is of pure gold like transparent glass, the gates are composed of a single large pearl. There was no temple in the city; for God himself and the Lamb serve as a temple. The throne which the prophet at the opening of his revelation has seen in heaven is now in the midst of the city: that is to say, in the centre of a regenerated and harmoniously organized humanity. Upon this throne are seated God and the Lamb. From the base of the throne

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flows the river of life, brilliant and transparent as crystal. On its banks grows the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruits, a kind for each month; these fruits appear reserved for the Israelites; the leaves have medicinal virtues for the healing of the Gentiles. The city has no need of either the sun or the moon to shine on it; for the glory of God lightens it, and its light is the Lamb. The nations walk in its light; the kings of the earth do homage to him with their glory, and its gates are not shut either day or night, so great shall be the wealth of those who shall come to bring their tribute there. Nothing impure, nothing that defiles shall enter there; all those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life shall find a place there. There shall exist no longer any religious division or curse; the pure worship of God and the Lamb shall gather together the whole world. At every moment its servants shall enjoy his presence and his name shall be written in their foreheads. This reign of good shall last through the ages of ages.

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CHAPTER XVII. THE FORTUNE OF THE BOOK The work then closes with this epilogue: And I John am he that heard and flaw these things. And when I heard and saw I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. And he saith unto me, see thou do it not; I am a fellow servant with thee and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them which keep the words of this book; worship God. And he saith unto me, seal not up the words of the prophecy of this book. For the time is at hand. He that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness still: and he that is filthy, let him be made filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still: and he that is holy let him be made holy still.

A distant voice, the voice of Jesus himself, is supposed to reply to these promises and to guarantee them. Behold I come quickly, and my reward is with me to render to each man according as his work is. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life and may enter in by the gates into the city. Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and everyone that loveth and maketh a lie. I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright, the morning star.

Then the voices of heaven and those of earth cross each other and arrive moriendo in a finale of complete sympathy: And the spirit and the bride say come, and he that heareth, let him say, come. And he that is athirst let him come: he that will, let him take the water of life freely. 230

I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city which are written in this book. He which testifieth these things saith, Yea, I come quickly, Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all, Amen.

There is no doubt that, presented under cover of the most venerated name in Christianity, the Apocalypse made upon the Churches of Asia a very deep impression. A crowd of details now become obscure, were clear to his contemporaries. His bold announcement of an approaching convulsion was not all surprising. Discourses, not less formal, attributed to Jesus, were spread abroad every day and accepted. For a year, besides, the events of the world would present a marvellous confirmation of the Book. About the 1st February the death of Galba and the accession of Otho became known in Asia. Then each day brought some apparent indication of the breaking up of the empire; the powerlessness of Otho became known through all the provinces; Vitellius maintaining his title against Rome and the Senate, the two bloody battles of Bedriac, Otho deserted

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in his turn, the accession of Vespasian, the battle in the streets of Rome, the fire in the Capitol lit by the combatants, a fire from which many concluded that the destinies of Rome were drawing to a close; everything would appear astonishingly conformable to the gloomy predictions of the prophet. The deceptions did not begin till the taking of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, and the final termination of the Flavian dynasty But religious faith is never cast down in its hopes; the work besides was obscure and susceptible in many passages of different interpretations. Thus a few years after the publication of the book a different meaning was attached to many chapters from that which the author had intended. The author had announced that the Roman empire would not be reconstituted, and that the temple of Jerusalem would not be destroyed. It was necessary on these two points to find some way of escape. As to the reappearance of Nero, that was not renounced so readily; even under Trajan, a certain class of people obstinately believed that he would return. For a long time they kept up the idea of the number of the beast. A variant was spread abroad even in Western countries for the accommodation of that number to Latin latitudes: Certain copies bear 616 instead of 666. Now 616 answers to the Latin form, Nero Cæsar (the Hebrew noun counting fifty). During the three first centuries the general meaning of the book was preserved at least for some initiated persons. The author of the Sibylline poem, which is dated a little before the year 80, if he had not read the prophesy of Patmos, had heard it spoken of. He sees in it quite an analagous order of ideas; he knows what the sixth vial signifies. For him Nero is the Anti-Messiah: the monster has fled beyond the Euphrates; he will return with thousands of men. The author of the apocalypse of Esdras, (a work dating from certainly the year 96, 97, or 98), notoriously imitates the apocalypse of John, employs his symbolic process, his notations. and his language. We can say as much of the Ascension of Isaiah (a work of the second century), where Nero, the incarnation of Belial, plays a rôle which proves that the author knew the number of the beast. The authors of the Sibylline poems, which date from the time of the Antonines, penetrate likewise the enigmas of the apostolic manifesto, and adopted their utopias, even those which, like the return of Nero, were decidedly smitten with decay. St. Justin and Melito appear to have had a nearly complete knowledge of the book. We can say as much of Commodian who (about 250) mingled with his interpretation some elements from another source, but who does not for an instant doubt that Nero, the Anti-Christ, will be raised from hell to carry on a final conflict against Christianity, and who conceived the destruction of Rome-Babylon exactly as it was conceived of two hundred years before. Lastly, Victorinus of Pettau (died 303) comments upon the Apocalypse with a very correct sentiment. He knew perfectly that Nero raised again was the real Anti-Christ. As to the number of the beast it was lost probably before the beginning of the second century. Ironæus (about 190) deceives himself grossly upon this point, as also upon some others of major importance and opens the series of chimerical commentaries and arbitrary symbolisms. Some subtle peculiarities, such as the meaning of the false prophet and Armageddon, were lost at an early date.

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After the reconciliation of the empire and the church, in the fourth century, the fortune of the Apocalypse was gravely compromised. The Greek and Latin doctors, who no longer separated the future of Christianity from that of the empire, could not admit as inspired a book whose fundamental basis was hatred of Rome and a prediction of the end of its ruler. Nearly every enlightened portion of the Eastern church which had received a Hellenic education, full of dislike to the Millenarian and Judeo—Christian writings—declared the Apocalypse apocryphal. The book had taken in the Greek and Latin New Testament such a strong position that it was impossible to expel it; men had recourse, to disembarrass themselves of the objections which it raised, to feats of exegetical power. Yet the evidence was crushing The Latins, less opposed than the Greek to millenarianism, continued to identify Anti-Christ with Nero. Up to the time of Charlemagne, there was a sort of tradition of that kind. St. Beat of Liebana, who commented on the Apocalypse in 786, affirms, by mixing up, it is true, more than one inconsequence, that the beast of chapters xiii. and xvii., which should reappear at the head of ten kings to destroy the City of Rome, is Nero, the Anti-Christ. For a moment even there are two elements of the principle which, in the nineteenth century, shall lead the critics to the true computation of the Emperors and the fixing of the date of the book. It was not till about the twelfth century, when the Middle Ages threw themselves into the path of a scholastic rationalism, little concerned with the tradition of the Fathers, that the meaning of the vision of John was at all compromised. Joachim of Flores may be considered as the first who carried the Apocalypse boldly into the field of boundless imagination, and sought, under the bizarre figures of a circumstantial writing, which limited its horizon to three and a-half years, the secret of the entire future of humanity.

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The chimerical commentaries to which this false idea gave rise have thrown on the book an unjust discredit. The Apocalypse has taken again in our days, thanks to a sounder exegesis, the high place which belongs to it in the sacred writings. The Apocalypse is, in a sense, the seal of prophecy, the last word of Israel. When we read in the ancient prophets, in Joel, for example, the description of “the day of Jehovah,” that is of the grand assize which the supreme judge of human things holds from time to time, to restore the order constantly disturbed by men, we find there the germ of the Patmos vision. Every historic revolution or convulsion became, to the fancy of the Jew, determined to pass from the immortality of the soul and to establish the reign of justice on the earth, a providential force, the prelude of a judgment much more solemn and final still. At each event a prophet rose, crying: “Sound, sound the trumpet in Zion; for the day of Jehovah comes; it is near.” The Apocalypse is the sequel and the crown of this strange literature, which is the proper glory of Israel. Its author is the last great prophet: he Is only inferior to his predecessors because he imitates them; it is the same soul, the same mind The Apocalypse presents the nearly unique phenomena of a pastiche of genius, of an original cento. If we except two or three inventions peculiar to the author and of marvellous beauty, the entire poem is made up of features borrowed from the earlier prophetic and apocalyptic literature, especially from Ezekiel, from the author of the books of Daniel and the two Isaiahs. The Christian Seer is the true disciple of these great men; he knows their 154


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writings by heart, and draws from them the last results. He is the brother (less the serenity and harmony) of that marvellous poet of the time of the captivity of that second Isaiah, whose luminous soul appears as if impregnated (six hundred years in advance) with all the dew and all the perfumes of the future. Like the larger number of people who possess a brilliant past literature, Israel lived in pictures consecrated by its old and wonderful literature. They were not composed of much else than scraps from the ancient texts; Christian poetry, for example, knew no other literary process. But when passion is sincere the form, even the most artificial, takes from the beauty. The Words of a Believer are in regard to the Apocalypse what the Apocalypse is in regard to the ancient prophets, and yet the Words of a Believer is a book of real effect; one never can re-read it without lively emotion.

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The dogmas of the time present, like the style, some-thing artificial; but they correspond to a deep feeling. The process of theological elaboration consists in a bold transposition, applying to the reign of Messiah and to Jesus every phrase of the ancient writings which appears susceptible of a vague relation with an obscure ideal. As the exegesis which presides over these Messianic combinations was thoroughly mediocre, the singular formations of which we speak imply often grave contradictions. That is seen especially in the passages of the Apocalypse concerning Gog and Magog, if we compare these with the parallel passages in Ezekiel. According to Ezekiel, Gog, king of Magog, shall come “in the end of the time” when the people of Israel shall have returned from the captivity and are established in Palestine, to make a war of extermination with them. Already, about the time of the Greek translators of the Bible and of the composition of the book of Daniel, the expression which marks simply in the classical Hebrew an unfixed future signifies “at the end of the time,” and is no longer applied except to the time of the Messiah. The author of the Apocalypse is led from this to connect chapters xxxviii. and xxxix. of Ezekiel with the Messianic times, and to look on Gog and Magog as the representatives of the barbarian and heathen world which shall survive the ruin of Rome, and shall co-exist with the millennial reign of Christ and his saints. This method of creation by the outer way, if I may say so, this fashion of combining by means of an exegesis of appropriation—phrases taken from here and there, and of constructing a new theology by this arbitrary play—is found again in the Apocalypse in everything that regards the mystery of the end of time. The theory of the Apocalypse on this point is distinguished by essential features from that which we find in St. Paul, and from that which the synoptical gospels place in the mouth of Jesus. St. Paul seems, it is true, sometimes to believe in the reign of Christ during the time which should be before the last end of all things, but he never becomes so precise as our author. In fact, according to the Apocalypse, the coming of the future reign of Christ is very near—it ought to follow closely on the destruction of the Roman empire The martyrs shall alone be raised again in this first resurrection: the rest of the dead shall not rise yet. Such absurdities were the result of

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the slow and incoherent manner in which Israel formed its ideas on the other life. We may say that the Jews have only been led to the dogma of immortality by the necessity of such a dogma to give a meaning to martyrdom. In the second book of the Maccabees, the seven young martyrs and their mother are strong in the belief that they shall rise again, while Antiochus shall not rise. It is in connection with these legendary heroes that we find in Jewish literature the first clear affirmations of an eternal life, and in particular this fine formula: “Those who die for God live in God’s sight.” We even see a certain tendency leaning towards the creation for them of a sort of special outer tomb, and for ranging themselves near the throne of God, “from then to the present,” without awaiting the resurrection. Tacitus, on his side, made the remark that the Jews did not claim immortality but for the souls of those who had died in the combats or in the punishments. The reign of Christ with his martyrs takes place on the earth, at Jerusalem, doubtless in the midst of nations not converted, but bound in respect towards the saints. It will last a thousand years. After these thousand years there shall be a new reign of Satan over the barbarous nations, whom the Church would not have converted; he shall make horrible wars, and be on the point of crushing the Church itself. God will exterminate them, and then there will come “the second resurrection,” that is the general, and the last judgment, which shall be followed by the end of the world. It is the doctrine which has been styled “millenarianism,” a doctrine spread soon in the first three centuries, which never could become dormant in the Church, but which has re-appeared constantly at different periods in her history, and is supported by texts much more ancient and formal than those which support many other dogmas universally accepted. It was the result of a materialistic exegesis, ruled by the need of finding true both the phrases in which the kingdom of God was presented as being to endure “through the age of ages,” and those in which, to express the indefinite length of the Messianic reign, it was said that it should last “a thousand years.” According to the rule of the interpreters, who are called harmonists, they put end to end in a clumsy manner the data which can be made to coincide quite properly. They were guided in the choice of the number thousand by a combination of passages from Psalms, whence there appears to result “that a day of God equals a thousand years.” Among the Jews is also found the thought that the reign of Messiah shall not be the blessed eternity, but an era of felicity during the ages which precede the end of the world. Many rabbis hold, like the author of the Apocalypse, the duration of this reign of a thousand years. The author of the epistle attributed to Barnabas declares that, just as the creation took place in six days, in the same way the accomplishment of the destiny of the world shall be completed in six thousand years (a day for God being equivalent to a thousand years), and that after-wards, even as God rested on the seventh day, so also, “when His son shall come, and he shall abolish the age of iniquity and judge the impious and change the sun and moon and all the stars, he shall rest again on the seventh day.” This is equivalent to saying he shall reign a thousand years, the reign of the Messiah being always compared to the Sabbath, which ends by rest the gradual agitations of the development of the universe. The idea of the eternity of individual life is so little familiar to the Jews that the era

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of future rewards is, according to them, confined to a number of years, doubtless considerable, but yet coming to an end.

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The Persian aspect of these dreams can be perceived at the first glance. Millenarianism, and, if it can be so expressed, apocalypticism have flourished in Iran for a very long time back. At the bottom of the Zoroastrian ideas there is a tendency to number the ages of the world, to reckon the periods of universal life by hazars, that is by millions of years, to conceive of a reign of salvation which shall be the final crowning of the trials of humanity. These ideas, joined to the statements as to the future which fill the ancient Hebrew prophets, became the soul of Jewish theology in the ages which preceded our era. The Apocalypses especially were penetrated by this; the revelations attributed to Daniel, Enoch, and Moses are nearly all from Persian books, from their style, doctrine, and images. Is that to say that the authors of these extraordinary books had read the Zend writings, such as existed in their time? Not at all. These borrowings were indirect: they arose from what the Jewish fancy had tinged with the colours of Iran. It was the same with the apocalypse of John. The author of this apocalypse had no direct connection with Persia any more than any other Christian; the foreign data which he brought into his book were already incorporated with the traditional midraschim; our Seer takes them film the atmosphere in which he lived. The fact is that since Hoschedar and Hoschedar-mah, the two prophets who preceded Sosiosch, up to the plagues which smote the world on the eve of the great days, up to the wars of the kings with each other, which shall be signs of the last struggle, all the elements on the apocalyptic stage are found again in the Parsi theory as to the end of the world. The seven heavens, the seven angels, the seven Spirits of God, who recur constantly in the vision of Patmos, transport us into full Parsiism, and even beyond that. The hieratic and apostolic meaning of the number seven appears indeed to have its origin in the Babylonian doctrine of the seven planets ruling the fate of men and of empires. Some resemblances more striking still are to he noted in the mystery of the seven seals. Just as, according to the Assyrian mythology, each of the seven tables of fate was dedicated to one of the planets; in the same way the seven seals have singular relations to the seven planets, with the days of the week, and with the colours which the Babylonians associated with the planets. The white horse, indeed, answers to the Moon, the red horse to Mars, the black horse to Mercury, and the yellow horse to Jupiter. The defects of such a system are manifest, and it was attempted in vain to hide them. Some hard and glaring colours, a complete absence of all plastic sentiment, harmony sacrificed to symbolism, something crude, bitter, and inorganic, made the Apocalypse the perfect antipodes of the Greek chef d’œuvre, whose type is the living beauty of the body of the man or woman. A sort of materialism lessens the most ideal conceptions of the author. He piles up gold: he has, like the Orientals, an immoderate taste for precious stones. His heavenly Jerusalem is awkward, puerile, impossible, in contradiction to all the good rules of architecture, which are those of reason. He makes it brilliant to the eyes, and he does not dream of having it sculptured by a Phidias. God, likewise, is for him “a smargdine vision,” a sort of huge diamond, flashing a thousand fires on a 157


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throne. Assuredly Jupiter Olympus was a symbol much superior to that. The error which too often has led away Christian art towards rich decoration finds its root in the Apocalypse. A temple of Jesuits, in gold or in lapis-lazuli, is more beautiful than the Parthenon, if we were to admit this idea, that the liturgical use of a precious article glorifies God.

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A most troublesome feature was this gloomy hatred of the profane world, which is common to our author and to all the makers of apocalypses, especially the author of the book of Enoch. His harshness, his passionate and unjust judgments on Roman society, shock us, and justify to a certain extent those who summed up the new doctrine as odium humani generis. The virtuous poor man is always a little inclined to look on the world which he does not know as more wicked than that world is in reality. The crimes of the rich and of people at court appear to him peculiarly gross That sort of virtuous anger, which certain barbarians, such as the Vandals, showed four hundred years later against civilisation, the Jews of the prophetic and apocalyptic school had in a very high degree. They feel among them a remainder of the old spirits of the nomads, whose ideal is patriarchal life, a profound aversion to the great cities regarded as the focus of corruption, and an ardent jealousy against the powerful States, founded on a military principle of which they are incapable, and which they do not admit. This is what has made the Apocalypse a dangerous book in some points of view. It is the book par excellence of the proud Jew. According to its author, the distinction between Jews and heathens will continue even in the kingdom of God. While the twelve tribes eat of the fruit of the tree of life, the Gentiles must be content with a medicinal concoction of its leaves. The author looks on the Gentiles, even believing in Jesus, even martyrs of Jesus, as strangers introduced into the family of Israel, as plebeians admitted by grace to connect themselves with an aristocracy. His Messiah is essentially the Jewish Messiah; Jesus is for him beyond everything the good David, a product of the Church of Israel, a member of the holy family which God had chosen; it is the Church of Israel which works the saving work by this elect coming forth from its bosom. Every practice capable of establishing a bond between the pure race and the heathen (eating ordinary food, the practice of marriage in the ordinary conditions) appeared to him an abomination. The heathen, as a whole, are, in his eyes, wretches, polluted by all crimes, and who can only be governed by terror. The real world is the kingdom of devils. The disciples of Paul are disciples of Balsam and Jezebel. Paul himself has no place among “the twelve apostles of the Lamb,” the only foundation of God’s Church; and the Church of Ephesus, the creation of Paul, is praised for having tried those who say they are apostles without being so, and to have found out that they are only liars. All this is very far from the Gospel of Jesus. The author is too passionate, he sees everything through the veil of a sanguine apoplexy, or the gleam of a fire. What was most lugubrious at Paris on the 25th May, 1871, was not the flames, it was the general colour of the city, when seen from an elevated position: a yellow and false tone, a sort of flat paleness. Such is the light with which our author colours his vision. Nothing resembles it less than the pure sun of Galilee. We feel from

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the present time that the apocalyptic species, no more than the species of the epistles, shall not be of the literary form which shall convert the world. There are these little collections of sentences and parables which are disdained by exact traditionists, that memory-help by which the less educated and the least well instructed set forth for their own personal use what they know of the acts and words of Jesus, who are destined to be the reading—the charm of the feature. The simple framework of the anecdotal life of Jesus has manifestly done more to enchant the world than the painful piling up of apocalypses and the touching exhortations in the letters of apostles. So true is that Jesus, Jesus only, had in the mysterious work of the Christian growth, always the great, the triumphant, and decisive part. Each book, each Christian institution is valued in proportion to what it contains of Jesus. The synoptical gospels, where Jesus is alone, and of which it may be said he is the true author, are par excellence the Christian book, the eternal book.

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Yet the Apocalypse occupies in the sacred canon a legitimate place in many points of view. A book of menaces and terror, it gives a body to the gloomy antithesis which the Christian conscience, moved by a deep aesthetic, would oppose to Jesus. If the Gospel is the book of Jesus, the Apocalypse is the book of Nero. Thanks to the Apocalypse, Nero has for Christianity the importance of a second founder. His odious face has been inseparable from that of Jesus. Increasing century by century, the author coming forth from the nightmare of the year 64, has become the bugbear of the Christian conscience, the gloomy giant of the world’s night. A folio book of 500 pages has been composed on its birth and education, its vices, riches, caskets, perfumes, women, doctrines, miracles, and festivals. Antichrist has ceased to frighten us, and the book of Malvenda has no longer many readers. We know that the end of the world is not so near as the illummati of the first century believed it, and that that end shall not be a sudden catastrophe. It shall take place calmly, in millions of years, when our system shall not repair its losses sufficiently, and when the earth shall have used up the treasure of the old sun warehoused like a provision for the journey in its depths. Before this exhaustion of planetary capital, will humanity attain to perfect knowledge—which is nothing else than the power of mastering the forces of the world, or even the earth—an experience wanting among so many millions of others; will it freeze before the problem which shall kill death has been solved? We know not. But, with the Seer of Patmos, beyond changing alternatives, we shall discover the ideal, and we affirm that this ideal shall be realised some day. Across the clouds of a universe in their state of embryo, we perceive the laws of the progress of life, the consciousness of going on increasing unceasingly, and the possibility of a condition in which all shall be in a definitive being (God) what the innumerable boughs of the tree are in the tree, what the myriads of cells of the living being are in the living being—in a condition, I say, in which the life of everything shall be complete, and in which the persons who have been revived in the life of God, shall see, shall enjoy in Him, singing in Him an eternal Alleluia. Whatever may be the form under which each of us may conceive of this future event of the absolute, the Apocalypse cannot fail to please us. It expresses symbolically that fundamental thought that God is, but especially that He shall be. The 159


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features are heavy there, and the contour paltry; it is the thick pencil of a child tracing, with a tool it cannot use, the design of a city it has never seen. His naïve picture of the city of God, a grand toy of gold and pearls, remains no less an element of our dreams. Paul has better said no doubt when he sums up the final goal of the universe in these words: “That God may be all in all.” But for a long time humanity yet shall have need of a God to dwell with them, have compassion on their trials, take account of their struggles, and “wipe away all tears from their eyes.” 244

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CHAPTER XVIII. THE ACCESSION OF THE FLAVII. The spectacle of the world, as we have already said, only answered too well to the dreams of the Seer of Patmos. The government of the military Coups d’Etat, bore its fruits. Politics were in the camps, and the empire was at auction. There had been some assemblies during Nero’s time, where there could be seen gathered together seven future emperors and the father of an eighth. The real republican, Virginius, who wished the empire for the senate and the people, was only a Utopian. Galba, an old honest general, who refused to lend himself to these military orgies, was soon destroyed. The soldiers for a moment had the idea of killing all the senators, to make the government easy. Roman unity appeared on the point of being broken up. It was not only among the Christians that such a tragical situation inspired sinister predictions. Men spoke of a child with three heads, born at Syracuse in 68, and in whom people saw the symbol of the three emperors who ruled for less than a year, and who existed together all three for many hours.

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Some days after the prophet of Asia had written his strange work, Galba was killed, and Otho proclaimed (15th January, 69). That was like a resurrection of Nero. Grave, economic, and disagreeable, Galba was in everything the contrary of him whom he replaced. If he had succeeded in making good his adoption of Piso, he would have been a sort of Nerva, and the series of the philosophic emperors would have begun thirty years sooner; but the detestable school of Nero prevailed. Otho resembled that monster; the soldiers and all those who had loved Nero made him their idol. They had seen him by the side of the deceased emperor, playing the part of first of his minions, and rivalling him by his affectation of ostentatious debaucheries, his vices and mad prodigalities. The lower classes gave him from the first day the name of Nero, and it appears as if he took it himself in some letters. He allowed them in any case to set up statues to the Beast; he re-established the Neronian coterie in the great places, and announced loudly as before to continue the principles inaugurated by the last reign. The first act he signed was to secure the completion of the Golden House. What is sadder is that the political lowering which had taken place did not give security. The ignoble Vitellius had been proclaimed some days before Otho (2nd January, 69) in Germany. He did not desist. A horrible civil war, such as had not been since that between Augustus and Antony, appeared inevitable. The public imagination was much excited; people only saw frightful prognostics; the crimes of the soldiery spread terror everywhere. Never had such a year been seen; the world sweated blood. The first battle of Bedriac, which left the empire to Vitellius alone, (about 15th April) cost the lives of 80,000 men. The disbanded legionaries pillaged the country, and fought among themselves. The people mixed themselves up with them; one would have imagined it was the breaking up of society. At the same time the astrologers and the charlatans of all sorts swarmed;

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the city of Rome was theirs; reason appeared confounded in presence of a deluge of crimes and follies, which defied all philosophy. Certain words of Jesus which the Christians repeated quite low, kept them in a sort of continual fever; the fate of Jerusalem was especially with them the object of an ardent pre-occupation.

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The East, indeed, was not less troubled than the West. We have seen that at the opening of the month of June of the year 68, the military operations of the Romans against Jerusalem were suspended. Anarchy and fanaticism did not diminish for that matter among the Jews. The violent acts of John of Gischala and some zealots rose to their height, John’s authority existed chiefly over a corps of Galileans who committed all imaginable excesses. The Jerusalemites often rose and forced John with his brigands to take refuge in the temple; but they feared him so much that, to preserve themselves from him, they believed themselves obliged to oppose a rival to him. Simon, son of Gioras, originally from Gerasa, who was distinguished from the commencement of the war, had filled Idumea with his acts of brigandage. Already he had had to struggle with the zealots, and twice he had appeared threateningly at the gates of Jerusalem. He came back there for the third time when the people called him, believing thus to put themselves under the shelter of a moan offensive to John. This new master entered Jerusalem in the month of March, of the year 69. John of Gischala remained in possession of the temple. The two chiefs sought to surpass each other in ferocity. The Jew is cruel, when he is master. The brother of the Carthaginians at the last hour, shows himself in his natural state. This people has always included an admirable minority; there lies its greatness; but never has there been seen in a group of men so much jealousy, so much ardour in the extermination of each other. Arrived at a certain degree of exasperation, the Jew is capable of everything, even against his religion. The history of Israel shows us people enraged against each other. We can say of this race the good we wish and the evil which we wish, without ceasing to be right; for, let us repeat it, the good Jew is an excellent being, and the bad Jew a detestable being. It is this that explains the possibility of this phenomenon, apparently inconceivable, that the gospel idyll and the horrors recounted by Josephus have been realities in the same land, among the same people, about the same time. Vespasian, during this time, remained inactive m Cesarea. His son Titus had succeeded in engaging him in a network of intrigues, cunningly combined. Under Galba, Titus had hoped to see himself adopted by the old emperor. After the death of Galba, he saw that he could not arrive at the supreme power except as successor to his father. With the art of the most consummate policy he knew how to turn the chances in favour of a grave, honest general, without distinction, without personal ambition, who did nearly nothing to aid his own fortune. All the East contributed to it. Mucian and the legions of Syria impatiently endured the sight of the legions of the West disposing alone of the empire; they pretended to make him emperor in their turn. Now Mucian, a sort of sceptic more zealous in disposing of the power than in exercising it, did not wish the purple for himself. In spite of his old age, his middle-class birth, his second-rate intelligence, Vespasian found himself designated thus. Titus, who was twenty-eight years of age, raised besides by his merits, his 162


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address, his activity, what the talent of his father had obscured. After Otho’s death, the legions of the east took only with regret the oath to Vitellius. The insolence of the soldiers of Germany revolted them. They had made them believe that Vitellius wished to send his favourite legions into Syria, and to transport over the borders of the Rhine the legions of Syria, beloved in this country, and to which many alliances had attached them.

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Nero, besides, although dead, continued to hold the die of human things, and the fable of his resurrection was not without some truth, as a metaphor. His party survived him. Vitellius, after Otho, placed himself to the great joy of the little people as a declared admirer, imitator, and avenger of Nero. He protested that, in his opinion, Nero had given the model of the best government of the republic. He made him magnificent funeral obsequies, ordered some pieces of his music to be played, and at the first note, rose transported, to give the signal for applause. Reasonable and honest people, fatigued by these miserable parodies of an abhorred reign, wished for a strong reaction against Nero, against his men, against his buildings; they demanded especially the rehabilitation of the noble victims of tyranny. They knew that the Flavii conscientiously played this rôle. In fine, the indigenous princes of Syria pronounced strongly for a chief in whom they saw a protector against the fanaticism of the revolted Jews. Agrippa II. and Berenice, his sister, were body and soul with the two Roman generals. Berenice, although forty years of age, gained Titus by some secrets against which an ambitious young man, a worker, a stranger to the great world, only preoccupied up till now with his own advancement, could not protect himself. She succeeded also with the old Vespasian by her amiabilities and her presents. The two roturier leaders, up till then poor and simple, were seduced by the aristocratic charm of a woman wonderfully beautiful, and by the exterior of a brilliant world they knew nothing of. The passion which Titus conceived for Berenice did not in any wise injure his concerns; everything indicates, on the contrary, that he found in this woman, accomplished in the intrigues of the east, one of the most useful agents. Thanks to her the little kings of Emesa, Sophena, and Comagena, all relatives or allies of the Herods, and more or less converted to Judaism, were gained over by this complot. The Jewish renegade, Tiberius Alexander, prefect of Egypt, entered fully into it. The Parthians even declared themselves ready to uphold Titus. What was most extraordinary in this is that the moderate Jews, such as Josephus, adhered to him also, and wished with all their strength to apply to the Roman general the ideas by which they were prepossessed. We have seen that the Jewish surroundings of Nero had succeeded in persuading him that, dethroned at Rome, he would find at Jerusalem a new kingdom, which would make him the greatest potentate on the earth. Josephus pretends that from the year 67, at the time when he was made prisoner by the Romans, he predicted to Vespasian the future which awaited him according to certain texts in his sacred scriptures. By dint of repeating their prophecies, the Jews had made a great number of people believe, even some who were not connected with their sect, that the East would gain, and that the master of the world would soon come from Judea. Already Virgil had lulled to sleep the vague sadnesses of his melancholy imagination by applying to his time a Cumæum 163


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carmen, which appears to have had some relation to the oracles of the second Isaiah. The Magi, the Chaldeans, and astrologers also talked of the belief in a star of the East; the messenger of a king of the Jews reserved for high destinies. The Christians took these chimeras quite seriously. Prophecy had a double meaning like all oracles; it appeared sufficiently justified if the heads of the legions of Syria, established some leagues from Jerusalem, obtained the empire in Syriain consequence of Assyrian movements. Vespasian and Titus, surrounded by Jews, lent an ear to this discourse, and were pleased by it. While exercising their military talent against the fanatics of Jerusalem, the two generals had a considerable liking for Judaism, studied it, and shewed a deference towards the Jewish books. Josephus had penetrated some time before into their familiar society, especially that of Titus, by his gentle, facile, and insinuating character. He boasted to them of his law, related to them old Biblical stories which he often put in Greek, and spoke mysteriously of the prophecies. Some other Jews entered into the same sentiments, and made Vespasian accept a sort of Messianic position. Some miracles were joined to this; there is mention of cures very analogous to those described in the Gospels wrought by this Christ of a new kind. The heathen priests of Phenicia did not wish to remain behind in this flattering concourse. The oracle of Paphos and the oracle of Carmel maintained that they had announced the advancement of the fortunes of the Flavii. The consequences of all this developed themselves at a later date. Having had the help of Syria, the Flavian emperors were much more open than the disdainful Cæsars to Syrian ideas. Christianity penetrated to the very heart of this family; some adherents were reckoned there, and thanks to this it shall enter on a phase of its destinies quite new. Toward the end of the Spring of 69 Vespasian appeared to wish to leave the military idleness in which policy held him. On the 29th of April he took the field and appeared with his cavalry before Jerusalem. During this time Cerealis, one of his lieutenants, burned Hebron. All Judea submitted to the Romans except Jerusalem and the three castles of Masada, Herodium, and Machero, occupied by the brigands. These four places needed arduous sieges. Vespasian and Titus hesitated to enter on that work in the precarious state in which they then were, on the eve of a new civil war in which they would have need of all their forces. Thus was prolonged for a year the revolution, which, for three years back, had held Jerusalem in the condition of the most extraordinary crisis of which history has preserved the recollection. On the 1st July, Tiberius Alexander proclaimed Vespasian at Alexandria, and caused the oath to be taken to him; on the 3rd, the army of Judea saluted him as Augustus at Cesarea; Mucian, at Antioch, caused him to be recognised by the Syrian legions, and on the 15th all the East submitted to him. A congress was held at Beyrout, at which it was decided that Mucian should march upon Italy, while Titus continued the war against the Jews, and that Vespasian should await the issue of events at Alexandria. After a bloody civil war (the third which had taken place within eighteen months) power remained definitively with the Flavii. A middle-class dynasty, industrious in business, moderate, not having the energy of the Cæsar race, but exempt also from their errors, was thus substituted for the inheritors of the title erected by Augustus. The prodigals and the fools had so abused their privilege of spoiled children, that people hailed with gladness the accession of a brave

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man, without distinction, who had slowly risen by merit, in spite of his little absurdities, his vulgar air, and lack of habit. The fact is that the new dynasty conducted business for ten years with sense and judgment, saved the Roman unity, and gave a complete contradiction to the predictions of Jews and Christians who already saw in their dreams the empire dismantled and Rome destroyed. The fire at the Capitol on 19th December, the terrible massacre which took place in Rome the next day, would for the moment make them believe that the great day was drawing nigh. But the undisputed establishment of Vespasian (at the beginning of 20th December) made them feel that they must live still, and forced them to find some shift for adjourning their hopes to a more distant future. The wise Vespasian, much lees shaken than those who fought with him to conquer the empire, spent his time at Alexandria, with Tiberius Alexander. He only revisited Rome in the month of July of the year 70, a little before the total destruction of Jerusalem. Titus, instead of pushing the war in Judea, had followed his father into Egypt; he remained beside him until the early days of March.

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The struggles in Jerusalem only increased. Fanatical movements are far from excluding from them those who are actors in their hatred, jealousy, and defiance; banded together, men who are very self-opinionated and passionate usually suspect each other, and there is in that a power; for this reciprocal suspicion creates a terror among them, binds them together as by a chain of iron, and prevents defection and moments of weakness. It is policy, artificial and without conviction, which proceeds with the appearances of concord and civility. Interest creates the coterie; while principles create division, and inspire temptation to decimate, expel and kill their enemies. Those who judge human things by middle-class conceptions believe that the revolution is lost when the revolutionaries “eat each other.” There is thereon the contrary, a proof that revolution has all its energy, and that an impersonal ardour guides it. We never see this more clearly than in that terrible drama of Jerusalem. The actors appear to have among them a covenant of death. Like these infernal rondos, in which, as the superstition of Middle Ages taught, men saw Satan forming the chain to draw to a fancied whirlpool files of men dancing and holding each other by the hand; so revolution permits no one to escape from the dance it leads. Terror is behind the conspirators; in turn exalting some, and then they, exalted by others, go on to the abyss; nothing can keep them back, for behind everyone is a hidden sword, which at the moment they wish to stop, compels them to march forward. Simon, son of Gioras, commanded in the city; John of Gischala with his assassins was master of the temple. A third party was formed, under the conduct of Eleazar, son of Simon, of priestly race, who detached a party of the zealots from John of Gischala and established himself in the inner enceinte of the temple, living on the consecrated provisions they found there, and of those which still continued to be brought to the priests, as first fruits. These three parties were at continual warfare with each other; they walked over heaps of corpses; they no longer buried the dead. Immense provisions of barley had been made, and this would permit them to exist for years. John and Simon burned these in order to keep each other from them. The situation of the inhabitants was fearful;

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peaceable people made prayers that order might be re-established by the Romans, but all the exits were guarded by the terrorists, they could not escape. Yet, strange indeed! from the end of the world people still came to the temple. John and Eleazar received the proselytes and profited by their offerings. Often the pious pilgrims were slain in the midst of their sacrifices, with the priests who read the liturgy for them, by the arrows and stones from John’s machines. The rebels worked with activity beyond the Euphrates, to obtain help either from the Jews of these countries or from the king of the Parthians. They believed that all the Jews of the East would take up arms. The civil wars of the Romans inspired them with foolish hopes; like the Christians, they believed that the empire was about to be dismembered. Jesus, son of Hanan, had traversed the city, calling for the four winds of heaven to destroy it; on the eve of their extermination the fanatics proclaimed Jerusalem the capital of the world, in the same manner as we have seen Paris invested, hungered, and maintaining all the time that the world was in it, working through it, and suffering with it. The oddest thing in all this was that they were not altogether wrong. The enthusiasts of Jerusalem, who declared that Jerusalem was eternal, while it was burning, were much nearer the truth than the people who saw in them nothing but assassins. They deceived themselves on the military question, but not on the distant religious result. These disturbed days, indeed, well marked the moment in which Jerusalem became the spiritual capital of the world. The Apocalypse, the burning expression of love which it inspires, has made sacred the image of “the beloved city.” Ah! who is able to say beforehand what shall be in the future, holy or wicked, foolish or wise? A sudden change in the course of a vessel makes a progress a retreat, and turns a contrary into a favourable wind. In view of these revolutions, accompanied by thunders and earthquakes, let us place ourselves among the blessed, who sing “Praise ye God,” or among the four creatures, spirits of the universe, who after each act of the heavenly tragedy, say AMEN.

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CHAPTER XIX. DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. At last the circle of fire had wound itself around the unfortunate city, never more to relax its hold. As soon as the season permitted, Titus left Alexandria, reached Cesarea, and from that city, at the head of a formidable army, advanced towards Jerusalem. He had with him four legions, the 5th, Macedonian, the 10th, Fretensis, the 12th, Fulminata, the 15th, Apollinaris, not to speak of the numerous auxiliary troops furnished by his Syrian allies, and many Arabs who had come to pillage. All the Jews who had rallied to him, Agrippa, Tiberius Alexander, now prefect of the prætorium, Josephus the future historian, accompanied him: Berenice doubtless waited at Cesarea. The military valour of the captain corresponded with the strength of the army. Titus was a remarkable soldier, and especially an excellent officer of genius, while he was also a very sensible man, a profound politician, and considering the cruelty of the manners of the age, very humane. Vespasian, irritated by the satisfaction the Jews showed in seeing the civil wars, and the efforts they were making to bring about an invasion by the Parthians, had ordered great severity. Gentleness, according to him, was always interpreted as weakness by haughty races, persuaded that they were fighting for God and with God.

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The Roman army arrived at Gabaoth-Saul, a league and a half from Jerusalem, in the early days of April. They were just on the eve of the feast of the Passover; an enormous number of Jews from all countries had assembled in the city; Josephus gives the number of those who perished during the siege at 1,100,000; it appeared as if the whole nation had made a rendezvous in order that they might be exterminated. About the 10th April, Titus established his camp at the angle of the tower of Psephina (Kasr-Djalond of the present day). Some partial advantages gained by surprise, and seven wounds Titus received at first, gave the Jews an exaggerated confidence in their strength, and shewed the Romans with what care they must guard themselves in this war with furious people. The city could be reckoned among the strongest in the world. The walls were a perfect type of those constructions in enormous blocks which were always affected in Syria; in the interior, the enceinte of the temple, that of the high city, and that of Acra formed as if partition walls, and appeared to be so many ramparts. The number of the defenders was very great; provisions, although diminished by the fires, abounded still The parties in the interior of the city continued to fight still; but they combined for defence. At the beginning of the days of the Passover, Eleazar’s faction nearly disappeared and merged itself in John’s. Titus conducted the operations with consummate skill; never had the Romans shown such a skilful poliorcétique. In the closing days of April, the legions had forced the first enceinte from the north side and were masters of the northern portion of the city. Five days after the second wall, the wall of Acra, was taken, the half of the city was thus in the power of the Romans. On the 12th May, they attacked the fortress Antonia. Surrounded

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by Jews who all, Tiberius Alexander excepted, desired the preservation of the city and the temple, ruled more than he would confess by his love for Berenice, who appears to have been a pious Jewess and much devoted to her nation, Titus sought, it is said, a means of reconciliation, and made acceptable offers; all was useless. The besieged replied to the propositions of the conqueror only by sarcasm. 257

The siege then assumed a character of horrible cruelty. The Romans displayed instruments of the most hideous tortures; the audacity of the Jews only increased. On the 27th and 29th of May they burned the machines of the Romans, and even attacked them in their camp. Discouragement fell on the besiegers. Many were persuaded that the Jews spoke the truth, and that Jerusalem was impregnable; desertion began. Titus, giving up the hope of carrying the place by sheer force, blockaded it closely. A wall of countervallation, raised rapidly (in the beginning of June) and doubled on the side of Perea by a line of castella, crowning the heights of the mount of Olives, totally separated the city from without. Up till then vegetables were procured from the neighbourhood; famine now became fearful. The fanatics, provided with necessaries, cared little for this. Rigorous perquisitions, accompanied by tortures, were made to discover concealed grain. Whoever wore a certain look of strength at once passed as culpable in hiding provisions. Pieces of bread were torn from people’s mouths. The most fearful diseases developed in the heart of this huddled-up, enfeebled, fevered mass. Some terrible stories were circulated and redoubled the terror. From that moment hunger, rage, despair, and madness inhabited Jerusalem. It was a cage of wild madness, a city of shrieks, of cannibals, a hell. Titus, on his side, was cruel; five hundred unfortunates per day were crucified with odious refinements in sight of the city. There was not sufficient wood to make crosses, and there was no room to place them.

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In this excess or evils, the faith and fanaticism of the Jews shewed themselves more ardently than ever. They believed the temple to be indestructible. The greater number were persuaded that, the city being under the special protection of the Eternal, it was impossible to take it. Prophets spread themselves among the people, announcing approaching succour. The confidence on this point was such that many who could have escapted, remained to see this miracle of Jehovah. The frenzied people, nevertheless, ruled as masters. They slew all those who were suspected of advising capitulation. Thus perished, by order of Siomon, son of Gioras, the hight priest Matthias, who had caused this brigand to be received into the city. His three sons were executed before his eyes. Many people of distinction were likewise put to death. The mere fact of weeping together or holding a meeting was a crime. It was forbidden from the smallest assembly. Josephus, from the Roman camp, tried vainly to have some spies in the place; he was suspected by both sides. The position had been reached in which reason and moderation have no longer any chance of being heard. Yet Titus became weary of these delays; he longed only for Rome: its splendours and its pleasures. A city taken by famine appeared to him an exploit insufficient to inaugurate brilliantly a dynasty. He then caused to be constructed four new aggeræ for a sharp attack. The trees of the 168


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gardens in the suburbs of Jerusalem were cut down a distance of four leagues. In twenty-one days everything was ready. On the 21st July the Jews attempted the operation in which they had succeeded on the former occasion; they went out to burn and sap the tower Antonia. On the 5th July Titus was master of it, and caused it to be almost entirely demolished, to open a large passage for his cavalry and his machines, at the point where all his efforts converged, and where the last struggle must take place.

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The temple, as we have said, was by its peculiar method of construction the strongest of fortresses. The Jews who had entrenched themselves with John of Gischala prepared themselves for battle. The priests themselves were under arms. On the 17th the perpetual sacrifice ceased for want of ministers to offer it. That made a great impression upon the people. It became known outside the city. The interruption of the sacrifice was for the Jews a phenomenon as grave as a stop in the progress of the universe. Josephus seized this occasion to try anew to conquer John’s obstinacy. The fortress Antonia was only about 60 yards from the temple. From the parapets of the tower Josephus cried out in Hebrew by order of Titus (unless the story of the Wars of the Jews is false) that John could retire with as great a number of his men as he wished, that Titus would charge himself with having the legal sacrifices continued by the Jews, that he would allow John even the choice of those who should offer them. John refused to listen. Those whom fanaticism had not blinded escaped at this moment to the Romans. Everyone who remained chose death. On the 12th July Titus began his works against the temple. The struggle was most bloody. On the 28th the Romans were masters of the whole gallery of the north from the fortress Antonia up to the vale of Kedron. The attack commenced then against the temple itself. On the 2nd August the most powerful machines were put to assail the walls wonderfully constructed with porticos which surrounded the inner courts. The effect was scarcely felt; but on the 8th of August the Romans succeeded in setting the gates on fire. The stupor of the Jews was then inexpressible; they had never believed that this was possible. At sight of the flames which leapt up they poured upon the Romans a flood of curses. On the 9th August Titus gave orders that the fire should be extinguished, and held a council of war at which there were present Tiberius Alexander, Cerealis, and his principal officers. The question was as to whether the temple should be burned. Many were of opinion that so long as the edifice remained the Jews would never be quiet. As to Titus, it is difficult to know what he meant, for on this point we have two opposing stories. According to Josephus, Titus was of opinion that such an admirable work should be spared, as its preservation would do honour to his reign and prove the moderation of the Romans. According to Tacitus, Titus insisted upon the necessity of destroying an edifice with which two superstitions equally fatal were associated, that of the Jews, and that of the Christians. “These two superstitions,” he is said to have added, “although contrary to one another are of the same source; the Christians come from the Jews, the root torn up, the shoot will perish quickly.”

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It is difficult to decide between two versions so absolutely irreconcilable, for the opinion attributed to Titus by Josephus may very well be regarded as an invention by that historian, jealous of shewing the sympathy of his patron for Judaism, cleansing himself in the eyes of the Jews of the crime of having destroyed the temple and of satisfying the ardent desire of which Titus had to pass for a very moderate man. It cannot be denied that the brief discourse put by Tacitus in the mouth of the victorious captain may be, not only for the style but for the order of ideas, an exact reflex of the sentiments of Tacitus himself. We have a right to suppose that the Latin historian, full of spite against the Jews and the Christians, and of that bad temper which characterizes the age of Trajan and the Antonines, had made Titus speak like a Roman aristocrat of his time, while in reality the middle-class Titus had more complacence for oriental superstitions than the high noblesse who succeeded the Flavii had for them. Living for two or three years with Jews who had boasted to him of their temple as the wonder of the world, won by the caresses of Josephus, Agrippa, and still more of Berenice, he might very well desire the preservation of a sanctuary whose worship many of his friends represented to him as being quite peaceable. It is therefore possible that, as Josephus has it, some orders had been given that the fire lit the evening before should be extinguished, and that in the frightful tumult which they foresaw, some measures should be taken against fire There was in the character of Titus, besides real goodness, much pose and a little hypocrisy. The truth is doubtless that he did not order the fire, as Tacitus says; did not countermand it, as Josephus says, but allowed it to go on, presenting some appearances for all the theories which people may be allowed to maintain in the different regions of probability, whatever may be on this point difficult to ascertain. A general assault was decided against the building, which had already lost its gates; as to military work, what remained to be done was an effort, bloody perhaps, but whose issue could not be doubtful. The Jews anticipated the attacks. On the 10th of August in the morning they delivered a furious attack without success. Titus retired into the Antonia to rest and to prepare for the assault next day. A detachment was left to prevent the fire from being relit. Then took place, according to Josephus, the incident which led to the ruin of the sacred pile. The Jews threw themselves with rage upon the detachment which watched near the fire; the Romans repulsed them, entering pell-mell into the temple with the fugitives. The irritation of the Romans was at its height. A soldier “without any one commanding him, and as if impelled by a supernatural movement,” took a joist which was in flames, and having raised it, with one of his companions, threw the brand through a window which opened upon the porticos of the north side. The flame and the smoke rose rapidly. Titus was resting at that moment in his tent. They ran to call him. Then, if Josephus must be believed, a sort of struggle was begun between him and his soldiers; Titus with voice and gesture ordered the fire to be extinguished; but the disorder was such that they did not understand him; those who might doubt his intentions affected not to hear him. In place of stopping the fire the legionaries stirred it up. Drawn by the wave of invaders, Titus was borne into the Temple itself—the flames had not reached the central building. He saw intact this sanctuary of which Agrippa, Josephus, and Berenice had

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spoken to him so often with admiration, and found it much superior to what they had told him. Titus redoubled his efforts, made them evacuate the interior, and gave even an order to Liberalos, a centurion of his guards, to strike those who refused to obey. All at once a jet of flame and smoke rose from the gate of the Temple. At the moment of the tumultuary evacuation a soldier had set fire to the interior. The flames gained on all sides; the position was no longer tenable. Titus retired.

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This recital of Josephus includes more than one probability. It is difficult to believe that the Roman legions could have shown themselves so disobedient to a victorious leader. Dion Cassius declares, on the contrary, that Titus needed to employ force to make the soldiers penetrate into a place surrounded by terrors, and of which all the profaners were believed to be struck dead. One thing only is certain—that Titus some years afterwards would have been glad if in the Jewish world they had told the same thing as Josephus did, and that they should have attributed the burning of the Temple to the discipline of his soldiers, or rather to a supernatural movement of some agent, unconscious of a superior will. The history of the war of the Jews was written about the end of the reign of Vespasian, in 76, or rather sooner, when Titus already aspired to be “the delight of the human race,” and wished to pass as a model of gentleness and goodness. In the preceding years, and that of another world than that of the Jews, he would surely have received eulogia of a different kind. Among the tableaux which were borne in the triumph of the year 71 was the image of “the fire set to the Temple,” in which certainly they would not seek to represent that fact otherwise than as glorious. About the same time the court poet, Valerias Flaccus, proposed to Domitian, as the finest employment of his poetical talent, to sing the war of Judea, and to represent his brother scattering burning torches everywhere— Solymo ingrantem pulvere fratrem, Spargentemque faces et in omni turre furentem? The struggle during this time was hot in the court and parvis. A frightful carnage was made round the altar, a sort of truncated pyramid, surmounted by a platform, which was raised in front of the Temple; the corpses of those whom they killed upon the platform rolled over upon the steps and reached to the feet. Rivers of blood flowed on all sides, nothing was heard but the piercing cries of those whom they killed and who died adjuring heaven. There was time still to take refuge in the high city; many liked rather to go to be killed, regarding as a lot to be envied dying for their temple; others threw themselves into the flames; others still precipitated themselves upon the swords of the Romans, while some slew themselves or each other. Some priests who had succeeded in gaining the crest of the Temple roof, tore the points which they found there with their leaden sockets and threw them upon the Romans; they continued this up till the time the flames enveloped them. A great number of Jews had assembled around the holy place, upon the word of a prophet, who had assured them that the very moment had come when God was about to shew them the signs of salvation. A gallery where it is said six thousand of these wretches had retired (nearly all women and children) was burned. Two gates of the Temple and a part of the enceinte reserved for the

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women were only preserved for the moment. The Romans planted their ensigns upon the place where the sanctuary had been, and offered the worship to which they had been accustomed. The old Zion remained; the high town, the strongest part of the city, having its ramparts still intact, and which still gave safety to John of Gischala, Simon son of Gioras, and a great number of combatants who had succeeded in forcing a way through the conquerors. This stand of madmen demanded a new siege. John and Simon had established the centre of their resistance in the palace of the Herods, situated near the, site of the present citadel of Jerusalem, and covered by the three enormous towers of Hippicus, of Phasaël, and Mariamne. The Romans were obliged, to carry this last refuge of Jewish obstinacy, to construct some aggerae against the western wall of the city, opposite the palace. The four legions were occupied in this work for the space of eighteen days (from 20th August to 6th September). During this time Titus made them set fire to the parts of the town which were in his power. The low town especially, from Ophel up to Siloam, were systematically destroyed. Many of the Jews belonging to the middle classes were able to escape. As to, the people of inferior condition, they were sold at a very low price. This was the origin of a multitude of Jewish slaves who, coming down upon Italy and upon the other countries of the Mediterranean, took from thence the elements of a new ardour of propagandism. Josephus reckons the number at 97,000. Titus gave pardon to the princes of Adiabene; the pontifical dresses, the precious stones, the tables, the cups, the candelabra, and the hangings were brought to him. He ordered that they should be preserved carefully, that they might be used in the triumph he was preparing, and to which he wished to give a particular mark of foreign pomp, by exhibiting there the rich material of the Jewish worship. The aggeræ being finished, the Romans began to batter the wall of the high tower. At the first attack, 7th September, they overturned a part as well as some of the tower. Attenuated by famine, undermined by fever and rage, the defenders were nothing more than skeletons. The legions passed in without difficulty; up till the end of the day, the soldiers burned and slew; the greater part of the houses into which they went to pillage were full of corpses. The wretches who could escape fled to Acra, which the Roman force had nearly evacuated, and to those vast subterranean cavities, which mark the subsoil of Jerusalem. John and Simon grew weaker at this time. They possessed still the towers of Hippicus, of Phasaël, and Mariamne, the most astonishing marks of military architecture in antiquity. The ram had been powerless against enormous blocks, collected with unequalled perfection, and bound together by iron cramps. Amazed and lost, John and Simon quitted these impregnable works, and sought to force the line of countervallation on the side of Siloam. Not succeeding, they went to rejoin those of their partisans who were concealed in the sewers. On the 8th all resistance was over; the soldiers were fatigued—they killed the weak who couldn't march. The remainder, women and children, were pushed like a flock towards the enceinte of the Temple, and enclosed in the inner court which had escaped the fire. Of this multitude set aside for death or slavery, they made lists. Everyone who had fought was massacred. Seven hundred people, the finest in figure and the best made, were reserved to follow the triumph of Titus. Among the others, those who had passed the age of 17, were sent into Egypt, their feet in irons, for the forced 172


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works, or divided among the provinces to be slain in the amphitheatres. Those who were less than 17 were sold. The sorting of the prisoners occupied many days, during which there died thousands, it is said, some because they gave them no food, others because they refused to accept it.

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The Romans employed the following days in burning tits rest of the city, overturning the walls, and rumaging in the sewers and subterranean passages. They found there great riches and many of the insurrectionists living, whom they killed at once, and more than two thousand corpses, without speaking of prisoners whom the Terrorists had shut up. John of Gischala, constrained by hunger to come forth, demanded quarter from the conquerors, who condemned him to perpetual imprisonment. Simon, son of Gioras, who had some provisions, remained concealed till the end of October. His food failing then, he took a singular step. Clothed in a white cloth with a mantle of purple, he came forth unexpectedly from under the earth to the place where the Temple had been. He imagined by this to astonish the Romans, and to pretend that he had been raised from the dead—perhaps to make himself pass as the Messiah. The soldiers were, in fact, a little surprised at first. Simon would only name himself to their commandant, Terentius Rufus. He made them put him in chains, sent the news to Titus, who was at Paneas, and caused the prisoner to be taken to Cesaræa. The Temple and the great constructions were demolished to the very foundations. The sub-basement of the Temple was, however, preserved, and constitutes what is called at this day Naramesch-scherif. Titus wished also to preserve the three towers of Hippicus, Phasaël, and Mariamne, to make posterity know against what walls he had had to fight. The wall of the western side was left standing to shelter the camp of the 10th legion Fretensius, which was sent to hold guard over the ruins of the fallen city. Lastly, some houses on the extremity of Mount Sion escaped the destruction, and remained in the condition of isolated ruins. All the rest disappeared. From the month of September, 70, to the year 122, when Hadrian re-built it under the name of Ælia Capitolina, Jerusalem was nothing but a field of rubbish, in a corner of which the tents of a legion always on guard were set up. They believed they saw at every instant the fire re-lit which lay under these calcined stones. They trembled lest the spirit of life should come into the corpses which appeared still at the depths of their charnel-house, to raise their arms and declare that they had with them the promises of eternity.

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CHAPTER XX. CONSEQUENCES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. Titus appears to have remained about a month in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, offering sacrifices and rewarding his soldiers; the spoils of the captives were sent to Cesaræa. The season, already far advanced, prevented the young captain from leaving for Rome. He employed the winter in visiting different cities of the East and giving fêtes. He took with him bands of Jewish prisoners, who were delivered to the beasts, burned alive, or forced to fight against each other. At Paneas, on the 24th October, the birthday of his brother Domitian, more than 2,500 Jews perished in the flames, or in these horrible games. At Beyrout, on the 17th November, the same number of captives perished, to celebrate the birthday of Vespasian. Hatred of the Jews was the dominant sentiment in Syrian cities. These hideous massacres were hailed with joy. What was perhaps most frightful was that Josephus and Agrippa did not quit Titus during this time, and were witnesses of these monstrosities.

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Titus made after this a long voyage into Syria going as far as the Euphrates. At Antioch he found the people exasperated against the Jews—they accused them of a fire which would have consumed the city. Titus contented himself with suppressing the bronze tables on which were engraved their privileges. He made a present to Antioch of the veiled Cherubim which covered the ark. This singular trophy was placed before the great western gates of the city, which took from that the name of the Gate of the Cherubim. Near that he dedicated a guadriga to the moon, for the help which she had given him daring the siege. At Daphne, he caused a theatre to be erected upon the site of the synagogue; an inscription indicated that this monument had been constructed with the booty obtained in Judea. From Antioch Titus returned to Jerusalem; he found there the Tenth Fretensis, under the orders of Terentius Rufus, still occupied in searching the caves by the destroyed city. The appearance of Simon, son of Gioras, coming out of the sewers when they believed that no one was to found there, had caused the subterranean fights to be be commenced; in fact, every day they discovered some wretch and some new treasures. In looking on the solitude which he had created, Titus was unable, it is said, to restrain a motion of pity. The Jews who were near him exercised upon him a cross influence; the phantasmagoria of an Oriental Empire, which they had caused to glitter before the eyes of Nero and Vespasian, reappeared around him, and went so far as to excite umbrage at Rome. Agrippa, Berenice, Josephus and Tiberius Alexander were more in favour than ever, and many augured for Berenice the rôle of a new Cleopatra. On the morning of the defeat of the rebels, men were irritated at seeing people of such a kind honoured and all powerful. As to Titus, he accepted more and more the idea that he was fulfilling a mission in providence. He was pleased to hear them quote the prophecies which they said referred to him. Josephus claims that he connected this victory with God, and recognised that he had been the object of a supernatural power. What is striking is that Philostratus, 120 years after, admits clearly these data and makes them the basis of an apocryphal correspondence between Titus and Apollonius. To believe him, 174


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Titus would have refused the crowns which were offered him, alleging that it was not he who had taken Jerusalem—that he had done nothing but lend his services to an irritated God. It is scarcely to be admitted that Philostratus had known the passage in Josephus. He drew the legend, which had become common, from the moderation of Titus. Titus returned to Rome in the month of May or June, 71. He held essentially a triumph which would surpass all that had been seen up till then. Simplicity, seriousness, the somewhat common manners of Vespasian, were not of a nature to give him prestige with a population which had been accustomed to ask before everything from its sovereigns prodigality and a grand style. Titus thought that a solemn entry would have a grand effect, and managed to surmount the repugnances of his old father on that point. The ceremony was organised with all the skill of the Roman decorators of that time. What distinguished it was the choice of local colour and historical truth. It pleased them also to reproduce the simple rites of the Roman religion as if they had the desire to oppose it to the conquered religion. At the opening of the ceremony Vespasian appeared as pontiff, his head more than half veiled in his toga, and made solemn prayers, and after him Titus prayed also according to the same rite. The procession was a marvel. All the curiosities, all rarities, the precious products of Oriental art, besides works achieved by the Græco-Roman art, figured there. It appears as if on the day after the greatest danger which the Empire encountered, they should make a pompous exhibition of their wealth. Some moving scaffolding, rising to the height of three or four tiers, excited universal wonder. All the episodes of the war were represented there; each series of tableaux terminated with the living representation of the strange appearance of Bar-Gorias and his capture—the pale visage and the haggard eyes of the captives disguised by the superb garments with which they clothed them In the midst was Bar-Gorias being led with great pomp to death; then came the spoils of the temple, the golden table, the golden seven-branched candlestick, the veil of the holy of holies, and to conclude, the series of trophies, the captive, the conquered one, the culprit par excellence, the book of the Torah. The conquerors closed the procession. Vespasian and Titus were mounted on two separate oars. Titus was radiant; as to Vespasian, who saw nothing in all this but a day lost for business, he did not seek to dissimulate his vulgar appearance as a business man, because the procession did not move rapidly enough, and said in a low voice, “It is well done. I have deserved it . . . Have I been foolish enough at my age, too!” Domitian, who was robed and mounted on a magnificent horse, caracoled near his father and elder brother. They arrived thus at the Sacred way. At the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus the ordinary termination of a triumph was reached. At the Clivus Capitolinus they made a halt to disembarrass themselves of the gloomy portion of the ceremony—the execution of the chief enemies. This odious custom was observed from point to point. Bar-Gorias, drawn out of the band of captives, was seen led away with a cord round his neck, amid most ignoble insults, to the Tarpeian rock, where they slew him. When a cry announced that Rome’s enemy was no more, an immense applause burst out and the sacrifices commenced. After the customary prayers the princes retired to the Palatine; the rest of the day was passed by the whole city in joy and festivity.

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The volume of the Thora and the hangings of the sanctuary were taken into the imperial palace, the articles of gold, especially the table of the shew bread and the candlestick, were deposited in a great edifice, which Vespasian caused to be built opposite the Palatine on the other side of the Sacred way under the name of the Temple of Peace, and which was in some sort the Museum of the Flavii. A triumphal arch of Pentelic marble, which exists to this day, kept up the memory of this extraordinary pomp, and the representation of the principal objects which were borne in it. The father and son assumed that day the title of Imperatores but they refused the epithet of Judaic, either because they attached to the name of Judæi something odious or ridiculous, or to indicate that this war in Judea had been not a war against a foreign people, but a simple revolt of slaves put down, or in consequence of some secret thought analogous to that whose exaggerated expressions Josephus and Philostratus have transmitted to us. A coinage, in which Judea chained weeping under a palm tree, figured with the legend IVDæA CAPTA IVDæA DEVICTA, kept the remembrance of the fundamental exploit of the dynasty of the Flavii. They continued to strike pieces of this type until the days of Domitian. The victory was indeed complete. A captain of our race, of our blood, a man like ourselves, at the head of legions in the position in which we shall encounter if we can read it, many of our ancestors, has crushed the fortress of Semiticism and inflicted upon the theocracy, this redoubtable enemy of civilisation, the greatest defeat which it had ever received. It was the triumph of Roman or rational law, a creation quite philosophic, pre-supposing no revelation, over the Jewish Thora, the result of a revelation. This law, whose roots were partly Greek, but in which the practical genius of the Latins had such a splendid part, was the excellent gift which Rome made to the conquered in return for independence. Every victory of Rome was a progress of reason. Rome brought into the world a better principle in many points of view than that of the Jews; I mean to say the profane State resting upon a purely civil conception of society. Every patriotic movement is entitled to respect, but the zealots were not only patriots, they were fanatics, assassins, of insupportable tyranny. What they wished was the maintenance of a law of blood which would permit the stoning of the evil thinker. What they rejected was the common law, laic and liberal, which does not interfere with belief in individuals. Liberty of conscience ought to go the length of the Roman law, while that has never gone forth from Judaism. From Judaism nothing can go forth but the synagogue and the church, censure of manners, obligatory morality, the convent, a life like that of the fifth century when humanity would have lost all its vigour, if the barbarians had not relieved it. In fact the reign of the man of war has a better effect than the temporal reign of the priest. For the man of war does not interfere with the mind. People think freely under him, while the priest demands from his subject the impossible, that is, to believe certain things and to bind themselves that they will hold the priest’s ways to be true. The triumph of Rome was therefore legitimate in some measure. Jerusalem had become an impossibility; left to themselves the Jews would have demolished it. But a great lacuna was to render this victory of Titus unfruitful. Our Western races, in spite of their superiority, have always shown a deplorable religious nullity. To draw from the Roman or Gallic religion anything analogous to the church was impossible. Now

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every advantage gained over a religion is useless if it be not replaced by another, satisfying, at least as well as it can, the needs of the heart. Jerusalem will be avenged for her defeat. She shall conquer Rome by Christianity, Persia by Islamism, shall destroy the old fatherland, and shall become for all higher minds the city of the heart.

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The most dangerous tendency of its Thora, a law in itself at once moral and civil, giving the advantage to social questions over military and political ones, shall rule in the church. During all the Middle Ages, the individual, censured and overlooked by the community, shall fear the sermon and tremble before excommunication, and that shall be a just return after the moral indifference of heathen societies, a protest against the insufficiency of the Roman institution to improve the individual. It is certainly a detestable principle the saw of coercion which has been accorded to religious communities over their members. It is the worst error to believe that there is a religion which must be exclusively the good; the good religion being for each man what renders him pleasant, just, humble and benevolent. But the question of the government of humanity is difficult. The ideal is very high, the earth is very low. Even only to haunt the desert of philosophy, there one meets at every step madness, folly and passion. The old sages did not succeed in claiming any authority but by impostures which, for want of material force, gave them a power of imagination. Where would civilisation be if during centuries people had not believed that the Brahmin could blast by his glance; if the barbarians had not been convinced of the terrible revenges of St. Martins of Tours. Man has need of a moral pedagogy, for which the care of the family and that of the state do not suffice. In the intoxication of success, Rome scarcely remembered that the Jewish insurrection lived still in the basin of the Dead Sea. Three castles, Herodium, Machero and Masada were still in the hands of the Jews. It needed a man to close his eyes to the evidence to retain any hope after the taking of Jerusalem. The rebels defended themselves with as much passion as if the struggle had but just commenced. Herodium was scarcely anything but a fortified palace; it was taken without great effort by Lucillus Bassus. Machero presented many difficulties. Atrocities, massacres, and the sales of whole bands of Jews recommenced. Masada made one of the most heroic defences that history has recorded. Eleazar, son of Jairus, grand-son of Judas the Ganlonite, had possessed himself of this fortress in the early days of the revolt and made it a haunt of zealots, assassins, and brigands. Masada occupies the platform of an immense rock of nearly fifteen hundred feet high upon the shores of the Dead Sea. To possess himself of such a place it was necessary that Fulvius Sylvia should work positive miracles The despair of the Jews was boundless when they saw to be lost a position which they believed impregnable. At the instigation of Eleazar they killed each other, and set fire to their property which they had heaped up. Nine hundred and sixty persons perished thus. This tragical episode took place on the 15th of April, 72. Judea after these events was overturned from top to bottom. Vespasian ordered all lands to be sold which were unowned by the death or captivity of their proprietors. The idea was suggested to him which later occurred to Hadrian, to rebuild Jerusalem under another name, and establish a colony there. He did not wish this, and annexed the whole country to the emperor’s own domains. 177


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He gave only to eight hundred veterans the borough of Emmaus, near Jerusalem, and made of it a little colony, a trace of which is preserved to this day in the name of the pretty village of Kulonia. A special tribute (fiscus) was imposed upon the Jews. In all the empire they were to pay annually to the capital a sum of drachmas which they had been accustomed to pay to their temple at Jerusalem. The little coterie of allied Jews, Josephus, Agrippa, Berenice, and Tiberius Alexander, chose Rome as a residence. We see it continued to play a considerable part, at one time obtaining for Judaism favourable regard at court—at other times pursued by the hatred of the enthusiastic believers; at other times conceiving more than a hope, especially when it seemed to require little for Berenice to become the wife of Titus, and hold the sceptre of the universe.

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Reduced to solitude Judea remained tranquil; but the enormous overthrow of which it had been the theatre continued to provoke difficulties in the neighbouring countries. The fermentation of Judaism lasted until the end of the year 73. The zealots who had escaped massacre, the volunteers of the siege, and all the madmen of Jerusalem, spread themselves in Egypt and Cyrenia. The communities of these countries, rich, conservative, and, far removed from the Palestinian fanaticism, felt the danger which these lunatics brought among them. They charged themselves with arresting them and giving them up to the Romans. Many fled into Higher Egypt, where they were hunted like wild beasts. At Cyrene a brigand named Jonathan, a weaver by trade, acted the prophet, and like all Messiahs, persuaded two thousand Ebionim, or poor people, to follow him into the desert, where he promised to let them see prodigies and strange signs. The sensible Jews denounced him to Catullus, the governor of the country, but Jonathan revenged himself by some informations which caused him endless trouble. Nearly all the Jewish community of Cyrene, one of the most flourishing in the world, was exterminated. Its property was confiscated in the name of the Emperor. Catullus, who shewed in this matter much cruelty, was disavowed by Vespasian; he died under frightful hallucinations, which, according to certain conjectures, must have furnished the subject of a theatrical piece of fantastic scenery, the “Spectre of Catullus.” Incredible fact! This long and terrible agony was not immediately followed by death. Under Trajan and under Hadrian we see the national Judaism revived, and still engaging in bloody combats; but the lot was evidently cast. The zealot was conquered beyond recovery. The way traced by Jesus, comprehended instinctively by the church of Jerusalem, who were refugees in Perea, became the way of Israel. The temporal kingdom of the Jews had been hateful, hard and cruel. The epoch of the Asmoneans when they enjoyed independence was their most sorrowful age. Was it Herodianism, Sadduceeism, that shameful alliance of a principality without grandeur with the priesthood, which was to be regretted? No, certainly, that was not the goal of “the people of God.” One would need to be blind not to see that the ideal institutions which pursued the Israel of God did not agree with national independence. These institutions, being incapable of making an army, could not exist in the vassaldom of a great empire, leaving much liberty to its rayahs, and disembarassing them of politics and not asking them for military service. The Achemidian empire had entirely satisfied those conditions of Jewish life, later the Caliphate, the Ottoman empire, satisfied them, and shall 178


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see developed in their bosom free communities such as those of the Armenian Parsees, the Greeks, nations without fatherland, brotherhood, supplying diplomatic and military autonomy, by the autonomy of the college and the church. The Roman empire was not flexible, to lend itself to the communities which it united. Of the four empires, this was, according to the Jews, the harshest and most wicked. Like Antiochus Epiphanes, the Roman empire led the Jewish people astray from their true vocation, by causing it through reaction to form a kingdom or separate state. This tendency was not that of men who represented the genius of the race. In some points of view these last preferred the Romans. The idea of Jewish nationality became each day an obsolete idea, an idea of the furious and frenzied, against which the pious men made no scruple to claim the protection of their conquerors. The true Jew, attached to the Thora, making the holy books his rule and his life, as well as the Christian, lost in the hope of his kingdom of God, renounced more and more all nationality. The principles of Judas the Ganlonite, which was the soul of the great revolt, anarchical principles, according to which, God alone being “Master,” no man has the right to take that title, could produce bands of fanatics analogous to the Independents of Cromwell, they could found nothing durable. These feverish irruptions were the indication of the deep throes which threatened the heart of Israel, and which, by making it sweat blood for humanity, must necessarily cause it to perish in frightful convulsions. 277

The nations must choose in fact between the long peaceful and obscure destinies of that which lives for itself, and the trouble and stormy career of that which lives for humanity. The nation which agitates in its bosom social and religious problems is nearly always weak as a nation. Every country which dreams of a Kingdom of God, which looks for general ideas, which pursues a work of universal interest, sacrifices by this its particular destiny, grows feeble and loses its role as a terrestrial country. It was so with Judea, Greece, and Italy. It shall be so with France. One never carries with impunity fire within oneself. Jerusalem, the city of middle-class people, would have pursued indefinitely its mediocre history. It is because it had the incomparable honour of being the cradle of Christianity that it was the victim of the Johns of Gischala, of the Bar Giorases, in appearance plagues of their country, in reality the instruments of their apotheosis. Those zealots, whom Josephus treats as brigands and assassins, were politicians of the lowest order, military men with little capacity, but they lost heroically that which could not be saved. They lost a material city, they opened the spiritual Jerusalem, seated in her desolation much more gloriously than she was in the days of Herod and Solomon. What did the conservatives and Sadducees desire? They wished something paltry; the continuation of a city of priests like Emesa, Tyana, or Comanus. Certainly they were not deceived when they declared that the rising of enthusiasts was the loss of the nation; but revolution and Messianism were indeed the vocation of this people, that by which it contributed to the universal work of civilisation. We deceive ourselves no longer when we say to France, “Renounce revolution

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or thou art lost”; but if the future belongs to some ideas which are elaborated obscurely in the heart of the people, it will be found that France will have its revenge by what caused in 1870-1871 its feebleness and its misery. At least of many violent strains given to truth, (everything in this sort is possible) our Bar-Giorases, our Johns of Gischala would never become great citizens, but they would play their part, and we shall perhaps see that more even than sensible people they were in the secrets of fate. How shall Judaism, deprived of its holy city and its temple, transform itself? How shall Talmudism leave the position which events have made to the Israelite? That is what we shall see in our fifth book. In a sense, after the production of Christianity, Judaism has no longer a raison d’etre. From this moment the spirit of life has gone from Jerusalem. Israel has given all to the son of its sorrow, and it has been exhausted in this childbirth. The Elohim whom they believed they heard murmur in the temple: “Let us go forth, let us go forth!” spoke truly. The law of great creations is that the creator virtually expires in transmitting existence to another. After the complete inoculation of life with that which should continue it, the initiator is nothing but a dry stem, an attenuated being. But it is rare, nevertheless, that this sentence of nature is accomplished at once. The plant which has yielded its flower does not consent to die because of that. The world is full of these walking skeletons who survive the doom which has struck them. Judaism is of this number. History has no spectacle stranger than that of this conservation of a people in the state of a ghost, of a people who, during nearly a thousand years, have lost the sentiment of fact, have not written a readable page, have not transmitted an acceptable instruction. Should one be astonished if, after having thus lived for ages outside of the free atmosphere of humanity, in a cellar, if I may say so, in a condition of partial madness, it should come forth, astonished by the light etiolated? As to the consequences which resulted for Christianity from the destruction of Jerusalem, they are so evident that one has but to indicate them. Already even many times we have had occasion to remark upon them.

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The ruin of Jerusalem and of the temple was for Christianity an unequalled good fortune. If the argument attributed by Tacitus to Titus is exactly reported, the victorious general believed that the destruction of the temple would be the ruin of Christianity, as well as of that of Judaism. Never were men more completely deceived. The Romans imagined to cut away at the same time the shoot, but the shoot was already a bush which lived by its own life. If the temple had survived, Christianity would certainly have been arrested in its development. The temple, surviving, would have continued to be the centre of all Judaic works. They could never have ceased from looking upon it as the most holy place in the world, going there on pilgrimage and bringing tributes thither. The church of Jerusalem, grouped around the sacred parvis, would have continued, by the name of its primacy, to obtain the homages of all the world, to persecute the churches of Paul, demanding that to have the right to to call himself a disciple of Jesus, one must practice circumcision and observe the Mosaic code. Every fertile propaganda would have been forbidden, letters of obedience signed at

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Jerusalem would have been exacted from the missionary. A centre of indisputable authority, a patriarchate, composed of a sort of college of cardinals, under the presidency of persons analogous to James, pure Jews belonging to the family of Jesus, would have established itself and would have constituted an immense danger for the nascent church. When one sees St. Paul after so much ill-usage remain always attached to the church at Jerusalem, one can conceive what difficulties a rupture with these holy personages would have presented. Such a schism would have been considered an enormity equivalent to the abandonment of Christianity. The separation between it and Judaism would have been impossible; now this separation was the indispensable condition of the existence of the new religion, as the cutting of the umbilical cord is the condition of a new being. The mother will kill the infant. The temple, on the contrary, once destroyed, the Christians thought no more of it; soon they even held it to be a profane place. Jesus shall be everything to them. The church of Jerusalem was by the same blow reduced to a secondary importance. We shall see it reforming itself in the element which makes its strength, the desposyni members of the family of Jesus, the sons of Clopas; but it shall reign no more. This centre of hatred and exclusion, once destroyed, the reconciliation of parties opposed to the church of Jesus shall become easy. Peter and Paul shall be reconciled officially, and the terrible duality of nascent Christianity shall cease to be a mortal wound. Forgotten at the base of Batanea or Hauran, the little group which is connected with the relatives of Jesus, the Jameses, the Clopases, became the Ebionite sect and died slowly through insignificance and unfruitfulness. The situation much resembles some things in the Catholicism of our days. No religious community has ever had more internal activity, more of a tendency to send forth from its bosom original creations than Catholicism for sixty years back. All these efforts, nevertheless, remain without result for one single reason; that reason is the absolute rule of the court of Rome. It is the court of Rome which has chased from the church Lamennais, Hermes, Döllinger, Father Hyacinthe, and all the Apologists who have defended it with some success. It is the court of Rome which has distressed and reduced to powerlessness Lacordaire and Montalembert, it is the court of Rome which by its Syllabus and its council has cut the whole future from liberal Catholics. When is this sad state of things to be changed? When Rome shall be no more the pontifical city, when the dangerous oligarchy which Catholicism has possessed itself of shall have ceased to exist. The occupation of Rome by the King of Italy will one day be probably reckoned in the history of Catholicism for an event as fortunate as the destruction of Jerusalem has been in the history of Christianity. Nearly all Catholics have groaned over it, just as without doubt the Judeo-Christians of the year 70 looked upon the destruction of the temple as the most sad calamity. But the result will shew how superficial this judgment is. Whilst weeping over the end of Papal Rome, Catholicism will draw from it the greatest advantages. To material uniformity and death we shall see following in its bosom discussion, movement, life, and variety.

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APPENDIX. CONCERNING THE COMING OF ST. PETER TO ROME AND THE RESIDENCE OF ST. JOHN AT EPHESUS. All are agreed that, from the end of the second century, the general belief of the Christian churches was that the Apostle Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome, and that the Apostle John lived at Ephesus until an advanced age. Protestant theologians from the sixteenth century have pronounced strongly against the visit of St. Peter to Rome. As to the opinion regarding the residence of John at Ephesus, it is only in our day that it has found contradiction. The reason why Protestants attach so much importance to the denial of Peter’s coming to Rome is easily grasped. During the whole Middle Ages the coming of St. Peter to Rome was the basis of the exorbitant pretentions of the papacy. These pretentions were founded on three propositions which were held to be “of the faith,” let, Jesus himself conferred on Peter a primacy in the Church; 2nd, that primacy ought to be transmitted to Peter’s successors; 3rd, the successors of Peter are the Bishops of Rome. Peter, after having resided at Jerusalem, then at Antioch, having definitively fixed his residence at Rome. To overthrow this last fact, was therefore to overturn from top to bottom the edifice of Roman theology. Men expended much learning on this; they showed that Roman tradition was not supported on direct or very solid evidences; but they treated lightly the indirect proofs; they pointed in a troublesome way to the passage in I. Peter, v. 13. That Βαβυλών in that passage really means Babylon on the Euphrates, is an untenable thesis, first because at that time “Babylon,” in the secret style of the Christians, meant Rome; in the second place, because the Christianity of the first century had scarcely left the Roman empire, and spread itself very little among the Parthians.

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To us the question has less importance than it had for the first Protestants, and it is easier to solve it impartially. We certainly do not believe that Jesus intended to establish a leader in his church, nor especially, to attach that primacy to the episcopal succession of a fixed city. The episcopate, at first scarcely existed in the thoughts of Jesus; besides, if it was a city of the world, among those whose names Jesus knew, to which he did not think of attaching the series of heads of his church, it was doubtless Rome. They would probably have horrified him if they had told him that this city of perdition, this cruel enemy of the people of God, should one day boast of his Satanic kingdom, to claim the right of inheriting by a new title the power founded by the Son. That Peter had not been at Rome, or that he had been, has therefore for us no moral or political consequence; there is in it only a curious historical question beyond which it is unnecessary to examine farther. Let us say first that Catholics have exposed themselves to the most weighty objections on the part of their adversaries with their unfortunate theory as to Peter’s coming to Rome in the year 42—a theory borrowed from Eusebius and St Jerome, and which limits the duration of the pontificate

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of Peter to twenty-three or twenty-four years. It is sufficient not to retain any doubt on that point, to consider that the persecution of which Peter was the object at Jerusalem on the part of Herod Agrippa I. (Acts xii.) took place in the very year in which Herod Agrippa tired, that is, in the year 44 (Jos. Ant., xix., viii., 2). Apollonius the Anti-Montanist (at the end of the second century) and Lactantius at the beginning of the fourth did not certainly believe that Peter had been at Rome in 42, the former, when he affirms having heard by tradition that Jesus Christ had forbidden his apostles to leave Jerusalem before twelve years had passed from the time of his death; the latter, when he saw that the apostles employed the twenty-five years which followed the death of Jesus in preaching the gospel in the provinces, and that Peter did not come to Rome till after the accession of Nero. It would be superstitious to combat at length a theory which cannot have a single reasonable defender. We can go much further, indeed, and affirm that Peter had not yet come to Rome when Paul was brought there, that is in the year 61. The epistle of Paul to the Romans, written about the year 58, or at least which had not been written more than two years and a half before the arrival of Paul at Rome, is here a very considerable argument; we can scarcely conceive St. Paul writing to the believers whose leader Peter was, without making the smallest mention of him. What is still more demonstrative is the last chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. That chapter, especially vv. 17-29, is not intelligible if Peter was at Rome when Paul arrived there. Let us hold then as absolutely certain that Peter did not come to Rome before Paul, that is to say before the year 61, or nearly so.

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But did he not go there after Paul? This is what Protestant critics have never succeeded in proving. Not only does this late journey of Peter to Rome offer no impossibility, but some strong reasons militate in its favour. I believe that those who read our account with care will find that everything fits in well enough in this hypothesis. Besides that, the testimony of the Fathers of the second and third centuries are not without value in this matter, and here are three arguments, the force of which does not appear to me to be disdained. 1. An incontestable thing is that Peter died a martyr. The evidence of the fourth gospel, Clemens Romans, and of the fragment called the Canon de Muratori, Dionysius of Corinth, Caius and Tertullian, leave no doubt on this matter. That the fourth gospel may be apocryphal, and that the twenty-first chapter has been added at a latter date, is of no consequence. It is clear that we have in the verses where Jesus announces to Peter that he will die by the same penalty as himself, the expression of an opinion established in the churches before the year 120 or 130, and to which allusions are made as to a thing known to all. It was almost alone at Rome, indeed, that Nero’s persecution was violent. At Jerusalem or at Antioch, the martyrdom of Peter could be less easily explained. 2. The second argument is drawn from chapter v. verse 13, of the epistle attributed to Peter. “Babylon” in this passage evidently means Rome. If the epistle is authentic, the passage is decisive. It it is apocryphal, the induction to be drawn from this passage is not less strong. In fact the author, whoever he was, wished to have it believed that the work in question is indeed Peter’s work. He

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needed consequently to give probability to his fraud, to dispose the circumstances of the case in a way agreeable to what he knew and to what was believed at his time as to the life of Peter. If, in such a disposition of mind, he dated the letter from Rome, it was because the received opinion at the time when that letter was written was that St. Peter had resided at Rome. Now, in every hypothesis, 1st Peter is a very ancient work and enjoyed very early a high authority.

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3. The system which served as the basis for the Ebionite Acts of Peter is also well worthy of consideration. This system shows us St. Peter following Simon Magus everywhere (see on that point St. Paul) to combat his false doctrines. M. Lipsius has brought into the analysis of this curious legend an admirable sagacity of criticism. He has shown that the basis of the different editions which have come down to us was a primitive record, written about the year 130, a writing in which Peter came to Rome to conquer Simon-Paul in the centre of his power, and found it dead, after having confounded this father in all his errors. It seems difficult to believe that the Ebionite author, at a date so remote, should have given so much importance to the journey of Peter to Rome, if that journey had not had some reality. The theory of the Ebionite legend must have a foundation of truth, in spite of the fables mixed up with it. It is indeed admissible that Peter came to Rome as he came to Antioch, following Paul and partly to neutralize his influence. The Christian community in the year 60 was in a state of mind which in no way resembled the tranquil waiting of the twenty years which followed the death of Jesus. The missions of Paul and the facilities which the Jews found for their journey, had put in fashion distant expeditions. The apostle Philip is even pointed out by an ancient and persistent tradition as having become settled at Hierapolis. I regard then as probable the tradition of Peter’s residence at Rome; but I believe that this sojourn was of short duration, and that Peter suffered martyrdom a little time after his arrival in the eternal city. A coincidence favourable to this theory is the record of Tacitus, Annals xv., 44. This record presents a quite natural occasion with which to connect Peter’s martyrdom. The apostle of the Judeo-Christians formed part of the list of sufferers whom Tacitus describes as crucibus affixi, and thus it is not without reason that the Seer of the Apocalypse places, “the apostles” among the holy victims of the year 64, who applauded the destruction of the city which slew them. The coming of John to Ephesus, having a dogmatic value much less considerable than the coming of Peter to Rome, has not excited such lengthened controversies. The opinion generally received up to the present day, was that the apostle John, son of Zebedee, died very old in the capital of the province of Asia, Even those who refused to believe that during his residence the apostle wrote the fourth gospel and the epistles which bear his name, even those who denied that the Apocalypse was his work, continued to believe in the reality of this, journey attended by tradition. The first, Lützelberger, in 1840, raised upon this point some elaborated doubts; but he was little listened to. Some critics who cannot be reproached with an excess of credulousness, Baur, Strauss, Schwegler, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, all by making a large part in the legend in the records as to the sojourn of John at Ephesus, persisted in regarding as historical the very fact of the apostle’s

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coming into these regions. It is in 1867, in the first volume of his Life of Jesus, that M. Keim has directed against this traditional opinion quite a serious attack. The basis of M. Keim’s theory is that Presbyteros Johannes has been confounded with John the Apostle, and that the statments of the ecclesiastical writers upon him ought to be listened to first. This was followed by M.M. Wittichen and Holtzmann. More recently M. Scholten, of the University of Leyden, in a lengthened work, was forced to destroy one after another all the proofs of the formerly received theory, and to demonstrate that the Apostle John had never set foot in Asia. 286

The tractate of M. Scholten is a true chef d’œuvre of argumentation and method. The author passes in review not only all the evidences which are alleged for or against the tradition, but also all the writings where it can and according to him ought to be mentioned. The learned Professor of Leyden had been formerly of a different opinion. In his long arguments against the authenticity of the fourth gospel, he had strongly insisted on the passage in which Polycrates of Ephesus, about the end of the second century, represents John as having been in Asia, one of the pillars of the Jewish and Quarto-deciman parties. But it is nothing to a friend of truth that it should be necessary in these difficult questions to modify and reform his opinion. M. Scholten’s arguments have not convinced me; they have put John into Asia among the number of doubtful facts; they have not put it among the number certainly of apocryphal facts. I believe, indeed, that the chances of truth are still in favour of the tradition. Less probable in my view than Peter’s residence at Rome, the theory of the residence of John at Ephesus maintains its probability, and I think that in many cases M. Scholten has given proof of an exaggerated scepticism. As I may permit myself once more to say, a theologian is never a perfect critic. M. Scholten has a mind too lofty to allow himself ever to be ruled by apologetic or dogmatic views; but the theologian is so accustomed to subordinate fact to idea, that rarely does he place himself in the simple point of view of the historian. For twenty-five years back, especially we have seen that the Protestant liberal school have allowed themselves to be carried away by an excess of negativeness in which we doubt whether the laic science which sees in those studies nothing but simply interesting researches, will follow it. Their religious position is come to this point, that they make a defence of supernatural beliefs more easy by “cheapening” the texts and sacrificing them largely, rather then by maintaining their authenticity. I am persuaded that a criticism unprejudiced by all theological prepossession shall find one day that the liberal theologians of our century have been too much in doubt, and that it will agree not certainly in spirit, but in some results, with the ancient traditional schools. Among the writings passed in review by M. Scholten the Apocalypse holds naturally the first rank. This is the point where the illustrious critic shews himself weakest. Of three things, one is true either the Apocalypse is by the Apostle John, or it is by a forger who has intended to make it pass for a work of the Apostle John, or it is by a homonym of the Apostle John, such as John Mark or the enigmatical Presbyteros Johannes. On the third hypothesis it is clear that the Apocalypse

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less nothing to do with the residence of the Apostle John in Asia, but this hypothesis has little plausibility and in any case is not that which M. Scholten adopts. He is for the second hypothesis; he believes the Apocalypse apocryphal in the same way as the Book of Daniel. He thinks that the forger wished, according to a very common proceeding among the Jews of his time, to cover himself with the prestige of a venerated personage, that he has chosen the Apostle John as one of the pillars of the church of Jerusalem, and that he represents himself to the churches of Asia under that venerable name. Such a falsehood scarcely being conceivable during the lifetime of the apostle, M. Scholten declares that John had died before the year 68. But this theory includes downright impossibilities. Whatever may be the authenticity of the Apocalypse, I dare to say that the arguments which are drawn from that writing to establish the truth of a residence of John in Asia are as strong in the second hypothesis set forth here as in the first. There is no question here of a book being produced like the Book of Daniel some centuries after the death of the author to whom it is attributed. The Apocalypse was circulated among the believers in Asia in the winter of 68-69, while the great struggles between the generals for the competition of the empire and the appearance of the false Nero, of Cythnos, kept the whole world in a feverish expectation. If the Apostle John were dead as M. Scholten says, it was shortly before; in any case in M. Scholten’s hypothesis the faithful of Ephesus, of Smyrna, &c., knew perfectly at that date that the Apostle John had never visited Asia. What reception would they give to the account of a vision represented as having taken place in Patmos at some leagues from Ephesus, an account which is addressed to the seven principal churches of Asia by a man who is credited to have known the concealed thoughts of their consciences, who distributes to some the hardest reproaches, to others the most exalted praise, who takes with them the tone of an indisputable authority, who represents himself as having been the partaker of their sufferings; if that man had been neither in Patmos nor Asia, if their imagination had always fixed him settled at Jerusalem? The forger must be supposed to have been endowed with little good sense to have created in lightness of heart for his books such reasons of dislike against them. Why does he place the scene of the prophesy at Patmos? That island had never up till then any importance, any significance. People never touched at it except when they went from Ephesus to Rome or from Rome to Ephesus; for such travelling as that Patmos offered a very good part for resting, a small day’s journey from Ephesus. It was the first or the last halting-place, according to the rules of the little navigation described in the Acts, and of which the essential principle was to stop as much as was possible every night. Patmos could not be the object of a voyage. A man coming to Ephesus or going from Ephesus alone needed to touch there. Even admitting the non-authenticity of the Apocalypse, the first three chapters of this book constitute therefore a strong probability in favour of the theory of John’s residence in Asia, in the same manner as 1st Peter, although apocryphal, is a very good argument for the residence of Peter at Rome. The forger, whatever may be the credulousness of the public whom he addressed, seeks always to create for his writing conditions in which it may be acceptable. If the author of 1st Peter believed himself obliged to date his writing from Rome, if the author of the Apocalypse imagined that he would give a good exordium to his vision by making it appear to be written upon the threshold of Asia, nearly opposite Ephesus, and 186


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by addressing it with counsels which remind one of those of a director of the conscience to the churches of Asia, it is because Peter has been at Rome and John has been in Asia. Dionysius of Alexandria at the end of the third century feels perfectly the great embarassment which the question thus placed presents. Shewing that antipathy against the Apocalypse which all the Greek fathers possessed in a true Hellenic spirit, Dionysius accumulates the objections against attributing such a writing to the Apostle John, but he recognises that the work cannot have been composed except by a personage who had lived in Asia, and he puts aside the homonyms of the apostle; so much does this proposition agree with the evidence that the true or supposed author of the Apocalypse has really been connected with Asia.

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M. Scholten’s discussion relative to the text of Papias is very important. It has been the lot of this ἀρχαῖος ἀνήρ to be badly understood since Irenæus, who has certainly wrongly made him an auditor of the Apostle John, until Eusebius, who also wrongly supposes that he knew directly Presbyteros Johannes. M. Keim had already shewn that the text of Papias, well understood, proves rather to be against than for the residence of the Apostle John in Asia. M. Scholten goes much further; he concludes from the passage in question, that even Presbyteros Johannes had not resided in Asia. He believes that this personage, distinct in his view from the Apostle John, resided in Palestine, and was a contemporary of Papias. We agree with M. Scholten, that if the passage in Papias is correct, it is an objection against the residence of the apostle in Asia. But is it correct? Are the words ἤ τί Ἰωάννης not an interpolation? To those who find this idea arbitrary, I would reply that, if they maintain ἤ τί Ἰωάννης, the words οἱ τοῦ κυρίου μαθηταί, placed after Ἀριστίων καὶ ὁ πρεσβύτερος Ἰωαννης made a bizarre and incoherent collection. What, nevertheless, confirms M. Scholten’s doubts is a passage in Papias, quoted by George Hamartolus, and according to which John was killed by the Jews. This tradition appears to have been created to show the realization of words of Christ (Matt. xx. 23); Mark x. 39; it is not reconcilable with residence of John at Ephesus, and if Papias had really adopted it, it is because he had not the least idea of the coming of John into the province of Asia. Now it would be very surprising that a man zealous in research in apostolic traditions should have ignored such an important fact, which would take place in the same country as that in which he lived. The omission of all reference relative to the residence in Asia in the epistles attributed to St. Ignatius and Hegesippus gives certainly cause for reflection. At the beginning of the year 180 A.D., tradition is definitely fixed. Appollonius, the Anti-Montanist, Polycrates, Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, have no doubt as to the remarkable honour which the city of Ephesus enjoyed. Among the texts which might be alleged, two are especially remarkable, that of Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, about 196, and Irenæus (at the same time) in his letter to Florinus. M. Scholten puts aside too lightly the text of Polycrates. It is important to find at Ephesus at the end of one century all the traditions so distinctly affirmed. “The small critical mind of Polycrates,” says M. Scholten, “draws from this circumstance that he represents John to us as decorated with the πέταλον, thus making recede by an anachronism to the apostolic age the usage existing then of giving to the Christian Bishop the dignity of high priest.” Formerly, M. Scholten 187


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did not judge thus; he saw in the πέταλον and in the title of “high priest” given to the Apostle John by Polycrates, a proof that the apostle was in Asia, the head of the Judeo-Christian party. He was right. The πέταλον, far from being an episcopal mark of the second century, is only attributed to two personages, and to two personages of the first century, to James and John, both belonging to the Judeo-Christian party, and this party believed to exalt them by attributing to them the prerogatives of the Jewish high priests. M. Keim and M. Scholten likewise reproach Polycrates with believing that the Philip who came to settle at Hierapolis with his prophetess daughters, is the apostle. I believe that Polycrates is right, and that if we compare attentively Acts xxi., v. 8, with the passages in Papias, Proclus, Polycrates, and Clement of Alexandria, as to Philip and his daughters, residing at Hierapolis, I think we shall be convinced that it is the apostle that is spoken of. The verse in Acts has all the appearance of an interpolation. M. Boltzmann seems to adopt upon this point the hypothesis which I have proposed in my Apostles. I hold to it more than ever.

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The most curious passage in the Fathers of the Church on the question which occupies as is the fragment of the epistle of Irenæus to Florinus, which Eusebius has preserved for us. It is one of the finest pages of Christian literature in the second century. “These opinions of Florinus are not of a sound teaching; . . . . . these opinions are not those which the elders who have preceded us, and who knew the Apostles, transmitted to thee. I remembered that when I was a child in Asia Minor where thou didst shine first by thy office at court, I saw thee near Polycarp seeking to acquire his esteem. I remember things which happened first rather than things which come later, for that which we have known in infancy grows with the mind, identifies itself with it; so much so that I could tell the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat to speak, his walk, his habit, his method of life, the features of his body, his manner of rendering assistance, how he related the familiarity he had had with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, and what he had heard them say as to the Lord and his miracles, and as to his doctrine. Polycarp reported it as having received it from eye witnesses of the Word of Life conforming all to the scriptures. Those things, thanks to the goodness of God, I listened to from the first with appreciation, not consigning them to paper, but in my heart, and I always, thanks to God, recorded them with authenticity. And I can attest in the presence of God, that if this blessed and apostolic elder had heard something like thy doctrines, he would have closed his ears and would have cried according to his custom: ‘Oh good God! to what times hast thou reserved me, that I should hear such words!’ and he would have fled from the place where he had heard them.” We see that Irenæus did not make an appeal as in the greater part of the other passages in which he speaks of the residence of the apostle in Asia, to a vague tradition; he recites to Florinus some remembrances of childhood, under their common master Polycarp. One of these souvenirs is that Polycarp spoke often of his personal relations with the Apostle John. M. Scholten has seen thoroughly that it is necessary to admit the reality of these relations, or to declare apocryphal the Epistle to Florinus. He decides for this second view. His reasons seem to me to be very weak. And first in the book Against Heresies Irenæus expresses himself nearly in the same manner as in the letter to 188


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Florinus. The principal objection of M. Scholten is drawn from this, that to explain such relations between John and Polycarp, there must be supposed for the apostle, for Polycarp, and for Irenæus, an extraordinary longevity. I am not much moved by that; John could not be dead, until about the year 80 or 90, and Irenæus wrote about 180. Irenæus was therefore at the same distance from the last years of John, as we are from the last years of Voltaire. Now without any miracle of longevity whatever our fellow worker and friend M. Remusat knew with great intimacy the Abbé Morellet, who conversed at length with Voltaire. The difficulty which it is believed we find in the fact recorded by Irenæus, is that the martyrdom of Polycarp is placed in 166, 167, 168, 169 under Marcus Aurelius. Polycarp was at that time eighty-six years of age; he would therefore be born in the year 80, 81, 82, or 83, which would make him too young at the death of John. But the date of the martyrdom of Polycarp should be modified. This martyrdom took place under the Pro-Consulate of Quadratus. Now M. Waddington has demonstrated in a manlier which leaves no room for doubt, that the Pro-Consulate of Quadratus, in Asia, ought to be placed in 154-155, under the reign of Antoninus the Pious. Polycarp was therefore born in 68-69. If the Apostle had lived until the year 90, which nothing contradicts (he might be twelve years younger than Jesus), it is not unlikely that Polycarp had in his youth some conversations with him. It is not the Acts of the martyrdom of Polycarp which assigns as the date of that martyrdom the reign of Marcus Aurelius, it is Eusebius who by an erroneous calculation, of which M. Waddington gives a clear exposure believed that the Pro-Consulate of Quadratus fell under that reign. A difficulty in the chronological system, which we would explain is the journey which Polycarp made to Rome, under the pontificate of Anicet. Anicet, according to the received chronology, became Bishop of Rome in the year 154, or rather sooner. There is, therefore, some little difficulty to find a place for the journey of Polycarp. M. Waddington’s results appeal decisive; if it be necessary to be in sequence with these results, to ante-date a little the elevation of Anicet to the pontificate, we ought not to hesitate, seeing that the pontifical lists offer some trouble in that direction, and that many lists place Anicet before Pius. It is to be regretted that M. Lipsius, who has published recently a very good work upon the Chronology of the Bishop of Rome up to the Fourth Century, had not known M. Waddington’s treatise; he would have found there matter for an important discussion.

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Is it likely, says M. Scholten, that an old man, already nearly a centenarian, would have taken such a voyage and that at a time when it was much more difficult to travel than in our days? The voyages from Ephesus or from Smyrna to Rome would have been more easy. A merchant of Hierapolis tells us in his epitaph that he had made seventy-two times the distance from Hierapolis to Italy by doubling the Malean Cape. This merchant continued therefore his journeys up to an age advanced as that when Polycarp made his voyage to Rome. Such navigations (they travelled very little during the winter) did not entail any fatigue. It is possible that Polycarp carried out his voyage to Rome during the summer of 154 and yet suffered martyrdom at Smyrna on the 23rd February, 155. M. Keim’s hypothesis, according to which the John whom Polycarp would know would not be John the Apostle, but Presbyteros Johannes, is full of improbabilities. If this Presbyteros was 189


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as we believe a secondary personage, the disciple of John the Apostle flourishing in the year 100 to nearly the year 120, the confusion of Polycarp or Irenæus would be inconceivable. As to the Presbyteros being really a man of the great apostolic generation, an equal of the apostles, who might be confounded with them, we have already presented our objections to this theory. Let us add that even then the error of Polycarp would not be much more easy to explain. One of the most curious parts of M. Scholten’s treatise is that in which he recurs to the question of the fourth gospel, which he had already treated with no much fulness some years before. M. Scholten does not only admit that this gospel may be the work of John, but he still refuses it all connection with John. He denies that John is the disciple named many times in this gospel with mystery and designated as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” According to M. Scholten that disciple is not a real person. The immortal disciple who, as distinguished from the other disciples of the Master, should live until the end of the ages by the force of his mind, this disciple, whose evidence, reposing upon spiritual contemplation, is of an absolute authenticity, ought not to be identified with any of the Galillean apostles. He is an ideal personage. It is quite impossible for me to admit that opinion. But let us not complicate difficult questions by another more difficult still. M. Scholten has removed many supports upon which formerly rested the opinion of the residence of the Apostle John in Asia. He has proved that this fact does not arise from the penumbra through which we see nearly all the facts of Apostolic history. In what concerns Papias he has raised an objection to which it is easy to reply; nevertheless he has not set forth all the arguments which can be alleged in favour of the tradition. The first chapters of the Apocalypse, the letter of Irenæus to Florinus, the passage in Polycrates remain three solid bases upon which we cannot build up a certainty, but which M. Scholten, in spite of his trenchant dialectic, has not overturned.

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Indexes Index of Scripture References Psalms 49:6 Isaiah 3:10 Zechariah 12:10 Matthew 20:23 Mark 10:39 Acts 12:1-25 21:8 28:17-29 Romans 3:28 4:1 Ephesians 2:20 Hebrews 5:11-14 6:6 6:10 6:10 6:11-12 10:3-7 10:32 13:7 13:23 13:23 James 2:21 2:24 5:1 1 Peter 5:1-4 5:13 5:13 2 Peter 3:1-2 Revelation 1:1-3 1:9 1:9 11:1-12:17 13:1-18 18:20 21:4

Index of Greek Words and Phrases • ἀντιλεγόμενα • ἀρχαῖος ἀνήρ • ἀσπάζονται ὑμᾶς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας 191


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• Ἀριστίων καὶ ὁ πρεσβύτερος Ἰωαννης • ἐγὼ Ἰωάννης • Ἐβραῖοι • ἤ τί Ἰωάννης • ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ • ὁ πρεσβύτερος •Α • Βαβυλών •Μ • Νέρων Καῖσαρ • ΝΕΡΟΝ, ΚΑΙΣΑΡ • Οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας • Πρὸς Ἐβραίους • Πρὸς Ἐφεσίους •Σ • Σεβαστός • ΤΙ •Ω • ΩΤΙΑ • οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας • οἱ τοῦ κυρίου μαθηταί • πέταλον • σῶμα

Index of Latin Words and Phrases •Castra prætoriana •Cumæum carmen •Ego errovi! •Imperatores •Literarum intemperantia laboramus. •Quorum pars magna fui. •Sub terris tonuisse putes •aggeræ •aggerae •annum reipublicæ prope supremum •areæ •canticum •castella •castra prætoriana 192


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•cauponæ •cellæ •cloaca •crucibus affixi •custodia millitaris •epinicium •ex-voto •exordium •fœtus •fiscus •flagitia cohærentia nomini •honestior •humiliores •illummati •imperium •innoxia corpora •ludus matutinus •memoriæ •nœvus •odium humani generis •piacalum •piacula •piaculum •podium •prætorium •primipilus •puticuli •rostra •sarmentarii •sarmentitii •semaxii •sensorium •spoliarium •tunica molesta

Index of French Words and Phrases •éclat •élite •Coups d’Etat •abandon

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•abatis •bazarre •bizarre •bocche d’inferno •charivari •chef d’œuvre •chefs-d’-œuvre •chevaliers •claquers •claqueurs •confreres •créches •début •dénoûement •emeute •emigrés •enceinte •entrées •epopee •fête •fêtes •flambeaux •gardes du corps •habitués •hauteur •lorgnon •morceau •mot d’ordre •négligé •penates •petalon •poliorcétique •régime •résumé •rôle •raison d’etre •rennaissances •roturier •roué •tableaux vivants

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Index of Pages of the Print Edition i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xx 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292

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The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book V. The Gospels. by

Ernest Renan


About The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book V. The Gospels. by Ernest Renan Title: URL: Author(s): Publisher: Publication History: Rights: Date Created: CCEL Subjects:

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book V. The Gospels. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/renan/gospels.html Renan, Ernest (1823-1892) Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library London: Mathieson & Company: 1890 (?) Copyright Christian Classics Ethereal Library 2005-05-20 All; History

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book V. The Gospels.

Ernest Renan

Table of Contents About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Title Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intoduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter I. The Jews after the Destruction of the Temple.. . . . . . . . . Chapter II. Bether: The Book of Judith: the Jewish Canon.. . . . . . . . Chapter III. Ebion Beyond Jordan.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter IV. The Relations of Jews and Christians.. . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter V. Settlement of the Legend and of the Teachings of Jesus.. . Chapter VI. The Hebrew Gospel.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter VII. The Greek Gospel—Mark.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter VIII. Christianity and the Empire under Flavius.. . . . . . . . . Chapter IX. Propagation of Christianity—Egypt—Sibyllism. . . . . . . . Chapter X. The Greek Gospel is Corrected and Completed (Matthew).. Chapter XI. Secret of the Beauties of the Gospel.. . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter XII. The Christians of the Flavia Family—Flavius Josephus.. . Chapter XIII. The Gospel of Luke.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter XIV. The Domitian Persecution.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter XV. Clemens Romanus—Progress of the Presbyteriate.. . . Chapter XVI. End of the Flavii—Nerva—Recrudescence of Apocalypses.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter XVII. Trajan—The Good and Great Emperors.. . . . . . . . . . Chapter XVIII. Ephesus—The Old Age John—Cerinthus—Docetism.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter XIX. Luke, the First Historian of Christianity.. . . . . . . . . . . Chapter XX. Syrian Sects—Elkasaï.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter XXI. Trajan as a Persecutor—Letter of Pliny.. . . . . . . . . . . Chapter XXII. Ignatius of Antioch.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter XXIII. End of Trajan—Revolt of the Jews.. . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter XXIV. Definitive Separation of the Church and Synagogue.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index of Scripture References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greek Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . p. ii . . p. 1 . . p. 2 . . p. 5 . . p. 18 . . p. 26 . . p. 30 . . p. 37 . . p. 41 . . p. 47 . . p. 53 . . p. 58 . . p. 67 . . p. 73 . . p. 80 . . p. 87 . . p. 96 . . p. 106 . . p. 113 the . . p. 121 . . p. 132 of . . p. 142 . . p. 149 . . p. 154 . . p. 160 . . p. 165 . . p. 169 the . . p. 174 . . p. 182 . . p. 188 . . p. 188 . . p. 188


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Latin Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 189 French Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 190 Index of Pages of the Print Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 191

iv


i

THE HISTORY OF THE


BOOK V. THE GOSPELS.

BY

ERNEST RENAN Member of the French Academy.

London:

MATHIESON & COMPANY NEW INN CHAMBERS, 41 WYCH STREET, W.C.

iii ii

Ernest Renan


Ernest Renan

CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION

v CHAPTER I.

THE JEWS AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF 1 THE TEMPLE CHAPTER II. BETHER—THE BOOK OF JUDITH—THE 14 JEWISH CANON CHAPTER IIII. EBION BEYOND JORDAN

20 CHAPTER IV.

THE RELATIONS CHRISTIANS

OF

JEWS

AND 32 CHAPTER V.

SETTLEMENT OF THE LEGEND AND OF 39 THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS CHAPTER VI. THE HEBREW GOSPEL

49 CHAPTER VII.

THE GREEK GOSPEL—MARK

58 CHAPTER VIII.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE EMPIRE UNDER 66 FLAVIUS CHAPTER IX. P R O P A G A T I O N O F 81 CHRISTIANITY—EGYPT—SIBYLLISM

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CHAPTER X. THE GREEK GOSPEL IS CORRECTED AND 91 COMPLETED (MATTHEW) CHAPTER XI. iv

SECRET OF THE BEAUTIES OF THE 103 GOSPEL CHAPTER XII. THE CHRISTIANS OF THE FLAVIA 115 FAMILY—FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS CHAPTER XIII. THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

131 CHAPTER XIV.

THE DOMITIAN PERSECUTION

149 CHAPTER XV.

CLEMENS ROMANUS—PROGRESS OF 161 THE PRESBYTERIATE CHAPTER XVI. E N D O F T H E 175 FLAVII—NERVA—RECRUDESCENCE OF THE APOCALYPSES CHAPTER XVII. TRAJAN—THE EMPERORS

GOOD

AND

GREAT 194 CHAPTER XVIII.

EPHESUS—THE OLD AGE OF 212 JOHN—CERINTHUS, DOCETISM CHAPTER XIX.

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LUKE, THE FIRST CHRISTIANITY

HISTORIAN

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OF 224

CHAPTER XX. SYRIAN SECTS—ELKASAÏ

232 CHAPTER XXI.

TRAJAN AS A PERSECUTOR—LETTER OF 241 PLINY CHAPTER XXII. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH

249 CHAPTER XXIII.

END OF TRAJAN—REVOLT OF THE JEWS 255 CHAPTER XXIV. DEFINITIVE SEPARATION OP THE 263 CHURCH AND THE SYNAGOGUE APPENDIX

277

v

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INTRODUCTION. CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS OF THIS HISTORY.

vi

I HAD at first believed that I should be able to finish is one volume this history of the “Origins of Christianity;” but the matter has grown in proportion as I have advanced in my work, and the present volume only the last but two. The reader will find in it the explanation, so far as it is possible to give one, of a fact almost equal in importance to the personal action of Jesus himself—I mean to say, of the manner in which the legend of Jesus was written. The compilation of the Gospels is, next to the life of Jesus, the cardinal chapter of the history of Christian origins. The material circumstances of this compilation are surrounded with mystery; many of the doubts, however, have, in those later years, been dispelled, and it can now he said that the problem of the compilation of the Gospels denominated synoptic, has reached a kind of maturity. The relations of Christianity with the Roman Empire, the first heresies, the disappearance of the last immediate disciples of Jesus, the gradual separation of the Church and the Synagogue, the progress of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the substitution of the presbytery for the primitive community, the coming in with Trajan of a met of golden age for civil society, these are the great facts which we shall see unfolded to our view. Our sixth volume will embrace the history of Christianity under the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus; we shall witness the commencement of Gnosticism, the compilation of the pseudo-Johannine writings, the first apologists, the party of St Paul drifting by exaggeration to Marcion, ancient Christianity running into a coarser Millenarism and Montanism. Opposed to all this, the episcopate making rapid strides, Christianity becoming each day more Greek and less Hebrew, a “Catholic Church” beginning to result from the accord of all the individual churches, and to constitute centre of irrefragable authority, which already was established at Rome. We shall see finally the absolute separation of Judaism and Christianity definitively effected, from the time of the revolt of Bar-Coziba, and hatred the most deadly kindled between mother and daughter. From this point it can be said that Christianity is constituted. Its principle of authority exists. The episcopate has entirely replaced the primitive democracy, and the bishops of the different churches are en rapport with one another. The new Bible is complete; it is called the New Testament. The divinity of Jesus Christ is recognised by all the Churches outside of Syria. The Son is not yet the equal of the Father; he is a tend god, a supreme vizier of creation, yet he is in very truth a god. Finally, two or three attacks of maladies, extremely dangerous, which break out in the nascent religion—Gnosticism, Montanism, docetism, the heretical attempt of Marcion—are vanquished by the force of the internal principle of authority. Christianity, moreover, has extended itself everywhere. It has seated itself in the heart of Gaul, it has penetrated into Africa. It is a public affair: the historians speak of it; it has its advocates who defend it officially, its accusers who commence against it a war of criticism. Christianity, in a word, is born, completely born; it is an infant, and will grow a great deal. It has all its organs, it lives in the broad light of day, it is no longer an embryo. The

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umbilical cord which attached it to its mother is definitely cut; it will receive nothing more from her; it will live its own life. It is at this moment, about the year 160, that we shall determine this. That which follows belongs to history, and may seem relatively easy to recount. What we have wished to make clear belongs to the embry-organic stage, and must in great part be inferred, sometimes even divined. Minds which only love material certainty, cannot be pleased with such researches. Rarely (for these periods recur) does it happen that one can say with precision how things have taken place; but one may succeed sometimes in picturing to oneself the diverse manners in which they may have taken place, and that is sufficient. If there be a science which can make in our day surprising progress, it is the science of comparative mythology. Now this science has consisted much less in teaching us how each myth has been formed, than in demonstrating to us the diverse categories of formation. Although we cannot say, “Such a demi-god, such a goddess, is surely storm, lightning, the dawn,” etc.; but we can say, “The atmospheric phenomena, particularly those which are related to the rising and the setting of the sun, and so forth, have been the fruitful sources of gods and demi-gods.” Aristotle has truly said, “There is no science except general science.” History herself, history properly speaking, history exposed to the light of day and founded upon documents, does she escape this necessity? Certainly not; we do not know exactly the details of anything. That which is of moment are the general lines, the grand resultant facts which remain true even though all the details may be erroneous.

vii

Hence I have said the most important object of this volume is to explain in a plausible manner the method by which the three Gospels, called synoptic, were formed, which constitute, if we compare them with the fourth Gospel, a family apart. It is certainly true that it is impossible to determine precisely many of the points in this delicate research. It must be confessed, however, that the question has made during the last twenty years veritable progress. As the origin of the fourth Gospel, which is attributed to John, remains enveloped in mystery, so the hypotheses in regard to the compilation of the Gospels called synoptic have attained a high degree of probability. There are in reality three kinds of Gospels: (1) The original Gospels, or Gospels at first hand, composed solely from oral tradition, and without the author having before him any anterior text. (In my opinion, there are two Gospels of this kind, the one written in Hebrew, or rather in Syriac, now lost, but of which many of the fragments have been preserved to us, translated into Greek or into Latin, by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, St Jerome, etc.; the other written in Greek, which is that of St Mark.) (2) The Gospels, in part original, in part at second hand, formed by combining the anterior texts with the oral traditions (such were the Gospel falsely attributed to the Apostle Matthew and the Gospel composed by Luke). (3) The Gospels at second or third hand, composed deliberately from written documents, without the authors having dipped through any living principle into traditions. (Such was the Gospel of Marcion; such were also these Gospels, called apocryphal, drawn from the canonical Gospels by processes of amplification.) The variety of the Gospels arises from this, that the tradition which is found deposited there was for a 6


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long time oral. That variety would not have existed if from the very first the life of Jesus had been written. The idea of modifying arbitrarily the compilation of the texts presents itself less in the East than elsewhere, because the literal reproduction of the anterior accounts, or, if it be preferred, plagiarism is there the rule of the historiographer. The moment when an epic, or a legendary tradition, commences to be put into writing, marks the hour when it ceases to produce divergent branches. Far from subdividing itself, the compilation obeys thenceforward a sort of secret tendency which restores it to unity through the gradual extinction of imperfectly-judged compilations. There existed fewer Gospels at the end of the second century, when Irenæus found mystical reasons to establish that there were four, and that there could not be more, than at the close of the fast, when Luke wrote at the end of his narrative, Ἐπερδή περ πολλοί επιχείρησαν . . . Even in the time of Luke several of the original editions had probably disappeared. The oral form produces a multiplication of variants; but once the written style has been entered upon, this multiplicity is nothing but inconvenience. If logic like that of Marcion’s had prevailed, we should have had no more than one Gospel, and the best mark of the sincerity of the Christian conscience is that the necessities of the apologetic have not suppressed the contradictions in the texts by reducing them to one only. This is why, to speak the truth, the want of unity was combated by a contrary desire—that of losing nothing of a tradition which was judged as being equally precious in all its parts. A design like that which is often attributed to St Mark, the idea of making an abridgment of the anteriorily received texts, is more contrary to the spirit of the times than the one in question. People aimed, indeed, rather at completing each text by the heterogeneous additions, as in the case of Matthew, than in discarding from the little book what one possessed of the details which were regarded by all as being penetrated by the Divine Spirit.

viii

The most important documents for the epoch treated of in this volume are, besides the Gospels and the other writings the compilation of which are therein explained, the somewhat numerous epistles which were produced during the last apostolic period—epistles in which almost always the imitation of those of St Paul is discernible. What we shall say in our text will be sufficient to make known our opinion upon each of these writing. A fortuitous accident has willed that the most interesting of these epistles, that of Clemens Romanus, has received, in these later times, considerable elucidation. We should not have before known of this precious document, but for the celebrated manuscript, named Alexandrinus, which was sent, in 1682, by Cyril Lucaris to Charles I. Now, this manuscript contained a considerable omission, not to speak of several places which had been destroyed, or become illegible, which it was necessary to fill up with conjecture. A new manuscript, discovered in the Fanar at Constantinople, contains the work in its entirety. A Syriac manuscript, which formed a portion of the library of the late M. Mohl, and which has been acquired by the library of the University of Cambridge, was found also to include the Syrian translation of the work of which we are speaking. M. Bensley is entrusted with the publication of that text. The collation which Mr Lightfoot has made of it, has produced the most important results which arise from it for criticism.

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The question whether the epistle attributed to Clemens Romanus really by that holy personage, has only a mediocre importance, since the writing in question is represented as the collective work of the Roman Church, and since the problem confines itself, consequently, as to who held the pen on this particular occasion. It is not the same as the epistles attributed to St Ignatius. The fragments which compose this collection are either authentic or the work of a forger. In the second hypothesis they were at lead sixty years posterior to the death of St Ignatius, and such is the importance of the change. which operated in those sixty years, that the documentary value of the said fragments is absolutely changed by them. It is hence impossible to treat the history of the origins of Christianity, without taking up a decided position in this regard.

ix

The question of the Epistles of St Ignatius, next to the question of the Johannine writings, is the most difficult of those which belong to the primitive Christian literature. A few of the moat striking features of one of the letters which form a portion of that correspondence, were known and cited from the end of the second century. We have, moreover, here the testimony of a man which we are surprised to see pleaded on a subject of ecclesiastical history—that of Lucian of Samosata. The spirituelle picture of morals which that charming author has entitled “The Death of Peregrinus,” contains some almost direct allusions to the triumphal journey of the prisoner Ignatius, and to the circular epistles which he addressed to the Churches. These constitute some strong presumptions in favour of the authenticity of the letters of which we have been speaking. On the other hand, the taste for supposititious writings was at the time so wide-spread amongst Christian society, that we ought always to be on our guard in respect of them, since it is proved that no scruple was made in ascribing some of the letters and other writings to Peter, Paul, and John. There is no prejudicial objection to be raised against the hypothesis which attribute. writings to persona of high authority, such as Ignatius and Polycarpus. It is only the examination of the compositions themselves which will warrant one in expressing an opinion in that regard. Now it is incontestable that the perusal of the writings of St Ignatius inspires the gravest suspicions, and raises objections which no one has as yet satisfactorily answered. In regard to a personage like St Paul, some of whose longer writings of indubitable authenticity it is universally admitted we possess, and whose biography is well enough known, the discussion of the contested epistles has some foundation. We start with the texts to which no exception can be taken, and from the well-established outlines of the biography; we compare the doubtful writings with them; we see whether they agree with the data admitted by everyone, and, in certain cases, as in those of the Epistles to Titus and Timothy, we reach most satisfactory conclusions. But we know nothing of the private life of St Ignatius; among the writings attributed to him there is not a page of them which is not contestable. We have not their solid criterium to warrant us in saying, “This is or this is not his.” That which greatly complicates the question is, that the text of the epistles is extremely variable—the Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Armenian manuscripts of the same epistle differ considerably amongst themselves. These letters, during several centuries, seem to have particularly

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exercised the forgers and the interpolators. Obstacles and difficulties are encountered in them at each step. Without taking into account the secondary various readings, as well as some works notoriously spurious, we prossess two collections of unequal length of the epistles attributed to St Ignatius. The one contains seven letters addressed to the Ephesian, the Magnesians, the Trallians, the Romans, the Philadelphians, the Smyrniotes, to Polycarpus. The other consists of thirteen letters, to wit: (1) The seven just mentioned, considerably augmented; (2) Four new letters of Ignatius to the Tarsians, to the Philippians, to the Antiochians, to Heros; (3) and finally, a letter of Maria de Castabala to Ignatius, with the answer of Ignatius. Between those two collections there can be but little possible hesitation. The critics, beginning with Usserius, are nearly agreed in preferring the collection of seven letters to that of the thirteen. There can be no doubt that the added letters in the latter collection are apocryphal. As for the seven letters which are common to the two collections, the actual text must certainly be sought for in the former collection. Many of the particulars in the texts of the second collection betray unmistakably the hand of the interpolator; but this does not necessitate that this second collection may not have a veritable critical value in regard to the construction of the text, for it would appear that the interpolator had in his hands an excellent manuscript, the reading of which ought to be preferred to that of the noninterpolated manuscripts actually existing.

10

In any case, is the collection of seven letters beyond suspicion? Far from it. The first doubts were raised by the great school of French criticism of the seventeenth century. Saumaise and Blondel raised the moat serious objections against portions of the collection of the seven letters. Daillé, in 1666, published a remarkable dissertation, in which he rejected the collection in its entirety. In spite of the trenchant replies of Pearson, Bishop of Chester, and the resistance of Cotolier, the majority of independent minds—Larroque, Basnage, Casimir Oudin—ranged themselves on the side of Daillé. The school which in our day in Germany has so learnedly applied criticism to the history of the origins of Christianity, has only followed the lines of that of nearly two hundred years ago. Neander and Gieseler remained in doubt; Christian Baur resolutely denied the authenticity of the whole: none of the epistles found grace in his sight. This great critic, it is true, did not rest content with denying, he explained. In his view, the seven Ignatian epistles were a forgery of the second century, fabricated at Rome, with a view of creating a basis for the authority of the episcopate, which was increasing day by day. M. M. Schwegler, Hilgenfeld, Vauchner, Volkmar, and more recently M. M. Scholten and Pfliederer, have adopted the same propositions, with slightly different shades of meaning. Many enlightened theologians, nevertheless, such as Uhlhorn, Hefele, and Dressel, persisted in regarding some portions of the collection of the seven letters as authentic, or even in defending it in its entirety. An important discovery, about the year 1840, ought to have determined the question in an ecclesiastical sense, and furnished an instrument to those who held it to be a difficult operation to separate in the texts, generally little accented, the sincere parts from those interpolated.

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Amongst the treasures which the British Museum secured from the convents of Nitria, M. Cureton discovered three Syriac manuscripts, each of which contained the same collection of the Ignatian epistles; but they are much more abridged than the two Greek collections. The Syrian collection found by Cureton contained only three epistles—the epistle to the Ephesians, that to the Romans, that to Polycarpus—and these three epistles were found to be much shorter than in the Greek. It was natural to believe that people would in fine hold Ignatius to be authentic, the text being anterior to all interpolations. The phrases cited as those of Ignatius by Irenæus, by Origen, were found in that Syriac version.

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People believed it was possible to show that the suspected passages were not to be found in them. Bunsen, Ritschl, Weiss, and Lipsius displayed an extreme ardour in maintaining that proposition. M. Ewald assumed to advocate it in imperious tone; but very strong objections were raised against it. Baur, Wordsworth, Hefele, Uhlhorn, and Merx set themselves to prove that the small Syriac collection, so far from being the original text, was an abridged and mutilated text. They have not clearly shown, it is true, what motives had guided the abbreviator in this work of making extracts. But in seeking again for the evidences of the knowledge which the Syrians had of the epistles in question, we arrive at the conclusion that not only had the Syrians not possessed an Ignatius more authentic than that of the Greeks, but that even the collection which they have was the collection of thirteen letters from which the abbreviator discovered by Cureton had drawn his extracts. Petermann contributed much to this result in discussing the Armenian translation of the epistles in question. This translation had been made from the Syriac, but it contains the thirteen letters, including the most feeble portions of them. People are to-day so nearly agreed that there is no occasion to consult the Syriac in that which concerns the writings attributed to the Bishop of Antioch, except as to a few details of the various readings. We see, after what has just been said, that three opinions divide the critics as to the collection of the seven letters, only one of which, however, merits discussion. Some hold that the whole collection is apocryphal, while others maintain that the whole, or nearly so, is authentic. A few seek to distinguish the authentic from the apocryphal portion. The second opinion appears to us indefensible. Without affirming that everything in the correspondence of the Bishop of Antioch is apocryphal, it is allowable to regard as a desperate attempt the pretension of demonstrating that the whole of it is of good alloy. If we except, in fact, the Epistle to the Romans, which is full of a singular energy, of a kind of sacred fire, and stamped by a character peculiarly original, the six other epistles, excepting two or three passages, are cold, lifeless, and desperately monotonous. There is not one of those striking peculiarities which gave so distinctive a seal to the Epistles of St Paul and even to the Epistles of St James and Clemens Romanus; they consist of vague exhortations, without any special relations to those to whom they are addressed, and always dominated by one fixed idea—the enhancement of the episcopal power, the constitution of the Church into a hierarchy.

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Certainly the remarkable evolution which substituted for the collective authority of the ἐκκλησία or συναγωγή the direction of the πρεσβύτεροι or ἐπίσκοποι (two terms at first synonymous), and which, among the πρεσβύτεροι or ἐπίσκοποι, in selecting one out from the circle (?) to be par excellence the ἐπίσκοπος or overseer of the others, began at a very early date. But it is not credible that, about the year 110 or 115, this movement was so advanced as we see it to be in the Ignatian epistles. According to the author of these curious writings, the bishop is the whole Church; it is imperative to follow him in everything, to consult him in everything—he some up the community in himself alone. He is Christ himself. Where the bishop is, there is the Church, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Church Catholic. The distinction between the different ecclesiastical orders is not less characteristic. The priests and deacons are in the hands of the bishop like the strings of a lyre; their perfect harmony depends upon the accuracy of the sounds which the Church emits. Above the individual Churches, in fact, there is a Church Universal, ἡ καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία. All this is true enough from the end of the second century, but not so from the early years of that century. The repugnance which our old French critics evinced on this point was well founded, and sprung from the very correct sentiment which they entertained as to the gradual evolution of the Christian dogmas.

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The heresies combatted by the author of the Ignatian epistles with so much fury are likewise of an age posterior to that of Trajan. They were wholly attached to a Docetism or a Gnosticism analogous to that of Valentinus. We insist less on this particular, for the pastoral epistles and the Johannine writings combat errors greatly analogous, yet we think these writings belong to the first half of the second century. However, the idea of an orthodoxy outside of which there is only error, appeared in the writings in question, and so fully developed that it seems to approach more nearly the times of St Irenæus than those of the primitive Christian age. The great feature of the apocryphal writings is the affectation of a leaning in a certain direction: the aim that the forger proposed to himself in their composition always clearly betrays itself in them. This character is observable in the highest degree in the epistles attributed to St Ignatius, the Epistle to the Romans always excepted. The author wishes to strike a great blow in favour of the episcopal hierarchy; he wishes to crush the heretics and the schismatics of his time with the weight of an indisputable authority. But where can we find a higher authority than that of this venerated bishop, whose heroic death was recognised by everyone! What more solemn than the counsels given by this martyr a few days or a few weeks before his appearance in the amphitheatre! St Paul, in like manner, in the epistles supposed to be addressed to Titus and to Timothy, is represented as old, nigh unto death. The last will of a martyr came to be regarded as sacred, and, moreover, the admission of the apocryphal work was so much the more easy, inasmuch as St Ignatius was believed, in fact, to have written different letters on his way to his execution. Let u add to these objections a few material improbabilities. The salutations to the Churches and the relations which these salutations presupposed to exist between the author of the letters and the Churches, are not

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sufficiently explained. The circumstantial features contain something awkward and stupid just as was also to be remarked in the false epistles of Paul to Titus and to Timothy. The great use which is made in the writings of which we speak, of the fourth Gospel and of the Johannine epistles, the affected way in which the author speaks of the doubtful epistle of St Paul to the Ephesians, likewise excites suspicion. On the other hand, it is very strange that the author, in seeking to exalt the Church at Ephesus, ignores the relations of this Church with St Paul, and says nothing of the sojourn of St John at Ephesus, he who was supposed to be so closely connected with Polycarpus, the disciple of John. It must be confessed, in short, that this correspondence is not often cited by the fathers, and that the estimate which appears to have been put upon it by the Christian authors up to the fourth century, is not in proportion to that which it merited had it been authentic. Let us always put to one side the Epistle to the Romans, which, in our view, does not form a part of the apocryphal collection. The six other epistles have been little read—St John, Chrysostom, and the ecclesiastical writers of Antioch, seem to have been ignorant of them. It is a singular thing that even the author of the Acts, of the Martyrdom of Ignatius, the most authorised of those that Ruinart published from a script of Colbert, possesses only a very vague knowledge concerning them. It is the same with the author of the Acts published by Dressel.

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Ought the Epistle to the Romans to be included in the condemnation which the other Ignatian epistles merit? One may read the translation of a part of this writing in our text. There is here certainly a singular fragment, which cuts into the common-places of the other epistles attributed to the Bishop of Antioch. Is the Epistle to the Romans entirely the work of the holy martyrs? This may be doubted, but it appears to cover original ground. Here and there only we acknowledge that which M. Zahn too generously accords to the rest of the Ignatian correspondence—the imprint of a powerful character and of a strong individuality. The style of the Epistle to the Romans is bizarre and enigmatical, whilst that of the rest of the correspondence is plain and insipid enough. The Epistle to the Romans does not include any of those common-places of ecclesiastical discipline by which the intention of the forger is recognised. The strong expressions which we encounter there upon the divinity of Jesus Christ and the eucharist ought not to surprise us too much. Ignatius belonged to the school of Paul, in which the formulas of transcendent theology were much more current than in the severe Judeo-Christian school. Still less must we be astonished at the numerous citations and imitations of Paul which are found in the Epistle of Ignatius of which we speak. There can be no doubt that Ignatius did not make constant use of the authentic epistles of Paul. I have said as much of a citation from St Matthew (sec. 6), which, moreover, is wanting in several of the old translations, as well as a vague allusion to the genealogies of the synoptics (sec. 7). Ignatius doubtless possessed the Λεχθέντα ἢ πραχθέντα of Jesus, such as were read in his times, and, upon the essential points these accounts differed little from those which have come down to us. More serious, undoubtedly, is the objection drawn from the expressions which the author of our epistle appears to have borrowed from the fourth Gospel. It is not certain that this Gospel existed before the year 115. But some expression like ὁ ἄρχων αἰῶνος τούτου, some images like ὕδωρ ζῶν, may

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have been mystical expressions employed in certain schools, dating from the first quarter of the second century, and before the fourth Gospel had consecrated them.

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These intrinsic arguments are not the only ones which oblige us to place the Epistle to the Romans in a distinct category in the Ignatian correspondence. In some respects this epistle contradicts the other six. At paragraph 4, Ignatius declares to the Romans that he represents them to the Churches as being willing that he should carry off the crown of martyrdom. We find nothing resembling this in the epistles to these Churches. That which is much more serious is that the Epistle to the Romans does not seem to have reached us through the same channel as the other six letters. In the manuscripts which have preserved to us the collection of the suspected letters, the Epistle to the Romans is not to be found. The relatively true text of this epistle has only been transmitted to us by the Acts, called Colbertine, of the martyrdom of St Ignatius. It has been extracted thence, and intercalated in the collection of the thirteen letters. But everything proves that the collection of the letters to the Ephesian, the Magnesian, the Trallians, the Philadelphians, the Smyrniotes, to Polycarpus, did not comprise at first the Epistle to the Romans,—that these six letters in themselves constituted the collection, having a distinct unity, from being the work of a single author; and that it was not until later that the two series of Ignatian correspondence were combined, the one apocryphal, consisting of six letters, the other, probably authentic, consisting of a single letter. It is remarkable that in the collection of the thirteen letters the Epistle to the Romans comes last, although its importance and celebrity ought to have secured it the first place. In short, in the whole of the ecclesiastical tradition, the Epistle to the Romans has a particular design. While the other six letters are very rarely cited, the Epistle to the Romans, beginning with Irenæus, is quoted with extraordinary respect. The energetic sentiments which it contains to express the love of Jesus and the eagerness for martyrdom, constitute in some sort a part of the Christian conscience, and are known of all. Pearson, and, after him, M. Zahn, have likewise proved a singular fact, which is the imitation that is to be found in paragraph 3 of the authentic account of the martyrdom of Polycarpus, written by a Smyrniote in the year 155, of a passage of the Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans. It seems, indeed, that the Smyrniote, the author of these Acts, had in his mind some of the most striking passages of the Epistle to the Romans, above all, the fifth paragraph. Thus everybody assigns the Epistle to the Romans in the Ignatian literature a distinct place. M. Zahn recognises this peculiar circumstance; he shows clearly in different places that this epistle was never completely incorporated with the other six; but he has failed to point out the consequence of that fact. His desire to discover the collection of the seven authentic letters has led him into an imprudent discussion, to wit, that the collection of the seven letters ought either to be accepted or rejected in its entirety. This is to repeat, in another sense, the fault of Baur, of Helgenfeld, and Volkmar; it is to compromise seriously one of the jewels of the primitive Christian literature, in associating it with these but too often mediocre writings, and which have almost on this point been put out of court.

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That which then seems the most probable is that the Ignatian literature contains nothing authentic, except the Epistle to the Romans. Even this epistle has not remained exempt from alterations. The length, the repetitions which are remarked in it, are probably injuries inflicted by an interpolation upon that beautiful monument of Christian antiquity. When we compare the texts preserved by the Colbertin Acts, with the texts of the collection of the thirteen epistles, with the Latin and Syriac translations, with the citations of Eusebius, we find very considerable differences. It seems that the author of the Colbertin Acts, in encasing in his account this precious fragment, has not scrupled to retouch it in many points. In the superscription, for example, Ignatius gives himself the surname of Θεοφόρος. Now neither Irenæus, nor Origen, nor Eusebius, nor St Jerome knew this characteristic surname; it appeared for the first time in the Acts of Martyrdom, which makes the most important part of Trajan’s inquiring turn upon the said epithet. The idea of applying it to Ignatius was suggested by passages in the supposititious epistles, such as Ad. Eph., sec. 9. The author of the Acts, finding that name in the tradition, has availed himself of it, and added it to the title of the epistle which he inserted in his narrative, Ἰγνάτιος ὁ και Θεοφορος. I think that in the original compilation of these six apocryphal epistles, these words, ὁ και Θεοφορος no longer constitute a part of the titles. The post-scriptum to the Epistle of Polycarpus to the Philippians, in which Ignatius is mentioned, and which is by the same hand as the six epistles, as we shall see further on, makes no mention of this epithet. Is one justified in denying absolutely that in the six suspected epistles there is no portion of them borrowed from the authentic letters of Ignatius? No, certainly not; and the author of the six apocryphal epistles not having known, as it would seem, the Epistle to the Romans, there is no great likelihood that he possessed other authentic letters of the martyr. A single passage in sec. 19 of the Epistle to the Ephesians, appears to me to cut into the dark and vague ground with which the suspected epistles are encompassed, that which concerns the τρία μυστήρια κραυγῆς has much of that mysterious, singular, and obscure style, recalling the fourth Gospel, which we have remarked in the Epistle to the Romans. That passage, like the brilliant sentiments in the Epistle to the Romans, has been much cited. But it occupies too isolated a position there to be insisted on. A question which is closely connected with that of the epistles ascribed to St Ignatius, is the question of the epistle attributed to Polycarpus. At two different places (sec. 9 and sec. 13), Polycarpus, or the person who has forged the letter, makes formal mention of Ignatius. In a third place (sec. 1), he would seem again to make allusion to it. We read in one of those passages (sec. 13, and last): “You have written to me, you and Ignatius, in order that if there be anyone here who is about to depart for Syria he would bear thence your letters. I shall acquit myself of this task, when I can find a suitable opportunity, either in person, or by a messenger whom I shall send for both of us. As for the epistles that Ignatius has addressed to you, and the others of his which we possess, we send them to you, since you have requested us to do so; they are sent together with this letter. You will be able to extract much profit from them, as they breathe the faith, the patience,

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the edification of our Lord.” The old Latin version adds, “Inform me as to that which you know touching Ignatius, and those who are with him.” These lines notoriously correspond with a passage in the letter of Ignatius to Polycarpus (sec. 8), where Ignatius asks the latter to send messengers in different directions. All this is suspicious. As the Epistle of Polycarpus finishes very well with sec. 12, one is led almost necessarily, if one admits the authenticity of this epistle, to suppose that a post-scriptum has been added to the Epistles of Polycarpus by the author of the six apocryphal epistles of Ignatius himself. There is no Greek manuscript of the Epistle of Polycarpus which contains this post-scriptum. We only know it through a citation of Eusebius, and through the Latin version. The same errors are combated in the Epistles to Polycarpus as in the six Ignatian epistles: the order of the ideas is the same. Many manuscripts present the Epistle of Polycarpus joined to the Ignatian collection in the form of a preface or of an epilogue. It would seem, then, either that the epistles of Polycarpus and those of Ignatius are by the same forger, or that the author of the letters of Ignatius had the idea of seeking for a point d’appui in the Epistle of Polycarpus, and in adding to it a post-scriptum,—of creating an interest in his work. This addition harmonises well with the mention of Ignatius which is found in the body of the letter of Polycarpus (sec. 9). It would fit in better still, in appearance, at least, with the first paragraph of this letter in which Polycarpus praises the Philippians for having received in a proper manner some confessors bound in chains who passed some time with them. From the Epistle of Polycarpus so falsified, and from the six letters ascribed to Ignatius, there was formed a little pseudo-Ignatian Corpus, perfectly homogeneous in style and in colouring, which was a real defence of orthodoxy, and of the episcopate. By the side of this collection there was preserved the more or less authentic Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans. This circumstance induces the belief that the forger was acquainted with this writing, nevertheless it appears that he did not judge it convenient to include it in his collection, the arrangement of which he changed, and demonstrated its non-authenticity. Irenæus, about the year 180, only knew Ignatius through the energetic sentiments contained in his Epistle to the Romans. “I am the bread of Christ,” etc. He had undoubtedly read this epistle, although what he says is sufficiently accounted for by an oral tradition. Irenæus, to all appearance, did not possess the six apocryphal letters, and in all probability he read the true or supposed epistle of his master Polycarpus without the post-scriptum; Επἰγρὰψατέ μοι . . . Origen admitted as authentic the Epistle to the Romans, and the six apocryphal letters. He cited the former in the prologue of his commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, and the pretended Epistle to the Ephesians in his sixth homily upon St Luke. Eusebius knew the Ignatian collection as we have it, that is to say, consisting of seven letters; he did not use the Acts of Martyrdom; he makes no distinction between the Epistle to the Romans and the six others. He read the Epistle of Polycarpus with the post-scriptum. A peculiar fate seemed to designate the name of Ignatius to the fabricators of apocryphas. In the second half of the fourth century, about 375, a new collection of Ignatian epistles was produced: this is the collection of the thirteen letters, to which the collection of the seven letters notoriously 15


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served as a nucleus. As these seven letters presented many obscurities, the new forger also set about interpolating them. A multitude of explanatory glosses are introduced into the text, and burden it to no purpose. Six new letters were fabricated from end to end, and, in spite of their shocking improbability, they came to be universally adopted. The retouchings to which they were afterwards subjected, were only abridgments of the two preceding collections. The Syrians, in particular, concocted a small edition, consisting of three abridged letters, in the preparation of which they were guided by no correct sentiment as to the distinction between the authentic and the apocryphal. A few works appeared still later to enlarge the Ignatian works. We possess these only in Latin. xvii

The Acts of the Martyrdom of St Ignatius presents not less diversities than the text itself of the epistles which are ascribed to them. We enumerate as many as eight or nine compilations. We must not attribute much importance to these productions; none of them have any original value; all are posterior to Eusebius, and compiled from the data furnished by Eusebius, data which of themselves have no other foundation than the collection of the epistles, and, in particular, the Epistle to the Romans. These Acts, in their most ancient form, do not go back further than the end of the fourth century. We cannot in any way compare them with the Acts of the Martyrdom of Polycarpus and the martyrs of Lyons, accounts actually authentic and contemporaneous with the fact reported. They are full of impossibilities, of historical errors and mistakes, as to the condition of the Empire at the epoch of Trajan. In this volume, as in those which precede, we have sought to steer a middle course between the criticism which employs all its resources to defend texts which have for long been stamped with discredit, and the exaggerated scepticism which rejects en bloc and à priori everything which Christianity records of its first origins. One will remark, in particular, the employment of this intermediary method in that which concerns the question of the Clements and that of the Christian Flavii. It is apropos of the Clements that the conjectures of the school called Tübingen have been the worst inspired. The defect of this school, sometimes so fecund, is the rejecting of the traditional systems, often, it is true, built upon fragile materials, and their substituting systems founded upon authorities more fragile still. As regards Ignatius, have not they pretended to correct the traditions of the second century by Jean Malala? As regards Simon Magus, have not some theologians, in other respects sagacious, resisted to the latest the necessity of admitting the real existence of that personage? An regards the Clements, we would be looked upon by certain critics as narrow-minded indeed, if we admitted that Clemens Romanus existed, and if we did not explain all that which relates to him by the certain misunderstandings and confusions with Flavius Clemens. Now it is, on the contrary, the data in regard to Flavius Clemens which are uncertain and contradictory. We do not deny the gleams of Christianity which appear to issue from the obscure rubbish of the Flavian family; but to extract from thence a great historic fact by which to rectify uncertain traditions, is a strange part to take, or rather, this lack of just proportion in induction, which in Germany is so often detrimental to the rarest qualities of diligence and application. They discard solid evidence, and substitute for it feeble hypothesis; they challenge satisfactory texts, and accept, almost without 16


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examination, the combinations hazarded by an accommodating archeology. Something new they will have at any cost, and the new they obtained by the exaggeration of ideas, often just and penetrating. From a feeble current proved to exist in some obscure gulf, they conclude the existence of a great oceanic current. The observation was proper enough, but they drew from it false consequences. It is far from my thoughts to deny or to attenuate the services which German science has rendered to our difficult studies, but, in order to profit by those services, we must examine them very closely, and apply to them a thorough spirit of discernment. Above all, we must be most resolute in not taking into account the haughty criticisms of men of system who treat you as ignorant and behind the age because you do not admit at the first onset the latest novelty hatched by the brain of a young doctor, and which, at the best, can only be useful in encouraging research in the circles of the learned.

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THE GOSPELS AND

THE SECOND CHRISTIAN GENERATION. CHAPTER I. THE JEWS AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE.

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NEVER was a people so sadly undeceived as was the Jewish race on the morrow of the day when, contrary to the most formal assurances of the Divine oracles, the Temple which they had supposed to be indestructible collapsed before the assault of the soldiers of Titus. To have been near the realisation of the grandest of visions and to be forced to renounce them, at the very moment when the destroying angel had already partially withdrawn the cloud, to see everything vanish into space; to be committed through having prophesied the Divine apparition, and to receive from the harshness of facts the most cruel contradiction—were not these reasons for doubting the Temple, nay, for doubting God himself? Thus the first years which followed the catastrophe of the year 70 were characterised by an intense feverishness—perhaps the most intense which the Jewish conscience had ever experienced. Edom (the name by which the Jews already distinguished the Roman Empire), the impious Edom, the eternal enemy of God, triumphed. Ideas which had appeared to be unimpeachable were now argued against. Jehovah appeared to have broken his covenant with the sons of Abraham. It was even a question if the faith of Israel—assuredly the most ardent that ever existed—would succeed in executing a complete right-about-face against evidence, and by an unheard-of display of strength continue to hope against all hope. The hired assassins, the enthusiasts, had almost all been killed: those who had survived passed the rest of their lives in that mournful state of stupefaction which amongst madmen follows attacks of violent mania. The Sadducees had almost disappeared in the year 66 with the priestly aristocracy who lived in the Temple, and drew from it all their prestige. It has been supposed that some survivors of the great families took refuge with the Herodians in the north of Syria, in Armenia, at Palmyra, remained long allied to the little dynasties of those countries, and shed a final brilliancy on that Zenobia who appears to us in effect, in the third century, as a Sadducean Jewess, foreshadowing by a simple monotheism both Arianism and Islam. The theory is a plausible one; but, in any case, such more or less authentic relics of the Sadducean party had become almost strangers to the rest of the Jewish nation: the Pharisees treated them as enemies.

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That which survived the Temple and remained almost intact after the disaster at Jerusalem, was Pharisaism: the moderate party in Jewish society, the party less inclined to mingle politics with religion than other sections of the people, narrowing the business of life to the scrupulous accomplishment of the Law. Strange state of things! the Pharisees had passed through the ordeal almost safe and sound; the Revolution had passed over them without injuring them. Absorbed in their sole preoccupation—the exact observance of the Law—almost all of them had fled from Jerusalem before the last convulsions, and had found an asylum in the neutral towns of Jabneh and Lydda. The zealots were only individual enthusiasts; the Sadducees were but a class; the Pharisees were the nation. Essentially pacific, preferring a peaceful and laborious life, contented with the free practice of their family worship, these true Israelites resisted all temptations; they were the corner-stones of Judaism which passed through the Middle Ages and came down to our own days. The Law was, in truth, all that remained to the Jewish people after the shipwreck of their religious institutions. Public worship, after the destruction of the Temple, had been impossible; prophecy, after the terrible check which it had received, was dumb; holy hymns, music, ceremonies, all had become insipid and objectless, since the Temple, which served as the navel of the entire Hebrew cosmos, had ceased to exist. The Thora, on the contrary, in the non-ritualistic part of it, was always possible. The Thora was not only a religious law, it was a complete system of legislation, a civil code, a personal statute, which made of the people who submitted to it a sort of republic apart from the rest of the world. Such was the object to which the Jewish conscience would henceforward attach itself with a kind of fanaticism. The ritual had to be profoundly modified, but the Canon Law was maintained almost in its entirety. To explain, to practise the Law with minute exactitude, appeared the sole end of life. One science only was held in esteem, that of the Law. Its tradition became the ideal country of the Jew. The subtle discussions which for about a hundred years had filled the schools, were as nothing compared with those which followed. Religious minutiæ and scrupulous devotion were substituted amongst the Jews for all the rest of the worship.

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One not less grave consequence springing out of the new conditions under which Israel was henceforward to live was the definitive victory of the teacher (doctor) over the priest. The Temple had perished, but the school of the Law had been spared. The priest, after the destruction of the Temple, saw his functions reduced to very small proportions. The doctor, or, more properly speaking, the judge, the interpreter of the Thora, became, on the contrary, an important personage. The tribunal (Beth-din) was at that time a great Rabbinical school. The Ab-beth-din (president) is a chief at once civil and religious. Every titled rabbin had the right of entry within its limits; its decisions are determined by the majority of votes. The disciples standing behind a barrier heard and learned what was necessary to make them judges and doctors in their turn. “A tight cistern which did not allow the escape of a drop of water” became henceforward the ideal of Israel. There was as yet no written manual of this traditional law. More than a hundred years had to roll on before the discussions of the schools became crystallised into a body which

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should be called Mishna, par excellence, but the root of this book really dates from the period of which we speak. Although compiled in Galilee, it was in reality born in Jabneh. Towards the end of the first century it existed only in the form of little pamphlets of notes, in style almost algebraical, and full of abbreviations, which gave the solutions by the most celebrated rabbins of embarrassing cases. The most robust memories already gave way under the weight of tradition and of judicial precedents. Such a state of things made writing necessary. Thus we see at this period mention is made of the Mishna, that is to say, little collections of decisions or halakoth, which bear the names of their authors. Such was that of the Rabbi Eliezer ben Jacob, who about the end of the first century was described as “short but good.” The Mishnic treatise Eduïoth, which is distinguished from all others in that it has no special subject and that it is in itself an abridged Mishna, has for central idea the Eduïoth or “testimonies” relative to prior decisions which were collected at Jabneh and submitted to revision after the dismissal of Rabbi Gamaliel the younger. About the same time Rabbi Eliezer ben Jacob composed from memory the description of the sanctuary which forms the basis of the treatise Middoth. Simon of Mispa, at a still earlier date, appears as the author of the first edition of the treatise Ioma, relating to the Feast of the Atonement, and perhaps of the treatise Tamid. The opposition between these tendencies and those of the nascent Christianity was that of fire and water. Christians detached themselves ever more and more from the Law: the Jews fettered themselves with it frantically. A lively antipathy appears to have existed amongst Christians against the subtle and uncharitable spirit which every day tended to increase in the synagogues. Jesus fifty years before already had chosen this spirit as the object of his severest rebukes. Since then the casuists had only plunged more and more deeply into the abysses of their narrow hair splittings. The misfortunes of the nation had in no way changed their character. Disputatious, vain, jealous, susceptible, given to quarrelling for merely personal motives, they passed their time between Jabneh and Lydda in excommunicating each other for the most puerile reasons. James and the relations of Jesus generally were very strict Pharisees. Paul himself boasted of being a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee. But after the siege the war was open. In collecting the traditional words of Jesus the change of situation made itself felt. The word “Pharisee” in the Gospels generally, as later the word “Jew” in the Gospel attributed to John, is employed as synonymous with “enemy of Jesus.” Derision of the casuist was one of the essential elements of the evangelical literature, and one of the causes of its success. The really good man in truth holds nothing in so much horror as moral pedantry. To clear himself in his own eyes from the suspicion of dupery, he is constrained sometimes to doubt his own works, his own merits. He who pretends to work out his own salvation by infallible receipts, appears to him the chief enemy of God. Pharisaism became thus something worse than vice, since it made virtue ridiculous; and nothing pleases us so much as to see Jesus, the most purely virtuous of men, set a hypocritical bourgeoisie at defiance, and allowing it to be understood that the Law of which he was so proud was perhaps like everything else—vanity. One consequence of the new situation of the Jewish people was a vast increase of the separatist and exclusive spirit. Hated and despised by the world, Israel withdrew more and more into itself. 20


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The perischouth insociability became a law of public salvation. To live apart in a purely Jewish world, to add new requirements to the Law, to render it difficult to fulfil, such was the aim of the doctors, and they attained it very cleverly. Excommunications were multiplied. To observe the Law was so complicated an art that the Jew had no time to think of anything else. Such was the origin of the “eighteen measures,” a complete code of sequestration which originally dates from a period anterior to the destruction of the Temple but which did not come into operation until after 70. These eighteen measures were all intended to exaggerate the isolation of Israel. Forbidden to buy the most necessary things amongst Pagans, forbidden to speak their language, to receive their testimony and their offerings, forbidden to offer sacrifices for the Emperor. Many of these prescriptions were at once regretted; some even said that the day on which they were adopted was as sad as that on which the Golden Calf was set up, but they were never abrogated. A legendary dialogue expresses the opposite sentiments of the two parties which divided the Jewish schools in this matter. “To-day,” says Rabbi Eliezer, “the measure is filled up.” “To-day,” says Rabbi Joshua, “it has been made to overflow.” “A vessel full of nuts,” says Rabbi Eliezer, “may yet contain as much oil or sesame as you wish.” “When a jar is full of oil, if you add water you drive out the oil.” Notwithstanding all protests, the eighteen measures obtained such authority that some went so far as to say that no power had the right to abolish them. Perhaps certain of these measures were inspired by a sullen opposition to Christianity, and, above all, by the liberal preachings of St Paul. It would seem that the more the Christians laboured to overthrow the legal barriers, the more the Jews laboured to render them impregnable. It was mainly in what concerned proselytes that the contrast was marked. Not merely did the Jews seek no longer to win them, but they displayed towards these new brethren a scarcely veiled hostility. It had not yet been said that “proselytes are a leprosy for Israel;” but far from encouraging them, they were dissuaded; they were told of the numberless dangers and difficulties to which they exposed themselves by consorting with a despised race. At the same time, the hatred against Rome redoubled. The only thoughts which her name inspired were thoughts of murder and of bloodshed.

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But now, as always in the course of its long history there was an admirable minority in Israel who protested against the errors of the majority of the nation. The grand duality which lies at the base of the life of this singular people continued. The calm, the gentleness of the good Jew, was proof against all trials. Shammai and Hillel, though long dead, were as the heads of two opposed families; one representing the narrow, malevolent, subtle, materialistic spirit; the other the broad, benevolent, idealistic side of the religious genius of Israel. The contrast was striking. Humble, polished, affable, putting always the good of others before their own, the Hillelites, like the Christians, had for their principle that God “resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the lowly;” that honours elude those who seek them, and follow after those who fly from them; that he who hurries will obtain nothing, whilst he who knows how to wait has time on his side.

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Amongst really pious souls singularly bold ideas sometimes developed themselves. On the one hand the liberal family of Gamaliel, who had for principle in their relations with Pagans to care for their poor, to treat them with politeness even when they worshipped their idols, to pay the last respects to their dead, sought to relax the situation. In business this family already had relations with the Romans, and had no scruple in asking from their conquerors the investiture of a sort of presidency of the Sanhedrim, and, with their permission, the resumption of the title of Nasi. On the other hand, an extremely liberal man, Johanan ben Zakaï, was the soul of the transformation. Long before the destruction of Jerusalem he had enjoyed a preponderating influence in the Sanhedrim. During the Revolution he was one of the chiefs of the moderate party which kept itself aloof from political questions, and did all that was possible to prevent the prolongation of a resistance which must inevitably bring about the destruction of the Temple. Escaped from Jerusalem, he predicted, it is asserted, the Empire of Vespasian; one of the favours which he asked from him was a doctor for the old Zadok, who, in the years before the siege, had ruined his health by fasting. It appears certain that he got into the good graces of the Romans, and that he obtained from them the re-establishment of the Sanhedrim at Jabneh. It is doubtful whether he was ever really a pupil of Hillel, but he was certainly the inheritor of his spirit. To cause peace to reign amongst men was his favourite maxim. It was told of him that no one had ever been able to salute him first, not even a Pagan in the market-place. Though not a Christian, he was a true disciple of Jesus. He even went at times, it is said, so far as to follow the example of the old prophets, denying the efficacy of worship, and recognising the fact that justice accomplishes for Pagans all that sacrifice did for the Jews. A little consolation came to the frightfully troubled soul of Israel. Fanatics, at the risk of their lives, stole into the silent city and furtively offered sacrifice on the ruins of the Holy of Holies. Some of these madmen spoke on their return of a mysterious voice which had come out from the heaps of rubbish, and had declared acceptance of their sacrifices; but this excess was generally condemned. Certain amongst them forbade all enjoyment, lived in tears and fasting, and drank only water. Johanan ben Zakaï consoled them:—“Be not sad, my son,” said he to one of these despairing ones. “If we cannot offer sacrifices, there is still a way of expiating our sins which is quite as efficacious—good works.” And he recalled the words of Isaiah, “I love charity better than sacrifice.” Rabbi Joshua was of the same opinion. “My friends,” said he to those who imposed exaggerated privations upon themselves, “what is the use of abstaining from meat and from wine?” “How,” they answered, “should we eat the flesh which is sacrificed on the altar which is now destroyed? should we drink the wine which we ought to pour out as a libation on the same altar?” “Well,” replied the Rabbi Joshua, “then eat no bread, since it is no longer possible to make sacrifices of fine flour.” “Then we must feed upon fruit.” “Nay. Fruits cannot be allowed, since it is no longer possible to offer first-fruits in the Temple.” The force of circumstances decided the matter. The eternity of the Law was maintained in theory; it was believed that even Elias himself could not

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change a single article of it; but the destruction of the Temple suppressed in fact a considerable proportion of the ancient prescriptions; there was no room for anything more than moral casuistry of details or for mysticism. The developed cabbala is surely of a more modern age. But at that time many gave themselves to what were called “the visions of the chariot,” that is to say, to speculations on the mysteries concealed in the visions of Ezekiel. The Jewish mind was wrapped up in visions, and created an asylum for itself in the midst of a hated world. The study became a deliverance. Rabbi Nehounia gave currency to the principle that he who takes upon him the yoke of the Law thereby frees himself from the yoke of the world and of politics. When this point of detachment is attained, people cease to be dangerous revolutionaries. Rabbi Hanina was accustomed to say, “Pray for the established government: for without it men would eat each other.” The misery was extreme. A heavy taxation weighed upon all, and the sources of revenue were dried up. The mountains of Judea remained uncultivated and covered with ruins; property itself was very uncertain. When it was cultivated, the cultivator was liable to be evicted by the Romans. As for Jerusalem, it was nothing but a heap of broken stones. Pliny even spoke of it as of a city that had ceased to exist. Without doubt, the Jews who had been tempted to come in considerable numbers to encamp upon the ruins, had been expelled from thence. Yet the historians who insist most strongly on the total destruction of the city, admit that some old men and some women were left. Josephus depicts for us the first sitting and weeping in the dust of the sanctuary, and the second reserved by the conquerors for the last outrages. The 10th Fretensian Legion continued to act as a garrison in a corner of the deserted city. The bricks which have been found with the stamp of that legion, prove that the men of it built it. It is probable that furtive visits to the still visible foundations of the Temple were tolerated or permitted by the soldiers for a money consideration. Christians, in particular, preserved the memory and the worship of certain places, notably of the tabernacle of Mount Sion, where it was believed that the disciples of Jesus met after the Ascension, as well as the tomb of James, the brother of the Lord, near the Temple. Golgotha probably was not forgotten. As nothing was rebuilt in the town or in the suburbs, the enormous stones of the great edifices remained untouched in their places, so that all the monuments were still perfectly recognisable. Driven thus from their Holy City and from the region which they loved, the Jews spread themselves over the towns and villages of the plain which extends from the foot of the Mountain of Judea to the sea. The Jewish population multiplied there. One locality above all was the scene of that quasi-resurrection of Pharisaism, and became the theological capital of the Jews until the war of Bar Coziba. This was the city—originally Philistine—of Jabneh or Jamnia, four leagues and a half to the south of Jaffa. It was a considerable town, inhabited by Pagans and Jews; but the Jews predominated there, although the town, since the war of Pompey, had ceased to form part of Judea. The struggles between the two populations had been lively. In his campaigns of 67 and 68 Vespasian had had to show himself there to establish his authority. Provisions abounded there. In the earlier days of the blockade many peaceable wise men, such as Johanan ben Zakaï, whom the chimera of natural independence did not lead away, came thither for shelter. There it was that they learned of 23


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the burning of the Temple. They wept, rent their garments, put on mourning, but found that it was still worth while to live, that they might see if God had not reserved a future for Israel. It was, it is said, at the entreaty of Johanan that Vespasian spared Jabneh and its savants. The truth is that before the war a Rabbinical school flourished in Jabneh. For unknown reasons, it was a part of the Roman polity to allow it to continue, and after the arrival of Johanan ben Zakaï it assumed a greater importance. Rabbi Gamaliel the younger put the top stone to the celebrity of Jabneh when he took the direction of the school after Rabbi Johann retired to Berour-Haïl. Jabneh, from this moment, became the first Jewish academy of Palestine. The Jews from various countries assembled there for the feasts, as formerly they had gone up to Jerusalem, and as formerly they profited by the journey to the Holy City to take council with the Sanhedrim and the schools upon doubtful cases, so at Jabneh they submitted difficult questions to the Beth-din. This tribunal was only rarely and improperly called by the name of the ancient Sanhedrim; but it exercised an undisputable authority; the doctors of all Judea sometimes met in it, and so gave to the Beth-din the character of a Supreme Court. The memory was long preserved of the orchard where the sittings of this tribunal were held, and of the dovecote under whose shade the president sat.

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Jabneh appeared thus as a sort of resuscitated Jerusalem. As to privileges and religious obligations, it was completely assimilated to Jerusalem; its synagogue was considered the legitimate heiress of that of Jerusalem—as the centre of the now religious authority. The Romans themselves looked at it in this light, and accorded to the Nasi or Ab-beth-din of Jabneh an official authority. This was the commencement of the Jewish patriarchate which developed itself later and became an institution analogous to the Christian patriarchates of the Ottoman Empire of our own days. These magistratures, at once civil and religious, conferred by the political power, have always been in the East the means employed by great Empires to disembarrass themselves of the responsibilities of their satraps. The existence of a personal statute was in no way disquieting to the Romans, above all, in a town partly idolatrous and Roman, where the Jews were restrained by the military force and by the antipathy of the rest of the population. Religious conversations between Jews and non-Jews appear to have been frequent in Jabneh. Tradition shows us Johanan ben Zakaï maintaining frequent controversies with infidels, and furnishing them with explanations of the Bible, on the Jewish festivals. His answers are often evasive, and sometimes alone with his disciples he allows himself to smile at the unsatisfactory solutions he has given to Pagan difficulties. Lydda had its schools which rivalled those of Jabneh in celebrity, or rather which were a sort of dependency of them. The two towns were about four leagues Apart: when a man had been excommunicated at one he betook himself to the other. All the villages, Danite or Philistine, of the surrounding maritime plain—Berour Haïl, Bakiin, Gibthon, Gimso, Bene Barak, which were all situated to the south of Antipatris, and were until then hardly considered as belonging to the Holy Land at all—served also as an asylum to celebrated doctors. Finally the Darom, the southern part

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of Judea, situated between Eleutheropolis and the Dead Sea, received many fugitive Jews. It was a rich country, far from the routes frequented by the Romans, and almost at the limit of their domination. It thus appears that the current which carried Rabbinism towards Galilee had not yet made itself felt. There were exceptions. Rabbi Eliezer ben Jacob, the editor of one of the first Mishna, appears to have been a Galilean. Towards the year 100 the Mishnic doctors are seen approaching Cæsarea in Galilee. It was, however, only after the war of Hadrian that Tiberias and upper Galilee became par excellence the country of the Talmud. 14

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CHAPTER II. BETHER: THE BOOK OF JUDITH: THE JEWISH CANON. DURING the first years which followed the war, it appears that a centre of population was formed near to Jerusalem, which fifty or sixty years later was destined to play a very important part. Two leagues and a quarter west-south-west of Jerusalem was a village until then obscure, known as Bether. Many years before the siege a great number of rich and peaceable citizens of Jerusalem, perceiving the storm which was about to break over the capital, had bought lands to which to retire. Bether was in effect situated in a fertile valley outside the important routes which connect Jerusalem with the north and with the sea. An acropolis commanded the village, built near a beautiful spring, and forming a sort of natural fortification; a lower plateau formed a sort of step to the lower town. After the catastrophe of the year 70, a considerable body of fugitives met there. Synagogues, a sanhedrim, and schools were established. Bether became a Holy City, a sort of equivalent to Zion. The little scarped hill was covered with houses, which, supporting themselves by ancient works in the rock and by the natural form of the hill, formed a species of citadel which was completed with steps of great stones. The isolated situation of Bether induces the belief that the Romans did not greatly trouble themselves about these works; perhaps also a part of them dated from before the time of Titus. Supported by the great Jewish communities of Lydda and of Jabneh, Bether thus became a sufficiently large town, and, as it were, the entrenched camp of fanaticism in Judea. We shall there see Judaism offer to the Roman power a last and impotent resistance.

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At Bether, a singular book appears to have been composed, a perfect mirror of the conscience of Israel at that date, where may be found the powerful recollection of past defects and a fiery prediction of future revolts. I speak of the book of Judith. The ardent patriot who composed that Agada in Hebrew, copied—according to the custom of the Hebrew Agadas—a well-known history, that of Deborah who saved Israel from her enemies by killing their chief. Every line is full of transparent allusions. The ancient enemy of the people of God, Nebuchadnezzar (a perfect type of the Roman Empire, which, according to the Jews, was but the work of an idolatrous propaganda), desired to subject the whole world to himself, and to cause it to adore him, to the exclusion of every other god. He charges his general Holophernes with this duty. All bow before him save only the Jewish people. Israel is not a military people but a mountaineering race difficult to force. So long as it observes the Law it is invincible. A sensible Pagan who knows Israel, Achior (brother of the light), tries to stop Holophernes. The one thing necessary, according to him, is to know if Israel fails to keep the Law; in this case, the conquest will be easy; if not, it will be necessary to beware how one attacks her. All is useless; Holophernes marches on Jerusalem. The key of Jerusalem is a place on the north, on the side of Dothaïm, at the entrance of the mountainous region to the south of the plain of Esdraelon. This 26


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place is called Beth-eloah (the House of God). The author describes it exactly on the plan of Bether. It is placed at the opening of a Wadi (Fiumara or bed of a watercourse), on a mountain at the foot of which runs a stream indispensable to the people, the cisterns of the upper town being relatively small. Holophernes besieges Beth-eloah, which is soon reduced by thirst to the direst extremity. But it is an attribute of Divine Providence to choose the weakest agents for the greatest works. A widow, a zealot, Judith (the Jewess), arises and prays; she goes forth and presents herself to Holophernes as a rigid devotee who cannot tolerate the breaches of the Law of which she has been witness in the town. She wishes to point out to him a sure means of conquering the Jews. They are dying of hunger and thirst; which induces them to fail with regard to the precepts concerning food, and to eat the first fruits reserved for the priests. They have sent to ask for the authorisation of the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, but at Jerusalem everything is relaxed, everything is allowed, so that it will be easy to conquer them. “I will pray to God,” she adds, “that I may know when they shall sin.” Then at the moment when Holophernes thinks himself assured of all her complaisances she cuts off his head. In this expedition she has not once failed to observe the Law. She prays and performs her ablutions at the appointed hours; she eats only of the meats which she has brought with her. Even on the evening when she is about to prostitute herself to Holophernes, she drinks her own wine. Judith lives after all this for a hundred and five years, refusing the most advantageous marriages, happy and honoured. During her life and for a long time after her death no one dares to disquiet the Jewish people. Achior is also well rewarded for having known Israel well. He is circumcised, and becomes a Son of Abraham for ever. The author, from his singular taste for imagining the conversion of Pagans, from his persuasion that God loves the weak above all, that he is par excellence the God of the hopeless, approaches Christian sentiments. But by his materialistic attachment to the principles of the Law, he shows himself a pure Pharisee. He dreams of an autonomy for the Israelites under the autonomy of the Sanhedrim and their Nasi. His ideal is absolutely that of Jabneh. There is a mechanism of human life which God loves; the Law is the absolute rule of it; Israel is created to accomplish it. It is a people like to no other; a people whom the heathen hate because they know them to be capable of leading the whole world; an invincible people, because they do not sin. To the scruples of the Pharisee are joined the fanaticism of the Zealot, the appeal to the dagger to defend the Law, the apology for the most sanguinary examples of religious violence. The imitation of the book of Esther penetrates the whole work; the author evidently read that book not as it exists in the original Hebrew but with the interpolations which the Greek text offers. The literary execution is weak; the feeble parts—common-places of the Jewish agada, canticles, prayers, etc.—recall at times the tone of the Gospel according to St Luke. The theory of the Messianic claims is, however, little developed. Judith is still rewarded for her virtue by a long life. The book was doubtless read with passion in the circles of Bether and of Jabneh; but it may readily be believed that Josephus knew nothing of it at Rome. It was probably suppressed as being full of dangerous allusions. The success in any case was not lasting amongst the Jews; the original Hebrew was soon lost; but the Greek translation

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made itself a place in the Christian Canon. We shall see this translation known at Rome towards the year 95. In general it was immediately after their publication that the apocryphal books were welcomed and quoted: those novelties had an ephemeral popularity, then fell into oblivion.

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The need of a rigorously limited canon of the sacred books made itself felt more and more. The Thora, the Prophets, the Psalms, were the admitted foundation of all. Ezekiel alone created some difficulties by the passages wherein be is not in accord with the Thora, from which he was extricated only by subtleties. There was some hesitation about Job, whose hardihood was not in accord with the pietism of the times. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs were assailed with much greater violence. The picture so freely sketched in the seventh chapter of Proverbs, the altogether profane character of the Canticles, the scepticism of Ecclesiastes, were thought sufficient to deprive those writings of the character of sacred books. Happily, admiration carried them. They were admitted, so to speak, subject to correction and to interpretation. The last lines of Ecclesiastes appeared to extenuate the sceptical crudities of the text. In the Canticles the critics began to seek for mystical profundities. Pseudo-Daniel had conquered his place by dint of audacity and assurance; he failed, however, to force the already impenetrable line of the ancient prophets, and he remained in the last pages of the sacred volume side by side with Esther and the more recent historical compilations. The son of Sirach was stranded simply for having avowed too frankly his modern editing. All this constituted a little sacred library of twenty-four works, the order of which was thenceforward irrevocably fixed. Many variations still existed; the absence of vowel points left many passages in a state of deplorable ambiguity which different parties interpreted in a sense favourable to their own ideas. It was many centuries before the Hebrew Bible formed a volume almost without variants, and the readings of which were settled down to their last details. As to the Books excluded from the Canon, their reading was forbidden, and it was even sought to destroy them. This it is which explains how books essentially Jewish, and having quite as much right as Daniel and Esther to remain in the Jewish Bible, are only preserved by Greek translations. Thus the Maccabean histories, the book of Tobit, the books of Enoch, the wisdom of the son of Sirach, the book of Baruch, the book called “the third of Esdras,” various chapters of which belong to the book of Daniel (the Three Children in the Furnace) Susannah, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Manasseh, the letter of Jeremiah, the Psalter of Solomon, the Assumption of Moses, a whole series of agadic and apocalyptic writings neglected by the Jews of the Talmudic tradition, have been guarded only by Christian hands. The literary community which existed during more than a hundred years between the Jews and the Christians, caused every Jewish book impressed with a pious spirit and imbued with Messianic ideas to be at once accepted by the Churches. At the beginning of the second century the Jewish people, devoted as they were exclusively to the study of the Law, and having no taste save for casuistry, neglected these writings. Many Christian Churches, on the contrary, persisted in placing a high value upon them, and admitted them more or less officially into their Canon. We see, for example, the Apocalypse of Esdras, the work of an

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enthusiastic Jew like the book of Judith, saved from destruction only through the favour which it enjoyed amongst the disciples of Jesus.

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Judaism and Christianity still lived together like those double beings which are joined by one part of their organisation though distinct as regards all the rest. Each of these beings transmitted to the other its sensations and its desires. A book which was the fruit of the most ardent Jewish passions, a book zealous for its first chief, was immediately adopted by Christianity, was preserved by Christianity, introduced itself, thanks to it, into the Canon of the Old Testament. A fraction of the Christian Church, it cannot be doubted, had felt the emotions of the siege, had shared in the grief and anger of the Jews over the destruction of the Temple, had sympathised with the rebels; the author of the Apocalypse, who probably still lived, had surely mourning at his heart, and calculated the days of the great vengeance of Israel. But already the Christian conscience had found other issues; it was not only the school of Paul, it was the family of the Master which passed through the most extraordinary crises, and transformed, according to the necessities of the time, the very memories which it had preserved of Jesus.

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CHAPTER III. EBION BEYOND JORDAN. WE have seen in 68 the Christian Church of Jerusalem carried on by the relatives of Jesus fly from the city delivered over to terror, and take refuge at Pella on the other side of Jordan. We have seen the author of the Apocalypse some months afterwards employ the most lively and touching images to express the protection which God extended to the fugitive Church, and the repose which it enjoyed in the desert. It is probable that this sojourn was prolonged for many years after the siege. A return to Jerusalem was impossible, and the antipathy between Christianity and the Pharisees was already too strong to allow of the Christians joining the bulk of the nation on the side of Jabneh and Lydda. The saints of Jerusalem dwelt therefore beyond the Jordan. The expectation of the final catastrophe had become extremely vivid. The three years and a half which the Apocalypse fixed for the fulfilment of its predictions, expired about the month of July 72.

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The destruction of the Temple had certainly been a surprise for the Christians. They had no more believed in it than had the Jews. Sometimes they had imagined Nero the Anti-Christ returning from amongst the Parthians, marching upon Rome with his allies, sacking it, and then putting himself at the head of the armies of Judea, profaning Jerusalem, and massacring the people of the just on the hill of Zion; but no one had supposed that the Temple itself would disappear. An event so prodigious, when once it occurred, was sufficient to put them beside themselves. The misfortunes of the Jewish nation were regarded as a punishment for the murders of Jesus and of James. In reflecting upon it they endeavoured to find that in all that God had been especially good to his elect. It was because of them that he had deigned to shorten the days which if they had lasted would have seen the extermination of all flesh. The frightful sufferings that they had gone through dwelt in the memory of the Christians of the East, and was for them what the persecutions of Nero were for the Christians of Rome, “the great tribulation,” the certain prelude to the days of the Messiah. One calculation, moreover, appears to have greatly engaged the Christians at this time. They remembered this passage of the Psalm (xcv. 8, et seq.), “To-day if ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts (as at Meriba as in the day of Massa1) in the wilderness. . . . Forty years long was I grieved with this generation and said, It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways; unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.” They applied to the stubborn Jews the words which referred to their rebellion in the desert, and as nearly forty years had gone by since the short but brilliant public career of Jesus, he was believed to address to the unbelieving that pressing appeal, “Forty years have I waited for you, the time is at hand, take care” (cf. Heb. iii. 7, et seq.) All these coincidences, which placed the Apocalyptic year about the 1

These words are not in either of the English versions.—TRANS.

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year 73, the recent memories of the revolution and of the siege, the strange outbreak of fever, of frenzy, of exaltation, of madness, through which they had passed, and, by way of crowning marvel, the fact that after signs so evident men had still the sad courage to resist the voice of Jesus which called them—all appeared unheard of, and capable of explanation only by a miracle. It was clear that the moment was approaching when Jesus should appear and the mystery of the times should be accomplished. So great was the influence of that fixed idea that the town of Pella came to be regarded as a temporary asylum where God himself fed his elect and preserved them from the hatred of the wicked (Rev. xii. 14); there was no thought of abandoning a place which they believed to have been pointed out by a revelation from heaven. But when it was clear that they must resign themselves to a longer life, there was a movement in the community. A great number of the brethren, amongst whom were members of the family of Jesus, left Pella and went to establish themselves some leagues off in Batanea, a province which belonged to Herod Agrippa II., but which was falling more and more under the direct sovereignty of the Romans. This country was then very prosperous; it was covered with towns and monuments; the rule of the Herods had been benevolent, and had founded there that brilliant civilisation which lasted from the first century of our era until Islam. The town chosen by preference by the disciples and relations of Jesus was Kokaba near Ashtaroth Carnaïm, a little beyond Adria, and very near the frontier of the kingdom of the Nabathites. Kokaba was only some thirteen or fourteen leagues from Pella, and the Churches of these two localities might long remain in close connection. Without doubt many Christians, from the times of Vespasian and of Titus, returned to Galilee and Samaria; yet it was only after the time of Hadrian that Galilee became the rendezvous of the Jewish population, and that the intellectual activity of the nation concentrated itself there.

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The name which these pious guardians of the tradition of Jesus gave themselves was (“Ebionim”) or “poor.” Faithful to the spirit which had said “Blessed are the poor” (“ebionim”) and which had characteristically attributed to the disinherited of this world the Kingdom of Heaven and the inheritance of the Gospel, they gloried in their poverty, and continued, like the primitive Church of Jerusalem, to live upon alms. We have seen St Paul always preoccupied with his poor of Jerusalem, and St James taking the name of “poor” as a title of nobility, (James ii. 5, 6). A crowd of passages from the Old Testament, where the word Ebion is employed to distinguish the pious man, and by extension the whole pietism of Israel, the reunion of the saints of Israel, wretched, gentle, humble, despised of the world but beloved of God, were associated with the sect. The word “poor” implied a shade of tenderness, as when one says, “The poor dear man!” This “poor of God” whose miseries and humiliations the prophets and the psalmists had told of, whose glorious future they had announced, was accepted as the symbolical title of the little Church of Pella and of Kokaba across the Jordan, the continuator of that of Jerusalem. And as in the old Hebrew tongue the word Ebion had received a metaphorical signification to designate the pious part of the people of God, in the same way the saintly little congregation of Batanea, considering itself the only true Israel, the “Israel 31


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of God,” heir of the heavenly kingdom, called itself the poor, the beloved of God. Ebion was thus often employed in a collective sense, almost as was Israel, or, as amongst ourselves, personifications such as “Jacques Bonhomme.” In the remote sections of the Church, to whom the good poor of Batanea were almost strangers, Ebion became a personage, the accepted founder of the sect of the Ebionites.

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The name by which the sectaries were known amongst the other populations of Batanea, was that of Nazarenes or Nazoreans. It was known that Jesus, his relations and his first disciples, belonged to Nazareth or its environs; they were described therefore by their place of birth. It is supposed, perhaps not without reason, that the name of Nazarenes was especially applied to the Christians of Galilee, who had taken refuge in Batanea, whilst the name of Ebionim continued to be the title which the mendicant saints of Jerusalem gave themselves. However this may be, “Nazarenes” remained always in the East the generic word by which Christians were designated. Mahomet knew them by no other, and the Mussulmans use it to this day. By a singular contrast, the word “Nazarenes,” after a certain date, presented like “Ebionites” an offensive sense in the opinion of Greek and Latin Christians. As in almost all great movements, it came to pass that the founders of the new religion were in the eyes of the foreign crowd which was affiliated to it, simply retrograde persons and heretics; those who had been the corner-stones of the sect found themselves isolated, and, as it were, ostracised. The name of Ebion by which they described themselves, and which conveyed to their minds the loftiest meaning, became an insult, and was, out of Syria, synonymous with “dangerous sectary.” Jokes were made about it, and it was ironically interpreted in the sense of “poor-spirited.” The ancient name of Nazarenes, after the beginning of the fourth century, served to designate for the orthodox Catholic Church heretics who were scarcely Christians at all. This singular misunderstanding explains itself when it is remembered that the Ebionim and the Nazarenes remained faithful to the primitive spirit of the Church of Jerusalem, and of the brothers of Jesus, according to whom Jesus was no more than a prophet chosen of God to save Israel, whilst in the Churches founded by Paul, Jesus became more and more the incarnation of God. According to the Greek Christians, Christianity took the place of the religion of Moses, as a superior worship taking the place of an inferior. In the eyes of the Christians of Batanea, this was blasphemy. Not merely did they refuse to consider the Law as abolished, but they observed it with redoubled fervour. They regarded circumcision as obligatory, they observed the Sabbath, as well as the first day of the week, they practised ablutions and all the Jewish ceremonies. They studied Hebrew with care, and read the Bible in Hebrew. Their canon was the Jewish canon; already, perhaps, they began by making arbitrary retrenchments. Their admiration for Jesus was unbounded: they described him as being in a peculiar degree the Prophet of Truth, the Messiah, the Son of God, the elect of God: they believed in his resurrection, but they never got beyond that Jewish idea according to which a man-God is a monstrosity. Jesus, in their minds, was a mere man, the son of Joseph, born under the ordinary conditions of humanity,

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without miracle. It was very slowly that they learned to explain his birth by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Some admitted that on the day on which he was adopted by God, the Holy Spirit or the Christ had descended upon him in the visible form of a dove, so that Jesus did not become the Son of God and anointed by the Holy Ghost until after his baptism. Others, approaching more nearly to Buddhist conceptions, held that he attained the dignity of Messiah, and of Son of God, by his perfection, by his continual progress, by his union with God, and, above all, by his extraordinary feat of observing the whole Law. To hear them, Jesus alone had solved this difficult problem. When they were pressed, they admitted that any other man who could do the same thing would obtain the same honour. They were consequently compelled, in their accounts of the life of Jesus, to show him accomplishing the fulfilment of the whole Law; wrongly or rightly applied, they constantly cited these words, “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Many, in short, carried towards gnostic and cabbalist ideas, saw in him a great archangel, the first of those of his order, a created being to whom God had given power over the whole visible creation, and upon whom was laid the especial task of abolishing sacrifices. Their churches were called “synagogues,” their priests “archi-synagogues.” They forbade the use of flesh, and practised all the austerities of the hasidim, austerities which, as is well known, made up the greatest part of the sanctity of James, the Lord’s brother. Peter also obtained all their respect. It was under the names of these two apostles that they put forth their apocryphal revelations. On the other hand, there was no curse which they did not utter against Paul. They called him “the man of Tarsus,” “the Apostate;” they told only the most ridiculous histories of him; they refused him the title of Jew, and pretended that it might be on the side of his father, or it might be on that of his mother, he had had only Pagans for ancestors. A genuine Jew speaking of the abrogation of the Law, appeared to them an absolute impossibility. We speedily discern a literature springing out of this order of ideas and passions. The good sectaries of Kokaba obstinately turned their backs upon the West, upon the future. Their eyes were for ever turned towards Jerusalem, whose miraculous restoration they confidently anticipated. They called it “the House of God,” and as they turned towards it in prayer, it is to be believed that they gave to it a species of adoration. A keen eye might have discovered from that that they were in the way of becoming heretics, and that some day they would be treated as profane in the house which they had founded.

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An absolute difference in a word separated the Christianity of the Nazarene—of the Ebionim—of the relatives of Jesus, from the Christianity which triumphed later on. For the immediate successors of Jesus it was a question not of replacing Judaism but of crowning it by the advent of the Messiah. The Christian Church was for them only a re-union of Hasidim, of true Israelites admitting a fact that for a Jew, not a Sadducee, might appear perfectly possible; it was that Jesus put to death and raised again was the Messiah, that after a very brief delay he would come to take possession of the throne of David and accomplish the prophecies. If they had been told that they were deserters from

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Judaism, they would certainly have cried out, and would have protested that they were true Jews and the heirs of the promises. To renounce the Mosaic Law would have been, from their point of view, an apostacy; they no more dreamed of setting themselves free from it than of liberating others. What they hoped to inaugurate was the complete triumph of Judaism, and not a new religion abrogating that which had been promulgated from Sinai.

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Return to the Holy City was forbidden them: but as they hoped that the prohibition would not last long, the important members of the refugee Church continued to associate together, and called themselves always the Church of Jerusalem. From the time of their arrival at Pella, they gave a successor to James, the Lord’s brother, and naturally they chose that successor from the family of the Master. Nothing is more obscure than the things which concern the brothers and cousins of Jesus in the Judeo-Christian Church of Syria. Certain indications lead us to believe that Jude, brother of the Lord, and brother of James, was, for some time, head of the Church of Jerusalem, but it is not easy to say when or under what circumstances. He whom all tradition designates as having been the immediate successor of James after the siege of Jerusalem, was Simon, son of Cleophas. All the brothers of Jesus, about the year 75, were probably dead. Jude had left children and grand-children. From motives of which we are ignorant it was not from amongst the descendants of the brothers of Jesus that the head of the Church was taken. The Oriental principle of heredity was followed. Simon, son of Cleophas, was probably the last of the cousins-german of Jesus who was still alive. He might have seen and heard Jesus in his childhood. Although he was beyond Jordan, Simon considered himself as chief of the Church of Jerusalem, and as heir of the singular powers which this title had conferred on James, the Lord’s brother. The greatest uncertainty prevails as to the return of the exiled Church (or rather of a part of that Church) to the city at once so guilty and so holy, which had crucified Jesus and was nevertheless to be the seat of his future glory. The fact of the return is incontestable, but the date of the event is unknown. Strictly we might put back the date to the moment when Hadrian decided on the rebuilding of the city, that is to say, until the year 122. It is more probable, however, that the return of the Christians took place shortly after the complete pacification of Judea. The Romans undoubtedly relaxed their severity towards a people so peaceable as the disciples of Jesus. Some hundreds of saints might well dwell upon Mount Sion in the houses which the destruction had respected, without the city ceasing to be considered a field of ruins and desolation. The 10th Fretensian Legion alone would form around it a certain group of inhabitants. Mount Sion, as we have already said, was an exception to the general appearance of the town. The meeting-place of the Apostles, many other buildings, and particularly seven synagogues, one of which was preserved until the time of Constantine, were almost intact amongst the surrounding ruins, and recalled that verse of Isaiah, “The daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.” It was there we may believe that the little colony fixed itself which established the continuity of the Church at Jerusalem. We may also believe if we will that it was placed in one of those straggling Jewish villages near Jerusalem, such as Bether, which are ideally identified with 34


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the Holy City. In any case, this Church of Mount Sion was, until the time of Hadrian, by no means numerous. The title of chief of the Church of Jerusalem appears to have been only a sort of honorary Pontificate, a presidency of honour, not carrying with it a real cure of souls. The relatives of Jesus especially appear to have remained beyond the Jordan. The honour of possessing amongst their body persons so distinguished inspired an extraordinary pride amongst the Churches of Batanea. It seems probable that at the moment of the departure of the Church of Jerusalem for Pella, some of “the twelve,” that is to say, the Apostles chosen by Jesus—Matthew, for example—were still alive, and were amongst the number of emigrants. Certain of the apostles may have been younger than Jesus, and consequently not very old at the date of which we speak. The data we have to go upon concerning the apostles who remained in the Holy Land and did not follow the example of Peter and John, are so incomplete that it is impossible to be certain on this point. The “Seven,” that is to say the Deacons chosen by the first Church of Jerusalem, were also without doubt dead or dispersed. The relatives of Jesus inherited all the importance which the chosen of the first Coenaculum had had. From the year 70 to about the year 110 they really governed the Churches beyond the Jordan, and formed a sort of Christian Senate. The family of Cleophas especially enjoyed in devout circles a universally recognised authority. 30

The relatives of Jesus were pious people, tranquil, gentle, modest, labouring with their hands, faithful to the rigid principles of Jesus with regard to poverty, but at the same time strict Jews, putting the title of child of Israel before every other advantage. They were much reverenced, and a name was given to them (perhaps maraniin or moranoïe) of which the Greek equivalent was desposynoi. For a long time past, doubtless even during the life-time of Jesus, it had been supposed that he was of the lineage of David, since it was admitted that the Messiah should be of David’s race. The admission of such an ancestry for Jesus implied it also for his family. These good people thought much of it, and were not a little proud of it. We see them constantly occupied in constructing genealogies, which rendered probable the little fraud of which the Christian legend had need. When they were too much embarrassed they took refuge behind the persecutions of Herod, which they pretended had destroyed the genealogical books. Nor did they stop here. Sometimes they maintained that the work had been done from memory, sometimes that they had had copies of ancient chronicles whereby to construct it. It was admitted that they had done “the best that they could.” Two of these genealogies have come down to us, one in the Gospel attributed to St Matthew, the other in the Gospel of St Luke, and it appears that neither of them satisfied the Ebionim, since their Gospel did not contain them, and the churches of Syria always protested strongly against them. This movement, inoffensive though it was as a matter of policy, excited suspicion. It appears that the Roman authorities had more than once kept a watch upon these real or pretended descendants of David. Vespasian had heard of the hopes which the Jews founded upon a mysterious representative

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of their ancient royal race. Fearing that they meant only a pretext for new insurrections, he caused all those who belonged to this line, or who boasted of being of it, to be sought out. This gave rise to much annoyance, which, perhaps, reached the chief of the Church of Jerusalem at Batanea. We shall see these inquiries renewed with much more rigour under Domitian. The imminent danger which these speculations about genealogy and royal descent implied for the nascent Christianity, needs no elaborate demonstration. A kind of Christian aristocracy was being created In the political world the nobility are almost necessary to the state, politics having to deal with vulgar struggles which make of them a matter—matter is material rather than ideal. A state is strong only when a certain number of families, by traditional privilege, find it alike their duty and their interest to transact its business, to represent it, to defend it. But in the ideal order, birth is nothing; everyone is valued in proportion to what he discerns of the truth, to what he realises of the good. Institutions which have a religious, literary, or moral aim are lost when considerations of family, of caste, of heredity come to prevail amongst them. The nephews and the cousins of Jesus would have been the destruction of Christianity if the Churches of Paul had not been of sufficient strength to act as a counterpoise to that aristocracy, whose tendency had been to proclaim itself alone respectable, and to treat all converts as intruders. Pretensions analogous to those of the sons of Ali in Islam would have been produced. Islamism would certainly have perished under the embarrassments caused by the family of the Prophet, if the result of the struggles of the first century after the Hejira had not been to throw into an inferior rank all these who were too nearly related to the person of the Founder. The true heirs of a great man are those who continue his work, and not his relatives according to the flesh.

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Considering the tradition of Jesus as its property, the little coterie of Nazarenes would have surely stifled it. Happily the narrow circle speedily disappeared: the relatives of Jesus were speedily forgotten in the depths of The Hauran. They lost all importance, and left Jesus to his true family, the only one which he would have recognised—those who “hear the word of God and keep it.” Many passages from the Gospels where the family of Jesus is seen in an unfavourable light, may spring out of the antipathy which the nobiliary pretensions of the desposynoi could not fail to provoke around them.

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CHAPTER IV. THE RELATIONS OF JEWS AND CHRISTIANS.

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THE relations of these altogether Hebrew Churches of Batanea and of Galilee with the Jews must have been frequent. It is to the Judeo-Christians that an expression frequent in Talmudic traditions, that of minim, corresponding to “heretics,” belongs. The minim are represented as a species of wonder-workers and spiritual doctors, curing the sick by the power of the name of Jesus and by the application of holy oil. It will be remembered that this was one of the precepts of St James. Cures of this sort, as well as exorcisms, were the great means of conversion employed by the disciples of Jesus, especially with regard to the Jews. The Jews appropriated to themselves these marvellous receipts, and until the third century we find the doctors curing in the name of Jesus. No one was astonished. The belief in daily miracles was such that the Talmud ordains the prayer that every one must make when “private miracles” happen to him. The best proof that Jesus believed that he could work miracles is, that the members of his family and his most authentic disciples had in some sort the speciality of performing them. It is true that by the same argument we must also believe that Jesus was a strict Jew, which is repugnant to our ideas. Judaism, besides, included two tendencies which put it into opposite relations with regard to Christianity. The Law and the Prophets continued always the two poles of the Jewish people. The Law gave occasion to that bizarre scholasticism which was called the halaka, out of which the Talmud sprang. The prophets, the psalms, the poetic books inspired an ardent, popular preaching, brilliant dreams, unlimited hopes; what was called the agada, a word which embraces at once passionate fables like that of Judith and the apocryphal apocalypses which agitated the people. Just as the casuists of Jabneh showed themselves contemptuous of the disciples of Jesus, so the agadists sympathised with them. The agadists, in common with the Christians, had a dislike for the Pharisees, a taste for Messianic explanations of the prophetic books, an arbitrary exegesis which recalls the fashion in which the preachers of the Middle Ages played with texts, a belief in the approaching reign of a descendant of David. Like the Christians, the agadists sought to connect the genealogy of the patriarchal family with that of the old dynasty. Like them, they sought to diminish the burden of the Law. Their system of allegorical interpretation which transformed a code of laws into a book of moral precepts was the avowed abandonment of doctrinal rigorism. On the other hand, the halakists treated the agadists (and Christians were agadists in their eyes) as frivolous people, strangers to the only serious study, which was that of the Thora. Talmudism and Christianity became in this way the two antipodes of the moral world, and the hatred between them grew from day to day. The disgust which the subtle researches of the casuists of Jabneh inspired in the minds of the Christians, is written in the Gospels in letters of fire.

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The inconvenience of the Talmudic studies was the confidence which they gave and the disdain which they inspired for the profane. “I thank Thee, O Eternal God!” said the student, on coming out of the house of study, “for that by Thy grace I have frequented the school instead of doing as those do who visit the market place. I rose up like them, but it was for the study of the law, and not from frivolous motives. I labour like them, but I shall be rewarded. We both run, but I for life eternal, whilst they can but fall into the pit of destruction.” This it was which wounded Jesus and the authors of the Gospels so deeply; this which inspired those beautiful sentences, “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” those parables wherein the man who is simple but pure of heart is preferred to the haughty Pharisee. Like St Paul, they saw in the casuists only people who sought to damn the greater part of the world by exaggerating obligations beyond the strength of man. Judaism, having at its basis the fact which was taken for granted that man is treated here below according to his merits, set itself to judge without ceasing, since the justice of God’s ways could be proved only under that condition. Pharisaism has its profoundest roots in the theories of the friends of Job and of certain Psalmists. Jesus, by postponing the application of the justice of God to the future, rendered those criticisms of the conduct of others futile. The Kingdom of Heaven would set all things straight: God sleeps until then; but commit yourselves to him. Out of horror of hypocrisy Christianity arrived at even the paradox of preferring a world openly wicked but susceptible of conversion to a bourgeoisie which made a parade of its apparent honesty. Many features of the legend, conceived or developed under the influence of Jesus, arose out of this idea. 35

Between people of the same race, partakers of the same exile, admitting the same divine revelations and differing only upon a single point of recent history, controversy was inevitable. Sufficiently numerous traces of it are found in the Talmud and in the writings connected with it. The most celebrated doctor whose name appears mixed up in these disputes, is Rabbi Tarphon. Before the siege of Jerusalem he had filled various sacerdotal offices. He loved to recall his memories of the Temple, particularly how he had assisted upon the platform of the priests at the solemn service of the Day of Atonement. The Pontiff had for that day permission to pronounce the ineffable name of the Most High. Tarphon tells how, notwithstanding his efforts, he was unable to hear it, the song of the other officiants having drowned the priest’s voice. After the destruction of the Holy City he was one of the glories of the schools of Jabneh and Lydda. To subtlety he joined what was better—charity. In a year of famine it is said that he married three hundred women so that they might, thanks to their title of future spouses of a priest, have the right to share in the sacred offerings. Naturally, the famine having passed over, nothing more was heard of his espousals. Many sentences of Tarphon recall the Gospel. “The day is short, the work is long; the workmen are idle, the reward is great, the master urges on.” “In our time,” he adds, “when one says to another, ‘Take the straw out of thine eye,’ the answer is, ‘Take the beam out of thine own.’” The Gospel places such a reply in the mouth of Jesus reprimanding the Pharisees, and one is tempted to believe that the ill temper of Rabbi Tarphon came from a response of the same kind which had been made to him by some min. The name of Tarphon, in short, was celebrated in 38


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the Church. In the second century Justin, wishing in a dialogue to depict a dispute between a Jew and a Christian, chose our Doctor as the defender of the Jewish thesis, and brought him upon the stage under the name of Tryphon. The choice of Justin and the malevolent tone in which he makes this Tryphon speak of the Christian faith, are justified by what we read in the Talmud of the sentiments of Tarphon. This Rabbi knew the Gospels and the books of the minim; but, far from admiring them, he wished them to be burned. It was pointed out to him that the name of God constantly appeared in them. “I would rather lose my son,” said he, “than that he should not cast these books into the fire, even though they contain the name of God. A man pursued by a murderer, or threatened with the bite of a serpent, had better seek shelter in an idolatrous Temple than in one of the houses of the minim, for these know the truth and deny it, whilst idolators deny God because they do not know him.” If a man relatively moderate like Tarphon could allow himself to be so far carried away, we can imagine how ardent and passionate must have been this hatred in the world of the synagogues, where the fanaticism of the Law was carried to its extremest limit. Orthodox Judaism could not curse the minim with sufficient bitterness. The use of a triple malediction against the partisans of Jesus comprised under the name of Nazarenes was early established, it being said in the synagogue at morning, at mid-day and at evening. This malediction was introduced into the principal prayer of Judaism, the amida or schemoné-esré. The amida is composed first of eighteen benedictions, or rather of eighteen paragraphs. About the time of which we speak, an imprecation in these terms was intercalated between the eleventh and twelfth paragraphs:—

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“For the treacherous, no hope! For the malevolent destruction! Let the power of the proud be weakened, broken down, crushed, humiliated, now in these our days. Praised be Thou, O Eternal God who crushest thine enemies and bringest the haughty to the dust”

It is supposed, not without a show of reason, that the enemies of Israel pointed at in this prayer were originally the Judeo-Christians, and that this was a sort of shibboleth to turn the partisans of Jesus out of the synagogues. Conversions of Jews to Christianity were not rare in Syria. The fidelity of the Christians of this country to Mosaic observances afforded great facilities for this kind of thing. Whilst the uncircumcised disciples of St Paul could have no relations with a Jew, the Judeo-Christian might enter the synagogues, approach the teba and the reading-desk where the officials and the preachers presided, and might select the texts which favoured their views. In this way great precautions were taken. The most efficacious, was to compel everyone who wished to pray in the synagogue to recite a prayer which, pronounced by a Christian, would have been a curse upon himself. To sum up—notwithstanding its appearance of narrowness, this Nazareo-Ebionite Church of Batanea had something mystical and holy about it which is exceedingly striking. The simplicity of the Jewish conceptions of the Divinity preserved it from mythology and from metaphysics, into which Western Christendom was not slow to plunge. Its persistence in maintaining the sublime 39


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paradox of Jesus, the nobility and the happiness of poverty was touching in its way. There, perhaps, lay the great truth of Christianity, that by which it has succeeded and by which it will survive. In one sense all of us, such as we are—students, artists, priests, doers of disinterested deeds—have the right to call ourselves Ebionim. The friend of the true, the beautiful, and the good, never admits that he calls for a reward. The things of the soul are beyond price; to the student who illuminates them, to the priest who moralises on them, to the poet and the artist who shed a charm over them, humanity will never give more than alms—alms wholly out of proportion to what she has received. He who sells the ideal and believes himself paid for what he delivers, is very humble. The proud Ebionite who thinks that the kingdom of Heaven is his, sees that the part which falls to his lot here below is not a salary but the obolus which is dropped into the hand of a beggar. The Nazarenes of Batanea had thus an inestimable privilege. They held the veritable tradition of the words of Jesus; the Gospel came forth from their midst. Thus those who knew directly the Church beyond the Jordan, such as Hegisippus and Julius Africanus, spoke of it with the greatest admiration. There, principally, it appeared to them, was the true ideal of Christianity to be found; in that Church hidden in the desert, in a profound peace under the wing of God, it appeared to them like a virgin of an absolute purity. The bonds of these scattered communities with Catholicism were broken little by little. Justin hesitates on their account, he knows little of the Judeo-Christian Church; but he knows that it exists, he speaks of it with consideration; at all events he does not break away from communion with it. It is Irenæus who begins the series of these declamations, repeated after him by all the Greek and Latin Fathers, and upon which St Epiphanius puts the topstone by the species of rage which the very names of Nazarene and Ebionite excite in him. It is a law of this world that every originator, every founder, shall speedily become a stranger, then one excommunicated, then an enemy in his own school, and that if he obstinately persists in living, those who go out from him are obliged to take measures against him as against a dangerous man.

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CHAPTER V. SETTLEMENT OF THE LEGEND AND OF THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS. WHEN a great apparition of the religious, moral, and literary order is produced, the next generation usually feels the necessity of fixing the memory of the remarkable things which happened at the commencement of the new movement. Those who took part in the first hatching, those who have known according to the flesh, the master whom so many others have been able to adore in the spirit only, have a sort of aversion for the writings which diminish their privilege and appear to deliver to all the world a holy tradition which they keep secretly guarded in their hearts. It is when the last witnesses of the beginning threaten to disappear, that disquietude as to the future sets in, and that attempts are made to trace the image of the founder in durable tints. One circumstance in the case of Jesus, contributed to delay the period when the memoirs of disciples are usually written down, and that was the belief in the approaching end of the world, the assurance that the Apostolic generation would not pass away until the gentle Nazarene had returned as the Eternal Shepherd of his friends.

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It has been remarked a thousand times, that the strength of man’s memory is in inverse proportion to the habit of writing. We can scarcely imagine what oral tradition might retain, when people did not resort to notes which had been taken or to papers which they possessed. The memory of a man was then as a book; he knew how to report conversation, to which he himself had not listened. “The Clamozenians had heard tell of one Antiphon, who was connected with a certain Pythadorus, friend of Zeno, who remembered the conversations of Socrates with Zeno and Parmenides, in order to repeat them to Pythadorus. Antiphon knew them by heart, and would repeat them to whomsoever would hear them.” Such is the opening of the Parmenides of Plato. A host of people who had never seen Jesus, knew him in this way, without the help of any book, almost as well as his disciples themselves. The life of Jesus, although not written, was the food of the Church; his maxims were incessantly repeated; the essentially symbolical parts of his biography were reproduced in the little recitals, in some sort stereotyped and known by heart. This is certain as regards the institution of the Supper. It was probably also the same as regards the essential lines of the story of the Passion; at all events, the agreement of the fourth Gospel with the three others on that essential part of the Life of Jesus, would lead one to suppose so. The moral sentences which formed the most solid part of the teaching of Jesus were still more easy to retain. They were assiduously recited. “Towards midnight I always awake,” Peter is made to say in an Ebionite writing, composed about the year 135, “and then sleep returns to me no more. It is the effect of the habit which I have contracted of recalling to memory the words of my Lord which I have heard, so that I may retain them faithfully.” As, however, those who had directly received the divine words were dying day by day, and as many words and anecdotes seemed likely 41


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to be lost, the necessity for writing them down made itself felt. On various sides little collections were made. These collections presented, with much in common, strange variants; the order and arrangement especially differed; each author sought to make his copy complete by consulting the papers of others, and naturally every vigorously accentuated word took its origin in the community, provided it conformed to the spirit of Jesus, was greedily seized upon, and inserted in the collections. According to certain appearances, the Apostle Matthew composed one of these memoirs, which has generally been accepted. Doubt is permissible in this matter, however; it is much more probable that all these little collections of the words of Jesus were anonymous, in the condition of personal notes, and were only reproduced by copyists as works possessing an individuality. One writing which may assist us to form an idea of this first Embryo of the Gospels is the Pirké Aboth, a collection of the sentences of celebrated Rabbis, from the Asmonean times to the second century of our era. Such a book could be formed only by successive accretions. The progress of the Buddhist writings on the life of Saka-Mouni followed a similar course. The Buddhist Sutras corresponded to the collections of the words of Jesus; they are not biographies; they begin simply by indications of this kind:—“At this time Bhagavat sojourned at Sravasti in the Vihara of Jetavana,” etc. The narrative part is very limited; the teaching, the parable, is the principal object. Entire parts of Buddhism only possess such Sutras. The Buddhism of the North, and the branches which have issued from it, have more books like the Lalita Vistara, complete biographies of Saka-Mouni, from his birth to the moment of his attaining to perfect intelligence. The Buddhism of the South has no such biographies, not that it ignores them, but because its theological teaching has been able to pass them by, and to hold to the Sutras.

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We shall see, in speaking of the Gospel according to Matthew, that the state of these Christian Sutras may readily be imagined. They were a species of pamphlets, of sentences and parables without much order, which the editor of our Matthew inserted into his narrative. The Hebrew genius had always excelled in moral sentences; in the mouth of Jesus that exquisite style attained perfection. Nothing prevents our believing that Jesus himself spoke in this way But the “hedge” which according to the expression of the Talmud, protected the sacred word, was very weak. It is of the essence of such collections to grow by a slow accretion, without the outline of the first stone being ever lost. Thus the treatise Eduïoth, a little Mishna complete, which is the kernel of the great Mishna, and in which the deposits of successive crystallisations of tradition are very visible, is to be found complete in the great Mishna. The Sermon on the Mount may be considered as the Eduïoth of the Gospel, that is to say, as a first artificial grouping which does not prevent later combinations or the maxims thus strung together by a slender thread from shelling off anew. In what language were those little collections of the sentences of Jesus composed, these Pirké Ieschou, if such an expression may be permitted? In the language of Jesus himself, in the vulgar tongue of Palestine—a sort of mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic which was still called Hebrew, and to which modern savants have given the name of Syro-Chaldaic. Upon this point the Pirké Aboth

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is perhaps still the book which gives us the best idea of the primitive Gospels, although the Rabbis who figure in this collection, being doctors of the pure Jewish school, speak there a language which is perhaps nearer to Hebrew than was that of Jesus. Naturally the catechists who spoke Greek translated those words as best they could, and in a fashion sufficiently free. It is this that is called the Logia Kyriaca, “the oracles of the Lord,” or simply the Logia. The Syro-Chaldaic collections of the sentences of Jesus having never had unity, the Greek collections have even less, and were only written down individually in the manner of notes for the personal use of each one. It was impossible that even in a sketchy fashion Jesus was entirely contained in a gnomic writing; the entire Gospel could not be confined within the narrow limits of a little treatise of morals. A choice of current proverbs or of precepts like the Pirké Aboth would not have changed humanity, even supposing it to have been filled with maxims of the most exalted character. That which characterises Jesus in the highest degree is that with him teaching was inseparable from action. His lessons were acts, living symbols, bound indissolubly to his parables, and certainly in the most ancient pages which were written to fix his teachings, there are already anecdotes and short narratives. Very soon, however, the first framework became totally insufficient. The sentences of Jesus were nothing without his biography. That biography is the mystery par excellence, the realisation of the Messianic ideal; the texts of the prophets there find their justification. To relate the life of Jesus is to prove his Messiahship, is to make, in the eyes of the Jews, the most complete apology for the new movement.

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Thus very early arose a framework which was in some sort the skeleton of all the Gospels, and in which word and action were mingled. In the beginning John the Baptist, forerunner of the Kingdom of God, announcing, welcoming, recommending Jesus; then Jesus preparing himself for his Divine mission by retirement and the fulfilling of the Law; then the brilliant period of his public life, the full sunshine of the Kingdom of God—Jesus in the midst of his disciples beaming with the gentle and tempered radiance of a prophet-son of God. As the disciples had scarcely any save Galilean reminiscences, Galilee was the almost exclusive stage of this exquisite theophany. The part of Jerusalem was almost suppressed. Jesus went there only eight days before his death. His two last days were told almost hour by hour. On the eve of his death he kept the Passover with his disciples and instituted the Divine rite of common communion. One of his disciples betrayed him; the official authorities of Judaism obtained his death from the Roman authority; he died upon Golgotha, he was buried. On the next day but one his tomb was found empty; it was because he had been resuscitated and had ascended to the right hand of the Father. Many disciples were then favoured with appearances of his shade wandering between heaven and earth. The beginning and the end of the history were, as we see, sufficiently well defined. The interval, on the contrary, was in a state of anecdotic chaos without any chronology. For the whole of this part relative to the public life no order was consecrated; each distributed his matter in his own way. Altogether the compilation became what was called “the good news,” in Hebrew Besora, in Greek

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Evangelion, in allusion to the passage of the second Isaiah: “The spirit of Jehovah is upon me, because Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.” The Mebasser or “Evangelist” had as his especial duty to expound this excellent history which has been for eighteen hundred years the great instrument for the conversion of the world, which yet remains the great argument for Christianity in the struggle of the last days.

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The matter was traditional: now tradition is in its essence a ductile and extensible matter. Every year sayings more or less apocryphal were mixed with the authentic words of Jesus. Did a new fact, a new tendency, make its appearance in the community, the question was asked what Jesus would have thought of it; and there was no difficulty in attributing it to the Master. The collection, in this way, grew from day to day, and was also purified. Words which were too strongly opposed to the opinions of the moment, or which had been found dangerous, were eliminated. But the basis remained; the foundation was really solid. The evangelical tradition is the tradition of the Church at Jerusalem transported into Perea. The Gospel was born amongst the family of Jesus, and, up to a certain point, is the work of his immediate disciples. This fact it is which gives us the right to believe that the image of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, resembles the original in all essential particulars. These narratives are at once historical and figurative. Whatever of fable may have mixed itself with them, it would be erring, out of fear of erring, to conclude that nothing in the Gospels is true. If we had known St Francis of Assisi only by the book of the “Conformities,” we should have to say that it was a biography like that of Buddha or of Jesus, a biography written à priori to exhibit the realisation of a preconceived type. Still, Francis of Assisi certainly existed. All has become an altogether mythical personage amongst the Shieks. His sons, Hassan and Hosein, have been substituted for the fabulous part of Thammuz. Yet, Ali Hassan and Hosein are real personages. The myth is frequently grafted upon a historical biography. The ideal is sometimes the true. Athens offers the absolutely beautiful in the arts, and Athens exists. Even the personages who may sometimes be taken for symbolical statues, have really at certain times lived in flesh and bone. These histories follow, in fact, certain orderly patterns so closely that there is a certain resemblance amongst all of them. Babism, which is a fact of our days, offers, in its nascent legend, parts that seem drawn from the Life of Jesus; the type of the disciple who denies; the details of the sufferings and the death of Bab, appear to be imitated from the Gospel, which does not imply that these facts did not happen as they are described to have done.

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We may add that by the side of these ideal traits, which make up the figure of the hero of the Gospels, there are also characteristics of the time, of the race, and of individual character. This young Jew, at once gentle and terrible, subtle and imperious, childlike and sublime, filled with a disinterested zeal, with a pure morality, and with the ardour of an exalted personality, most certainly existed. He should have his place in one of Bida’s pictures, the face encircled with long locks of

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hair. He was a Jew, and he was himself. The loss of his supernatural aureole has deprived him in no way of his charm. Our race restored to itself and disengaged from all that Jewish influences have introduced into its manner of thought, will continue to love him.

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Assuredly in writing concerning such lives, one is perpetually compelled to say, with Quintus Curtius. Equidem plura transcribo quam credo. On the other hand, by an excess cf scepticism, one is deprived of many great truths. For our clear and scholastic minds, the distinction between a real and a fictitious history is absolute. The epic poem, the heroic narrative, or the Homerides, the troubadours, the antari, the cantistorie, exhibit themselves with so much ease, are reduced in the poetic of a Lucan or of a Voltaire to the cold puppets of stage machines which deceive nobody. For the success of such narratives, the auditor must accept them; but it is necessary that the author should believe them possible. The legendary, the Agadist, are no more impostors than the authors of the Homeric poems, or than were the Christians of Troyes. One of the essential dispositions of those who create the really fertile fables, is their complete carelessness with regard to material truth. The Agadist would smile if we put a question with all sincerity, “Is what you tell us true?” In such a state of mind no one is uneasy save about the doctrine to be inculcated, the sentiment to be expressed. The spirit is everything; the letter is of no importance. Objective curiosity which proposes to itself no other end than to know as exactly as possible the reality of the facts, is a thing of which there is almost no example in the East. Just as the life of a Buddha in India was in some sense written in advance, so the life of a Jewish Messiah was traced à priori; it was easy to say what it would be and what it ought to be. His type was as it were sculptured by the prophets, thanks to the exegesis which applied to the Messiah all that belonged to an obscure ideal. Most frequently, however, it was the inverse process which prevailed amongst the Christians. In reading the prophets, especially the prophets of the end of the captivity, the second Isaiah, Jeremiah and Zechariah, they found Jesus in every line. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold thy King cometh unto thee, he is just and having salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass and a colt the foal of an ass” (Zech. ix. 9). The King of the poor was Jesus, and the circumstance which they recalled was regarded as the fulfilment of that prophecy. “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner,” they read in a psalm. “He shall be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence,” they read in Isaiah, “to both the houses of Israel, a gin and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble and fall” (Isaiah viii. 14, 15). “There indeed it is!” they said. Above all things, they went ardently over the circumstances of the Passion to find figures. All that passed hour by hour in that terrible drama happened in order to fulfil some prediction, to signify some mystery. It was remembered that he had refused to drink the posca, that his bones bad not been broken, that the soldiers had drawn lots for his garments. The prophets had predicted all. Judas and his pieces of silver (true or supposed) suggested analogous comparisons. All the old history of the people of God became as it were a model which they copied. Moses and Elias, with their luminous apparitions, gave rise to imaginary ascents to glory. All the ancient Theophanies took place on high 45


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ground. Jesus revealed himself principally on the mountains; he was transfigured on Tabor. They were not dismayed by apparent contradictions. “Out of Egypt have I called My Son,” said Jehovah in Hosea. The words, of course, applied to Israel, but the Christian imagination applied them to Jesus, and made his parents carry him when a child into Egypt. By a yet more strained exegesis they discovered that his birth in Nazareth was the fulfilment of a prophecy. The whole tissue of the life of Jesus was thus an express fact, a sort of superhuman arrangement intended to realise a series of ancient texts reputed to relate to him. It is a kind of exegesis which the Jews call Midrasch, into which all equivoques, all plays upon words, letters, sense, are admitted. The old biblical texts were for the Jews of this time not as for us an historical and literary whole but a book of gramarye whence were drawn fates, images, inductions of every description. The sense proper for such an exegesis did not exist; the chimeras of the cabbalist were already approached; the sacred text was treated simply as an agglomeration of letters. It is unnecessary to say that all this work was done in an impersonal and in some sense an anonymous fashion. Legends, myths, popular songs, proverbs, historical words, calumnies characteristic of a party—all this is the work of that great impostor who is called the crowd. Assuredly every legend, every proverb, every spiritual word, has its father, but an unknown father. Someone says the word; thousands repeat it, perfect it, refine it, acuminate it; even he who first spoke it has been in saying it only the interpreter of all. 49

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CHAPTER VI. THE HEBREW GOSPEL. THIS exposition of the Messianic life of Jesus, mixed up with texts of the old prophets, always the same, and capable of being recited in a single sitting, was early settled in almost invariable terms, at least so far as the sense is concerned. Not merely did the narrative unfold itself according to a predetermined plan, but the characteristic words were settled so that the word often guided the thought and survived the modifications of the text. The framework of the Gospel thus existed even before the Gospel itself, almost in the same way as in the Persian dramas of the death of the sons of Ali the order of the action is settled, whilst the dialogue is left to be improvised by the actors. Designed for preaching, for apology, for the conversion of the Jews, the Gospel story found all its individuality before it was written. Had the Galilean disciples, the brothers of the Lord, been consulted as to the necessity for having the sheets containing this narrative worked into a consecrated form, they would have laughed. What necessity is there for a paper to contain our fundamental thoughts, those which we repeat and apply every day? The young catechists might avail themselves, for some time, of such aids to memory; the old masters felt only contempt for those who used them.

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Thus it was that until the middle of the second century the words of Jesus continued to be cited from memory often with considerable variations. The texts of the evangelists which we possess, existed; but other texts of the same kind existed by the side of them; and, besides, to quote the words or the symbolical features of the life of Jesus no one felt obliged to have recourse to the written text. The living tradition was the great well from which all alike drew. Hence the explanation of the fact which is in appearance surprising, that the texts which have become the most important part of Christianity were produced obscurely, confusedly, and at first were not received with any consideration. The same phenomenon makes its appearance furthermore in almost all sacred literatures. The Vedas have been handed down for centuries without having been written; a man who respected himself ought to know them by heart. He who had need of a manuscript to recite these ancient hymns confessed his ignorance; so that the copies have never been held in much esteem. To quote from memory from the Bible, the Koran, is, even in our days, a point of honour amongst Orientals. A part of the Jewish Thora must have been oral before it was written down. It was the same with the Psalms. The Talmud, finally, existed for two hundred years before it was written down. Even after it was written, scholars long preferred the traditional discourses to the MSS. which contained the opinions of the doctors. The glory of the scholar was to be able to cite from memory the greatest possible number of the solutions of the casuists. In presence of these facts, far from being astonished at the contempt of Papias for the Gospel texts existing in his time, amongst which were certainly two of the books which Christianity has since so deeply revered, we find his contempt in perfect 47


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harmony with what might be expected from a “man of tradition,” an “elder,” as those who had spoken of him have called him. 51

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It may be doubted whether before the death of the Apostles, and the destruction of Jerusalem, all that collection of narratives, sentences, parables, and prophetic citations had been reduced to writing. The features of the divine figure before which eighteen centuries of Christians have prostrated themselves, were first sketched about the year 75. Batanea, where the brothers of Jesus lived, and where the remnant of the Church of Jerusalem had taken refuge, appears to have been the country where this important work was executed. The tongue employed was that in which the very words of Jesus had been uttered, that is to say, Syro-Chaldaic, which was abusively called Hebrew. The brothers of Jesus, the fugitive Christians of Jerusalem, spoke that language, little different besides from that of the Bataneans, who had not adopted the Greek tongue. It was in an obscure dialect, and without literary culture, that the first draft of the book which has charmed so many souls was traced. It was in Greek that the Gospel was to attain its perfection, the last form which has made the tour of the world. It must not, however, be forgotten that the Gospel was first a Syrian book, written in a Semitic language. The style of the Gospel—that charming turn of childlike narrative which recalls the most limpid pages of the old Hebrew books—penetrated with a species of idealistic ether that the ancient people did not know, and which has nothing of Greek in it. Hebrew is its basis. A just proportion of materialism and spirituality, or rather an indiscernible confusion of soul and sense, makes that adorable language the very synonym of poetry, the pure vestment of the moral idea, something analogous to Greek sculpture, where the ideal allows itself to be touched and loved. Thus was sketched out by an unconscious genius that masterpiece of spontaneous art, the Gospel, not such and such a gospel, but this species of unfixed poem, this unrevised masterpiece where every defect is a beauty, and the indefiniteness of which has been the chief cause of its success. A portrait of Jesus, finished, revised, classic, would not have had so great a charm. The Agada, the parable, do not require hard outlines. They require the floating chronology, the light transition, careless of reality. It is by the Gospel that the Jewish agada has been universally accepted. The air of candour is fascinating. He who knows how to tell a tale can catch the crowd. Now, to know how to tell stories is a rare privilege; a naïveté, an absence of pedantry of which a solemn doctor is hardly capable, are absolutely necessary. The Buddhists and the Jewish Agadists (the evangelists are true Agadists) have alone possessed this art in the degree of perfection which makes the entire universe accept a story. All the stories, all the parables which are repeated from one end of the world to the other, have but two origins, one Buddhist and the other Christian, because Buddhists and the founders of Christianity alone had the care of the popular preaching. The situation of the Buddhists with regard to the Brahmans was in a sense analogous to that of the Agadists with regard to the Talmudists. The latter have nothing which resembles the Gospel parable, any more than the Brahmans would have arrived by themselves at a turn so light, so agile, and so flowing as the

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Buddhist narrative. Two great lives well told, that of Buddha and that of Jesus—there lies the secret of the two vastest religious propaganda that humanity has ever seen.

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The Halaka has converted no one; the Epistles of St Paul alone would not have won a hundred disciples to Jesus. That which has conquered the hearts of man is the Gospel, that delicious mixture of poetry and the moral sense, that narrative floating between dreams and reality in a Paradise where no note is taken of time. In all that there is assuredly a little literary surprise. The success of the Gospel was due on the one hand to the astonishment caused amongst our heavy races by the delicious strangeness of the Semitic narrative, by the skilful arrangement of these sentences and discourses, by these cadences, so happy, so serene, so balanced. Strangers to the artifices of the agada, our good ancestors were so charmed with them that even in the present day we can scarcely persuade ourselves that this species of narrative may be devoid of objective truth. But to explain how it has happened that the Gospel may have become amongst all nations what it is, the old family book whose worn pages have been moistened with tears, and on which the finger of generations has been impressed, more is required. The literary success of the Gospel is due to Jesus himself. Jesus was, if we may so express ourselves, the author of his own biography. One experience proves the fact. There have been many Lives of Jesus in the past. Now the life of Jesus will always obtain a great success when the writer has the necessary degree of ability, of boldness, and of naïveté to translate the Gospel into the style of his time. A thousand reasons for this success may be looked for, but there is never more than one, and that is the incomparable intrinsic beauty of the Gospel itself. When the same writer later on attempts a translation of St Paul, the public will not be attracted. So true it is that the eminent person of Jesus trenching vigorously on the mediocrity of his disciples was pre-eminently the soul of the new apparition, and gave to it all its originality. The Hebrew Protavangel was preserved in the original amongst the Nazarenes of Syria until the fifth century. There are besides Greek translations of it. A specimen was found in the library of the priest Pamphilus of Cæsarea; St Jerome is said to have copied the Hebrew text at Aleppo, and even to have translated it. All the Fathers of the Church have found that this Hebrew Gospel is much like the Greek Gospel which bears the name of St Matthew. They usually assume that the Greek Gospel attributed to St Matthew was translated from the Hebrew, but the deduction is erroneous. The generation of our Gospel of St Matthew was a much more complicated matter. The resemblance of the Gospel with the Gospel of the Hebrews does not go so far as identity. Our St Matthew is anything but a translation. We will explain later on why of all the Gospel texts the latter approaches most nearly to the Hebrew prototype. The destruction of the Judeo-Christians of Syria brought about the disappearance of the Hebrew text. The Greek and Latin translations, which created a disagreeable discord by the side of the canonical Gospels, also perished. The numerous quotations made from it by the Fathers, allow us to imagine the original up to a certain point. The Fathers had reason to connect it with the first of our Gospels. This Gospel of the Hebrews, of the Nazarenes, resembled in truth much of that which

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bears the name of Matthew, both in plan and in arrangement. As to length, it holds the middle place between Mark and Matthew. It is impossible sufficiently to regret the loss of such a text, though it is certain that even supposing we still possessed the Gospel of the Hebrews seen by St Jerome, our Matthew would be preferred to it. Our Matthew, in a word, has been preserved intact since its final revision in the last years of the first century, whilst the Gospel of the Hebrews, through the absence of an orthodoxy (the jealous guardian of the text) amongst the Judaising Churches of Syria, has been revised from century to century, so that at the last it was no better than one of the apocryphal Gospels.

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In its origin it appears to have possessed the characteristics which one expects to find in a primitive work. The plan of the narrative was like that of Mark, simpler than that of Matthew and Luke. The virginal birth of Jesus does not figure in it at all. The struggle about the genealogies was lively, and the great battle of Ebionism took place on this point. Some admitted the genealogical tables into their copies, while others rejected them. Compared with the Gospel which bears the name of Matthew, the Gospel of the Hebrews, so far as we can judge by the fragments which remain to us, was less refined in its symbolism, more logical, less subject to certain objections of exegesis, but of a stranger, coarser supernaturalism, more like that of Mark. Thus the fable that the Jordan took fire at the Baptism of Jesus—a fable dear to popular tradition in the earlier ages of the Church—is to be found there. The form under which it was supposed that the Holy Spirit entered into Jesus at that moment, as a force wholly distinct from himself, appears also to have been the oldest Nazarene conception. For the transfiguration, the Spirit, which was the Mother of Jesus, takes her Son by a hair, according to an imagination of Ezekiel (Ezek. viii. 3), and in the additions to the book of Daniel, and transports him to Mount Tabor. Some material details are shocking, but are altogether in the style of Mark. Finally some features which had remained sporadic in the Greek tradition, such as the anecdote of the woman taken in adultery, which is thrust rightly or wrongly into the fourth Gospel, had their place in the Gospel of the Hebrews. The stories of the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection, presented evidently in that Gospel a character apart. Whilst the Galilean tradition represented by Matthew will have it that Jesus appointed a meeting with his disciples in Galilee, the Gospel of the Hebrews—without doubt because it represented the tradition of the Church of Jerusalem—supposed that all the appearances took place in that city, and attributed the first vision to James. The endings of the Gospels of St Mark and St Luke place, in the same way, all the apparitions at Jerusalem. St Paul followed an analogous tradition.

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One very remarkable fact is that James, the man of Jerusalem, played in the Gospel of the Hebrews a more important part than in the evangelical tradition which has survived. It appears that there was amongst the Greek evangelists a sort of agreement to efface the brother of Jesus, or even to allow it to be supposed that he played an odious part. In the Nazarene Gospel, on the contrary, James is honoured with an appearance of Jesus after his resurrection; that apparition is the first of

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all; it is for him alone; it is the reward of the vow, full of lively faith, that James had made, that he would neither eat nor drink until he had seen his brother raised from the dead. We might be tempted to regard this narrative as a sufficiently modern resetting of the legend, without a single important circumstance. St Paul in the year 57 also tells us that, according to the tradition which he had received, James had had his vision. Here, then, is an important fact which the Greek evangelists suppressed, and which the Gospel of the Hebrews related. On the other hand, it appears that the first Hebrew edition embodies more than one hostile allusion to Paul. People have prophesied, and cast out devils in the name of Jesus: Jesus openly repulses them because they have “practised illegality.” The parable of the tares is still more characteristic. A man has sown in his field only good seed; but whilst he slept an enemy came, sowed tares in the field, and departed. “Master,” said the servants, “didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?” And he said unto them, “An enemy hath done this.” The servants said unto him, “Wilt thou that we go and gather them up?” But he said unto them, “Nay, lest while ye gather up the tares ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” It must be remembered that the expression “the enemy” was the name habitually given by the Ebionites to Paul. Was the Gospel of the Hebrews considered by the Christians of Syria, who made use of it, as the work of the Apostle Matthew? There is no valid reason for such a belief. The witness of the fathers of the Church proves nothing about the matter. Considering the extreme inexactitude of the ecclesiastical writers, when Hebrew affairs are in question, this perfectly accurate proposition, “The Gospel of the Hebrews of the Syrian Christians resembles the Greek Gospel known by the name of St Matthew,” transforms itself into this, with which it is by no means synonymous:—“The Christians of Syria possessed the Gospel of St Matthew in Hebrew,” or rather, “St Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew.” We believe that the name of St Matthew was not applied to one of the versions of the Gospel until the Greek version which now bears his name was composed, which will be much later. If the Hebrew Gospel never bore an author’s name, or rather a title of traditional guarantee, it was the title of “the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles,” sometimes also that of “the Gospel of Peter.” Still, we believe that these names were given later, when Gospels bearing the names of the Apostles came into use. A decisive method of preserving to the original Gospel its high authority, was to cover it with the authority of the entire Apostolic College.

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As we have already said, the Gospel of the Hebrews was ill preserved. Every Judaising sect of Syria added to it, and suppressed parts of it, so that the orthodox sometimes presented it as swollen by interpolation to a greater size than St Matthew, and sometimes as mutilated. It was especially in the hands of the Ebionites of the second century that the Gospel of the Hebrews arrived at the lowest point of corruption. These heretics issued a Greek version the style of which appears to have been awkward, heavy, overloaded, and in which, moreover, the writer did not fail to imitate Luke

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and the other Greek evangelists. The so-called Gospels of Peter and of the Egyptians came from the same source, and presented equally an apocryphal character and a mediocre standard.

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CHAPTER VII. THE GREEK GOSPEL—MARK.

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THE Christianity of the Greek countries had still greater need than those of Syria for a written version of the life and teaching of Jesus. It appears at the first glance that it would have been very simple, for the satisfaction of that demand, to translate the Hebrew Gospel, which shortly after the fall of Jerusalem had taken a definite form. But translation pure and simple was not the fashion of those times: no text had sufficient authority to cause it to be preferred over others; it is, moreover, doubtful if the little Hebrew pamphlets of the Nazarenes could have passed the sea and gone out of Syria. The Apostolic men who were in communication with the Western Churches trusted to their memories, and without doubt did not carry with them works which would have been unintelligible to the faithful. When the necessity for a Gospel in Greek made itself felt, it was composed of fragments. But, as we have already said, the plan, the skeleton, the book almost in its entirety, were sketched out in advance. There was at bottom but one way of telling the life of Jesus, and two disciples, working separately, one at Rome, the other at Kokaba, the one in Greek, the other in Syro-Chaldaic, could not but produce two works very much like each other. The general lines, the order of the narrative, had already been settled. What had to be created were the Greek style and the choice of the necessary words. The man who accomplished this important work was John-Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter. Mark, it appears, had seen when a child something of the facts of the Gospel; it may even be believed that he was at Gethsemane. He had personally known those who had played a part in the drama of the last days of Jesus. Having accompanied Peter to Rome, he probably remained there after the death of the Apostle, and passed through the terrible crisis which followed the event in that town. It was there that, according to all appearances, he put together the little book of forty or fifty pages which was the corner stone of the Greek Gospels.

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The document, although composed after the death of Peter, was in a sense his work; it was the way in which he had been accustomed to relate the life of Jesus. Peter knew scarcely any Greek; Mark served him as dragoman; hundreds of times he had been the channel through which this marvellous history had passed. Peter did not follow a very rigid order in his preaching; he cited facts and parables as the exigencies of his teaching required. This licence of composition is also found in the book of Mark. The distribution of the subject is often logically at fault; in some respects the work is very incomplete, since entire parts of the Life of Jesus are wanting, of which complaint was made even in the second century. On the other hand, the clearness, the precision of detail, the originality, the picturesqueness, the life of this first narrative were not afterwards equalled. A sort of realism renders the form heavy and hard; the ideality of the character of Jesus suffers from it; there are incoherencies, inexplicable whimsicalities. The first and the third Gospels greatly surpass 53


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that of Mark in the beauty of the discourses, the happy application of the anecdotes; a crowd of touching details have disappeared, but as an historical document the Gospel of Mark is greatly superior. The strong impression left by Jesus is there found almost entire. We see him really living and acting. The part which Mark took in so singularly abridging the great discourses of Jesus is astonishing. These discourses could not have been unknown to him: if he has omitted them, he must have had some motive for doing so. The somewhat narrow and dry spirit of Peter is perhaps the cause of this suppression. This spirit is certainly also the explanation of the puerile importance which Mark attaches to the miracles. The working of wonders in his Gospel has a singular character of heavy materialism, which for the moment recalls the reveries of the magnetizers. The miracles are painfully accomplished by successive steps. Jesus works them by means of Aramaic formulae, which have a Cabbalistic air. There is a struggle between the natural and supernatural forces: the evil yields only step by step, and under reiterated injunctions. Add to this a sort of secret character, Jesus always forbidding those who are the recipients of his favours. to speak of them It is not to be denied that Jesus comes out of this Gospel not as the delightful moralist whom we love, but as a terrible magician. The sentiment with which he inspires the majority of those about him is fear; the people, terrified by his miracles, pray him to depart out of their coasts.

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It is not to be concluded from this that the Gospel of Mark is less historic than the others; quite the contrary. Things which offend us in the highest degree were of the first importance to Jesus and his immediate disciples. The Roman world was even more than the Jewish world the dupe of these illusions. The miracles of Vespasian are conceived on exactly the same lines as those of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. A blind man, a lame man, stop him on the public road, and beg him to cure them. He cures the first by spitting on his eyes; the second by treading upon his leg. Peter appears to have been principally struck by these prodigies, and we may readily believe that he insisted much upon them in his preaching. Hence the work which he inspired has a physiognomy peculiar to itself. The Gospel of Mark is less a legend than a memoir written by a credulous person. The characters of the legend, the vagueness of the details, the softness of the outlines, strike one in Matthew and Luke. Here, on the contrary, everything is taken from life; we feel that we are in the presence of memories. The spirit which rules in this little book is certainly that of Peter. In the first place, Cephas plays there an eminent part, and appears always at the head of the apostles. The author is in no way of the school of Paul, yet in various ways he approaches him much more nearly than in the direction of James by his indifference with regard to Judaism, his hatred for Pharisaism, his lively opposition to the principles of the Jewish theocracy. The story of the Syro-Phœnician woman (Mark vii. 24, et seq.), which evidently signifies that the Pagan may obtain grace, provided he have faith, is humble and recognises the precedence of the son of the house, is in perfect harmony with the part which is played by Peter in the history of the centurion Cornelius. Peter, it is true, appears much later to

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Paul as a timid man, but he was none the less, in his day, the first to recognise the calling of the Gentiles. 62

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We shall see later what kind of modifications it was thought necessary to introduce into the first Greek version, in order to make it acceptable to the faithful, and how, from that revision, emerged the Gospels attributed to Matthew and Luke. One cardinal fact of primitive Christian literature is that these connected, and in a sense more complete texts, did not cause the primitive text to disappear, The little work of Mark was preserved, and soon, thanks to the convenient but altogether erroneous hypothesis which makes of him “a divine abbreviator,” he took his place amongst the mysterious four evangelists. Is it certain that the text of Mark can have remained pure from all interpolations,—that the text which we read to-day is purely and simply the first Greek Gospel? It would be a bold thing to affirm that it is. At the very time that it was found necessary to compose, other Gospels bearing other names, taking Mark for the foundation, it is very possible that Mark himself may have been retouched, whilst his name was still left at the head of the book. Many particulars appear to suppose a sort of retroactive influence upon the text of Mark, exercised by the Gospels composed after Mark. But these are complicated hypotheses of which there is no absolute proof. The Gospel of Mark presents a perfect unity and, except for certain matters of detail where the manuscripts differ, apart from those little retouchings, from which the Christian writings have, almost without exception, suffered, it does not appear to have received any considerable addition since it was composed. The characteristic feature of the Gospel of Mark was, from the first, the absence of the genealogies and of the legends relating to the infancy of Jesus. If there was a gap which ought to be filled up for the benefit of Catholic readers, it was to be found there. And yet no attempt was made to fill it. Many other particulars, inconvenient from the apologist’s point of view, were not erased. The story of the Resurrection alone presents itself in Mark with evident traces of violence. The best manuscripts stop after the words ephobountogar (xvi. 8). It is scarcely probable that the primitive text should have finished so abruptly. On the other hand, it is very likely that something followed which was shocking to received ideas, and it was cut out, but the conclusion ephobountogar being very unsatisfactory, various little clauses were invented, not one of which possessed sufficient authority to exclude the others from the manuscripts. When Matthew, and, above all, Luke, omit certain passages which are actually in Mark, are we forced to conclude that these passages were not in the proto-Mark? We are not. The authors of the second version selected and omitted, guided by the sentiment of an instinctive art and by the unity of their work. It has been said, for example, that the Passion was wanting in the primitive Mark, because Luke, who has followed him up to that point, does not follow him in the narrative of the last hours of Jesus. The truth is that Luke has taken for the Passion another guide more symbolical, more touching than Mark, and Luke was too great an artist to muddle his colours. The Passion of Mark, on the contrary, is the truest, the most ancient, the most historical. The second version in

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any case is always blunter, more governed by a priori, reasons than those which have preceded it. Precise details are matters of indifference to generations which have not known the primitive actors. What is pre-eminently required is an account with clear outlines and significant in all its parts.

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There is everything to lead us to believe that Mark did not write down his Gospel until after the death of Peter. Papias assumes this when he tells us that Mark wrote “from memory” what he had from Peter. Finally the fact that the Gospel of Mark contains evident allusion to the catastrophe of the year 70 is decisive when we admit the unity and integrity of the work. The author puts into the mouth of Jesus in Chapter xiii. a species of apocalypse wherein are intermingled predictions relative to the capture of Jerusalem and the approaching end of time. We believe that this little apocalypse, in part designed to induce the faithful to retire to Pella, was spread amongst the community of Jerusalem about the year 68. It certainly did not then contain the prediction of the destruction of the Temple. The author of the Johanine apocalypse, however well he may have understood the Christian conscience, did not yet believe, in the later days of 68 or the early days of 69, that the Temple would be destroyed. Naturally all the collections of the life and words of Jesus which adopted this fragment as prophetic would modify it in the light of accomplished facts, and would see in it a clear prediction of the ruin of the Temple. It is probable that the Gospel of the Hebrews in its first form contained the apocalyptic discourse in question. The Hebrew Gospel, indeed, certainly contained the passage relating to the murder of Zecharias, son of Barachias, a feature which took its rise about the time of the apocalyptic discourse in question. Mark would scarcely venture to neglect a matter so striking. He supposes that Jesus in the last days of his life clearly foresaw the ruin of the Jewish nation, and took that ruin as the measure of the time which must elapse before his second appearing. “In those days after that tribulation . . . they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.” Such a formula notoriously assumes that at the moment when the author wrote the ruin of Jerusalem was accomplished, but accomplished very lately. On the other hand, the Gospel of St Mark was composed before all the eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus were dead. Hence we may see within what narrow limits the possible date of the compilation of the book is restricted. In all ways we are brought to the first years of calm which followed the war of Judea. Mark could not have been more than fifty-five years old. According to all appearances, it was at Rome that Mark composed this first attempt at a Greek gospel, which, imperfect though it is, contains the essential outlines of the subject. Such is the old tradition, and there is nothing improbable in it. Rome was, after Syria, the headquarters of Christianity. Latinisms are more frequent in the little work of Mark than in any other of the New Testament writings. The biblical texts to which reference is made recall the Septuagint. Many details lead to the belief that the writer had in view readers who knew little of Palestine and Jewish customs. The express citations from the Old Testament made by the author himself may be reduced to one; the exegetical reasonings which characterise Matthew and even Luke are wanting in Mark;

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the name of the Law never drops from his pen. Nothing, in fact, obliges us to believe that this may be a work sensibly different from that of which the Presbyter Joannes in the first years of the second century said to Papias:—“The Presbyters still say this: Mark, become the interpreter of Peter, wrote exactly but without order all that he remembered of the words and actions of Christ. For he did not hear or follow the Lord; but later, as I have said, he followed Peter, who made his didascalies according to the necessities of the moment, and not as if he wished to prepare a methodical statement of the discourses of the Lord; hence Mark is in no way to be blamed if he has thus written down but a small number of details, such as he remembered them. He had but one concern, to omit nothing that he had heard, and to let nothing pass that was false.” 66

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CHAPTER VIII. CHRISTIANITY AND THE EMPIRE UNDER FLAVIUS. FAR from diminishing the importance of the Jews at Rome, the war of Judea had in a sense contributed to increase it. Rome was by far the greatest Jewish city in the world: she had inherited all the importance of Jerusalem. The war of Judea had cast into Italy thousands of Jewish slaves. From 65 to 72 all prisoners made during the war had been sold wholesale. The places of prostitution were filled with Jews and Jewesses of the most distinguished families. Legend has pleased itself by building a most romantic structure on this foundation.

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Except for the heavy poll tax which oppressed the Jews, and which was for Christians more than an exaction, the reign of Vespasian was not remarkable for any special severities towards the two branches of the House of Israel. We have seen that the new dynasty, far from drawing down upon itself the contempt of Judaism in the beginning, had been compelled by the fact of the war of Judea, inseparable from its approach, to contract obligations towards a great number of Jews. It must be remembered that Vespasian and Titus, before attaining to power, had remained about four years in Syria, and had there formed many connections. Tiberius Alexander was the man to whom the Flavii owed the most. He continued to occupy one of the chief positions in the state; his statue was one of those which adorned the Forum. Nec meiere fas est! said the old Romans in their wrath, irritated by that intrusion of the Orientals. Herod Agrippa II., whilst continuing to reign and to coin money at Tiberias and Paneas, lived at Rome surrounded by his co-religionists, keeping up a great state, astonishing the Romans by the pomp and ostentation with which he celebrated the Jewish feasts. He displayed in his relations a certain largeness, since he had for his secretary the radical Justus of Tiberias, who had no scruple in eating the bread of a man whom he had certainly more than once accused of treason. Agrippa was decorated with the ornaments of the priesthood, and received from the Emperor an augmentation of fiefs on the side of Hermon. His sisters Drusilla and Berenice also lived at Rome. Berenice, notwithstanding her already ripe age, exercised over the heart of Titus such an empire, that she had the design of marrying him, and Titus it was said had promised her, and was only deterred by political considerations. Berenice inhabited the palace, and, pious as she was, lived openly with the destroyer of her country. The jealousy of Titus was active, and it appears to have contributed, not less than policy, to the murder of Caecina. The Jewish favourite enjoyed to the full her royal rights. Legal cases were taken under her jurisdiction, and Quintilian relates that he pleaded before her in a case in which she was both judge and party. Her luxury astonished the Romans; she ruled the fashions; a ring which she had worn on her finger sold for an insane price; but the serious world despised her, and openly described her relations with her brother Agrippa as incestuous. Other Herodians still lived in Italy, perhaps at Naples, in particular that Agrippa, son of Agrippa and Felix, who perished in the eruption of 58


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Vesuvius. In a word, all these dynasties of Syria and Armenia which had embraced Judaism, remained with the new Imperial family in daily relations of intimacy.

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Around this aristocratic world the subtle and prudent Josephus hovered, like a complaisant servant. Since his entry into the household of Vespasian and of Titus, he had taken the name of Flavius, and in the usual manner of a common-place soul, he reconciled contradictory characters—he was obsequious to the executioners of his country, he was a boaster concerning his national memories. His domestic life, until then by no means correct, now began to become orderly. After his defection, he had been weak enough to accept from Vespasian a young prisoner from Cesarea, who left him as soon as she could. At Alexandria he took another wife, by whom he had three children. Two of them died young, and he repudiated his wife, he says, on the ground of incompatability of temper, about the year 74. He then married a Jewess of Crete, in whom he found all perfections, and who bore him two children. His Judaism had always been lax, and became more and more so; it was very easy to believe that even at the period of the greatest Galilean fanaticism he was a liberal, preventing the forcible circumcision of people, and protesting that everyone ought to worship God in his own way. This idea that everyone should choose his own form of worship gained the day, and lent powerful help to the propagation of a religion founded on a rational idea of the divinity. Josephus had undoubtedly a superficial Greek education, of which, like a clever man, he knew how to make the most. He read the Greek historians; that reading provoked him to emulation; he saw the possibility of writing in the same way the history of the last misfortunes of his country. Too little of an artist to understand the temerity of his undertaking, he plunged into it, as happens sometimes with Jews who begin in literature in a foreign tongue, like one who fears nothing. He was not yet accustomed to write in Greek, and it was in Syro-Chaldaic that he made the first version of his work; later he put forward the Greek version which has come down to our own times. Notwithstanding his protestations, Josephus is not a truthful man. He has the Jewish defect—the defect most opposed to a healthy manner of writing history—an extreme personality. A thousand preoccupations govern him; first the necessity for pleasing his new masters, Titus and Herod Agrippa; then the desire of proving his own importance, and of showing to those of his compatriots who looked askance at him, that he had acted only from the purest inspirations of patriotism; then an honest sentiment in many respects which induces him to present the character of his nation in the light which would compromise them least in the eyes of the Romans. The rebellion, he pretends, was the work of a handful of madmen; Judaism is a pure doctrine elevated in philosophy, inoffensive in policy; the Jews moderate, and, far from making common cause with sectaries, have usually been their first victims. How could they be the enemies of the Romans? they who had asked from the Romans aid and protection against the revolutionaries? These systematic views contradict on every page the pretended impartiality of the historian.

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The work was submitted (at least Josephus wishes us to believe so) to the criticism of Agrippa and of Titus, who appear to have approved it. Titus would have gone further; he would have signed with his own hand the copy which was intended to serve as a type, to show that it was according to this volume that he desired that the history of the siege of Jerusalem should be told. The exaggeration here is palpable. What is clearly evident is the existence around Titus of a Jewish coterie which flattered him, which desired to persuade him that, far from having been the cruel destroyer of Judaism, he had wished to save the Temple; that Judaism had killed itself, and that, in any case, a superior decree of the Divine will, of which Titus had been but the instrument, hovered over all. Titus was evidently pleased to hear this theory maintained. He willingly forgot his cruelties, and the decree that he had to all appearance pronounced against the Temple, when the vanquished themselves came to offer such apologies. Titus had a great fund of humanity; he affected an extreme moderation; he was without doubt very well pleased that this version should be circulated throughout the Jewish world; but he was also well pleased when in the Roman world the story was told in quite a different way, and represented him upon the walls of Jerusalem as the haughty conqueror breathing only fire and death. The sentiment of sympathy for the Jews, which is thus implied on the part of Titus, might be expected to extend itself to the Christians. Judaism, as Josephus understood it, approached Christianity on many sides, especially the Christianity of St Paul. Like Josephus, the majority of the Christians had condemned the insurrection, and cursed the zealots. They loudly professed submission to the Romans. Like Josephus they held the ritual part of the Law as secondary, and understood the sonship of Abraham in a moral sense. Josephus himself appears to have been favourable to the Christians, and to have spoken of the chiefs of the sect with sympathy. Berenice, on her side, and her brother Agrippa, had had for St Paul a sentiment of benevolent curiosity. The private friends of Titus were rather favourable than unfavourable to the disciples of Jesus, by which circumstance may be explained the fact, which appears incontestable, that there were Christians in the very household of Flavius. Let it be remembered that this family did not belong to the great Roman aristocracy; that it formed part of what may be called the provincial middle class; that it had not, consequently, against the Jews and Orientals in general, the prejudices of the Roman nobility, prejudices which we shall soon see regain all their power under Nerva, and bring about a century of almost continuous persecution of the Christians. That dynasty fully admitted popular charlatanism. Vespasian had no scruple about his miracles of Alexandria, and when he remembered that juggleries had had much to do with his fortune, he no doubt felt merely an increase of that sceptical gaiety which was habitual to him. The conversions which brought the faith in Jesus so near to the throne, were probably not effected until the reign of Domitian. The Church of Rome was reformed but slowly. The inclination which Christians had felt about the year 68 to flee from a town upon which they expected every moment the wrath of God to descend, had grown weak. The generation mown down by the massacres of 64 was replaced by the continual immigration which Rome received from other parts of the 60


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Empire. The survivors of the massacres of Nero breathed at last, they considered themselves as in a little provisional Paradise, and compared themselves with the Israelites after they had passed the Red Sea. The persecution of 64 presented itself to them as a sea of blood, where all had only not been drowned. God had inverted the parts, and as to Pharaoh, he had given to their executioners blood to drink: it was the blood of the civil wars, which from 68 to 70 had poured out in torrents. The exact list of the ancient presbyteri or episcopi of the Roman Church is unknown. Peter, if he went to Rome, as we believe, occupied there an exceptional place, and would certainly have had no successor properly so-called. It was not until a hundred years afterwards, when the episcopate was regularly constituted, that any attempt was made to present a consecutive list of the successors of Peter as bishops of Rome. There are no accurate memorials until after the time of Xystus, who died about 125. The interval between Xystus and St Peter is filled with the names of Roman presbyters who had left some reputation. After Peter we come upon a certain Linus, of whom nothing certain is known; then Anenclet, whose name was disfigured afterwards, and of whom two person ages were compounded, Clet and Anaclet. 72

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One phenomenon which is manifested more and more is that the Church of Rome became the heiress of that of Jerusalem, and was in some sort substituted for it. There was the same spirit, the same traditional and hierarchical authority, the same taste for command. Judeo-Christianity reigned at Rome as at Jerusalem. Alexandria was not yet a great Christian centre. Ephesus, even Antioch, could not struggle against the preponderance which the capital of the Empire, by the very nature of things, tended more and more to arrogate to itself. Vespasian arrived at an advanced old age, esteemed by the serious part of the Empire, repairing, in the bosom of a profound peace, with the aid of an active and intelligent son, the evils which Nero and the civil war had created. The high aristocracy, without having much sympathy for a family of parvenus—men of capacity but without distinction, and of manners sufficiently common—sustained and seconded it. They were at last delivered from the detestable school of Nero,—a school of wicked, immoral, and frivolous men, wretched soldiers and administrators. The honest party which, after the cruel trial of the reign of Domitian was to arrive definitely at power with Nerva, breathed at last, and already was almost triumphant. Only the madmen and the debauchees of Rome who had loved Nero laughed at the parsimony of the old General, without dreaming that that economy was perfectly simple and altogether praiseworthy. The treasury of the Emperor was not clearly distinguished from his private fortune; but the treasury of Nero had been sadly dilapidated. The situation of a family without fortune, like that of Flavius, borne to power under such circumstances, became very embarrassing. Galba, who was of the great nobility, but of serious habits, was lost because one day at the theatre he offered to a player on the flute who had been much applauded, five denarii, which he drew from his purse. The crowd received it with a song: “Onesimus comes from the village,” 61


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the burden of which the spectators repeated in chorus. There was no way of pleasing these impertinents save by magnificence and cavalier manners. Vespasian would have found it much more easy to obtain pardon for crimes than for his rather vulgar good sense, and that species of awkwardness which the poor officer usually retains who has risen from the ranks by his merits. The human race is so little disposed to encourage goodness and devotion in its sovereigns, that it is sometimes surprising that the offices of king and of emperor still find conscientious men to discharge them.

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A more importunate opposition than that of the idlers of the amphitheatre and the worshippers of the memory of Nero, was that of the philosophers, or, to be more correct, of the republican party. This party, which had reigned for thirty-six hours after the death of Caligula, gained, on the death of Nero, and during the civil war which followed that event, an unexpected importance. Men highly considered, like Helvidius Priscus, with his wife Fannia (daughter of Thrasea), were seen to refuse the most simple fictions of imperial etiquette, to affect with regard to Vespasian an air at once cavilling and full of effrontery. We must do Vespasian the justice to remember that it was with great regret that he treated the grossest provocations with rigour, provocations which were the simple result of the goodness and simplicity of this excellent sovereign. The philosophers imagined, with the best faith in the world, that they defended the dignity of man with their little literary allusions; they did not see that in reality they defended only the privileges of an aristocracy, and that they were preparing for the ferocious reign of Domitian. They hoped for the impossible,—a municipal republic governing the world,—public spirit in an immense Empire composed of the most diverse and unequal races. Their madness was almost as great as that of the lunatics whom we have seen in our own days dreaming that the Commune of Paris could be the monarchy of France. Thus the good spirits of the time, Tacitus, the two Plinies, Quintilian, saw clearly the vanity of this political school. Whilst full of respect for Helvidius Priscus, the Rusticus, the Senecion, they abandoned the republican chimera. Seeking no more than to ameliorate the princely power, they drew from it the finest fruits for about a century. Alas! that power had the cardinal defect of floating between the elective dictatorship and the hereditary monarchy. Every monarchy aspires to be hereditary, not merely because of what the democracies call the egotism of the family, but because monarchy is advantageous for the people only when it is hereditary. Heredity, on the other hand, is impossible without the Germanic principle of fidelity. All the Roman Emperors aimed at heredity; but heredity could never extend beyond the second generation, and it scarcely ever produced any but fatal consequences. The world only breathes when through particular circumstances adoption (the system best adapted to Cæsarism) prevails; there was in it only a happy chance; Marcus Aurelius had a son, and lost everything. Vespasian was exclusively preoccupied with this cardinal question. Titus, his eldest son, at the age of thirty-nine, had no male issue, nor had Domitian at twenty-seven a son. The ambition of Domitian ought to have been satisfied with such hopes. Titus openly announced him as his successor,

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and contented himself with desiring that he should marry his daughter Julia Sabina. But in spite of so many favourable conditions, Nature gave herself up in that family to an atrocious complication. Domitian was a scoundrel before whom Caligula and Nero might pass for harmless jesters. He did not hide his intention of dispossessing his father and his brother. Vespasian and Mucianus had a thousand difficulties in preventing him from spoiling all. As happens with good-hearted men, Vespasian improved every day as he grew older. Even his pleasantry, which was often, from want of education, of a coarse description, became just and fine. He was told that a comet had shown itself in the sky. “It is the King of the Parthians whom that concerns,” said he, “he wears long hair.” Then his health growing worse,—“I think I am about to become a god,” said he, smiling. He occupied himself with business to the last, and feeling himself dying, “an Emperor should die standing,” said he. He expired, in fact, in the arms of those who supported him, a grand example of manly attitude and firm bearing in the midst of troubled times, which seemed almost desperate. The Jews alone preserved his memory as that of a monster who had made the entire earth groan under the weight of his tyranny. There was without doubt some Rabbinical legend concerning his death; he died in his bed they admitted, but he could not escape the torments which he merited.

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Titus succeeded him without difficulty. His virtue was not a profound virtue like that of Antoninus or of Marcus Aurelius. He forced himself to be virtuous, and sometimes nature got the upper hand. Nevertheless, a good reign was hoped for. As rarely happens, Titus improved after his accession to power. He had great powers of self-control, and he began by making the most difficult of all sacrifices to public opinion. Berenice was less than ever disposed to renounce her hope of being married. She behaved in all respects as if she were. Her quality of Jewess, of foreigner, of “Queen”—a title which, like that of King, sounded ill in the ears of a true Roman, and recalled the East—created an insurmountable obstacle to that fortune. Nothing else was spoken of in Rome, and more than one impertinence was daringly uttered aloud. One day in the full theatre a cynic named Diogenes, who had introduced himself into Rome, notwithstanding the decrees of expulsion issued against the philosophers, rose, and in the presence of all the people poured forth a torrent of insults. He was beaten. Heras, another cynic, who thought to enjoy the same liberty at the same price, had his head cut off. Titus yielded, not without pain, to the murmurs of the people. The separation was all the more cruel, since Berenice resisted. It was necessary to send her away. The relations of the Emperor with Josephus, and probably with Herod Agrippa, remained what they had been before the rupture. Berenice herself returned to Rome, but Titus had no further communication with her. Honest folks felt their hopes revive. With the spectacles, and a little charlatanism, it was easy to content the people, and they remained quiet. Latin literature, which, since the death of Augustus, had undergone so great an eclipse, was in the way of recovery. Vespasian seriously encouraged science, literature, and the arts. He established the first professors paid by the state, and was thus

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the creator of the teaching body, at the head of which illustrious fraternity shines the name of Quintilian. The sickly poetry of the epopoeias and the artificial tragedies continued piteously. Bohemians of talent, like Martial and Statius, both excellent in little verses, did not come out from a low and barren literature. But Juvenal attained, in the truly Latin species of satire, an uncontested mastery for force and originality. A haughty Roman spirit, narrow, if you will, closed, exclusive, but full of tradition, patriotic, opposed to foreign corruptions, breathes through his verses. The courageous Sulpicia dared to defend the philosophers against Domitian. Great prose writers, above all, sprang up, rejected all that was excessive in the declamation of the time of Nero, preserving that part of it which did not shock the taste, animated the whole with an exalted moral sentiment, prepared, in a word, that noble generation which discovered and surrounded Nerva, which brought about the philosophical reigns of Trajan, of Antoninus, and of Marcus Aurelius. Pliny the younger, who so greatly resembles the cultivated wits of our eighteenth century; Quintilian, the illustrious pedagogue, who traced the code of public instruction, the master of our great masters in the art of education; Tacitus, the incomparable historian; others, like the author of the Dialogue of the Orators, who equalled them, but whose names are ignored or whose writings are lost, increased the labours which had already begun to bear fruit. A gravity full of elevation, respect for the moral laws and for the laws of humanity, replaced the gross debauchery of Petronius and the excessive philosophy of Seneca. The language is less pure than that of the writers of the time of Cæsar and of Augustus, but it has character, audacity, something which ought to cause it to be appreciated and imitated in modern times, which have conceived the middle tone of their prose in a more declamatory key than that of the Greeks. Under this wise and moderate rule Christians lived in peace. The memory which Titus left in the Church was not that of a persecutor. One event of his reign made a lively impression. This was the eruption of Vesuvius. The year 79 witnessed this, perhaps the most striking phenomenon in the volcanic history of the earth. The entire world was moved. Since humanity had a conscience, nothing so remarkable had ever been seen. An old crater, extinct from time immemorial, broke into activity with an unequalled violence, just as if in our days the volcanoes of Auvergne should recommence their most furious manifestations. We have seen since the year 68 the preoccupation of the volcanic phenomena fill the Christian imagination and leave its traces in the Apocalypse. The event of the year 79 was equally celebrated by the Judeo-Christian seers, and provoked a species of recrudescence of the Apocalyptic spirit. The Judaising sects especially considered the catastrophe of the Italian towns thus swallowed up as the punishment for the destruction of Jerusalem. The blows which continued to rain upon the world were, to a certain point, the justification for such imaginings. The terror produced by these phenomena was extraordinary. Half of the pages of Dion Cassius which remain to us are consecrated to prophecies. The year 80 witnessed the greatest fire Rome had ever seen, save that of the year 64. It lasted for three days and three nights: the whole district of the Capitol and the Pantheon was destroyed. A frightful pestilence ravaged the world about the same

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time; it was believed to be the most terrible epidemic ever known. The tremblings of the earth spread terror everywhere; famine oppressed the nations.

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Would Titus keep to the end his promise of goodness? That was the question. Many pretended that the part of “delight of the human race” is difficult to maintain, and that the new Cæsar would follow in the footsteps of Tiberius, of Caligula, and of the Neros, who after having begun well finished most badly. Souls absolutely given over to the stoic philosophy, like those of Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, were required by those who would not succumb to the temptations of a boundless power. The character of Titus was of a rare quality; his attempt to reign by goodness, his noble illusions as to the humanity of his times, were something liberal and touching; his morality was not, however, of a perfect solidity; it was forced. He repressed his vanity and forced himself to propose purely objective aims in life. But a philosophical and virtuous temperament is of more value than a ready-made morality. The temperament does not change; morality of that kind may do so. It might be that the goodness of Titus was only the effect of an arrested development; it was asked if in the course of years he was not likely to become such another as Domitian. These, however, were only retrospective apprehensions. Death came to withdraw Titus from a trial which might have been fatal had it been too prolonged. His health failed visibly. At every instant he wept as if, after having attained the highest rank in the world, he saw the frivolity of all things in spite of appearances. Once especially, at the end of the ceremony of the inauguration of the Coliseum, he burst into tears before the people. In his last journey to Rhætum he was overwhelmed with sadness. At one moment he was seen to draw back the curtains of his litter, to look at the sky, and to swear that he had not deserved death. Perhaps it was the wasting, the enervation produced by the part which he chose to play, the life of debauchery which he had lived at various times before attaining to the Empire, that was the cause of this. Perhaps also it was the protest which a noble soul had in such a time the right to raise against destiny. His nature was sentimental and amiable. The frightful wickedness of his brother killed him. He saw clearly that if he did not take the initiative, Domitian would. To have dreamed of the empire of the world, to make himself adored by it, to see his dream accomplished, and then to see its vanity, and to recognise that in politics good nature is a mistake; to see evil rise before him in the form of a monster, saying, “Kill me or I will kill you!” What a trial for a good heart! Titus had not the hardness of a Tiberius, or the resignation of a Marcus Aurelius. Let it be remembered also that his hygenic régime was the worst conceivable. At all times, and especially in his house near Rhætum, where the waters were very cold, Titus took baths sufficient to kill the most robust of men. All this assuredly renders it unnecessary to suppose that his premature death was the effect of poison. Domitian was not a fratricide in the material sense; he became one through his hatred, his jealousy, his undisguised desires. His attitude after the death of his father was a perpetual conspiracy. Titus had scarcely given up the ghost when Domitian obliged all those about him to abandon him as dead, and, mounting his horse, hurried to the camp of the Prætorian Guard.

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The world mourned but Israel triumphed. That unexplained death from exhaustion and philosophical melancholy, was it not a manifest judgment from heaven upon the destroyer of the Temple—the guiltiest man the world had yet seen? The rabbinical legend on this subject took as usual a puerile turn which, however, was not wholly without justice. “Titus the wicked,” said the Agadists, “died through the bite of a fly which introduced itself into his brain and killed him amidst atrocious tortures.” Always the dupes of popular reports, the Jews and the Christians of the time generally believed in the fratricide. According to them, the cruel Domitian, the murderer of Clemens, the persecutor of the saints, was more than the assassin of his brother, and that foundation, like the parricide of Nero, became one of the bases of a new apocalyptic symbolism, as we shall see somewhat later on. 81

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CHAPTER IX. PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY—EGYPT—SIBYLLISIM. THE tolerance which Christianity enjoyed under the reign of the Flavii was eminently favourable to its development. Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, especially, were the active centres where the name of Jesus became every day more and more important, and from which the new faith shone out. If we except the exclusive Ebionites of Batanea, the relations between the Judeo-Christians and the converted Pagans became every day more easy; prejudices were set aside; a fusion was wrought. In many important towns there were two Presbyteries and two Episcopi, one for Christians of Jewish extraction, the other for the faithful of Pagan origin. It is supposed that the Episcopos of the converted Pagans had been instituted by St Paul, and the other by some apostle of Jerusalem. It is true that in the third and fourth centuries this hypothesis was abused, in order that the Churches might escape from the difficulty in which they found themselves when they sought to found a regular succession of bishops with antagonistic elements of tradition. Nevertheless, the double character of the two Churches appears to have been a real fact. Such was the diversity of education of the two sections of the Christian community, that the same pastor could scarcely give to both the teaching of which they stood in need.

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Matters fell out thus especially when, as at Antioch, the difference of origin was joined with difference of language, where one of the groups spoke Syriac and the other Greek. Antioch appears to have had two successions of Presbyteri, one belonging in theory to St Peter, the other to St Paul. The constitution of the two lists was managed in the same way as the lists of the Bishops of Rome. They took the oldest names of the Presbyteri whom they remembered, that of a certain Evhode much respected—that of Ignatius who was greatly celebrated—and put them at the heads of the files of the two series. Ignatius died only under the reign of Trajan; St Paul saw Antioch for the last time in 54. The same thing then happened for Ignatius as for Clement, for Papias and for a great number of personages of the second and third Christian generations—the dates were garbled, so that they might be supposed to have received from the Apostles their institution or their teaching. Egypt, which for a long time was much behind-hand in the matter of Christianity, probably received the germ of the new faith under the Flavii. The tradition of the preaching of St Mark at Alexandria is one of those tardy inventions by which the great Churches sought to give themselves an Apostolic antiquity. The general outline of the life of St Mark is well known; it is in Rome and not in Alexandria that it must be sought. When all the great Churches pretended to an Apostolic foundation, the Church of Alexandria, already very considerable, wished to supply titles of nobility which it did not possess. Mark was almost the only one amongst the personages of Apostolic history who had not yet been appropriated. In reality the cause of the absence of the name of Egypt from the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles and from the Epistles of St Paul is that Egypt had a sort 67


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of pre-Christianity which long held it closed against Christianity properly so called. She had Philo, she had the Therapeutes, that is to say, doctrines so like those which grew up in Judea and Galilee that it was unnecessary for her to lend an attentive ear to the latter. Later, it was maintained that the Therapeutes were nothing else than the Christians of St Mark, whose kind of life Philo had described. It was a strange hallucination. In a certain sense, however, this bizarre confusion was not altogether so devoid of truth as might be imagined at the first glance. 83

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Christianity appears indeed to have had a very undecided character in Egypt for a long time. The members of the old Therapeutic communities of Lake Narcotis, if their existence must be admitted, ought to appear like saints to the disciples of Jesus, the Exegetas of the school of Philo, like Apollos, marched side by side with Christianity, entered into it even without staying there; the other Alexandrine Jewish authors of the apocryphal books shared largely, it is said, in the ideas which prevailed in the Council of Jerusalem. When the Jews, animated, it is said, by like sentiments, heard Jesus spoken of, it was unnecessary that they should be converted in order to sympathise with his disciples. The confraternity established itself. A curious monument of the spirit, peculiar to Egypt, has been preserved in one of the Sibylline poems—a poem dated with great precision from the reign of Titus or one of the first years of Domitian, which the critics have been able, with almost equal reason, to accept as Christian on the one hand and Essenian or Therapeutic on the other. The truth is that the author was a Jewish sectary, floating between Christianity, Baptism, Essenism, and inspired, before all things, by the dominant idea of the Sibyllists, who were the first preachers of monotheism to the Pagans, and of morality, under cover of a simplified Judaism. Sibyllism was born in Alexandria about the time when apocalypticism came into existence in Palestine. The two parallel theories owed their existence to analogous spiritual conditions. One of the laws of every apocalypse is the attribution of the work to some celebrity of past times. The opinion of the present day is that the list of great prophets is closed, and that no modern can pretend to equal the ancient inspired ones. What then was a man to do who was possessed with the idea of producing his thought and giving to it the authority which would be lacking if he published it as his own? He takes the mantle of an ancient man of God and boldly puts forth his book under the shelter of a venerated name. The forger who, to expound an idea which he thinks just, abnegates his own personality in this way, has not a shadow of scruple. Far from believing that he injures the antique sage whose name he takes, he thinks he does him honour by attributing to him good and beautiful thoughts. And as to the public to whom these writings were addressed, the complete absence of criticism prevented anyone from raising a shadow of objection. In Palestine the authorities chosen to serve as name-lenders to these new revelations were real or fictitious personages whose holiness was known to and admitted by all—Daniel, Enoch, Moses, Solomon, Baruch, Esdras. At Alexandria, where the Jews were initiated into the Greek literature, and where they aspired to exercise an intellectual and moral influence over the Pagans, the forgers chose renowned Greek philosophers or moralists. It is thus that we see Aristobalus alleging false quotations from Homer, Hesiod, and Linus, and that there was soon a pseudo-Orpheus, a pseudo-Pythagoras, an aprocryphal 68


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correspondence of Heraclites, a moral poem attributed to Phocylides. The object of all these works was the same; they preached deism to idolators and the precepts known as Noachian, that is to say, Judaism mitigated for their use or reduced almost to the proportions of the natural law. Two or three observances only were retained which in the eyes of the most liberal Jews passed almost as forming part of the natural law.

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The Sibyls present themselves to the mind as forgers in search of incontestable authorities under cover of whom they may present themselves to the Greeks the ideas which were dear to them. They already circulated little poems, pretended Cumæans, Erythæans, full of threats, prophesying calamities to different countries. These dicta, which had a great effect on the popular imagination, especially when fortuitous coincidences appeared to justify them, were conceived in the old epic hexameter, in a language which affected a resemblance to that of Homer. The Jewish forgers adopted the same rhythm, and, the better to deceive credulous people, they served in their text some of those threats which they thought in harmony with the character of the ancient prophetic virgins. Sibyllism was thus the form of the Alexandrine Apocalypse. When a Jew—a friend of the good and of the true in that tolerant and sympathetic school—wished to address warnings or counsels to the Pagans, he made one of the prophetesses of the Pagan world to speak, to give to his utterances a force which they would not otherwise have had. He took the tone of the Erythæan oracles, forced himself to imitate the traditional style of the prophetic poetry of the Greeks, provided himself with some of these versified threats which made a great impression on the people, and framed the whole in pious utterances. Let us repeat it—such frauds with a good object were in no way repugnant to anybody. By the side of the Jewish manufactory of false classics, the art of which consisted in putting into the mouths of Greek philosophers and moralists the maxims which they were desirous of inculcating, there was established in the second century before Christ a pseudo-Sibyllism in the interest of the same ideas. In the time of the Flavii, an Alexandrine looked up the long interrupted tradition and added some new pages to the former oracles. These pages are of a remarkable beauty.

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Happy is he who worships the Great God, him whom human hands have not made, who hath no temple, whom mortal eye cannot see nor haul measure. Happy are those who pray before they eat, and before they drink; who, at sight of the temples make a sign of protestation, and who turn away with horror from the altars bedabbled with blood. Murder, shameful gain, adultery, the crimes against nature, do they hold in horror. Other men given over to their perverse desires run after these holy men with laughter and with insult; in their madness they charge them with the crimes of which they themselves have been guilty; but the judgment of God shall be accomplished. The impious shall be cast into darkness, but the godly shall dwell in a fertile land, and the Spirit of God shall give to them light and grace.

After this exordium came the essential parts of every apocalypse; first a theory concerning the succession of empires—a species of philosophy of history imitated from Daniel; then signs in heaven, tremblings of the earth, islands emerging from the depths of the sea, wars, famines, and all the preparations which announce the coming of God’s judgment. The author particularly mentions the earthquake at Laodicaea in 60; that of Myra; the invasions of the sea at Lycia, which took place in 68. The sufferings of Jerusalem then appeared to him. A powerful king, the murderer of his

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mother, flees from Italy, ignored, unknown, under the disguise of a slave, and takes refuge beyond the Euphrates. There he waits in hiding whilst the candidates for the Empire make bloody war. A Roman chief will deliver the Temple to the flames and will destroy the Jewish nation. The bowels of Italy will be torn; a flame will come out of her and will mount to heaven, destroying the cities, consuming thousands of men; a black dust will fill the air; lapilli like vermillion red will fall from heaven. Then it may be hoped men will recognise the wrath of God Most High, the wrath which has fallen on them because they have destroyed the innocent tribe of pious men. As the topstone of misfortune, the fugitive king, hidden behind the Euphrates, will draw his great sword and will recross the Euphrates with myriads of men.

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It will be remarked how immediately this work follows the Apocalypse of St John. Taking up the ideas of the seer of 68 or 69, the Sibyllist of 81 or 82, confirmed in his dark previsions by the eruption of Vesuvius, revives the popular belief of Nero living beyond the Euphrates, and announces his immediate return. Some indications exist that there was a false Nero under Titus. A more serious attempt was made in 88, and nearly brought about a war with the Parthians. The prophecy of our Sibyllist is without doubt prior to that date. He announces in effect a terrible war; now the affair of the false Nero under Titus, if it ever occurred, was not serious, and as to the false Nero of 88, he created nothing more than a false alarm. When piety, faith, and justice shall have entirely disappeared, when no one will care for pious men, when all will seek to kill them, taking pleasure in insulting them, plunging their hands in their blood, then will be seen an end to the Divine patience; trembling with wrath, God will annihilate the human race with fire. Ah! wretched mortals! change your conduct; do not force the great God to the last outbreak of his wrath; leaving your swords, your quarrels, your murders, your violence, wash your whole bodies in running water, and, lifting up your hands to Heaven, ask pardon for your sins that are past, and with your prayers heal yourselves of your dreadful impieties. Then will God repent him of his threat, and will not destroy you. His wrath shall be appeased if you cultivate this precious piety in your hearts. But if you persist in your evil mind; if you do not obey me, and if, nursing your madness, you receive these warnings ill, fire shall spread itself upon the earth, and these shall be the signs of it. At the rising of the sun there shall be sounds in the heavens and the noise of trumpets; the whole earth shall hear bellowings and a terrible uproar. Fire shall burn the earth; the whole race of man shall perish, and the world shall be reduced to small dust. When all shall be in ashes, and God shall have put out the great fire which he had kindled, then shall the Almighty restore form to the dust and bones of men, and restore man as he was before. Then shall cone the Judgment, when God himself shall judge the world. Those who remain hardened in their wickedness, the earth spread upon their heads shall recover them; they shall be cast into the abysses of Tartarus and of Jehannum, sister of Styx. But those who have lived

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a pious and godly life shall live again in the world of the Great and Eternal God, in the bosom of imperishable happiness, and God shall give them, to reward their piety, spirit, life, and grace. Then all shall see themselves, and their eyes shall behold the undying light of a sun that shall never go down. Blessed is the man who shall see those days!

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Was the author of this poem a Christian? He certainly was one at heart, but he was one also by his style. The critics who see in this fragment the work of a disciple of Jesus, support their view principally upon the invitation to the Gentiles to be converted and to wash their whole bodies in the rivers. But baptism was not an exclusively Christian rite. There were by the side of Christianity sects of Baptists, of Hemero-Baptists, with whom the Sibylline verse would agree better, since Christian baptism can be administered but once, whilst the baptism mentioned in the poem would seem to have been like the prayer which accompanied it, a pious practice for the washing away of sin, a sacrament which might be renewed, and which the penitent administered to himself. What would be altogether inconceivable is that in a Christian apocalypse of nearly two hundred verses written at the beginning of the age of Domitian there was not a single word about the resurrection of Jesus or of the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds to judge the quick and the dead. If we add to that the employment of mythological expressions, of which there is no example in the first century, an artificial style which is a pasticcio of the old Homeric style which takes for granted a study of the profane poets and a long stay in the schools of the grammarians of Alexandria, our case is complete.

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The Sibylline literature appears then to have originated amongst the Essenian or Therapeutic communities; now the Therapeutists, the Essenians, the Baptists, the Sibyllists, lived in an order of ideas very like that of the Christians, and differing from them only on the point of the worship of the person of Jesus. Later on, without doubt, all these sects were merged in the Church. More and more but two classes of Jews came to be left; on the one hand, the Jew who was a strict observer of the Law—Talmudist, Casuist, Pharisee, in a word; on the other, the liberal Jew who reduced Judaism to a sort of natural religion open to virtuous Pagans. About the year 80 there were, especially in Egypt, sects which took up this position without, however, adhering to Jesus. Soon there will be more, and the Christian Church will include all those who wish to withdraw themselves from the excessive demands of the Law, without ceasing to belong to the spiritual family of Abraham. The book numbered fourth in the Sibylline collection is not the only one of its class which the period of Domitian may have produced. The fragment which serves as the preface to the entire collection, and which has been preserved for us by Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch (end of second century), greatly resembles the fourth book, and ends in the same way: “A torrent of fire will fall upon you; burning torches will scorch you through all eternity; but those who have worshipped the true and infinite God, shall inherit life for ever, dwelling in the free and laughing garden of Paradise, and eating the sweet bread which shall fall from the starry skies.” This fragment appears at first sight to present in some expressions indications of Christianity, but expressions altogether analogous may be found in Philo. The nascent Christianity had outside the divine aspect lent to it by the person of Jesus so few features specially proper to it, that the rigid distinction between what is Christian and what is not, becomes at times extremely delicate.

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A characteristic detail of the Sibylline Apocalypses is that, according to them, the world will finish by a conflagration. Many passages in the Bible lead to this idea. Nevertheless, it is not found in the great Christian Apocalypse attributed to John. The first trace of it, found amongst the Christians, is in the Second Epistle of Peter, written, it is supposed, at a very late date. The belief thus appears to have sprung up in Alexandrian centres, and we are justified in believing that it came in part from the Greek philosophy; many schools, particularly the Stoics, held it as a principle that the world would be consumed by fire. The Essenes had adopted the same opinion; it became, in some sort, the basis of all the writings attributed to the Sibyl, so long as that literary fiction continued to serve as a skeleton for the dreams of unquiet minds as to the future. It is there and in the writings of the psuedo Hytasper that the Christian doctors found it. Such was the authority of these supposed oracles, that they were accepted as inspired, with the utmost simplicity. The imagination of the Pagan crowd was haunted by terrors of the same kind, utilised by more than one impostor. Ananias, Avilius, Cerdon, Primus, who are described as the successors of St Mark, were without doubt old presbyters whose names had been preserved and of whom bishops were made when the divine origin of the episcopate was recognised, and when every see was expected to show an unbroken succession of presidents up to the apostolic personage who was accredited with its foundation. Whatever it may have been, the Church of Alexandria appears to have been from the first of a very isolated character. It was exceedingly anti-Jewish; it is from its bosom that we shall see emerge, in the course of the next fourteen or fifteen years, the most energetic manifesto of separation between Judaism and Christianity, the treatise known by the name of “the Epistle of Barnabas.” It will be a different matter in fifty years, when gnosticism shall be born there proclaiming that Judaism was the work of an evil God, and that the essential mission of Jesus was to dethrone Jehovah. The importance of Alexandria, or, if you choose, of Egypt, in the development of Christian theology, will then clearly describe itself. A new Christ will appear resembling the Christ whom we know, just as the parables of Galilee resemble the myths of Osiris or the symbolism of the mother of Apis.

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CHAPTER X. THE GREEK GOSPEL IS CORRECTED AND COMPLETED (MATTHEW). THE defects and omissions in the Gospel of Mark became every day more obnoxious. Those who knew the beautiful addresses of Jesus as they appeared in the Syro-Chaldaic Scriptures, regretted the dryness of the narrative based on the tradition of Peter. Not only did the most beautiful of his preachings appear in a truncated form, but parts of the life of Jesus, which had come to be recognised as essential, were altogether omitted. Peter, faithful to the old ideas of the first Christian century, attached little importance to the story of the childhood and to the genealogies. Now it was especially with respect to those things that the Christian imagination laboured. A crowd of new narratives sprang up; a complete Gospel was demanded, which to all that Mark embodied should be added all that the best traditionists of the East knew, or believed they knew.

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Such was the origin of our text “according to Matthew.” The author has taken as the foundation of his work the Gospel of Mark. He follows him in his order, in his general plan, in his characteristic forms of expression, in a way which does not leave it open to doubt that he had beneath his eyes, or in his memory, the work of his predecessor. The coincidences in the smallest details throughout entire pages are so literal, that one is tempted at times to declare that the author possessed a manuscript of Mark. On the other hand, certain changes of words, numerous transpositions, certain omissions, the reason for which it is not easy to explain, lead rather to the belief that the work was done from memory. The matter is of small consequence. What is important is that the text said to be of Matthew supposes that of Mark as pre-existing, and requiring only to be completed. He completes it in two ways, first by inserting in it the long discourses which make the Hebrew Gospels precious, then by adding to it traditions of more modern origin, fruits of the successive development of the legend, and to which the Christian conscience already attached an infinite value. The last version has, besides, much unity of style; a single hand has presided over the very various fragments which have entered into its composition. This unity leads to the belief that for the parts engrafted upon Mark the editor worked from the Hebrew; if he had made a translation, we should feel the differences of style between the foundation and the intercalated parts. Besides, the taste of the times was rather towards new versions than to translations properly so called. The biblical citations of the pseudo-Matthew suppose at once the use of a Hebrew text, or of an Aramaic Targum, and of the version of the Seventy (the Septuagint): a part of his exegesis has no meaning save in Hebrew. The fashion in which the author managed the intercalation of the great discourses of Jesus is singular. Whether he takes them from the collections of sentences which may have existed at a certain period of the evangelic tradition, or whether he takes them ready made from the Gospel of the Hebrews, these discourses are inserted by him like great parentheses in the narrative of Mark, into which he cuts as it were grooves. The chief of these discourses, the Sermon on the Mount, is 73


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evidently composed of parts which have no natural connection, and which have been only artificially brought together. The twenty-third chapter contains all that tradition has preserved of the reproaches which Jesus on various occasions addressed to the Pharisees. The seven parables of the thirteenth chapter were certainly never uttered by Jesus on the same day, and one after another. Let us take a familiar illustration, which alone renders our meaning. There were, before the issue of the first Gospel, bundles of discourses and parables where the words of Jesus were classified for purely external reasons. The author of the first Gospel found those bundles ready made up, and inserted them into the text of Mark, which served him as a canvas all tied up together without breaking the thread which bound them. Sometimes the text of Mark, brief though the discourses have been made, contains some parts of the sermons which the new editor took bodily from the collection of the Logia, hence some repetitions. Generally the new editor cares little about those repetitions; sometimes he avoids them by retrenchments, transpositions, and certain little niceties of style.

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The insertion of traditions unknown to the old Mark is done by the pseudo-Matthew by yet more violent processes. In possession of some accounts of miracles or of healings of which he does not perceive the identity with those which are already told by Mark, the author prefers telling the story twice over, to omitting any particular. He desires, before all things, to be complete, and he does not disquiet himself lest he should stumble in thus arranging portions of various productions with contradictions and the difficulties of narration. Hence these circumstances, obscure at the moment when they are introduced, which are only explained by the course of the work; these allusions to events of which nothing is said in the historical part. Hence the singular doublets which characterise the first Gospel: two cures of two blind men; two cures of a dumb demoniac; two multiplications of bread; two demands for a sign from heaven; two invectives against scandals; two sentences on divorce. Hence, also, perhaps, that method of proceeding by couples which produces the effect of a sort of duplicate narrative; two blind men of Jericho and two other blind men; two demoniacs of the Gergesenes; two disciples of John; two disciples of Jesus; two brothers. The harmonistic exegesis produces hence its usual results of redundance and heaviness. At other times the cut is seen to be quite fresh, the operation of the grafting by which the addition is made. Thus the miracle of Peter—a story which Mark does not give—is intercalated between Mark vi. 50 and 51 in such a way that the edges of the wound are still raw. It is the same with the miracle of the tribute money; with Judas pointing himself out and questioned by Jesus; with Jesus rebuking the stroke of Peter’s sword; with the suicide of Judas; with the dream of Pilate’s wife, etc. If we cut out all these details, the fruits of a later development of the legend of Jesus, the very text of Mark remains. In this way a crowd of legends were introduced into the Gospel text which are wanting in Mark—the genealogy; the supernatural birth; the visit of the Magi; the flight into Egypt; the massacre of Bethlehem; Peter walking upon the water; the prerogatives of Peter; the miracle of the money found in the fish’s mouth; the eunuchs of the kingdom of God; the emotion of Jerusalem at the

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entrance of Jesus; the Jerusalem miracles and the triumph of the children various legendary details about Judas, particularly his suicide; the order to put the sword back into its sheath; the intervention of Pilate’s wife; Pilate washing his hands and the Jewish people taking all the responsibility for the death of Jesus; the tearing of the curtain of the Temple; the earthquake and the rising of the saints at the moment of the death of Jesus; the guard set over the tomb, and the corruption of the soldiers. In all these places the quotations are from the Septuagint. The Editor for his personal use avails himself of the Greek version, but when he translates the Hebrew Gospel he conforms to the exegesis of that original which often had no basis in the Septuagint. A sort of competition in the use of the marvellous; the taste for more and more startling miracles; a tendency to present the Church as already organised and disciplined from the days of Jesus; an ever-increasing repulsion for the Jews, dictated the majority of these additions to the primitive narrative. As has already been said, there are moments in the growth of a dogma when days are worth centuries. A week after his death, Jesus was the hero of a vast legend of his life, the majority of the details to which we have just referred were already written in advance. One of the great factors in the creation of the Jewish Agada are the analogies drawn from Biblical texts. These things serve to fill up a host of gaps in the souvenirs. The most contradictory reports were current, for example, about the death of Judas. One version soon prevailed: Achitophel, the betrayer of David, served as his prototype. It was admitted that Judas hanged himself as he did. A passage of Zechariah furnished the thirty pieces of silver, the fact of his having cast them down in the Temple, as well as the potter’s field—nothing is wanting to the story.

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The apologetic intention was another fertile source of anecdotes and intercalations. Already objections to the Messiahship of Jesus had been raised, and required answering. John the Baptist, said the misbelievers, had not believed in him or had ceased to believe in him; the towns where his miracles were said to have been performed were not converted; the wise men and the sages of the nation despised him; if he had driven out devils, it was through Beelzebub; he had promised signs in the heavens which he had not given. There was an answer to all this which flattered the democratic instincts of the crowd. It was not the nation which had repulsed Jesus, said the Christians, it was the superior classes, always egotists, who would none of him. Simple people would have been for him, and the priests took him with subtlety, for they feared the people. “It was the fault of the Government”—here is an explanation which in all ages has been readily accepted. The birth of Jesus and his resurrection were the cause of endless objections from low minds and ill-prepared hearts. The resurrection no one had seen; the Jews declared that the friends of Jesus had carried his corpse away into Galilee. It was answered by the fable of the guardians to whom the Jews had given money to say that the disciples had carried away the body. As to the birth, two contradictory currents of opinion may be traced; but as both responded to the needs of the Christian conscience, they were reconciled as well as they might be. On the one hand, it was necessary that Jesus should be the descendant of David; on the other, he might not be conceived under the ordinary 75


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conditions of humanity. It was not natural that he who had never lived as other men lived should be born as other men were born. The descent from David was established by a genealogy which showed Joseph as of the stock of David. That was scarcely satisfactory, in view of the hypothesis of the supernatural conception, according to which Joseph and his supposed ancestors had nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. It was Mary whom it was necessary to attach to the royal family. Now no attempt was made in the first century to do this, doubtless because the genealogies had been fixed before it was seriously pretended that Jesus was born otherwise than as the result of the lawful union of the two sexes, and no one denied to Joseph his rights to a real paternity. The Gospel of the Hebrews—at least at the period at which we now are—always described Jesus as the son of Joseph and Mary the Holy Spirit in the conception of this Gospel was for Jesus the Messiah (a distinct personage from the man Jesus) a mother, not a father. The Gospel of Matthew, on the contrary, propounds an altogether contradictory combination. Jesus, with him, is the son of David through Joseph, who is not his father. The author evades this difficulty with an extreme naïveté. An angel comes to relieve the mind of Joseph from suspicions which in a case so peculiar he had a right to entertain. The genealogy which we read in the Gospel ascribed to Matthew is certainly not the work of the author of that Gospel. He has taken it from some previous document. Was it in the Gospel of the Hebrews itself? It is doubtful. A large proportion of the Hebrews of Syria kept always a text in which such genealogies did not figure; but also certain Nazarene manuscripts of very ancient date presented by way of preface a sepher toledoth. The turn of the genealogy of Matthew is Hebrew; the transcriptions of the proper names are not those of the Septuagint. We have seen, besides, that the genealogies were probably the work of the kinsmen of Jesus, retired to Batanea and speaking Hebrew. What is certain is that the work of the genealogies was not executed with much unity or much authority, for two altogether discordant systems of connecting Joseph with the last known persons of the line of David have come down to us. It is not impossible that the names of the father and grandfather of Joseph were known. After that, from Zerubbabel to Joseph, all has been fabricated. As after the captivity the Biblical writings give no more genealogies, the author imagines the period to have been shorter than it really was, and puts in too few generations. From Zerubbabel to David, Paralipomenes are made use of, not without sundry inaccuracies and failures of memory. Genesis, the Book of Ruth, the Paralipomenes, have furnished the body as far as David. A singular preoccupation of the author of the genealogy contained in Matthew has been to mention, by exceptional privilege, or even to introduce by force, in the ascending line of Jesus, four women who were sinners, faithless to a point which a Pharisee might well criticise—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. It was an invitation to sinners never to despair of entering into the family of the elect. The genealogy of Matthew gives also to Jesus as ancestors the kings of Judah, descendants of David, beginning with Solomon, but soon, not wishing that that genealogy should borrow too much from profane glory, Jesus is connected with David by a little known son, Nathan, and by a line parallel to that of the kings of Judah.

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For the rest, the supernatural connexion gained every day so much in importance, that the question of the father and of the ancestors of Jesus after the flesh, became in some sort a secondary matter. It was believed to have been prophesied by Isaiah in a passage which is ill-rendered in the Septuagint, that Christ should be born of a Virgin. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, had done all. Joseph in reality appears to have been an old man when Jesus was born. Mary, who appears to have been his second wife, might be very young. This contrast rendered the idea of the miracle easy. Certainly the legend would not have come into existence without that; as, moreover, the myth was elaborated in the midst of a people who had known the family of Jesus, such a circumstance as an old man taking a young wife was not indifferent. A common feature of the Hebrew histories, is the magnifying of the Divine power by the very weakness of the instruments which he employed. Thus came the habit of describing great men as the offspring of parents old or long childless. The legend of Samuel begot that of John the Baptist, that of Jesus and that of Mary herself. On the other hand, this provoked the objections of ill-wishers. The coarse fable invented by the opponents of Christianity, which made Jesus the fruit of a scandalous adventure with the soldier Pantheris, arose out of the Christian narrative without much difficulty—that narrative presenting to the imagination the shocking picture of a birth where the father had only a false part to play. The fable shows itself clearly only in the second century; in the first, however, the Jews appear to have malignantly represented the birth of Jesus as illegitimate. Perhaps they so argued from the species of ostentation with which at the head of the book of the toledoth of Jesus the names of Tamar, of Rahab, and of Bathsheba were placed, whilst omitting those of Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah. The stories of the childhood, ignored by Mark, are confined by Matthew to the episode of the magi, linked with the persecution by Herod, and the Massacre of the Innocents. All this development appears to be of Syrian origin; the odious part which Herod plays, was, without doubt, the invention of the family of Jesus, refugees in Batanea. The little group appears, in a word, to have been a source of hateful calumnies against Herod. The fable about the infamous origin of his father, contradicted by Josephus and Nicholas of Damascus, appears to have come from thence. Herod became the scapegoat of all Christian grievances. As for the dangers with which the childhood of Jesus is supposed to have been surrounded, they are simply an imitation of the childhood of Moses, whom a king also desired to slay, and who was obliged to escape to foreign parts. It happened to Jesus as to all great men. We know nothing of their childhood, for the simple reason that no one can predict the future of a child; we supplement our imperfect knowledge by anecdotes invented after the event. Imagination, besides, likes to figure to itself that the men of Providence have grown in spite of perils, as the effect of a special protection of Heaven. A popular story relative to the birth of Augustus, and various features of Herod’s cruelty, might give rise to the legend of the massacre of the children of Bethlehem. Mark, in his singularly naïve narrative, has eccentricities, rudenesses, passages not very easy of explanation and open to much objection. Matthew proceeds by retouchings and extenuations of detail. Compare, for example, Mark iii. 31-35 with Matthew xii. 46-50. The second editor gets rid 77


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of the idea that the relations of Jesus thought him mad, and wished to put him under restraint. The astonishing simplicity of Mark vi. 5, “He could do there no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them,” is softened in Matthew xiii. 58, “And he did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.” The strange paradox of Mark, “Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life,” becomes in Matthew, “And everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” The motive assigned for the visit of the women to the sepulchre, implying clearly that they did not expect the resurrection, is replaced in Matthew by an insignificant expression. The scribe who interrogates Jesus on the great commandment does so in Mark with a good intention. In the two other Evangelists he does it to tempt Jesus. The times have advanced: it is no longer to be admitted that a scribe could possibly act without malice. The episode when the young rich man calls Jesus “Good Master,” and where Jesus reproves him with the words, “there is none good but God,” appeared scandalous a little later. Matthew settles it in a less shocking manner. The fashion in which the disciples are sacrificed in Mark is equally extenuated in Matthew. Finally, this last is guilty of some inaccuracies, in order to obtain pathetic effects: thus the wine of the condemned, the institution of which was really humane, becomes with him a refinement of cruelty to bring about the fulfilment of a prophecy. The two lively sallies of Mark are thus effaced; the lines of the new Gospel are larger, more correct, more ideal. The marvellous features are multiplied, but we should say that there is an attempt to make the marvellous more credible. Miracles are less clumsily told; certain prolixities are omitted. Thaumaturgic materialism, the use of natural means to produce miracles —characteristic features of Mark’s narrative—have almost wholly disappeared in Matthew. Compared with the Gospel of Mark, that attributed to Matthew presents corrections of taste and tact. Various inaccuracies are rectified; details æsthetically weak or inexplicable are suppressed or cleared up. Mark has often been considered as the abbreviator of Matthew. The very reverse is the truth; only the addition of the discourses has the effect of extending the abridgment considerably beyond the limits of the original. When we compare the accounts of the demoniac of the Gergesenes, the paralytic of Capernaum, the daughter of Jairus, the woman with the issue of blood, the epileptic boy, the correctness of our view is apparent. Often, also, Matthew gathers together, into a single group, circumstances which in Mark constitute two episodes. Some stories, which appear at first sight to be his especial property, are really stripped and impoverished copies of the longer accounts of Mark. It is especially with regard to poverty that we discover in the text of Matthew precautions and uneasiness. Jesus had boldly placed poverty at the head of the heavenly beatitudes. “Blessed are ye poor,” was probably the first word which came out of the Divine mouth, when he began to speak 78


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with authority. The majority of the sentences of Jesus (as happens always when we wish to give a living form to thought) lent themselves to misunderstanding; the pure Ebionites drew from them subversive consequences. The editor of our Gospel adds a word to prevent certain excesses. The poor in the ordinary sense become the “poor in spirit”—that is to say, pious Israelites who play a humble part in the world, which contrasts with the haughty air of the great men of the day. In another beatitude, those who are hungry become those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness.”

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The progress of thought is then very visible in Matthew; we catch glimpses in him of a crowd of after thoughts, the intention of parrying certain objections; an exaggeration of the symbolical pretensions. The story of the Temptation in the Wilderness has developed itself and has changed its character; the passion is enriched with some beautiful details; Jesus speaks of his “Church” as of a body already constituted and founded under the primacy of Peter. The formula of baptism is enlarged, and comprehends, under a form sufficiently syncretic, the three sacramental words of the theology of the time, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The germ of the doctrine of the Trinity is thus deposited in a corner of the sacred page, and will become fertile. The Apocalyptic discourse attributed to Jesus, with reference to the war in Judea, is rather strengthened and particularised than weakened. We shall soon see Luke employing all his art to extenuate whatever was embarrassing in these daring predictions of an end that had not come.

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CHAPTER XI. SECRET OF THE BEAUTIES OF THE GOSPEL. WHAT is chiefly remarkable in the new Gospel is an immense literary progress. The general effect is that of a fairy palace constructed wholly of luminous stones. An exquisite vagueness in the transitions and the chronological relations gives to this divine composition the light attractiveness of a child’s story. “At that hour,” “at that time,” “that day,” “it happened that,” and a crowd of other formulæ which look precise, but which are nothing of the kind, hold the narrative as it were in suspense between earth and heaven. Thanks to the uncertainty of the time, the Gospel story only touches the reality. An airy genius whom one touches, one embraces, but who never strikes against the pebbles in the road, speaks to us and enchants us. We do not stop to ask if he is certain of what he tells us. He doubts nothing, and he knows nothing. There is an analogous charm in the affirmation of a woman who subjugates us while she makes us smile. It is in literature what a picture of a child by Correggio or a Virgin of sixteen by Raphael is in art. 104

The language is of the same character and perfectly appropriate to the subject. By a veritable tour de force the clear and childlike method of the Hebrew narrative, the fine and exquisite stamp of the Hebrew proverbs, have been translated into a Hellenic dialect, correct enough as far as grammatical forms are concerned, but in which the old learned syntax is completely cast aside. It has been remarked that the Gospels were the first books written in the Greek of everyday life. The Greek of antiquity is there, in effect, modified in the analytical sense of modern languages. The Hellenist cannot but admit that the language is commonplace and weak; he is certain that from the classical point of view the Gospel has neither style, nor plan, nor beauty; but it is the masterpiece of popular literature, and in one sense the most ancient popular book that has been written. That half-articulate language has the additional advantage of preserving its character in different versions, so that for such writings the translation is as valuable as the original. This simplicity of form ought to give rise to no illusion. The word “truth” has not the same significance for the Oriental as for ourselves. The Oriental tells with a bewitching candour and with the accent of a witness, a crowd of things which he has not seen and about which he is by no means certain. The fantastic tales of the Exodus from Egypt, which are told in Jewish families during the Feast of the Passover, deceive nobody, yet none the less they enchant those who listen to them. Every year the scenic representations by which they commemorate the martyrdom of the sons of Ali in Persia, are enriched with some new invention designed to render the victims more interesting and their murderers more hateful. There is more passion in these episodes than anyone might think possible. It is the especial quality of the Oriental agada to touch most profoundly those who best know how fictitious it is. It is its triumph to have created such a masterpiece that all the world is

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deceived by it, and for want of knowing laws of this kind the credulous West has accepted as infallible truth the recital of facts which no human eye has ever seen.

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The especial quality of a literature of logia, of hadith, is to go on increasing. After the death of Mohammed the number of words which “the people of the Bench” attributed to him was not to be counted. It was the same with Jesus. To the charming apologues which he had really pronounced, others were added conceived in the same style, which it is very difficult to distinguish from the genuine. The ideas of the time expressed themselves especially in those seven admirable parables of the kingdom of God, where all the innocent rivalries of the golden age of Christianity have left their traces. Some persons were aggrieved by the low rank of those who entered the Church; the doors of the churches of St Paul opening with both leaves, appeared to them a scandal; they wanted a selection, a preliminary examination, a censorship. The Shamaites in like manner desired that no man should be admitted to Jewish teaching unless he were intelligent, modest, of good family, and rich. To these exigent persons an answer was given in the shape of a parable of a man who prepared a dinner, and who, in the absence of the regularly invited guests, invited the lame, the vagabonds, and the beggars; or of a fisherman whose net gathered of every kind, both bad and good, the choice being made afterwards. The eminent place which Paul, once one of the enemies of Jesus, one of the last comers to the Gospel work, occupied amongst the faithful of these early days, excited murmurs. This was the occasion of the workers who were engaged at the eleventh hour, and were rewarded equally with those who had borne the burden and heat of the day. A statement of Jesus, “the last shall be first and the first shall be last,” had furnished the text. The owner of a vineyard goes out at various hours of the day to hire labourers. He takes all that he can find, and in the evening the last corners who had worked but a single hour, are paid exactly as those who had toiled the whole day through. The struggle of two generations of Christians is seen here very clearly. When the converted appeared to say with sadness that the places were taken, and that they had to fill a secondary part, this beautiful parable was quoted to them, from which it was evident that they had no reason to envy the ancients. The parable of the tares also signifies in its way the mixed composition of the kingdom, wherein Satan himself has sometimes power to cast in a few grains. The mustard seed expresses its future greatness; the leaven its fermentative force; the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price; the thread, its success, mixed with perils in the future. “The first shall be last,” “many are called but few chosen,” such were the maxims which they especially loved to repeat. The expectation of Jesus above all inspired living and strong comparisons. The image of the thief in the night, the lightning which shines from the east to the west, of the fig tree whose young shoots announce the approach of summer, filled all minds. They repeated the charming fable of the wise and the foolish virgins, masterpieces of simplicity, of art, of wit, of subtlety. Both awaited the bridegroom, but as he was long in coming, they all slumbered. Then in the middle of the night was heard the cry, “Behold him! Behold him:” The wise virgins, who had carried oil in their flasks, soon lighted their lamps, but the foolish were confounded. There was no place for them at the banquet. 81


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We do not say that these exquisite fragments are not the work of Jesus. The great difficulty of a history of the origins of Christianity is to distinguish in the Gospels between the part that comes directly from Jesus, and the part which is inspired by his spirit. Jesus having written nothing, and the editors of the Gospels having handed down to us pell-mell his own authentic words and those which have been attributed to him, there is no critic sufficiently subtle to work in such a case with absolute certainty. The life of Jesus, and the history of the compilation of the Gospels, are two subjects which are so interwoven that the boundary between them must be left undefined, at the risk of appearing to contradict oneself. In reality, this contradiction is of small consequence. Jesus is the veritable creator of the Gospel; Jesus did all, even what has been only attributed to him; his legend and himself are inseparable; he was so identified with his idea that his idea became himself, absorbed him, made his biography what it ought to be. There was in him what theologians call “communication of the idioms.” The same communication exists between the first and last book but one of this history. If that is a defect, it is a defect springing out of the nature of the subject, and we have thought it would be a mark of truth not to seek to avoid it. What is striking in any case is the original physiognomy of these narratives. Whatever may be the date of their compilation, they are truly Galilean flowers blossoming beneath the sacred feet of the divine dreamer. The Apostolic instructions, such as our Gospel presents them, appear in some respects to proceed from the ideal of the Apostle formed upon the model of Paul. The impression left by the life of the great missionary had been profound. Many apostles had already suffered martyrdom for having carried to the people the appeals of Jesus. The Christian preacher was imagined as appearing before kings, before the highest tribunals, and proclaiming Christ. The first principle of this apostolic eloquence was not to prepare the discourses. The Holy Ghost would at the moment put into the mind of the preacher what he ought to say. In travelling, no provision, no money, not even a scrip, not even a change of garments, not even a staff. The workman deserved his daily bread. When the apostolic missionary entered into a house he might remain there without scruple, eating and drinking what was given to him, without feeling himself obliged to give in return anything but the word and wishes for health. This was the principle of Paul, but he did not put it in practice except amongst people of whom he was altogether sure, as for example with the woman of Philippi. Like Paul, the apostolic traveller was guarded in the dangers of the way by a Divine protection; he played with serpents, poisons did not affect him. His lot will be the hatred of the world, persecution. . . . Tradition always exaggerates the primitive feature. It is in some sort a necessity of the memory, the mind retaining better strongly accented and hyperbolical words than measured sentences. Jesus had too profound a knowledge of the souls of men not to know that rigour and exigence are the best means of gaining them and keeping them under the yoke. We do not, however, believe that he ever went to the excess which has been attributed to him, and the sombre fire which animates the apostolic instructions, appears to us, in part, a reflection of the feverish ardour of Paul. The author of the Gospel according to Matthew takes no decisive aide in the great questions which divided the Church. He is neither an exclusive Jew after the manner of James, nor a lax Jew 82


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after the fashion of Paul. He feels the necessity for attaching the Church to Peter, and insists upon the prerogative of this last. On the other hand, he allows certain shades of ill will to appear against the family of Jesus and against the first Christian generation. He suppresses, in particular, in the list of the appearances of Jesus after the Resurrection, the part played by James, whom the disciples of Paul held as an avowed enemy. Opposite theories may find equally valuable support from him from time to time. At times he speaks of faith almost in the tone of St Paul’s Epistles. The author accepts from tradition sayings, parables, miracles, decisions in the most contrary senses, provided they are edifying, without any effort to reconcile them. Here there is a question of evangelising Israel; there the world. The Canaanitish woman, received at first with hard words, is then saved, and a history is begun to prove that Jesus has only been sent to the house of Israel, which finishes up with an exaltation of the faith of a Pagan woman. The centurion of Capernaum finds from the first both grace and favour. The legal chiefs of the nation have been more opposed to the Messiah than Pagans such as the magi, Pilate and Pilate’s wife. The Jewish people pronounce their own curse upon themselves. They have not chosen to enter the feast of the Kingdom of God prepared for them; the people of the highway—the Gentiles—will take their place. The formula, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time . . . but I tell you,” is placed repeatedly in the mouth of Jesus. The society to which the author addresses himself is a society of converted Jews. The polemic against the unconverted Jews occupies him much. His quotations of the prophetic texts, as well as of a certain number of circumstances related by him, refer to the assaults which the faithful had to submit to on the part of the orthodox majority, and especially to the great objection of these official representatives of the nation to believe in the Messianic character of Jesus. The Gospel of St Matthew, like almost all fine compositions, was the work of a conscience in some sort double. The author is at once Jew and Christian; the new faith has not killed the old, nor has it taken any of its poetry from it. He loves two things at the same moment. The spectator enjoys the struggle without discomfort. Charming state to be in, without as yet anything being determined. Exquisite transition, excellent for art, where a conscience is a peaceable field of battle upon which opposing parties contend without either being overthrown! Although the pretended Matthew speaks of the Jews in the third person and as though they were strangers, his spirit, his apology, his Messianism, his exegesis, his piety, are essentially those of a Jew. Jerusalem is for him essentially “the holy city,” “the holy place.” Missions are in his eyes the appanage of the Twelve; he does not associate St Paul with them, and he certainly does not accord to this last a special vocation, although the apostolic instructions such as he gives them contain more than one feature drawn from the life of the great preacher of the Gentiles. His aversion to the Pharisees does not prevent him from admitting the authority of Judaism. Christianity is with him like a newly-blown flower, which still bears the envelope of the bud from which it has escaped. In this lay one of his strong points. The supreme ability in the work of conciliation is to deny and affirm at the same moment, to practise the Ama tanquam osurus of the sage of antiquity. Paul suppresses all Judaism, and even all religion, to replace everything by Jesus. The Gospels hesitate, 83


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and remain in a much more delicate half-light? Does the Law still exist? Yes, and no. Jesus fulfilled it and destroyed it. The Sabbath? He suppressed and maintained it. The Jewish ceremonies? He observes them, and will not allow of their being held to. Every religious reformer has to observe this rule; men are not discharged from a burden impossible to be borne, except he takes it for himself without reserve or softening. The contraction was everywhere. When the Talmud has quoted on the same line opinions which exclude each other absolutely, it finishes by this formula:—“And all these opinions are the word of life.” The anecdote of the Canaanitish woman is the true image at this moment of Christianity. She prays. “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Jesus answers to her. She approaches, and worships him. “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and to cast it to the dogs.” “Truth, Lord, but the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the Master’s table.” “Oh, woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” The converted Pagan finished by carrying off, by force of humility, and on condition of submitting first to the ill reception of an aristocracy which wished to be flattered and solicited, all that she desired. Such a state of mind, to say the truth, agreed only with a single kind of hatred—the hatred of the Pharisee, the official Jew. The Pharisee, or, more properly, the hypocrite (for the word was now used in an abusive sense, just as with us the name of Jesuit is applied to a host of people who form no part of the society founded by Loyola), had to appear especially guilty, opposed in everything to Jesus. Our Gospel groups into a single invective, full of virulence, all the discourses which Jesus pronounced at various times against the Pharisees. The author undoubtedly took this fragment from some previous collection which had not the ordinary form. Jesus is there accredited with having made numerous journeys to Jerusalem; the punishment of the Pharisees is predicted in a vague fashion, which carries us back to the date before the revolution in Judea.

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From all this results a Gospel infinitely superior in beauty to that of Mark, but of a much smaller historical value. Mark remains, as far as facts are concerned, the only authentic record of the life of Jesus. The narratives which the pseudo-Matthew adds to those of Mark are only legends; the modifications which he applies to the tales of Mark are only methods of hiding certain difficulties. The assimilation of the elements which the author takes from Mark is effected in the roughest way; the digestion—if such an expression may be permitted—is not completed; the morsels are left whole, so that they may still be recognised. In this connection Luke will introduce great improvements. But what gives value to the work attributed to Matthew, are the discourses attributed to Jesus, preserved with an extreme fidelity, and probably in the relative order in which they were first written. This was more important than biographical exactitude, and the Gospel of Matthew, all things considered, is the most important book of Christianity—the most important book that has ever been written. It was not without reason that in the classification of the writings of the new Bible it received the first place. The biography of a great man is a part of his work. St Louis would not be what he is in the conscience of humanity, without Joinville. The life of Spinoza, by Colerus, is the finest of

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Spinoza’s works. Epictetus owes almost as much to Arrian, Socrates to Plato and to Xenophon. Jesus in the same way is in part made by the Gospel. In this sense, the compilation of the Gospels is, next to the personal action of Jesus, the leading fact of the history of the origins of Christianity; I will even add of the history of humanity. The habitual reading of the world is a book where the priest is always in fault, where respectable people are always hypocrites, where the lay authorities are always scoundrels, and where all the rich are damned. This book—the most revolutionary and dangerous ever written—the Roman Church has prudently put aside; but it has not been able to prevent it from bearing fruit. Malevolent towards the priesthood, contemptuous of austerity, indulgent towards the loose liver of good heart, the Gospels have been the perpetual nightmare of the hypocrite. The man of the Gospel has been an opponent of pedantic theology, of hierarchical haughtiness, of the ecclesiastical spirit such as the centuries have made it. The Middle Ages burned it. In our days, the great invective of the twenty-third chapter of St Matthew against the Pharisees is still a sanguinary satire on those who cover themselves with the name of Jesus, and whom Jesus, if he were to return to this world, would drive out with scourges. Where was the Gospel of St Matthew written? Everything appears to indicate that it was in Syria, for a Jewish circle which knew scarcely anything but Greek, but which had some idea of Hebrew. The author makes use of the original Gospels written in Hebrew; yet it is doubtful whether the original Hebrew of the Gospel texts ever went out of Syria. In five or six cases, Mark had preserved little Aramaic phrases uttered by Jesus; the pseudo-Matthew effaces all of them with but one exception. The character of the traditions proper to our evangelist is exclusively Galilean. According to him, all the appearances of Jesus after the Resurrection took place in Galilee. His first readers appear to have been Syrians. He gives none of those explanations of customs and those topographical notes which are to be found in Mark. On the contrary, there are details which, meaningless at Rome, were interesting in the East. A Greek Gospel appeared a precious thing; but the gaps in that of Mark were striking, and they were filled up. The Gospel which resulted from these additions came in time to Rome. Hence the explanation of Luke’s ignorance of it in that city about 95.

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Hence, also, the explanation of the reasons why to exalt the new work and to oppose to the name of Mark that of a superior authority, the text was attributed to the Apostle Matthew. Matthew was a Judeo-Christian apostle, living an ascetic life like that of James, abstaining from flesh, and living only upon vegetables and the shoots of trees. Perhaps his former occupation of publican gave rise to the idea that, accustomed to writing, he more than anyone else was likely to record the facts of which he was credited with having been a witness. Certainly Matthew was not the editor of the work which bears his name. The Apostle had long been dead when the Gospel was composed, and the book, besides, absolutely could not have been the work of such an author. Never was book so little that of an eye-witness. How, if our Gospel were the work of an apostle, could it possibly have been so defective in all that concerns the public life of Jesus? Perhaps the Hebrew Gospel with which the author completed that of Mark, bore the name of Matthew. Perhaps the collection of 85


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Logia bore that name. The addition of the Logia being what gave character to the new Gospel, the name of the apostle guaranteeing these Logia may have been preserved to designate the author of the work which drew its chief value from these additions. All that is doubtful. Papias believes the work to be really that of Matthew, but after fifty or sixty years the means of solving so complicated a question must have been wanting. What is certain, in any case, is that the work attributed to Matthew had not the authority which its title would lead one to suppose, and was not accepted as final. There have been many similar attempts which are no longer in existence. The mere name of an apostle was not enough to recommend a work of this kind. Luke, who was not an apostle, and whom we shall soon see resuming the attempt at a Gospel embodying and superseding the others, was, in all probability, ignorant of the existence of that said to be according to Matthew. 115

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CHAPTER XII THE CHRISTIANS OF THE FLAVIA FAMILY—FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS. THE fatal law of Cæsarism fulfilled itself. The legitimate king improves as his reign grows older: the Cæsar begins well, and finishes ill. Every year was marked in Domitian by the progress of evil passions. The man had always been perverse. His ingratitude towards his father and his eldest brother was something abominable, but his first government was not that of a bad sovereign. It was only by degrees that the sombre jealousy of all merit, the refined perfidy, the black malice which were ingrained in his nature, disclosed themselves. Tiberius had been very cruel, but this was through a sort of philosophic rage against humanity which was not without its grandeur, and which did not prevent him from being in some respects the most intelligent man of his time. Caligula was a melancholy buffoon, at once grotesque and terrible, but amusing, and not very dangerous to those who did not approach him. Under the reign of that incarnation of satanic irony who called himself Nero, a sort of stupor held the world in suspense; people had the consciousness of assisting at an unprecedented crisis, at the definitive struggle between good and evil. After his death there was a breathing space; evil appeared to be chained up; the perversity of the century seemed to be softened. It is easy to imagine the horror which seized on all honest minds when they saw “the Beast” revived; when they recognised that the abnegation of all the honourable men in the Empire had served only to hand over the world to a sovereign much more worthy of execration than the monsters whom they believed relegated to the souvenirs of the past. 116

Domitian was probably the wickedest man who over lived. Commodus is more odious, for he was the son of an admirable father; but Commodus is a sort of brute; Domitian is a man of strong sense, and of a calculating wickedness. He had not the excuse of madness; his head was perfectly sound, cold, and clear. He was a serious and logical politician. He had no imagination, and if at a certain period of his life he dabbled somewhat in literature, and made fairly good verses, it was out of affectation, and in order to appear a stranger to business; soon he renounced it and thought no more of it. He did not love the arts; music found him and left him indifferent; his melancholy temperament rejoiced only in solitude. He was seen walking alone for hours; his followers were then sure to see the breaking out of some perverse scheme. Cruel without disguise, he smiled almost in the act of murder. His base extraction constantly reappeared. The Cæsars of the House of Augustus, prodigal and greedy of glory, are bad, often absurd, rarely vulgar. Domitian is the tradesman of crime: he makes a profit of it. Not rich, he makes money everywhere, and pushes taxation to its last limits. His sinister face never knew the mad laugh of Caligula. Nero, a very literary tyrant, always engaged in making the world love and admire him, heard raillery and provoked it. Domitian had nothing burlesque about him. He did not lend himself to ridicule; he was too tragic. His manners were no better than those of the son of Agrippina, but to infamy he joined a sly egotism, a hypocritical affectation of severity, the air of a rigid censor (sanctissimus censor)—all which 87


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things were only pretexts for destroying the innocent. The tone of austere virtue which his flatterers assume is nauseous in the extreme. Martial, Statius, Quintilian, when they wished to give him the title which he coveted the most, bestowed on him that of Saviour of the gods, and Restorer of morals. 117

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Nero’s vanity was not less than that which impelled him to so many pitiable freaks, and it was much less innocent. His false triumphs, his pretended victories, his monuments full of lying adulation, his accumulated consulates, were something sickening, much more irritating than the eighteen hundred crowns of Nero. The other tyrannies which had afflicted Rome were much less wise. His was administrative, meticulous, organised. The tyrant himself played the part of chief of the police and prosecuting counsel. It was a juridical reign of terror. The proceedings were conducted with the burlesque legality of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Flavius Sabinus, cousin of the Emperor, was put to death because of a mistake of the crier who had proclaimed him Emperor instead of Consul; a Greek historian, for certain images which appeared obscure: all the copyists were crucified. A distinguished Roman was killed because he loved to recite the harangues of Livy, possessed certain maps, and had given to two slaves the names of Mago and of Hannibal; a highly-esteemed soldier, Sallustius Lucullus, perished for having suffered his name to be given to some lances of a new model which he had invented. Never had the trade of informer thriven so greatly; tempters and spies abounded everywhere. The mad faith of the Emperor in astrologers doubled the danger. The instruments of Caligula and Nero had been vile Orientals, strangers to Roman society, and satisfied when they were rich. The informers of Domitian—men like Tonquier Tinville, sinister and ghostly—struck a sure blow. The Emperor concerted with the accusers and the false witnesses what they were to say; he then was himself present at the tortures, diverting himself with the pallor painted in all faces, and appearing to count the groans extorted by suffering. Nero spared himself the sight of the crimes he commanded; Domitian insisted on seeing everything. He had nameless refinements of cruelty. His mind was so perverse that he was offended equally by flattery and by its absence; his suspicion and jealousy were unbounded. Every worthy man, every benevolent man, had him for a rival. Nero at least found them only amongst the singers, and did not regard every statesman, every military superior, as an enemy. The silence during this time was frightful. The Senate passed some years in a mournful stupor. What was most terrible was that there seemed to be no way out. The Emperor was thirty-six. The feverish outburst of evil which had been observed up to that time had been short; it was felt that they were crises and that they could not last. This time there was no reason for their coming to an end. The army was content; the people were indifferent. Domitian, it is true, never attained the popularity of Nero; and in the year 88 an impostor thought he saw a chance of dethroning him, by presenting himself as the adored master who had given the people such days of enjoyment. Nevertheless, too much had not been lost. The spectacles were as monstrous as they had ever been.

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The Flavian amphitheatre (the Coliseum) inaugurated under Titus, had even made progress in the ignoble art of amusing the people. No danger then on that side. He, however, read only the Memoirs of Tiberius. He despised the familiarity which his father Vespasian had encouraged; he treated as childishness the good nature of his brother Titus, and the delusion of governing humanity by making himself beloved, under which he laboured. He pretended to know better than anybody the requirements of a power without constitution, obliged to defend itself, to refound itself every day.

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It was felt, in short, that there was a political reason for these horrors, which was not the mere caprice of a lunatic. The hideous image of the new sovereignty such as the necessities of the times had made it, suspicious, fearing everything from everybody, head of Medusa which froze with terror, appeared in this odious mask all splashed with blood, with which the cunning terrorist seemed to have shielded his face against all modesty. It was principally upon his own house that his fury was spent. Almost all his cousins or nephews perished. Everything that recalled Titus to him exasperated him. That singular family which had none of the prejudice, aristocratic coolness, profound scepticism of the high Roman aristocracy, offered strange contrasts. Frightful tragedies were played in it. What a fate, for example, was that of Julia Sabina, the daughter of Titus, sinking from crime to crime, until she finished, like the heroine of a vulgar romance, in the anguish of an abortion. So much perversity provoked strange reactions. The tender and sentimental parts of the nature of Titus reappeared amongst some members of the family, especially in the branch of Flavius Sabinus, the brother of Vespasian. Flavius Sabinus, who was long Prefect of Rome, and particularly in 64, might already know the Christians; he was a gentle, humane man, and one who was already reproached with “poor spiritedness.” For Roman ferocity such a word was equivalent to humanity. The numerous Jews who were familiar with the Flavian family, found, especially on this side, an audience already prepared and attentive.

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It is, in short, not to be denied that Christian or Judeo-Christian ideas penetrated the Imperial family, especially in its collateral branch. Flavius Clemens, son of Flavius Sabinus, and consequently cousin-german to Domitian, had married Flavia Domitilla, his second cousin, daughter of another Flavia Domitilla, herself the daughter of Vespasian, who had died before the accession of her father to the Empire. By means which are unknown to us, but probably arising out of the relations of the Flavian family with the Jews, Clemens and Domitilla adopted Jewish customs, that is to say, of course, that mitigated form of Judaism which differed from Christianity only by the importance attached to the part of Jesus. The Judaism of the proselytes, confined to the Noachian precepts, was precisely that preached by Josephus, the client of the Flavian family. That it was which was represented as having been settled by the agreement of all the apostles at Jerusalem. Clemens allowed himself to be seduced by it. Perhaps Domitilla went further, and merited the name of Christian. Nothing, however, ought to be exaggerated. Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla do not appear to have been veritable members of the Church of Rome. Like so many other distinguished Romans, they felt the emptiness of the official worship, the insufficiency of the moral law which

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sprang out of Paganism, the repulsive hideousness of the manners and the society of the times. The charm of the Judeo-Christian ideas wrought upon them. They recognised from that side life and the future; but, without doubt, they were not ostensibly Christians. We shall see later Flavia Domitilla acting rather as a Roman matron than as a Christian woman, and not hesitating at the assassination of a tyrant. The single fact of accepting the consulate was for Clemens to accept the obligation of essentially idolatrous sacrifices and ceremonies. Clemens was the second person in the State. He had two sons whom Domitian had named as his successors, and to whom he had already given the names of Vespasian and Domitian. The education of these boys was entrusted to one of the most upright men of the time, Quintilian the rhetorician, to whom Clemens accorded the honorary insignia of the consulate. Now Quintilian regarded with equal horror the ideas of the Jews and those of the Republicans. Side by side with the Gracchi he placed “the author of the Jewish superstition” amongst the most fatal revolutionaries. Was Quintilian thinking of Moses or of Jesus? Perhaps he scarcely knew himself. “Jewish superstition” was still the generic title which comprehended both Jews and Christians. Christians were not furthermore the only people who lived the Jewish life without submitting to circumcision. Many of those who were attracted by Mosaism confined themselves to the observance of the Sabbath. A similar purity of life, a similar horror of polytheism, united all these groups of pious men upon whom the verdict of superficial Pagans was, “they live the Jewish life.” If the family of Clemens were Christians, it must be owned that they were Christians of a very undecided kind. What the public saw of the conversion of these two illustrious personages was a very small matter. The distracted world which surrounded them could not well say whether they were Jews or Christians. Changes of this kind are recognised only by two symptoms, first, an ill-concealed aversion from the national religion, an estrangement from all apparent rites, on the part of those who are supposed to hold to the secret worship of an intangible, unnameable God; in the second place, an apparent indolence, a total abandonment of the duties and honours of civic life inseparable from idolatry. A taste for solitude, a search after a peaceable and retired life, an aversion for the theatres, for the shows and for the cruel scenes which Roman life offered at every step, fraternal relations with persons of humble station, by no means inclined to the military life (for which the Romans despised them), indifference to public business, as frivolous matters to those who looked for the speedy coming of Christ, meditative habits, a spirit of detachment—all this the Romans described by the single word ignavia. According to the ideas of the time, everyone ought to have as much ambition as comported with his birth and fortune. The man of high rank who ceased to take an interest in the struggle of life, who feared bloodshed, who assumed a gentle and humane air, was an idle and degraded man incapable of any enterprise. Impious and cowardly—such were the adjectives applied to him, which in a still vigorous state of society must infallibly result in destroying him. Clemens and Domitilla were not, moreover, the only ones whom the blast of the reign of Domitian inclined towards Christianity. The terror and the sadness of the times crushed souls. Many 90


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persons of the Roman aristocracy lent an ear to teaching, and which, in the midst of the night through which they were passing, showed the pure heaven of an ideal kingdom. The world was so dark, so wicked! Never, besides, had the Jewish propaganda been so active. Perhaps we must refer to the time of the conversion of a Roman lady, Veturia Paulla, who, being converted at the age of 70, took the name of Sara, and was mother of the synagogues of the Campus Martius and of Volumnus, for sixteen years longer. A great part of the movement in these immense suburbs of Rome, where seethed an immense population, far greater in number than the aristocratic society enclosed in the circuit of Servius Tullius, came from the sons of Israel. Confined to a spot near the Capenian Gate by the side of the unwholesome stream of the fountain of Egeria, they lived there, begging, carrying on disreputable trades, the art of the gipsies, telling fortunes, levying contributions on visitors to the wood of Egeria, which they rented. The impression produced upon the public mind by that strange race was more lively than ever. “He to whom fate has given for father an observer of the Sabbath, not contented with adoring the God of heaven, and with putting on the same level the flesh of pigs and the flesh of human beings, soon hurries to get rid of his foreskin. Accustomed to despise the Roman law, he studies and observes, with trembling, the Jewish law which Moses has deposited in a mysterious volume. There he learns not to show the way save to him who practises the same religion with himself, and when one asks him, where is the fountain? to point out the road to the circumcised only. The fault is ih the father who adopted the seventh day of rest, and forbade on that day all the acts of life.” (Juv. xiv.) Saturday, in fact, notwithstanding all the bad temper of the true Romans, was not in Rome in the least like other days. The world of little tradesmen who on other days filled the public places, seemed to have sunk into the earth. That irregularity, yet more than their easily recognisable type, drew attention, and made those eccentric foreigners the object of the gossip of the idle.

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The Jews suffered like the rest of the world from the hardness of the times. The greed of Domitian made all taxation excessive, especially the poll tax, called the fiscus Judaïcus, to which the Jews were subject. Until this time the tribute was exacted only from those who avowed themselves to be Jews. Many disguised their origin and did not pay. To prevent that tolerance, the truth was sought in the most odious way. Suetonius remembers having seen in his youth an old man of ninety stripped before a numerous audience to see if he were not circumcised. These rigours brought about, as a consequence, the practice, in a great number of instances, of the operation of blistering; the number of recutiti at this date is very considerable. Such inquiries, on the other hand, brought the Roman authorities to a discovery which astonished them: it was that there were people who were living the Jewish life in all ways who were not circumcised. The treasury decided that that class of persons, the improfessi, as they were called, should pay the poll-tax like the circumcised. “The Jewish life,” and not the circumcision, was thus taxed, and the Christians saw themselves subjected to the impost. The complaints which this abuse called forth moved even those statesman who had least sympathy with Jews and Christians; the liberal were shocked by these corporeal visitations, these distinctions

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made by the state as to the meaning of certain religious denominations, and saw in the suppression of this abuse their programme for the future. The vexations introduced by Domitian contributed greatly to deprive Christianity of its previously undecided character. By the side of the severe orthodoxy of the Jewish doctors, and afterwards of those of Jabneh, there had been until that time in Judaism schools analogous to Christianity, without being identical with it. Apollos, in the bosom of the Church, was an example of those inquiring Jews who tried many sects without adhering resolutely to any one. Josephus when he wrote for the Romans, reduced his Judaism to a kind of Deism, owning that circumcision and the Jewish practices were good for Jews by race, whilst the true worship is that which each adopts in full liberty. Was Flavius Clemens a Christian in the strict sense of the word? It may be doubted if he were. He loved the Jewish life, he practised Jewish customs, and it was that fact which struck his contemporaries. He went no further, and perhaps he himself would have been puzzled to say to what class of Jews he belonged. The matter was not cleared up when the treasury took it in hand. The circumcision received on that day a fatal blow. The greed of Domitian extended the tax on the Jews, the fiscus Judaïcus, who without being Jews by race, and without being circumcised, practised Jewish customs. Then the categories were marked out: there was the pure Jew, whose quality was established by physical inquiry, and the quasi-Jew, the improfessus, who took nothing from Judaism besides its honest morality and its purified worship. 125

The penalties ordained by a special law against the circumcision of non-Jews contributed to the same result. The precise date of that law is unknown, but it certainly appears to be of the period of Flavius. Every Roman citizen who allowed himself to be circumcised was punished with perpetual exile, and the loss of all his goods. A master rendered himself liable to the same penalty if he permitted his slaves to submit to the operation; the doctor who performed it was punished with death. The Jews who circumcised their slaves were equally liable to death. That was thoroughly conformable to the Roman policy,—tolerant towards foreign religions when they kept themselves within the limits of their own nationalities; severe when those religions entered upon the work of the propaganda. But it is easy to understand how decisive such measures were in the struggle between the circumcised Jews and the uncircumcised or improfessi. These last alone could carry on a serious proselytism. By the law of the Empire, the circumcision was condemned to go no further than the narrow limits of the house of Israel. Agrippa II., and probably Berenice, died about this time. Their death was an immense loss to the Jewish colony, which these exalted personages covered by their credit with Flavius. Josephus, in the midst of this ardent struggle, doubled his activity. He had the superficial facility characteristic of the Jew transported into a civilisation which is foreign to him, of placing himself with marvellous quickness abreast of the ideas in the midst of which he finds himself thrown, and of seeing in what way he can profit by them. Domitian protected him, but was probably indifferent to his writings. The Empress Domitia heaped favours on him. He was, besides, the client of a certain Epaphroditus,

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a considerable personage, supposed to be identical with the Epaphroditus of Nero, whom Domitian had taken into his service. This Epaphroditus was a man of a singularly liberal mind, who encouraged historical studies, and who interested himself in Judaism. Not knowing Hebrew, and probably not understanding the Greek version of the Bible very well, he engaged Josephus to compose a history of the Jewish people. Josephus received the commission with eagerness. It fully accorded with the suggestions of his literary vanity and of his liberal Judaism. The objection which the Jews made to learned persons imbued with the beauties of Greek and Roman history, was that the Jewish people had no history, that the Greeks had not eared to know it, that good authors never mentioned its name, that it had never had any connection with the noble races, and that in its past there were to be found no such heroic histories as those of Cynegirus and of the Scævola. To prove that the Jewish people were also of a high antiquity, that they possessed the memory of heroes comparable to those of Greece, that they had had in the course of ages the finest relations of people to people, that many learned Greeks had spoken of them, such was the aim that the protege of Epaphroditus sought to realise in a vast composition divided into twenty books and entitled “Antiquities of the Jews.” The Bible naturally formed the basis: Josephus made additions to it, without value as to the ancient times, since there were no Hebrew documents relating to those times other than those which we ourselves possess, but which for more modern times are of the highest interest, since they fill up a gap in sacred history. Josephus added to this curious work, in the form of an appendix, an autobiography, or rather an apology for his own conduct. His ancient enemies of Galilee who, rightly or wrongly, called him a traitor, were still alive and left him no repose. Justus of Tiberius, writing, from his point of view, the history of the catastrophe of his country, accused him of falsehood, and presented his conduct in Galilee in the most odious light. We must do Josephus the justice of saying that he did nothing to injure this dangerous rival, as would have been easy to him, in view of the favour which he enjoyed in high places. Josephus, on the other hand, is weak enough, when he defends himself against the accusations of Justus, by invoking the official approbation of Titus and Agrippa. It is impossible to regret too much that a writing which would have given us the history of the war in Judea, from the revolutionary point of view, should be totally lost to us. The fecundity of Josephus was inexhaustible. As many persons raised doubts as to what he said in his “Antiquities,” and objected that if the Jewish nation had been as ancient as he represented, the Greek historians would have spoken of it, he undertook on this subject a justificatory memoir, which may be regarded as the first monument of the Jewish and Christian apology. Already towards the middle of the second century B.C. Aristobalus, the Jewish peripatician, had maintained that the Greek poets and philosophers had known the Hebrew writings, and had borrowed from them all those parts of their writings which have a monotheistic appearance. To prove his theory, he forged without scruple passages from profane authors—Homer, Hesiod, Linus—which he pretended were borrowed from the Bible. Josephus took up the task with more honesty, but as little critical ability. It was necessary to refute the learned men who, like Lysimachus of Alexandria, Apollonius Molon 93


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(about a hundred years B.C.), expressed themselves unfavourably with regard to the Jews. It was especially necessary to destroy the authority of the Egyptian scholar Apion, who fifty years before had, it may be in his history of Egypt, or else in a distinct work, exhibited an immense amount of learning in disputing the antiquity of the Jewish religion. In the eyes of an Egyptian, or of a Greek, that was quite sufficient to deprive it of all nobility. Apion had relations with the imperial world of Rome, Tiberius called him “the cymbal of the world”; Pliny thought he had better have been called the tom-tom. His book might still be read in Rome under the Flavii. The science of Apion was that of a vain and frivolous pedant; but that which Josephus opposed to it was scarcely better. Greek erudition was for him an improvised speciality, since his early education had been Jewish, and altogether confined to the law. His book is not, and could not be, anything but a pleading without criticism; one feels in every page the presence of the advocate who cuts his arrow in any wood. Josephus does not manufacture his texts, but he takes anything that comes; the false historians, the garbled classics of the Alexandrian school; the valueless documents accumulated in the book “on the Jews” which circulated under the name of Alexander Polyhiston, all are greedily accepted by him; through him that suspected literature of the Eupolemes, the Cleodemes, the so-called Hecatea of Abvera, Demetrius of Phalera, etc., makes its entrance into science, and troubles it seriously. The apologists, and the Christian historians—Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Moses of Khorone—followed him in this bad path. The public to whom Josephus addressed himself was superficial in point of erudition; it was easily contented; the rational culture of the time of the Cæsars had disappeared; the human mind was rapidly lowering its standard, and offered to all charlatanisms an easy prey.

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Such was the literature of the cultivated and liberal Jews grouped around the principal representatives of a dynasty liberal in itself and in its origin, but for the moment devoured by a madman. Josephus formed endless projects of work. He was fifty-six. With his style, artificial and chequered with a patchwork heterogeneous of rags, he seriously thought himself a great writer; he thought he knew Greek, with which he had only a second-hand acquaintance. He wished to take the “Wars of the Jews” in hand again; to abridge it, to make it the continuation of his “Antiquities,” and to tell all that had happened to the Jews from the end of the war to the moment of his writing. He meditated, above all, a philosophical work in four books upon God and his essence, according to Jewish ideas, and upon the Mosaic laws, with the object of rendering account of the prohibitions which they contain, and which greatly astonished the Pagans. Death doubtless prevented him from carrying out these new designs. It is probable that if he had composed these writings they would have come down to us as the others have done. Josephus in effect had a very strange literary destiny. He remained unknown to the Jewish Talmudic tradition; but he was adopted by Christians as one of themselves, and almost as a sacred writer. His writings complete the holy history which, reduced to the Biblical documents, offers only a blank page for many centuries. They form a sort of commentary on the Gospels, of which the historical sequence would have been unintelligible without the information which the Jewish historian furnishes as to the history of the Herods. They flattered 94


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especially one of the favourite theories of the Christians, and furnished one of the bases of the Christian apology, by the account of the siege of Jerusalem.

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One of these ideas, to which Christians held most strongly, was that Jesus had predicted the ruin of the rebellious city. What could more strongly prove the literal accomplishment of that prophecy than the history, told by a Jew, of the unheard-of atrocities which accompanied the destruction of the Temple? Josephus became thus a fundamental witness and a supplement to the Bible. He was read and copied assiduously by Christians. He made of it, if I may so say, a Christian edition, wherein certain corrections may be permitted in passages which offended the copyists. These passages, above all, present in this connection doubts which criticism has not even yet allayed. These are the passages relative to John the Baptist, to Jesus, and to James. Certainly it is possible that these passages, at least that relating to Jesus, may be interpolations made by the Christians in a book which they had in some sort appropriated. We prefer, however, to believe that in the three places in question he spoke in effect of John the Baptist, of Jesus, and of James, and that the labour of the Christian editor, if he may be so called, was confined to pruning away from the passage upon Jesus certain clauses, and modifying some expressions offensive to an orthodox reader. The reduced circle of aristocratic proselytes of a mediocre literary taste, for whom Josephus composed his book, were doubtless entirely satisfied with it. The difficulties of the old texts were ably disguised. Jewish history became as attractive as Greek, sown with harangues conducted according to the rules of profane rhetoric. Thanks to a charlatanesque display of erudition, and to a choice of doubtful or slightly falsified situations, there was an answer to all objectors. A discreet rationalism threw a veil over the too naive wonders of the ancient Hebrew books; after having read the accounts of the greatest miracles, you might believe them or not at will. For non-Jews never an insulting word; provided one is willing to recognise the historic nobility of the race, Josephus is satisfied. On every page a gentle philosophy, sympathetic with all virtue, treating the ritual precepts of the Law as binding upon Jews only, and proclaiming aloud that every just man has the essential qualities necessary for becoming a son of Abraham. A simple metaphysical and rationalistic Deism, a purely natural morality, replaces the sombre theology of Jehovah. The Bible thus rendered altogether human, appeared to the deserter of Jotapata to become more acceptable. He deceived himself. His book, precious as it is to the student, rises no higher in point of value in the eyes of the man of taste than one of those insipid Bibles of the seventeenth century where the most awful of the old texts are translated into academic language and decorated with vignettes in rococo style.

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CHAPTER XIII. THE GOSPEL OF LUKE.

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AS we have already several times had occasion to remark, the Gospel writings at the period at which we have arrived, were numerous. The majority of those writings did not bear the names of Apostles; they were second-hand attempts founded upon oral tradition, which they did not pretend to exhaust. The Gospel of Matthew alone presented itself as having the privilege of an apostolic origin; but that Gospel was not widely diffused; written for the Jews of Syria, it had not yet, to all appearance, penetrated to Rome. It was under these conditions that one of the most conspicuous members of the Church at Rome undertook—“himself also” (Luke i. 3)—to compile a Gospel from former texts, and not forbidding himself, any more than his predecessors had done, to intercalate what tradition and his own beliefs furnished him with. This man was no other than Lucanus or Luke, the disciple whom we have seen attach himself to Paul in Macedonia, follow him in his travels and in his captivity, and play an important part in his correspondence. We may readily believe that after the death of Paul he remained in Rome, and as he must have been young when Paul knew him (about the year 52), he would now be scarcely more than sixty years of age. It is impossible, in such cases, to speak with certainty; there is, however, no very strong reason for supposing that Luke was not the author of the Gospel which bears his name. Luke was not yet sufficiently famous for anyone to make use of his name to give authority to a book, as had been done in the case of the Apostles Matthew and John, later, for James and Peter. Nor does the date appear involved in much uncertainty. All the world admits that the book is of later date than the year 70; but, on the other hand, it cannot be very much later. If it were, the predictions of the immediate appearance of Christ in the clouds, which the author copies without flinching from the oldest documents, would be sheer nonsense. The author throws back the year of the return of Jesus to an indeterminate future; “the end” is postponed as far as possible, but the connection between the catastrophe of Judea and the destruction of the world is maintained. The author preserves also the assertion of Jesus, according to which the generation which listened to him should not pass away until his predictions as to the end of the world were accomplished. Notwithstanding the extreme latitude which the apostolic exegesis claims in the interpretation of the discourses of our Lord, it cannot be allowed that an editor so intelligent as that of the third Gospel, an editor who knows so well how to make the words of Jesus pass through the changes required by the necessities of the time, should have copied a phrase which embodies a peremptory objection to the gift of prophecy attributed to the Master.

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It is certainly only by conjecture that we connect Luke and his Gospel with the Christian society in Rome in the time of the Flavii. Yet it is certain that the general character of the work of Luke answers well to what such an hypothesis requires. Luke, we have already remarked, has a sort of Roman spirit; he loves order—the hierarchy; he has a profound respect for the centurions, and for the Roman functionaries, and likes to show them as favourable to Christianity. By an able turn, he succeeds in not saying that Jesus was crucified and insulted by the Romans. Between Luke and Clemens Romanus there are considerable analogies. Clemens often cites the words of Jesus from Luke, or a tradition analogous to that of Luke. The style of Luke, on the other hand, by its Latinisms, its general form, and its Hebraisms, recalls the Shepherd of Hermas. The very name of Luke is Roman, and may belong, by a bond of patron and client, or of emancipation, to some M. Annæus Lucanus, of the family of the celebrated poet, which would make a connection the more with that family of Annæa which is to be found everywhere under the dust of Christian Rome. Chapters xxv. and xxvi. of the Acts lead to the belief that the author, like Josephus, had relations with Agrippa II., Berenice, and the little Jewish coterie at Rome. Even down to Herod Antipas, whose misdeeds he almost attempts to extenuate, he represents its intervention in the Gospel history as benevolent in some aspects. May we not also find a Roman custom in that dedication to Theophilus, which recalls that of Josephus to Epaphroditus, and appears altogether foreign to the customs of Syria and Palestine in the first century of our era? We can see, besides, how such a situation recalls that of Josephus, writing almost at the same time, the one telling of the rise of Christianity, the other the Jewish revolution, with a very similar sentiment—moderation, antipathy to extreme parties,—an official tone implying more care for defending positions than for truth,—respect, mingled with fear, for the Roman authority, whose very severities he strives to present as excusable necessities, and by whom he affects to have been sometimes protected. It is this which makes us believe that the world in which Luke lived and that of Josephus were very near to each other, and must have had more than one point of contact. This Theophilus is otherwise unknown; his name may be only a fiction or a pseudonym to distinguish some one of the powerful adepts of the Church of Rome—one of the Clemens, for instance. A little preface clearly explains the intention and the situation of the author:— Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us which from the beginning were eye-witnesses of the word, it seemed good to me, also having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee, in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.

It does not necessarily follow from this preface that Luke must have had under his eyes, in working, these numerous writings to whose existence he bears witness; but the reading of the book leaves no doubt on that point. The verbal coincidences of the text of Luke with that of Mark, and, by consequence, with Matthew, are very frequent. No doubt Luke may have had under his eyes a text of Mark which differed very little from our own. We might say that he has assimilated it bodily, except the part of Mark vi. 45 to viii. 26, and the story of the Passion, for which he has preferred 97


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an ancient tradition. In the rest, the coincidence is literal, and when there are variants, it is easy to see the motive which has induced Luke to correct, in view of those whom he addressed, the original which he had under his hands. In the parallel passages of the three texts, the details which Matthew adds to Mark, Luke has not; what Luke appears to add, Matthew always has. In the passages which are wanting in Mark, Luke always has another recension than Matthew. In other words, in the parts common to the three Evangelists, Luke offers a sensible agreement in terms with Matthew only when the last presents a similar agreement with Mark. Luke has not certain passages of Matthew without any visible reason why he should have neglected them. The discourses of Jesus are fragmentary in Luke as in Mark; it would be incomprehensible that Luke, if he had known Matthew, should have broken up the grand discourses which the last gives. Luke, it is true, recalls a host of Logia which are not to be read in Mark, but these Logia did not come to his knowledge in the arrangement which we find in Matthew. Let us add that the legends of childhood and the genealogies have in the two evangelists in question nothing in common. Why should Luke cheerfully expose himself to evident objections? We can only conclude that Luke did not know one Matthew; and in effect, the essays of which he speaks in his prologue might bear the names of disciples or of apostles, but none of them could have borne a name like that of Matthew, since Luke distinguishes clearly between apostles, witnesses, and actors in the Gospel history, and traditionary authors and editors who have only reduced to writing the traditions without any special title to do so. By the side of the book of Mark, Luke had surely on his table other narratives of the same kind, from which also he borrowed largely. The long passage from ix. 51 to xviii. 14, for example, has been copied from an earlier source, for it is all in confusion: Luke composed better than that when he followed oral tradition only. It has been calculated that a third of the text of Luke is to be found in neither Mark nor Matthew. Some of the Evangelists lost to us from whom Luke thus borrowed, contained very precise details; “those upon whom the tower of Siloam fell,” those “whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifice.” Many of these documents were simply resettings of the Gospel of the Hebrews, strongly impressed with Ebionism, and thus approached Matthew. Hence may be explained in Luke certain passages analogous to Matthew which do not appear in Mark. The majority of the primitive Logia are to be found in Luke, not disposed in the form of great discourses as in our Matthew, but backed about and applied to particular circumstances. Not only has Luke not had St Matthew’s Gospel under his hands, but it does not seem that he can have made use of any collection of the discourses of Jesus where already the great series of maxims of which we have verified the insertion in our Matthew were gathered. If he possessed such collections, he neglected them. On the other hand, Luke sometimes connects himself with the Gospel of the Hebrews, above all, where it is better than Matthew. It is possible that he had a Greek translation of the Hebrew Gospel. From this it appears that Luke held with regard to Mark a position analogous to that which Matthew held to the same Evangelist. By both Mark has been enlarged by additions borrowed from documents drawn more or less from the Hebrew Gospel. To explain the numerous additions which 98


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Luke made to the common basis of Mark, and which are not in Matthew, a large part must be attributed to oral tradition. Luke plunged deeply into that tradition; he drew from it; he looked upon it as on the same footing as the numerous authors of essays on Gospel History who had existed before him. Did he scruple to insert in his text stories of his own invention, in order to stamp upon the work of Jesus the impression which he believed to be the true one? Certainly not. Tradition itself did no otherwise. Tradition is a collective work, since it expresses the mind of all; but at the same time there has always been someone who uttered for the first time the bright saying or the significant anecdote. Luke has often been that someone. The spring of the Logia had been dried up; and, to say the truth, we believe that it never produced anything more. On the contrary, the liberty of the Agada shows itself entirely in the right which Luke assumes of handling his documents according to his convenience, of culling, intercalating, transposing, and combining at his will, to obtain the arrangement which suited him the best. Not once did he say, If this history is true like this it cannot be true like that. The true material is nothing to him; the idea, the dogmatic and moral aim, are everything. I will even add the literary effect. Thus it is possible that what has caused him not to admit into his bundle of Logia collected before him or even to divide them violently, it may be a scruple of his delicate taste which has made him find these artificial groupings a little heavy. Nothing equals the ability with which he cuts down previous collections created upon the framework of Logia thus dispersed. He encases them, serves them like little gems in the delightful narratives which provoke them and lead up to them. The art of arranging has never been carried so far. Naturally, however, that method of composing brings about with Luke, as with Matthew, and generally with all the Gospels of the “second hand” artificially edited from earlier documents, repetitions, contradictions, and incoherencies, coming from the diverse documents which the last editor sought to blend together. Mark alone, by his primitive character, is exempt from this defect, and it is the best proof of his originality. We have insisted elsewhere upon the errors which the distance of the Evangelist from Palestine has made him commit. His exegesis rests only the Septuagint, which he follows in its greatest blunders. The author was not a Jew by birth; he certainly writes for those who are not Jews; he has only a superficial acquaintance with the geography of Palestine, and the manners of the Jews. He omits everything that would be uninteresting to non-Israelites, and he adds notes which would be uninteresting to a native of Palestine. The genealogy which he attributes to Jesus leads to the belief that he was addressing people who could not easily verify a Biblical text. He extenuates all that shows the Jewish origin of Christianity, and although he may have a sort of tender compassion for Jerusalem, the Law has ceased to exist for him, save as a memory. The spirit which inspired Luke is thus much more easy to determine than that which inspired Mark and the author of the Gospel according to Matthew. These two last Evangelists are neutral, taking no part in the quarrels which were rending the Church. The partisans of Paul, and those of James, might equally adopt them. Luke, on the contrary, is a disciple of Paul, moderate certainly, tolerant, full of respect for Peter, even for James, but a decided supporter of the adoption into the 99


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Church of Pagans, Samaritans, publicans, sinners, and heretics of all sorts. It is in him that we find the pitiful parable of the Good Samaritan, of the Prodigal Son, of the Lost Sheep, of the Lost Drachma, where the position of the penitent sinner is placed almost above that of the just man who has not failed. Certainly Luke was in that matter in agreement with the very spirit of Jesus, but there is on his part preoccupation, prejudice, fixed ideas. His boldest stroke was the conversion of one of the two thieves of Calvary. According to Mark and Matthew, the two malefactors insulted Jesus. Luke puts a fine sentiment into the mouth of one of them. “We receive the due rewards of our deeds, but this man hath done nothing amiss.” In return, Jesus promises that that very day he shall be with him in Paradise. Jesus goes further. He prays for his executioners. “They know not what they do.” In Matthew, Jesus appears ill-disposed towards Samaria, and recommends his disciples to avoid the cities of the Samaritans as in the way of Pagans. According to Luke, on the contrary, he is in frequent communication with the Samaritans, and speaks of them in terms of praise. It is to the journey to Samaria that Luke attaches a great amount of teaching and of narrative. Far from imprisoning Jesus in Galilee, like Mark and Matthew, Luke obeyed an anti-Galilean and anti-Judaic tendency—a tendency which will be much more visible in the fourth Gospel. In many other respects the Gospel of Luke forms a sort of intermediary between the two first Gospels and the fourth, which appears at first to offer no trace of union with them. There is scarcely an anecdote or a parable proper to Luke which does not breathe that spirit of mercy, and of appeal to sinners. The only saying of Jesus which ever appears a little harsh becomes in his hands an apologue, full of indulgence and of long-suffering. The unfruitful tree ought not to be cut down too quickly; a good gardener opposes the anger of the proprietor, and asks leave to dig about the roots of the unhappy tree, and to dung it before condemning it altogether. The Gospel of Luke is especially the Gospel of pardon, and of pardon obtained by faith. “There is more joy in heaven over a sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.” “The Son of Man is come not to destroy men, but to save them.” Any quantity of straining is lawful to him, if only he can make each incident of the Gospel history a history of pardoned sinners. Samaritans, publicans, centurions, guilty women, benevolent Pagans, all those whom Pharisaism despises, are his clients. The idea that Christianity has pardons for all the world is his alone. The door is open; conversion is possible to all. It is no longer a question of the Law; a new devotion, the worship of Jesus, has replaced it. Here it is the Samaritan who does the good deed, whilst the priest and the Levite pass indifferent by. There a publican comes out of the Temple justified by his humility, whilst the irreproachable but haughty Pharisee goes out more guilty than before. Elsewhere the sinful woman is raised by her love for Jesus, and is permitted to bestow on him particular marks of tenderness. Elsewhere, again, the publican Zacchaeus becomes at the first onset a son of Abraham, by the simple fact of his having shown eagerness to see Jesus. The offer of an easy pardon has always been the principal means of success in all religions. “Even the most guilty of men,” says Bhagavat, “if he comes to adore me, and to turn himself to me in his worship, must be accepted as good.” Luke adds the taste for humility. “That which is highly esteemed amongst men is abomination

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in the sight of God.” The powerful shall be cast down from his throne, the humble shall be exalted; there, in brief, is the revolution wrought by Jesus. Now, the haughty is the Jew, proud of his descent from Abraham; the humble is the gentle man who draws no glory from his ancestors, and owes everything that he is to his faith in Jesus.

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The perfect conformity of these views with those of Paul may readily be seen. Paul had no Gospel in the sense in which we understand the word. Paul had never heard Jesus, and intentionally speaks with much reserve of his relations with his immediate disciples. He had seen very little of them, and had passed only a few days in the centre of their traditions, at Jerusalem. He had scarcely heard tell of the Logia; of the tradition of the Gospel he knew only fragments. It must be added, however, that these fragments agree well with what we read in Luke. The account of the Last Supper, as Paul gives it, is identical, save for a few details of small importance, with that of the third Gospel. Luke, without doubt, carefully avoids all that might offend the Judeo-Christian party, and awaken controversies which he desires to put to rest; he is as respectful to the Apostles as he can be; he fears, however, that they will assume a too exclusive position. His policy, in this respect, has inspired him with the boldest of ideas. By the side of the Twelve he creates, of his own authority, seventy disciples, to whom Jesus gives a mission which in the other Gospels is reserved for the Twelve alone. In this was an imitation of that chapter of Numbers in which God, in order to console Moses under a burden which had become too heavy, pours out upon seventy elders a part of the spirit of government which, until then, had been the gift of Moses alone. As though with the intention of rendering more conspicuous this division, and this likeness of powers, Luke divides between the Twelve and the Seventy the apostolic instructions which in the collections of Logia form only a single discourse addressed to the Twelve. This number of seventy or seventy-two had, moreover, the advantage of corresponding with the number of the nations of the earth, as the number twelve answered to the tribes of Israel. There was, indeed, an opinion that God had divided the earth amongst seventy-two nations, over each of which an angel presided. The figure was mystical; besides the seventy elders of Moses, there were seventy-one members of the Sanhedrim, seventy or seventy-two Greek translators of the Bible. The secret thought which dictated to Luke this so grave addition to the Gospel text is thus evident. It was necessary, to save the legitimacy of the apostolate of Paul, to present that apostolate as parallel to the powers of the Twelve,—to show that one might be an Apostle without being one of the Twelve —which was precisely Paul’s case. The Twelve, in a word, did not exhaust the apostolate; the plenitude of their powers did not make the existence of others impossible, “and besides,” the sage disciple of Paul hastens to add, “these powers, in themselves, are nothing; what is important to them, as to every other faithful man, is to have their names written in heaven.” Faith is everything; faith is the gift of God, which he bestows on whom he will.

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From such a point of view the privileges of the sons of Abraham are reduced to a very small thing. Jesus, rejected by his own, finds his true family only amongst the Gentiles. Men of distant countries, the Gentiles of Paul, have accepted him as king, whilst his companions, whose natural sovereign he was, have shown him that they will none of him. Woe to them! When the lawful king shall return, he will put them to death in his presence. The Jews imagine that because Jesus has eaten and drunk with them, and taught in their streets, they will always enjoy their privileges. They are in error. Many shall come from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and they shall lament at the door. The lively impression of the misfortunes which have befallen the Jewish people may be read upon every page, and these misfortunes, the author finds, the nation has merited through not having understood Jesus and the mission with which he was charged for Jerusalem. In the genealogy Luke avoids tracing the descent of Jesus from the kings of Judah. From David to Salathiel the descent is through collaterals.

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Other and less open signs discover a favourable intention towards Paul. It is not unquestionably merely by chance that, after having described how Peter was the first to recognise Jesus as the Messiah, the author does not give the famous words, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church;” words which were already taking their place in the tradition. The story of the Canaanitish woman, which the author had undoubtedly read in Mark, is omitted because of the harsh words which it contains, and for which the pitiful ending is no sufficient compensation. The parable of the tares, which appears to have been imagined against Paul, that untoward sower who came after the authorised sowers and made a mingled harvest out of a pure one, is also neglected. Another passage, where we think we may see an insult to the Christians who shake off the bondage of the Law, is retorted, and becomes an attack on the Judeo-Christians. The rigour of the principles of Paul upon the apostolic spirit, is pushed even further than in Matthew, and what is equally important, is that precepts addressed elsewhere to the little group of missionaries are here applied to the whole body of the faithful. “If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” “Whoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” And after these sacrifices he says yet again, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it was our duty to do.” Between the Apostle and Jesus there is no difference. He who hears the Apostle hears Jesus; he who despises the Apostle despises Jesus and despises also him that hath sent him. The same exaltation may be remarked in all that relates to poverty. Luke hates riches, regards the simple attachment to property as an evil. When Jesus came into the world there was no room for him in the inn; he was born in the midst of the simplest of beings, sheep and oxen. His first worshippers were shepherds. All his life he was poor. It is absurd to save, for the rich man can carry nothing away with him. The disciple of Jesus has nothing to do with the goods of this world: he must renounce all that he possesses. The happy man is the poor man; the rich man is always

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guilty: hell is his certain fate. So the poverty of Jesus was absolute. The Kingdom of God will be the festival of the poor; a shifting of the social strata, an accession of new classes, will take place. With the other Evangelists the persons who are substituted for the original guests are people gathered out of the highways, the first comers; with Luke they are the poor, the halt, the lame, the blind, all who have been the sport of fortune. In this new kingdom it will be better to have made friends amongst the poor, even by injustice, than to have been correctly economical. It is not the rich who should be invited to dinners, it should be the poor; and the reward shall be paid at the resurrection of the just—that is to say, in the reign of a thousand years. Alms are a supreme precept; alms are strong enough to purify impure things; they are greater than the Law itself. The doctrine of Luke is, it will be seen, pure Ebionism—the glorification of poverty. According to the Ebionites, Satan is king of this world, and he gives its good things to his fellows. Jesus is the prince of the world to come. To participate in the good things of the diabolical world is equivalent to exclusion from the other. Satan is the sworn enemy of Christians and of Jesus; the world, its princes and its rich men, are his allies in the work of opposition to the kingdom of Jesus. The demonology of Luke is material and bizarre. His miracle-mongering has something of the crude materialism of Mark: it terrifies the spectators. Luke does not know in this way the softened tones of Matthew.

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An admirable popular sentiment, a fine and touching poetry, the clear and pure sound of a silvery soul, something removed from earthliness and exquisite in tone, prevent us from dreaming of these blemishes, these many failures of logic, these singular contradictions. The judge and the importunate widow, the friend with the three loaves, the unfaithful steward, the prodigal son, the pardoned woman that was a sinner, many of the combinations proper to Luke at first appear to positive minds little conformable to scholastic reason and to a strict morality; but these apparent weaknesses, which are like the amiable imperfections of a woman’s thought, are a feature of truth the more, and may well recall the tone of emotion, soon expiring, soon breathless, the altogether womanly movement of the words of Jesus, ruled by image and by sentiment much more than by reason. It is, above all, in the stories of the childhood and of the Passion that we find a divine art. These delicious episodes of the cradle, of the shepherds, of the angel who announces great joy to the lowly, of heaven descending upon earth amongst the poor to sing the song of peace on earth to men of good will; then the old man, worthy personification of ancient Israel, whose part is finished, but who considers himself happy in that he has lived his life, since his eyes have seen the glory of his people and the light revealed to all nations; and that widow of eighty who dies consoled; and the Canticles, so pure, so gentle—Magnificat, Gloria in Excelsis, Nunc Dimittis, Benedictus—which will soon serve as the basis of a new liturgy; all that exquisite pastoral traced with a delicate outline on the forefront of Christianity—all that is assuredly the work of Luke. Never was sweeter cantilena invented to put to sleep the sorrows of poor humanity.

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The taste which carried Luke towards pious narratives naturally inclined him to create for John the Baptist a childhood like that of Jesus. Elizabeth and Zecharias long barren, the vision of the priest at the hour of incense, the visit of the two mothers, the Canticle of the father of John the Baptist, were as the propylæa before the porch, imitated from the porch itself, and reproducing its principal lines. There is no necessity for denying that Luke may have found in the documents of which he made use the germs of these exquisite narratives which have been one of the principal sources of Christian art. In fact, the style of the childhoods of Luke, truncated, full of Hebraisms, is scarcely that of a prologue. Moreover, this part of the work is more Jewish than the rest: John the Baptist is of sacerdotal origin; the rites of the purification, and of circumcision, are carefully accomplished; the family of Jesus go on a pilgrimage every year; many anecdotes are altogether in the Jewish taste. A remarkable fact is that the part of Mary—nothing in Mark—grows little by little in proportion as we get further from Judea, and as Joseph loses his paternal character. The legend wants her, and allows itself to be led away to speak of her at length. It can only be imagined that the woman whom God has chosen to impregnate by the Spirit must be no ordinary woman; she it is who serves as the guarantee for whole chapters of the Gospel history; who has created for herself in the Church a position which has become more important from day to day. Very beautiful, and also very unhistoric, are the narratives proper to the third Gospel of the Passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In this part of his book, Luke almost abandons his original Mark, and follows other texts. Hence we have a narrative even more legendary in character than that of Matthew. Everything is exaggerated. At Gethsemane, Luke adds the angel, the sweating of blood, the curing of the amputated ear of Malchus. The appearance before Herod Antipas is entirely of his invention. The beautiful episode of the daughters of Jerusalem, intended to present the crowd as innocent of the death of Jesus, and to throw all the odium of it upon the great men and their chiefs, the conversion of one of the malefactors, the prayer of Jesus for his executioners, drawn from Isaiah liii. 12, are deliberate additions. For the sublime cry of despair, Eli, eli, lama sabachthani, which was no longer in harmony with the ideas of the Divinity of Jesus which were growing up, he substitutes a calmer text, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Finally the life of Jesus after his resurrection is related on an altogether artificial plan, conformable in part to that of the Gospel of the Hebrews, according to which that life beyond the tomb lasted but for one day, and was brought to a close by an ascension which Matthew and Mark altogether ignore. The Gospel of Luke is then an amended Gospel, completed and strongly impressed with legend. Like the pseudo-Matthew, Luke corrects Mark, foreseeing objections, effacing real or apparent contradictions, suppressing more or less difficult features, and vulgar exaggerated or insignificant details. What he does not understand, he suppresses or turns with infinite skill. He adds touching and delicate details. He invents little, but he modifies much. The aesthetic transformations which he creates are surprising. The picture which he has drawn of Mary and her sister Martha, is a marvellous thing: no pen has ever traced ten more charming lines. His arrangement of the woman

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with the alabaster box of ointment is not less exquisite. The episode of the disciples at Emmaus, is one of the finest and most delicately-shaded in any language.

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The Gospel of Luke is the most literary of the Gospels. Everything in it reveals a large and gentle mind, wise, moderate, sober, and rational, even in the midst of unreason. His exaggerations, his improbabilities, his inconsequences, are somewhat of the nature of parables, and give its charm to it. Matthew rounds off the somewhat harsh outlines of Mark; Luke does more—he writes and shows a true understanding of the art of composition. His book is a beautiful narrative well followed up, at once Hebraic and Hellenistic, uniting the emotion of the drama with the serenity of the idyll. Everyone there smiles, weeps, sings; everywhere there are tears and canticles; it is the hymn of the new people, the hosannah of the little ones and the humble introduced into the kingdom of God. A spirit of the holy childhood, of joy, of fervour, the evangelic sentiment in its originality, spreads over the whole legend a colouring of an incomparable sweetness. Never was writer less sectarian. Never a reproach, never a harsh word for the old excluded people; is not their exclusion punishment enough? It is the most beautiful book there is. The pleasure that the author must have had in writing it will never be sufficiently understood. The historical value of the third Gospel is certainly less than that of the two first. Nevertheless, one remarkable fact which proves that the so-called synoptical Gospels really contain an echo of the words of Jesus, results from the comparison of the Gospel of Luke with the Acts of the Apostles. On both sides the author is the same. Yet when we compare the discourses of Jesus in the Gospels with the discourses of the Apostles in the Acts, the difference is absolute; here the charm of the most utter simplicity, there (I should say in the discourses of the Acts, especially towards the last chapters) a certain rhetoric, at times cold enough. Whence can this difference arise? Evidently because in the second case Luke makes the discourses himself, while in the first he follows a tradition. The words of Jesus were written before Luke; those of the Apostles were not. A considerable inference may be drawn from the account of the Last Supper in the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians. The most anciently written Gospel text that there is may be found here (the First Epistle to the Corinthians is of the year 57.) Now this text coincides absolutely with that of Luke. Luke then has his own value, even when he is separated from Mark and Matthew.

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Luke marks the last degree of deliberate revision at which the Gospel tradition may arrive. After him we have no more than the apocryphal Gospel based upon pure amplification and à priori supposition, without the use of any new documents. We shall see later how the texts of the kind of Mark, of Luke, and of the pseudo-Matthew were still insufficient for Christian piety, and how a new Gospel came into existence which had the pretension of surpassing them. We shall have, above all things, to explain why none of the Gospel texts succeeded in suppressing the others, and how the Christian Church exposed itself by its very good faith to the formidable objections which sprang out of their diversities.

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CHAPTER XIV. THE DOMITIAN PERSECUTION.

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THE monstrosities of the “bald Nero” made frightful progress. He reached madness, but a sombre, determined madness. Until now there had been intervals in his paroxysms; now it was a continuous frenzy. Wickedness mingled with a feverish rage, which appears to be one of the fruits of the Roman climate, the sensation of becoming ridiculous through his military failures, and by the lying triumphs which he had ordered, filled him with an implacable hatred for every honest and sensible man. He might have been called a vampire feeding greedily upon the carcase of expiring humanity; an open war was declared against all virtue. To write the biography of a great man was a crime; it seemed as though there was a wish to abolish the human intellect, and to take away the voice from conscience. Everything that was illustrious trembled; the world was full of murders and exiles. It must be said, to the honour of our poor humanity, that it went through this trial without bending. Philosophy recognised her position, and strengthened herself more than ever in this struggle against torment; there were heroic wives, devoted husbands, constant sons-in-law, faithful slaves. The family of Thrasea and Barea Soranus, was always in the front rank of the virtuous opposition. Helvidius Priscus (the son), Arulenus Rusticus, Junius Mauricus, Senecio, Pomponia Gratilla, Fannia, a whole family of great and strong souls, resisted without hope. Epictetus repeated every day in his grave voice, “Stand up and abstain. Suffering, thou wilt never make me agree that thou art an ill. Anytus and Melitus may kill me; they cannot injure me.” It was a very honourable thing for philosophy and for Christianity that under Domitian, as under Nero, they should have been persecuted in company. As Tertullian says, what such monsters condemned must have had something of good in it. It is the topstone of wickedness in a government when it does not permit the good to live even under its most resigned form. The name of philosopher implied thenceforward a profession of ascetic practices, a special kind of life, a cloak. This race of secular monks, protesting by their renunciation against the vanities of the world, were during the first century the greatest enemies of Cæsarism. Philosophy, let us say it to its glory, does not readily lend its support to the basenesses of humanity, and to the sad consequences which that baseness entails in politics. Heirs of the liberal spirit of Greece, the Stoics of the Roman epoch dreamed of virtuous democracies in a time which suited only with tyranny. The politicians whose principle it is to shut themselves up within limitations as far as possible, had naturally a strong antipathy to such a way of looking at things. Tiberius had been wont to hold the philosophers in aversion. Nero (in 66) drove away these importunates, whose presence was a perpetual reproach to his life. Vespasian (in 74) had better reasons for doing the same thing. His young dynasty was sapped every day by the republican spirit which Stoicism fostered; he did but defend himself by taking precautions against his most mortal enemies.

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Nothing more than his own personal wickedness was necessary to induce Domitian to persecute the sages. He had early entertained a hatred for men of letters: every thought was a condemnation of his crimes and of his mediocrity. In his later days he could not suffer them. A decree of the senate drove the philosophers from Rome and from Italy. Epictetus, Dionysius Chrysostom, Artemidorus, departed. The courageous Sulpicia dared to raise his voice on behalf of the banished, and to address prophetic menaces to Domitian. Pliny, the younger, escaped almost by a miracle from the punishment which his distinction and his virtue merited. The treatise Octavius composed about this time contains cruel outbursts of indignation and despair: Urbe eat nostra mitior Aulis Et Taurorum barbara tellus; Hospitis illic cæde litatur Numen superum; civis gaudet Roma cruore.

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It is not surprising that the Jews and the Christians should have suffered from the recoil of these redoubtable terrors. One circumstance rendered war inevitable: Domitian, imitating the madness of Caligula, wished to receive divine honours. The road to the Capitol was crowded with herds which were taken to his statue to be sacrificed there: the form of the letters from his Chancery commenced with Dominus et Deus noster. We must read the monstrous preface which Quintilian, one of the master spirits of the age, puts at the head of one of his volumes, on the day following that on which Domitian had charged him with the education of his adopted heirs, the sons of Flavius Clemens:—“And now it would be not to understand the honour of the celestial appreciations, to remain below my task. What care the morals require if they are to obtain the approval of the most holy of censors! What attention I shall have to give to the studies not to disappoint the expectations of a prince so eminent for eloquence as for everything else! One is not astonished that the poets, after having invoked the Muses at the outset, renew their vows when they arrive at difficult passages of their tasks . . . So also I shall be pardoned for calling all the gods to my help, and in the first place he who more than any other divinity shows himself propitious to our studies. May he inspire me with the genius which the functions to which he has called me require; may he always assist me; may he make me what he has believed me.” Such is the tone adopted by a man who was “pious” in the fashion of his times. Domitian, like all hypocritical sovereigns, showed himself a severe upholder of the old worship. The word impietas especially during his reign had generally a political signification, and was synonymous with lèse majesté. Religious indifference and tyranny had reached such a point that the Emperor was the only god whose majesty was dreaded. To love the Emperor was piety; to be suspected of opposition or even of coldness was impiety. The word was not from that suspected of having lost its religious sense. The love of the Emperor, in fact, implied the respectful adoption of a whole sacred rhetoric which no sensible man could any longer accept as serious. That man was a revolutionary who did not bow before these absurdities, which had become part of the routine of the state; now the 107


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revolutionary was the impious man. The Empire thus came from it to a sort of orthodoxy, to an official pedagogy as in China. To admit what the Emperor wished with a sort of loyalism like that which the English affect towards their sovereign and their Established Church, this was what was called religio, and gained for a man the title of pius. In such a condition of the language and of minds, Jewish and Christian monotheism must have appeared a supreme impiety. The religion of the Jew and of the Christian attached itself to a supreme God, the worship of whom was a robbery of the profane god. To worship God was to give a rival to the Emperor; to worship other gods than those of whom the Emperor was the legal patron, constituted a yet worse insult. The Christians, or rather the pious Jews, believed themselves obliged to make a more or less evident sign of protest when passing before the temples; at least they refrained absolutely from the kiss which it was the custom of pious Pagans to wave to the sacred edifice in passing before it. Christianity, by its cosmopolitan and revolutionary principle, was certainly “the enemy of the gods, of the emperors, of the laws, of morals, of all nature.” The best of the emperors will not always know how to disentangle this sophism, and, without knowing it, almost without wishing it, will be persecutors. A narrow and wicked spirit, like that of Domitian, became such with pedantry and even with a sort of voluptuousness.

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The Roman policy had always made in religious legislation a fundamental difference. Roman statesmen saw no harm in a provincial practising his religion in his own country without any spirit of proselytism. When this same provincial wished to worship in his own way in Italy, and, above all, in Rome, the matter became more delicate; the eyes of the true Roman were offended by the spectacle of fantastic ceremonies, and from time to time the police come to sweep out what these aristocrats regarded as ignominies. The foreign religions were besides extremely attractive to the lower classes, and it was regarded as a necessity of state to keep them within due limits. But what was held to be altogether grave was that Roman citizens, persons of importance, should abandon the religion of Rome for Oriental superstitions. That was a crime against the state. The Roman was yet the basis of the Empire. Now the Roman was not complete without the Roman religion; for him to go over to a foreign religion was to be guilty of treason to his country. Thus a Roman citizen could never be initiated into Druidism. Domitian, who aspired to the character of a restorer of the worship of the Latin gods, would not lose so fine an opportunity of delivering himself to his supreme joy, which was to punish. We know with certainty in effect, that a great number of persons having embraced Jewish customs (the Christians were frequently placed in this category) were brought to judgment under the accusation of impiety or atheism. As under Nero, calumnies uttered by false brethren were perhaps the cause of the evil. Some were condemned to death; others were exiled or deprived of their goods. There were some apostacies. In the year 95 Flavius Clemens was Consul. In the last days of his Consulate Domitian put him to death on the slightest suspicion, coming from the basest informers. These suspicions were assuredly political, but the pretext was religion. Clemens had,

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without doubt, manifested little zeal for the Pagan forms with which every civil act in Rome was accompanied: possibly he had abstained from some ceremony regarded as of capital importance. Nothing more was required to justify the issue of a charge of impiety against him and against Flavia Domitilla. Clemens was put to death. As to Flavia Domitilla, she was exiled to the island of Pandataria, which had already been the scene of the exile of Julia, the daughter of Augustus, of Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, of Octavia, the wife of Nero. This was the crime for which Domitian paid most dearly. Domitilla, whatever was the decree of her initiation into Christianity, was a Roman woman. To avenge her husband, to save her children, compromised by the caprices of a fantastic monster, appeared to be a duty. From Pandataria she continued to maintain relations with the numerous body of slaves and freedmen whom she had at Rome, and who appear to have been strongly attached to her. Of all the victims of the persecution of Domitian, we know one only by name—that of Flavius Clemens. The ill-will of the Government appears to have been directed far more against the Romans who were attracted to Judaism or to Christianity than against the Jews and Oriental Christians established in Rome. It does not appear that any of the presbyters or episcopi of the Church suffered martyrdom. Among the Christians who suffered, none appear to have been delivered to the beasts in the amphitheatre, for almost all belonged to what were relatively the upper classes of society. As under Nero, Rome was the principal scene of these violences; there were, however, troubles in the provinces. Some Christians faltered and left the Church, where for the moment they had found consolation for their souls, but where it was too hard to remain. Others, however, were heroic in charity, spent their goods to feed the saints, and took upon themselves the chains of those whom they judged to be more valuable to the Church than themselves. The year 95 was not, it may be owned, as solemn a time for the Church as the year 64, but it had its importance. It was like a second consecration of Rome. After an interval of thirty-one years the maddest and wickedest of men appeared to lay himself out for the destruction of the Church of Jesus, and in reality strengthened it so that the apologists could put forth this specious argument, “All monsters have hated us; therefore we are the true.”

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It was probably the information which Domitian had of this remark upon Judeo-Christianity which told him of the rumours which circulated concerning the continued existence of descendants of the ancient dynasty of Judah. The imagination of the Agadists gave itself the rein on this subject, and attention, which for centuries had been diverted from the family of David, was now strongly attracted to it. Domitian took umbrage at this, and commanded all who bore that name to be put to death; but soon it was pointed out to him that amongst these supposed descendants of the antique royal race of Jerusalem there were people whose inoffensive character ought assuredly to place them beyond suspicion. There were the grandsons of Jude, the brother of Jesus, peaceably retired in Batanea. The defiant Emperor had besides heard tell of the coming triumph of Christ; all that disquieted him. An evocatus came to seek out the holy people in Syria; they were two; they were

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taken to the Emperor. Domitian asked them first if they were the descendants of David. They answered that they were. The Emperor then questioned them as to their means of living. “Between us,” they said, “we possess only 9000 denarii, of which each of us takes half. And that property we possess not in money but in the form of a piece of land of some thirty acres upon which we pay the taxes, and we live by the labour of our hands.” Then they showed their hands covered with callosities, and hardened, and red with toil. Domitian questioned them concerning Christ and his kingdom; his future appearance, and the times and places of his appearance. They answered that his kingdom was not of this world; that it was celestial, angelic; that it would be revealed at the end of time, when Christ should come in his glory to judge the quick and the dead, and render to each man according to his works. Domitian could feel only contempt for such simplicity; he set at liberty the two grand-nephews of Jesus. It appears that that simple idealism completely reassured him as to the political dangers of Christianity, and that he gave orders to cease the persecution of these dreamers. Certain indications in effect lead to the belief that Domitian towards the end of his life relaxed his severities. It is, however, impossible to be certain in this matter; for other witnesses lead us to think that the situation of the Church was improved only after the advent of Nerva. At the moment when Clemens wrote his letter, the fire appears to have diminished. It was like the morrow of a battle; they count those who have fallen, those who are still in chains are pitied; but they are far from believing that all is over. God is entreated to defeat the perverse designs of the Gentiles, and to deliver his people from those who hate them without a cause.

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The persecution of Domitian struck at Jews and Christians alike. The Flavian house thus put the topstone to its crimes, and became for the two branches of the house of Israel the most flagrant representation of impiety. It is not impossible that Josephus may have fallen a victim to the last fury of the dynasty which he had flattered. After the year 93 or 94 we hear no more of him. The works which he contemplated in 93 were not written. In that year, his life had been in danger through the curse of the times—the informers. Twice he escaped the danger, and his accusers were even punished; but it was the abominable habit of Domitian in such a case to revoke the acquittal which he had pronounced, and, after having chastised the informer, to slay the accused. The frightful rage for murder which Domitian showed in 95 and 96 against everyone connected with the Jewish world and family, scarcely permits it to be believed that he would have allowed a man to go unharmed who had spoken of Titus in a tone of panegyric (a crime in his eyes the most unpardonable of all), and had praised himself only casually. The favour of Domitia whom he detested, and whom he had resolved to put to death, was, besides, a sufficient grievance. Josephus in 96 was only 59. If he had lived under the tolerant reign of Nerva, he would have continued his writings, and probably explained some of the insinuations which the fear of the tyrant had imposed. Have we a monument of these sombre months of terror, where all the worshippers of the true God dreamed only of martyrdom, in the discourse “on the Empire of Reason,” which bears in the

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MSS. the name of Josephus? The thoughts, at least, are very much those of the times in which we are. A strong soul is mistress of the body which she animates, and allows herself to be conquered only by the most cruel punishments. The author proves his position by the examples of Eleazer and of the mother who, during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanius, courageously endured death with her seven sons—histories which may also be found in the sixth and seventh chapters of the Second Book of Maccabees.

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Notwithstanding the declamatory tone, and certain ornaments which recall a little too strongly the lesson of philosophy, the book contains noble doctrines. God embodies in himself the eternal order which is made manifest to man by reason; reason is the law of life; duty consists in preferring it to the passions. As in the Second Book of Maccabees, the idea of future rewards and punishments is altogether spiritual. The righteous dead live to God for God in the sight of God, Ζῶσι τῷθεῷ. God as the author is at the same time the absolute God of philosophy, and the national God of Israel. The Jew ought to die for his Law, first, because it is the Law of his fathers, then because it is divine and true. The meats forbidden by the Law have been forbidden because they are injurious to man; in any case, to break the Law in small things is as culpable as to do so in great, since in the two cases the authority of reason is equally misunderstood. It is easy to see how such a way of looking at things connects that of Josephus and of the Jewish philosophers. From the wrath which breaks forth in every page against tyrants, and from the images of tortures which haunt the mind of the author, the book evidently dates from the time of the last outbreak of Domitian’s fury. It is by no means impossible that the composition of this noble writing may have been the consolation of the last days of Josephus, when, almost certain of dying under punishment, he sought to gather together all the reasons that a wise man might find for not fearing death. The book succeeded amongst the Christians; under the title of Fourth Book of Maccabees it was almost received into the canon; many Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament contain it. Less fortunate, however, than the Book of Judith, it was not able to keep its place; the Second Book of Maccabees afforded no sufficient reason for placing it at its side. The interesting point for us is that we may there see the first type of a species of literature which was later much cultivated,—exhortations to martyrdom, in which the author exalts to encourage the sufferers the example of feeble beings who have shown themselves heroic, or still better of these Acta martyrum, now pieces of rhetoric having edification as their aid, proceeding by oratorical amplification, without any care for historical truth, and finding in the hideous details of the antique the ferments of a sombre voluptuousness and the means of emotion.

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An indistinct echo of all these events may be found in the Jewish traditions. In the month of September or October four elders of Judea, Rabbi Gamaliel, patriarch of the tribunal of Jabneh; Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah; Rabbi Joshua; Rabbi Aquiba, later so celebrated, appeared at Rome. The journey is described in detail: every evening, because of the season, they anchored in some port; on the day of the Feast of Tabernacles the Rabbins found the means to erect on the bridge of

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the boat a hut of foliage, which the wind carried away the next day; the time of the navigation was occupied in discussing the manner of paying title, and of supplying the place of the loulab (palm-branch with myrtle, used at this feast) in a country where there were no palm trees. At a hundred and twenty miles from the city the travellers heard a hollow murmur; it was the sound of the Capitol. All then shed tears. Aquiba alone burst into laughter. “Why do you not weep,” said the Rabbins, “at seeing how happy and tranquil are the idolators who sacrifice to false gods, while the sanctuary of our God has been consumed by fire, and serves as a den for the beasts of the field?” “Well,” said Aquiba, “it is that which makes me laugh. If God grants so many good things to those who offend him, what destiny awaits those who do his will, and to whom the kingdom belongs?” Whilst these four elders were at Rome the senate of the Emperor decreed the extermination of the Jews throughout the world. A senator, a pious man (Clemenes?) reveals this redoubtable secret to Gamaliel. The wife of the senator, even more pious than he (Domitilla??) advises him to kill himself by sucking a poison which he keeps in his ring, which will save the Jews (how one does not see). Later on, the conviction spread that this senator was circumcised, or, according to the figurative expression, “that the vessel had not quitted the port without paying the impost” According to another account, the Cæsar, enemy of the Jews, said to the great of his empire: “If one has an ulcer on the foot, should he cut off his foot or keep it at the risk of suffering?” All were for amputation, except Katia hen Shalom. This last was put to death by order of the Emperor and died whilst saying, “I am a ship which has paid its taxes; I may set sail.” 161

There are plenty of vague images here and memories of half sane people. Some of the controversies of the four doctors at Rome are reported. “If God disapproves idolatry,” they were asked, “why does he not destroy it?” “But God must then destroy the sun, moon, and stars.” “No; he might destroy useless idols and leave the useful ones.” “But that would at once make those things divine which he has not destroyed. The world goes its own way. The stolen seed grows like any other; the unchaste woman is not sterile because the child which shall be born of her is a bastard.” In preaching, one of the four travellers utters this thought: “God is not like earthly kings, who make laws, and do not themselves observe them.” A Min (a Judeo-Christian?) heard these words, and on coming out of the hall said to the doctor, “Why does not God observe the Sabbath; the world goes on just as usual on Saturday?” “Is it not lawful on the Sabbath day to move whatever is in one’s house?” “Yes,” said the Min. “Well, then, the whole world is the house of God.”

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CHAPTER XV. CLEMENS ROMANUS—PROGRESS OF THE PRESBYTERIATE.

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THE most correct lists of the Bishops of Rome, forcing a little the signification of the word bishop, for times so remote place after Anenclet a certain Clement, who from the similarity of his name and the nearness of his time has frequently been confounded with Flavius Clemens. The name is not rare in the Judeo-Christian world. We may in strictness suppose a relationship of patron and client between our Clement and Flavius Clemens. But we must absolutely set aside both the theory of certain modern critics who insist on seeing in Bishop Clement only a fictitious personage, a double of Flavius Clemens, and the error which at various times comes to light in the ecclesiastical tradition, according to which Bishop Clement was a member of the Flavian family. Clemens Romanus was not merely a real personage, he was a personage of the first rank, a true chief of the Church, a bishop before the Episcopate was definitely constituted; I would almost dare to say a pope, if the word were not too great an anachronism in this place. His authority was recognised as the greatest in all Italy, in Greece, in Macedonia, during the last decade of the first century. At the expiration of the apostolic age he was like an apostle, an epigon in the great generation of the disciples of Jesus, one of the pillars of that Church of Rome, which, after the destruction of the Church of Jerusalem, became more and more the centre of Christianity. Everything leads to the belief that Clement was of Jewish origin. His familiarity with the Bible, the turn of style in certain passages of his Epistle, the use which he makes of the Book of Judith and of apocryphal writings such as the assumption of Moses, do not agree with the idea of a converted Pagan. On the other hand, he appears to be little of a Hebraiser. It appears then that he was born in Rome of one of those Jewish families which had inhabited the capital of the world for many generations. His knowledge of cosmography and of profane history presuppose a careful education. It is admitted that he had been in relation with the Apostles, especially with Peter, though on this point the proof is perhaps hardly decisive. What is indubitable is the high rank which he held in the spiritual hierarchy of the Church of his time, and the unequalled credit which he enjoyed. His approval made law. All parties claimed him, and wished to shelter themselves under his authority. A thick veil hides his private opinions from us; his Epistle is a fine neutral fragment with which the disciples of Paul and the disciples of Peter might equally content themselves. It is probable that he was one of the most energetic agents in the great work which was about to be accomplished, I mean the posthumous reconciliation of Peter and Paul, and the fusion of the two parties, without the union of which the work of Christ must have perished. The extreme importance at which Clement had arrived results, above all things, from the vast apocryphal literature which is attributed to him. When, towards the year 140, an attempt was made to gather together into one body of writing, clothed with an ecclesiastical character, the 113


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Judeo-Christian traditions concerning Peter and his apostolate, Clement was chosen as the supposed author of the work. When it was desired to codify the ancient ecclesiastical customs, and to make the collection thus formed a Corpus of “Apostolic Constitutions,” it was Clement who guaranteed that apocryphal work. Other writings, all having more or less connection with the establishment of a canon law, were equally attributed to him. The fabricator of apocryphas endeavours to give weight to his forgeries. The name which he puts at the head of his compositions is always that of a celebrity. The sanction of Clement thus appears to us as the highest which can be imagined in the second century to recommend a book. Thus in the Pastor of the psuedo-Hermas, Clement’s special function is assigned as being that of sending the books newly issued in Rome to the other Churches, and of causing them to be accepted. His supposed literature, whether he must be taken as assuming personal responsibility for it or not, is a literature of authority, inculcating on every page the hierarchy, obedience to the priests, to the bishops. Every phrase which is attributed to him is a law, a decretal. The right of speaking to the Universal Church is freely accorded to him. He is the first typical “Pope” whom ecclesiastical history presents. His lofty personality, increased yet more by legend, was, after that of Peter, the holiest image of Christian Rome. His venerable face was for succeeding ages that of a grave and gentle legislator, a perpetual preacher of submission and respect. Clement passed through the persecution of Domitian without suffering from it. When the severities abated, the Church of Rome renewed its relations with the outer world. Already the idea of a certain primacy of that Church began to make itself felt. The right of advising the Churches and of adjusting their differences was accorded to it. Such privileges; it may at least be believed, were accorded to Peter and to his immediate disciples. Now, a closer and closer bond was established between St Peter and Rome. Grave dissensions had torn the Church of Corinth. That Church had scarcely changed since the days of St Paul. There was the same spirit of pride, of disputatiousness, of frivolity. We feel that the principal opposition to the hierarchy dwelt in this Greek spirit, always mobile, frivolous, undisciplined, not knowing how to reduce a crowd to the condition of a flock. The women, the children, were in full rebellion. The transcendental doctors imagined that they possessed concerning everything deep significations, mystical secrets, analogous to the gift of tongues and the discerning of spirits. Those who were honoured with these supernatural gifts despised the elders and aspired to replace them. Corinth had a respectable presbyteriate, but one which never aimed at an exalted mysticism. The illuminati pretended to throw it into the shade, and to put themselves into its place; some of the elders were even deprived. The struggle of the established hierarchy and of personal relations began, and the conflict filled all the history of the Church, the privileged soul finding it wrong that, in spite of the favours with which he had been honoured, a homely clergy, strangers to the spiritual life, should govern it officially. Not without a certain likeness to Protestantism, the rebels of Corinth formed themselves into a separate Church, or at least distributed the Eucharist in other than consecrated places. The Eucharist had always been a stumbling block to the Church of Corinth. That Church had its rich and its poor; it accommodated itself with especial difficulty to the mystery of equality. At last the innovators, proud to excess of

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their exalted virtue, raised chastity to the point of depreciating marriage. This was, as will be seen, the heresy of individual mysticism maintaining the rights of the spirit against authority, pretending to raise itself above the level of the faithful, and of the ordinary clergy, in the name of its direct relations with the Divinity. The Roman Church, consulted on these internal troubles, answered with admirable good sense. The Roman Church was then above all things the Church of order, of subordination, of rule. Its fundamental principle was that humility and submission were of more value than the most sublime of gifts. The Epistle addressed to the Church of Corinth was anonymous, but one of the most ancient traditions has it that Clement’s was the pen which wrote it. Three of the most considerable of the elders—Claudius Ephebus, Valerius Biton, and Fortunatus—were charged to carry the letter, and received full powers from the Church at Rome to bring about a reconciliation. 166

The Church of God Abiding in Rome to the Church of God in Corinth, to the Elect sanctified by the will of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, grace and peace be upon you in abundance from God Almighty by Jesus Christ. The misfortunes, the unforeseen catastrophes which have fallen upon us, blow upon blow, have, brethren, been the reason that we occupied ourselves but slowly with the questions which you have addressed to us, dear brethren, touching the impious and detestable revolt, cursed of the elect of God, which a small number of insolent and daring persons have raised up and carried to such a point of extravagance, that your name so famous, so venerable, and so beloved of all, has suffered great injury. Who was he who having lived among you did not esteem your virtue and the firmness of your faith? Who did not admire the wisdom and the Christian moderation of your piety? Who did not publish the largeness of your hospitality? Who did not esteem you happy in the perfection and soundness of your knowledge? You did all things without acceptation of persons, and you walked according to the laws of God, obedient to your leaders. You rendered due honour to the elders, you warned the young men to be grave and sober, and the women to act in all things with a pure and chaste conscience, loving their husbands as they ought to do, dwelling in the rule of submission, applying themselves to the government of their houses with great modesty. You were all humble-minded, free from boastings, disposed rather to submit yourselves than to cause others to submit to you, to give than to receive. Content with the sacraments of Christ, and applying yourselves carefully to his word, you kept it in your hearts, and had always his sufferings before your eyes. Thus you rejoiced in the sweetness of a profound peace; you had an insatiable desire to do good, and the Holy Ghost was fully poured out upon you. Fitted with good-will, with zeal, and with an holy confidence, you stretched forth your hands towards Almighty God, praying for pardon for your involuntary sins. You strove day and night for all the community, so that the number of the elect of God was saved by the force of piety and of conscience. You were sincere and innocent, without resentment of injuries. All rebellion, all divisions you held in horror. You wept over the fall of your neighbours; you esteemed their faults as your own. A virtuous and respectable life was your adornment, and you did all things in the fear of God; his commandments were written upon the tables of your hearts, you were in glory and abundance, and in you was accomplished that which was written:—“The well-beloved bath eaten and drunk; he has been in abundance; he has

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waxed fat and kicked.” (Deut. xxxii. 15.) Hence have come jealousies and hatred disputes and sedition, persecution and disorder, war and captivity. Thus the vilest persons have been raised above the most worthy; the foolish against 167

the wise; the young against the old. Thus justice and peace have been driven away; since the fear of God has fallen off, since the faith is darkened, since all will not follow the laws, nor govern themselves according to the maxims of Jesus Christ, but follow their own evil desires, abandoning themselves to unjust and impious jealousies, by which death first came into the world.

After having quoted many sad examples of jealousy, taken from the Old Testament, he adds:— But let us leave here these ancient examples and come to the strong men who have lately fought. Let us take the illustrious examples of our own generation. It was through jealousies and discord that the great men who were the pillars of the Church have been persecuted, and have fought to the death. Let us place before our eyes the holy Apostles, Peter, for example, who, through an unjust jealousy suffered not once or twice but many times, and who, having thus accomplished his martyrdom, has gone to the place of glory which was due to him. It was through jealousy and discord that Paul has shown how far patience can be carried; seven times in chains, banished, stoned, and after having been the herald of the Truth in the east and in the west, he has received the noble reward of his faith, after having taught justice to the whole world and being come to the very extremity of west. Having thus accomplished his martyrdom before the earthly power, he was delivered from this world, and has gone to that holy place, giving to all of us a great example of patience. To those men whose life has been holy has been joined a great company of the elect, who, always through jealousy, have endured many insults and torments, leaving amongst us an illustrious example. It was finally pursued by jealousy that the poor women, the Danaides and the Dirces, after having suffered terrible and monstrous indignities, have reached the goal in the sacred course of faith, and have received a noble recompense, feeble in body though they were.

Order and obedience are the supreme law of the Church. It is better to displease imprudent and senseless men who raise themselves up and who glorify themselves through pride in their discourses, than to displease God. Let us respect our superiors, honour the elders, instruct the young in the fear of God, chasten our wives for their good. Let the amiable habit of chastity display itself in their conduct let 168

them show a simple and true gentleness; let them show by their silence that they know how to rule their tongues,—that, instead of allowing their hearts to be carried away by their inclinations, they testify with holiness to an equal friendship for all who fear God. . . . Let us consider the soldiers who serve under our sovereigns; with what order, what punctuality, what submission do they obey. All are not prefects, nor tribunes, nor centurions, but each in his rank obeys the orders of the Emperor and of the chiefs. The great cannot exist without the small, nor the small without the great. In everything there is a mixture of diverse elements, and it is because of that mixture that things go on. Let us take our bodies for an example. The head without the feet is nothing; the feet are nothing without the head. The smallest of our organs are necessary, and serve the whole body; all work together and obey one same principle of subordination for the preservation of all. Let each then submit to his neighbour according to the order in which he has been placed by the grace of Christ Jesus. Let not the strong neglect the weak, let the weak respect the strong; let the rich be generous to the poor, and the poor thank God for having given him one to supply his needs. Let the wise man show his wisdom not by discourses,

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but by good works; let not the humble bear witness to himself, let him leave that care to others. Let him who preserves the purity of the flesh not exalt himself therefore, seeing that he has from another the gift of continence.

The Divine Service ought to be celebrated in the places and at the hours fixed by the ordained ministers, as in the Temple of Jerusalem. All power, all ecclesiastical rule, comes from God. The Apostles have evangelised us on the part of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ had received his mission from God. Christ has been sent by God, and the Apostles have been sent by Christ. The two things have then been regularly done by the will of God. Provided with instruction from the Master, persuaded by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthened in the faith in the Word of God by the confirmation of the Holy Ghost, the Apostles went out preaching the approach of the Kingdom of God. Preaching thus alike in the country and in the cities, they chose those who had been the first-fruits of their apostolate, and after having proved them by the Spirit, established them Episcopi and Diaconi of those who believe. And this was no novelty, for the Scripture had long spoken of Episcopi 169

and Diaconi, since it saith in one place, “I will establish their Episcopi on the foundations of justice and their Diaconi on the bases of faith” (Isa. lx. 17). Our Apostles, enlightened by our Lord Jesus Christ, knew perfectly that there would be competition for the title of Episcopos. This is why they conferred that title in their perfect prescience on those whom we have named and prescribed, that after their death other approved men should assume their functions. These then who have been established by the Apostles or afterwards by other excellent men with the consent of all the Church, and who have served the flock of Jesus Christ without reproach, humbly, peaceably, honourably, to whom all have borne good testimony during a long time, we do not think it just to cast out of the ministry, for we could not without grave fault eject from the Episcopate those who worthily present the sacred offerings. Happy are the elders who have finished their career before us and are dead in holiness, and with fruit I They at least have no fear lest any should come and drive them from the place to which they have been called. We see, in a word, that you have deprived some who lived well in the ministry, of which office they acquitted themselves without reproach and with honour. Have we not the same God, the same Christ, the same Spirit of Grace poured out upon us? Why shall we tear away, why shall we cut off, the members of Christ? Why should we make war upon our own body, and come to such a point of madness as to forget that we are all members one of another? Your schism has driven away many persons, it has discouraged others, it has cast certain into doubt, and afflicted all of us; nevertheless, your rebellion continues. Take the Epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle. What is the first thing of which he writes to you at the beginning of his Gospel? Certainly the Spirit of Truth dictated to him what he commanded you touching Cephas, Apollos, and himself. Then there were divisions amongst you, but those divisions were less guilty than the divisions of to-day. Your choice was divided amongst authorised Apostles and a man whom they had approved. Now consider who are those who have led you astray, and have injured that reputation for fraternal love for which you were venerated. It is shameful, my beloved, it is very shameful and unworthy of Christian piety to hear it said that that Church of Corinth, so firm, so ancient, is in revolt against its elders because of one or two persons. And this report has come not only to us, but to those who hold us in but little goodwill, so that the name of the Lord is blasphemed through your imprudence, and you create perils for yourselves. . . Such a faithful one is specially gifted to explain the secrets of the gnose (tongues); he has the wisdom to discern the discourse; he is pure in his actions, let him humiliate himself so that he may be greater,

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The best thing the authors of these troubles can do is to go away. Is there amongst you anyone who is generous, tender, and charitable, let him say, “If I am the cause of the rebellion, the quarrel, the schisms, I will retire, I will go where you will, I will do what the majority order, I ask only one thing, which is, that the flock of Christ may be at peace with the elders who have been established.” He who will thus use himself will acquire a great glory in the Lord, and will be made welcome wherever he may go. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that therein is.” See what they have done, and what they yet will do, who do the will of God, which never leads to repentance.

Kings and pagan chiefs have braved death in time of pestilence, to save their fellow-citizens; others have exiled themselves to put an end to civil war. “We know that many amongst us have delivered themselves to chains, that they might deliver others.” If those who have caused the revolt recognise their errors, it is not to us, it is to God, to whom they will yield. All ought to receive with joy the correction of the Church. You then who have begun the rebellion, submit yourselves to the elders, and receive the correction in the spirit of penitence, bending the knees of your hearth. Learn to submit yourselves, renouncing the vain and insolent boldness of your tongues; for it is better that you should be small but esteemed in the flock of Christ, than that you should keep up the appearance of superiority, and be deprived of your hopes in Christ.

The submission which is due to the bishops and elders, the Christian owes to the powers of the earth. At the moment of the most diabolical atrocities of Nero, we heard Paul and Peter declare that the power of this monster came from God. Clement, in the very days when Domitian was guilty of the greatest cruelties against the Church, and against the human race, held him equally as being the lieutenant of God. In a prayer which he addresses to God, he thus expresses himself:— It is thou, supreme Master, who by thy great and unspeakable power hast given to our sovereigns and to those 171

who govern us upon earth the power of royalty. Knowing the glory and the honour which thou hast distributed to them, we submit ourselves to them, thus avoiding placing ourselves in contradiction with thy will. Give to them, O Lord, health, peace, concord, stability, that they may exercise without hindrance the sovereignty which thou has confided to them. For it is thou, Heavenly Master, King of the Worlds, who hast given to the children of men the glory, and the honour, and the power over all that there is on the surface of the earth. Direct, O Lord! their wills for good, and according to that which is pleasing to thee, so that exercising in peace, with gentleness and piety, the power which thou has given, they may find thee propitious.

Such is this document, a remarkable monument of the practical wisdom of the Church of Rome, of its profound policy, of its spirit of government. Peter and Paul are there more and more reconciled; both are right; the dispute about Law and works is pacified; the vague expressions “our apostles,” “our pillars,” mask the memory of past struggles. Although a warm admirer of Paul, the author is profoundly a Jew. Jesus for him is simply “the child beloved of God;” “the great High Priest,” “the chief of Christians.” Far from breaking with Judaism, he preserves in its integrity the privilege of

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Israel; only a new chosen people amongst the Gentiles is joined with Israel. All the antique prescriptions preserve their force, even though they have ceased to bear their original meaning. Whilst Paul abrogates, Clement preserves and transforms. What he desires above all things is concord, uniformity, rule, order in the Church as in nature, and in the Roman Empire. Let everyone obey in his rank: this is the order of the world. The small cannot exist without the great, nor the great without the small; the life of the body is the result of the common action of all the members. Obedience is then the summing-up, the synonym of the word duty. The inequality of men, the subordination of one to the other, is the law of God. 172

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The history of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is the history of a triple abdication, the community of the faithful remitting first all its powers to the hands of the elders or presbyteri; the presbyteral body joining in a single personage, who is the episcopos; then the episcopi effacing themselves in the presence of one of them, who is pope. This last process, if we may so describe it, was effected only in our own days. The creation of the Episcopate is the work of the second century. The absorption of the Church by the presbyteri was accomplished before the end of the first. In the Epistle of Clement of Rome it is not yet the episcopate, it is the presbytery, which is in question. Not a trace of a presbyteros superior to his fellows is to be found. But the author proclaims aloud that the presbyteriate, the clergy, are before the people. The Apostles, in establishing Churches, have chosen, by the inspiration of the Spirit, “the bishops and deacons of future believers.” The powers emanating from the Apostles have been transmitted by a regular succession. No Church has a right to deprive its elders. The privilege of riches counts for nothing in the Church. In the same way, those who are favoured with mystical gifts ought to be the most submissive. The great problem is approached: who form the Church? Is it the people? or the clergy? or the inspired? The question had already been asked in the time of St Paul, who solved it in the right way by mutual charity. Our Epistle defines the question in a purely Catholic sense. The apostolic title is everything; the right of the people is reduced to nothing. It may then be said that Catholicism had its origin in Rome, since the Church of Rome traced out its first rule. Precedence does not belong to spiritual gifts, to science, to distinction; it belongs to the hierarchy, to the powers transmitted by the channel of canonical ordination, which stretches back to the apostolate in an unbroken chain. We feel that a free Church such as Jesus had conceived, and as St Paul still admitted, was an anarchical utopia, which could not be looked for in the future. With gospel liberty there would have been disorder: it was not seen that with the hierarchy would come uniformity and death. From the literary point of view the Epistle of Clement is somewhat weak and soft. It is the first monument of that prolix style, charged with superlatives, smelling of the preacher, which to this day remains that of the Papal Bulls. The imitation of St Paul is palpable; the author is governed by his memories of the sacred Scriptures. Almost every line contains an allusion to the writings of the Old Testament. Clement shows himself singularly pre-occupied with the new Bible, which is in course of formation. The Epistle to the Hebrews, which was a sort of inheritance of the Church of

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Rome, evidently formed his habitual reading; we may say the same of the other great Epistles of St Paul. His allusions to the Gospel texts appear to be divided between Matthew, Mark, and Luke; we might almost say that he had the same Gospel matter as we, but distributed without doubt otherwise than as we have it. The allusions to the Epistles of James and Peter are doubtful. But the allusions to the Jewish apocryphas, to which Clement accords the same authority as to the writings of the Old Testament, are striking: Judith an apocrypha of Ezekiel, the assumption of Moses, perhaps also the prayer of Manasseh. Like the Apostle Jude, Clement admitted into the Bible all those recent products of Jewish imagination or passion, inferior though they are to the old Hebrew literature, but more fitted than this last of pleasing at the time, by their tone of pathetic eloquence and of lively piety.

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The Epistle of Clement attained besides the object for which it had been written. Order was re-established in the Church of Corinth. The lofty pretensions of the spiritual doctors were abated. Such was the ardent faith of these little conventicles, that they submitted to the greatest humiliations rather than quit the Church. But the work had a success which extended far beyond the limits of the Church of Corinth. There has been no writing more imitated, more quoted. Polycarpus, or the author of the Epistle attributed to him, the author of the apocryphal Epistles of Ignatius, the author of the fragment falsely called the Second Epistle of Clement, borrow from it as from a document known almost by heart. The treatise was read in the Churches like inspired Scripture. It took its place amongst the additions to the Canon of the New Testament. In one of the most ancient manuscripts of the Bible (the Codex Alexandrinus), it is found at the end of the books of the new alliance, and as one of them. The trace left at Rome by Bishop Clement was profound from the most ancient times; a Church consecrated his memory in the valley between the Cœlius and the Esquiline, in the district where, according to tradition, the paternal house was placed, and where others, through a feeling of secular hesitation, wished to recall the memory of Flavius Clemens. We shall see him later become the hero of a surprising romance, very popular in Rome, and entitled “the Recognitions,” because his father, his mother, and his brothers, bewailed as dead, are found again, and recognise each other. With him was associated a certain Grapte, charged together with him with the government and teaching of widows and orphans. In the half light in which he remains enveloped, and, as it were, lost in the luminous haze of a fine historic distance, Clement is one of the great figures of nascent Christianity. Some vague rays come only out of the mystery which surrounds him; one might call him a saint’s head in an old half-effaced fresco of Giotto, still recognisable by its golden aureole and by some vague tints of a pure and gentle light.

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CHAPTER XVI END OF THE FLAVII—NERVA—RECRUDESCENCE OF THE APOCALYPSES.

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THE death of Domitian followed closely upon that of Flavius and the persecution of the Christians. There were between these events relations which are hardly to be explained. “He had been able,” says Juvenal, “to deprive Rome with impunity of her most illustrious souls, without anyone arming himself to avenge them, but he perished when he became terrible to the cobblers. Behold what lost a man stained with the blood of the Lamia!” It seems probable that Domitilla and Flavius Clemens entered into the plot. Domitilla may have been recalled from Pandataria in the last months of Domitian. There was, however, a general conspiracy around the monster. Domitian felt it, and, like all egotists, he was very exigent as to the fidelity of others. He caused Epaphroditus to be put to death for having helped Nero to kill himself, in order to show what crime the freedman commits who raises his hand against his master, even with a good intention. Domitia his wife, all the people of his household, trembled, and resolved to anticipate the blow which threatened them. With them was associated Stephanus, a freedman of Domitilla, and steward of her household. As he was very robust, he offered himself for the attack, body to body. On the 18th September, towards eleven o’clock in the morning, Stephanus, with his arm in a sling, presented himself to hand to the Emperor a memorial on a conspiracy which he pretended to have discovered. The chamberlain Parthenius, who was in the plot, admitted him, and closed the door. Whilst Domitian read with attention, Stephanus drew a dagger from his bandage and stabbed him in the groin. Domitian had time to cry to the little page who attended to the altar of the Lares to give him the sword which was under his pillow and to call for help. The boy ran to the bed’s head, but found only the hilt. Parthenius had foreseen all, and had closed up the ways of escape. The struggle was sufficiently long. Domitian sought to draw the dagger from the wound, and then with his fingers half cut off he tore at the eyes of the murderer, and succeeded in throwing him to the ground and placing himself upon him. Parthenius then caused the other conspirators to enter, who finished off the wretch. It was time; the guards arrived an instant later, and slew Stephanus. The soldiers, whom Domitian had covered with shame but whose pay he had increased, wished to avenge him, and proclaimed him Divus. The senate was sufficiently strong to prevent this last ignominy. It caused all his statues to be broken or melted, his name to be effaced from the inscriptions, and his triumphal arches to be thrown down. It was ordered that he should be buried like a gladiator; but his nurse succeeded in carrying away his corpse, and in secretly uniting his ashes to those of the other members of his family in the temple of the gens Flavia. This house, raised up by the chance of the revolutions to such strange destinies, fell thenceforward into great discredit. The persons of merit and virtue whom it yet contained were

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forgotten. The proud aristocracy, honest and of high nobility, who were about to reign could only feel the profoundest aversion for the relics of a middle-class family whose last chief had been the object of their just execration. During the whole of the second century nothing is heard of any Flavius. Flavia Domitilla ended her life in obscurity. It is not known what became of her two sons, whom Domitian had intended for the Empire. One indication leads to the belief that the posterity of Domitilla continued until the end of the third century. That house always preserved, it would appear, an attachment to Christianity. Its family sepulchre, situated on the Via Ardeatina, became one of the most ancient Christian catacombs. It is distinguished from all the others by its spacious approaches; its vestibule in the classical style, fully open to the public road; the size of its principal hall, destined for the reception of the sarcophagi; the elegance and the altogether profane character of the decorative paintings on the vault of this hall. if one holds to the frontispiece, everything recalls Pompeii, or, still better, the Villa of Livy, ad gallinas albas, in the Flaminian Way. In proportion as one descends the underground temple (hypogea) the aspect grows more and more Christian. It is then quite conceivable that this beautiful sepulchre may have received its first consecration from Domitilla, whose family must have been in a great part Christian. In the third century the approaches were enlarged and a collegiate schola was constructed, designed probably for agapes or sacred feasts. The circumstances which brought the old Nerva to the Empire are obscure. The conspirators who killed the tyrant had, without doubt, a preponderating share in the choice. A reaction against the abominations of the preceding reign was inevitable; the conspirators, however, having taken part in the principal events of the reign, did not want too strong a reaction. Nerva was an excellent man, but reserved, timid, and carrying the taste for half measures almost to excess. The army desired the punishment of the murderers of Domitian; the honest party in the Senate wished for the punishment of those who had been the ministers of the crimes of the last government. Dragged about between these opposing requirements, Nerva often appeared weak. One day at his table were found united the illustrious Junius Mauricius, who had risked his life for liberty, and the ignoble Veientus, one of the men who had done the greatest evil under Domitian. The conversation fell upon Catullus Messalinus, the most abhorred of the informers:—“What would this Catullus do if he were alive?” said Nerva. “Faith,” cried Mauricius, at the end of his patience, “he would dine with us.” All the good that could be done without breaking with the evil, Nerva did. Progress was never loved more sincerely; a remarkable spirit of humanity, of gentleness, entered into the government and even into the legislation. The Senate regained its authority. Men of sense thought the problem of the times, the alliance of the aristocracy with liberty, definitely resolved. The mania for religious persecution, which had been one of the saddest features of the reign of Domitian, absolutely disappeared. Nerva caused those who were under the weight of accusations of this kind to be absolved, and recalled the banished. It was forbidden to prosecute anyone for the mere practice of Jewish customs; prosecutions for impiety were suppressed; the informers were punished. The fiscus 122


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judaicus, as we have seen, afforded scope for much injustice. People who did not owe it were made to pay; in order to ascertain the quality of persons liable to it, they were subjected to disgusting inquiries. Measures were taken to prevent the revival of similar abuses, and a special coinage (FISCI IVDAICI CALVMNIA SVBLATA) recalled the memory of that measure. 179

All the families of Israel thus enjoyed a relative calm after a cruel storm. They breathed. For some years the Church of Rome was more happy and more flourishing than she had ever been. The apocalyptic ideas resumed their course; it was believed that God had fixed the time of his coming upon earth for the moment when the number of the elect reached a certain figure; every day they rejoiced to see that number increase. The belief in the return of Nero had not disappeared. Nero, if he had lived, would have been sixty, which was a great age for the part which was destined for him; but the imagination reasons little; besides Nero, the Antichrist became day by day a more ideal personage, placed altogether without the conditions of the natural life. For a long time people continued to speak of his return, even when it was obvious that he could no longer be alive. The Jews were more ardent and more sombre than ever. It appears that it was a law of religious conscience with this people to pour forth in each of the great crises which tore the Roman Empire one of those allegorical compositions in which the rein was given to prognostications of the future. The situation of the year 97 in many ways resembled that of the year 68. Natural prodigies appeared to multiply. The fall of the Flavii made almost as much impression as the disappearance of the house of Julius. The Jews believed that the existence of the Empire was again in question. The two catastrophes had been preceded by sanguinary madnesses, and were followed by civil troubles, which caused doubts as to the vital powers of a state so agitated. During this eclipse of the Roman power, the imagination of the Messianists again took the field; the eccentric speculations as to the end of the Empire and the end of time resumed their course.

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The Apocalypse of the reign of Nerva appeared, according to the custom of compositions of this kind, under a fictitious name, that of Esdras. This writer began by becoming very celebrated. An exaggerated part was attributed to him in the reconstitution of the sacred books. The forger for his purpose wanted besides a personage who had been contemporary with a situation of the Jewish people analogous to that through which they were passing. The work appears to have been originally written in that Greek full of Hebraisms which had already been the language of the Apocalypse of John. The original is lost, but from the Greek text translations were made into Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Ethopian, and Arabic which have preserved to us this precious document, and have allowed us to restore its first state. It is a sufficiently fine piece of writing, of a truly Hebrew taste, composed by a Pharisee probably at Rome. Christians read it with avidity, and it was unnecessary to do more than retouch one or two passages to turn it into a very edifying Christian book. The author may in many ways be considered the last prophet of Israel. The work is divided into seven sections, for the most part affecting the form of a dialogue between Esdras, a supposed exile

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to Babylon, and the angel Uriel; but it is easy to see behind the biblical personage the ardent Jew of the Flavian epoch, full of rage because of the destruction of the Temple by Titus. The memory of these dark days of the year 70 rises in his soul like the smoke of the pit, and fills it with holy wrath. How far are we, with this fiery zealot, from a Josephus who treats the defenders of Jerusalem as scoundrels? Here is a veritable Jew who is sorry not to have been with those who perished in the fire of the Temple. The Revolution of Judea, according to him, was not an insanity. Those who defended Jerusalem to the uttermost, those assassins whom the moderates sacrificed and regarded as alone responsible for the misfortunes of the nations—those assassins were saints. Their fate was enviable; they will be the great men of the future. 181

Never did Israelite, more pious, more penetrated with the sufferings of Zion, pour out his prayers and tears before Jehovah. A profound doubt, the great doubt of the Jews, rent him,—the same which devoured the Psalmist when he “saw the ungodly in prosperity.” Israel are the chosen people. God has promised happiness to them if they observe the Law. Without having fulfilled that condition in all its rigour, what would be beyond human strength, Israel is better than other nations. In any case, he has never observed the Law more scrupulously than in these last times. Why, then, is Israel the most unfortunate of peoples; and more just he is the more unfortunate? The author sees clearly that the old materialistic solutions of this problem cannot be accepted. Thus is his soul troubled even to death. Lord, Master Universal, he cries, of all the forests of the earth, and of all the trees that are found therein, thou hast chosen a vine; of all the countries of the world, thou hast chosen a province; of all the flowers of the world, thou hast chosen a lily; of all the wilderness of water, thou host chosen a brook; amongst all the cities, thou hast sanctified Sion; of all the birds, thou hast dedicated a dove to thyself; and of all created beasts, thou wouldest take only a lamb for thyself. thus out of all the people on the face of the earth thou hast adopted one only, and to that beloved people thou hast given a Law which all admire. And now, Lord, what has he done that thou shouldest deliver thine only One to profanation, that upon the root of thy choice thou hast grafted other plants, that thou hast dispersed thy dear ones in the midst of the nations. those who deny thee crowd upon the feet of the faithful. If thou hast come to hate thy people, it must be so! But at least punish them with thine own hands, and lay not this task upon the unfaithful. Thou hast said that it is for us that thou hast created the world; that the other nations born of Adam are in thine eyes but vile spittle (sic). . . . And now, Lord, behold these nations, thus treated as nothing, rule over us and trample us under foot. And we thy people, we whom thou hast called thy first-born, thy only Son, we the objects of thy jealousy, we are delivered unto their hands. If the world has been created for us, why do we not at least possess an heritage? How long, O Lord, how long! . . .

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Sion is a desert, Babylon is happy. Is this just? Sion has sinned much. She may have, but is Babylon more innocent? I believed so until I came here, but since I came, what do I see? Such impieties that I marvel that thou bearest them, after having destroyed Sion for so much less iniquity. What nation has known thee save only Israel? What tribe has believed in thee save only that of Jacob? And who has been less rewarded? Amongst the nations I have seen them flourishing and unmindful of thy commandments. Weigh in the balance what we have done, and what they do. Amongst

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us I confess there are few faithful ones, but amongst them there are none at all. Now they enjoy a profound peace, and we, our life is the life of a fugitive grasshopper; we pass our days in fear and anguish. It had been better for us never to have been born than to be tormented thus without knowing in what our guilt consists. . . . Oh, that we had been burned in the fires of Sion! We are not better than those who perished there!

The angel Uriel, the interlocutor of Esdras, eludes as best he can the inflexible logic of this protestation. The mysteries of God are so profound! The mind of man is so limited! Pressed with questions, Uriel escapes by a Messianic theory like that of the Christians. The Messiah, son of God, but simple man, is on the eve of appearing in Zion in glory, in company with those who have not tasted death, that is to say, with Moses, Enoch, Elias, and Esdras himself. He will recall the ten tribes from the “land of Arzareth” (foreign country). He will fight a great fight against the wicked; after having conquered them, he will reign four hundred years upon the earth with his elect. At the end of that time, the Messiah will die, and all the living will die with him. The world will return to its primitive silence for seven days. Then a new world will appear, and the general resurrection will take place. The Most High will appear upon his throne, and will proceed to a definitive judgment.

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The particular turn which Jewish Messianism tended to take, clearly appears here. Instead of an eternal reign, of which the old prophets dreamed, for the posterity of David, and which the Messianists after the pseudo-Daniel transferred to their ideal king, we arrive at the notion of a Messianic kingdom as having a limited duration. We have seen the author of the Christian Apocalypse fix that date at a thousand years. Pseudo-Esdras contents himself with four hundred years. The most diverse opinions were current on that subject amongst the Jews. Pseudo-Baruch, without specifying the limit, says distinctly that the Messianic reign will last only as long as the perishable earth. The judgment of the world from that point of view is distinguished from the advent of the Messianic kingdom, and the presidency is given to the Most High alone and not to the Messiah. Then the conception of the Eternal Messiah inaugurating an endless reign, and judging the world, carries him away altogether, and becomes the essential and distinctive feature of Christianity. Such a theory raises a question with which we have already seen St Paul and his faithful greatly concerned. In such a conception there is an enormous difference between the fate of those who are alive at the appearance of the Messiah, and those who have died beforehand. Our seer even asks himself a question which is odd enough, but certainly logical:—Why did not God make all men alive at the same time? He gets out of the difficulty by the hypothesis of provisional “depôts” (pronaptuaria) where the souls of departed saints are held in reserve until the judgment. At the great day the depôts will be opened, so that the contemporaries of the appearance of the Messiah shall have only one advantage over the others—that of having enjoyed the reign of four hundred years. In comparison with eternity, that is a very small matter, and the author thinks himself justified

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in maintaining that there will be no point or privilege,—the first and the last will be all equals in the Day of Judgment. Naturally, the souls of the just, confined in a sort of prison, feel some impatience, and often say: “Until what time is this to continue? When will be the day of the harvest?” The angel Jeromiel answers them, “When the number of those like unto you is complete?” The time is coming. As the bowels of a woman nine months pregnant cannot contain the fruit which they bear, so the depôts of Sheol, too full in some sense, hasten to render up the souls which they contain. The total duration of the universe is divided into twelve parts; ten parts and a half of that period have gone by; The world is approaching its end with an incredible rapidity. The human race is decaying fast; the stature of man dwindles; like the children born of old parents, our races have no longer the vigour of the earlier ages. “The age has lost its youth, and time begins to grow old.” The signs of the last days are those which we have enumerated twenty times. The trumpet shall sound. The order of Nature will be reversed; blood shall flow from wood, and the stones shall speak. Enoch and Elias will appear to convert man. Men must hasten to die, and are as nothing compared with those that are to come. The more the world is weakened by old age, the more wicked it will become. Truth will withdraw day by day from the earth; good shall seem to be exiled.

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The small number of the elect is the dominant thought of our sombre dreamer. The entrance to eternal life is like a narrow strait between two seas, like a narrow and slippery passage which gives access to a city; on the right there is a precipice of fire, on the left a sea without bottom; a single man can scarcely hold himself there. But the sea into which one enters is also immense, and the city is full of every good thing. There is in this world more silver than gold, more copper than silver, more iron than copper. The elect are the gold; the rarer things are, the more precious they are. The elect are the adornments of God; those adornments would be valueless if they were common. God is not grieved by the multitude of those who perish. Unhappy ones! they exist no longer than a puff of smoke or a flame; they are burned, they are dead. We may see how deeply rooted in Judaism the atrocious doctrines of election and of predestination had already become—doctrines which a little later were to cause such cruel tortures to so many devout souls. These frightful severities to which all the schools of thought which deal in damnation are accustomed, at times revolts the pious sentiment of the author. He allows himself to exclaim:— Oh Earth! what hast thou done in giving birth to so many beings destined to perdition? It had been better had we no existence, rather than that we should exist only to be tortured Let humanity weep! let the beasts of the field rejoice! The condition of these last is better than ours; they do not expect the Judgment; they have no punishment to fear; after death, there is nothing for them. Of what use is life to us, since we owe to it an eternity of torments? Better annihilation than the prospect of judgment.

The Eternal God answers that intelligence has been given to man that he may be without excuse in the Day of Judgment and that he has nothing to reply.

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The author plunges more and more deeply into strange questions, which raise formidable dogmas. Can it be that from the moment that one draws his last breath that he is damned and tortured, or will an interval pass, during which the soul is in repose until the Judgment? According to the author, the fate of each man is fixed at death. The wicked, excluded from the place of departed spirits, are in the condition of wandering souls, tormented provisionally with seven punishments, of which the two principal are seeing the happiness enjoyed by those in the asylum of just souls, and to assist in the preparations for the punishment reserved for themselves. The just, guarded in their limbo by angels, enjoy seven joys, of which the most agreeable is that of seeing the sufferings of the wicked, and the tortures which await them. The soul of the author, pitiful at bottom, protests against the monstrosities of his theology. “The just at least,” asks Esdras, “may not they pray for the damned,—the son for his father, the brother for his brother, the friend for his friend?” The answer is terrible. “Just as in the present life the father cannot be the substitute for the son, nor the son for the father, the master for his slave, nor the friend for his friend, to be sick, to sleep, to eat, to be cured in his place; so in that day no one can interfere for another, each shall bear his own justice or his own injustice.” Esdras adduces in vain the examples of Abraham, and of other holy persons who have prayed for their brethren. The Day of Judgment will be the first of a definite state, where the triumph of justice will be such that the righteous himself cannot pity the damned. Assuredly we agree with the author when he exclaims after these responses, supposed to be divine, I have already said, and I say again,—“Better were it for us that Adam had not been created upon the earth. At least after having placed him there God should have prevented him from doing evil. What advantage is it for man to pass his life in sadness and in misery, when after his death he can expect nothing else than punishments and torments? Oh, Adam! how enormous was thy crime! By sinning thou didst lose thyself and hast dragged down in thy fall all the men of whom thou went the father. And of what value is immortality to us if we have done only deeds worthy of death?”

Pseudo-Esdras admits liberty; but liberty has but a small right of existence in a system which makes so cardinal a point of predestination. It is for Israel that the world was created; the rest of the human race are damned. And now, Lord, I pray not for all men (thou knowest better than I what concerns them), but I will entreat thee on behalf of thy people; of thy heritage; of the perpetual source of my tears. . . . 187

Inquire of the earth and she will tell thee that it is to her that the right of weeping belongs. All those who are born or who will be born come out of the earth; yet almost all of them hasten to destruction, and the greater part of them are destined to perish! . . . Disquiet not thyself because of the great number of those who must perish, for they also having received liberty have scoffed at the Most High, have rejected his holy law, have trampled his just ones under foot, and have said in their hearts “There is no God.” So whilst ye enjoy the rewards that have been promised, they will partake of the thirst and the torments which have been prepared for them. It is not that God hath desired the destruction of men; but the

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men who are the work of his hands have defiled the name of their Maker, and have been ungrateful to him who has given them life. . . . I have reserved to myself a grape of the bunch, a plant from the forest. Let the multitude then perish who have been born in vain, if only I may keep my single grape, my plant that I have tended with so much care! . . .

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A special vision is designed, as in almost all apocalypses, to give in an enigmatic fashion the philosophy of contemporary history, and as usual also the date of the book may be precisely arrived at from it. An immense eagle (the eagle is the symbol of the Roman Empire in Daniel) extends its wings over all the earth and holds it in its grip. It has six pairs of great wings, four pairs of pinions or opposing wings, and three heads. The six pairs of great wings are six Emperors. The second amongst them reigns for so long that none of those who succeed him reach half the number of his years. This is obviously Augustus; and the six Emperors referred to are the six Emperors of the house of Julius—Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, masters of the East and of the West. The four pinions or opposing wings are the four usurpers or Anti-Cæsars—Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Nerva, who, according to the author, must not be considered as true Emperors. The reigns of the three first Anti-Cæsars are periods of trouble, during which we may believe that the Empire is at an end; but the Empire rises again, though not as she was at the first. The three heads (the Flavii) represent this new resuscitated Empire. The three heads always act together, make many innovations, surpass the Julii in tyranny, put the topstone to the impieties of the Empire of the Eagle (by the destruction of Jerusalem), and mark the end. The middle head (Vespasian) is the greatest; all the three devour the pinions (Galba, Otho, Vitellius), who aspire to reign. The middle head dies; the two others (Titus and Domitian) reign; but the head on the right devours that on the left (an evident allusion to the popular belief as to the fratricide of Domitian); the head on the right, after having killed the other, is killed in its turn; only the great head dies in its bed; but not without cruel torments (an allusion to the Rabbinical fables as to the maladies by which Vespasian expiated his crimes towards the Jewish nation). Then comes the turn of the last pair of pinions, that is to say, of Nerva, the usurper, who succeeded, the right hand head (Domitian) and is with regard to Flavius in the same relation as Galba, Otho, and Vitellius were with Julius. The last reign is short and full of trouble; it is less a reign than an arrangement made by God to bring about the end of the world. In fact, after some moments, according to our visionary, the last Anti-Cæsar (Nerva) disappears; the body of the eagle takes fire, and all the earth is stricken with astonishment. The end of the profane world arrives, and the Messiah comes to overwhelm the Roman Empire with the bitterest reproaches. Thou hast reigned over the world by terror and not by truth; thou hast crushed the poor; thou hast persecuted peaceable people; than hast hated the just; thou hast loved the liars; thou hast broken down the walls of those who have done thee no wrong. Thy violences have gone up before the throne of the Eternal God, and thy pride has reached even

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unto the Almighty. The Most High hath regarded his table of the times and hast seen that the measure is full and that the moment has arrived. Wherefore thou shall disappear, O Eagle! thou and thy horrible wings and thy accursed pinions, 189

thy perverse heads and thy detestable claws and all thy wicked body, so that the earth may breathe again, may live again, delivered from tyranny, and may begin to hope once more in the justice and mercy of him who has done it.

The Romans will then be judged; judged living, and exterminated on the spot. Then the Jewish people will breathe. God will preserve them in joy until the Day of Judgment. It will scarcely be doubted after this that the author wrote during the reign of Nerva, a reign which appeared without solidity or future, because of the age and of the weakness of the sovereign, until the adoption of Trajan (end of 97). The author of the Apocalypse of Esdras, like the author of the Apocalypse of John, ignorant of real politics, believes that the Empire which he hates, and the infinite resources of which he does not see, is approaching the end of its career. The authors of the two Revelations, passionately Jewish, clap their hands in advance over the ruin of their enemy. We shall see the same hopes renewed after the reverses of Trajan in Mesopotamia. Always on the look out for the moments of weakness on the part of the Empire, the Jewish party, at the appearance of any black spot on the horizon, break out in advance into shouts of triumph, and applaud, by anticipation. The hope of a Jewish Empire succeeding to the Roman Empire, still filled these burning souls whom the frightful massacres of the year 70 had not crushed. The author of the Apocalypse of Esdras had perhaps in his youth fought in Judea; sometimes he appears to regret that he did not find his death. We see that the fire is not extinct, that it still lives in the ashes, and that before abandoning all hope, Israel will tempt her fortune more than once. The Jewish revolts under Trajan and Adrian will answer to this enthusiastic cry. The extermination of Bether will be required to bring to reason the new generation of revolutionaries who have risen from the ashes of 70. 190

The fate of the Apocalypse of Esdras was as strange as the work itself. Like the Book of Judith and the discourse upon the Empire of Reason, it was neglected by the Jews, in whose eyes every book written in Greek became at once a foreign book; but immediately upon its appearance it was eagerly adopted by the Christians, and accepted as a book of the Canon of the Old Testament, really written by Esdras. The author of the Epistle attributed to St Barnabas, the author of the apocryphal epistle which is called the Second of Peter, certainly read it. The false Herman appears to imitate its plan, order, use of visions, and turn of dialogue. Clement of Alexandria makes a great show of it. The Greek Church, departing further and further from Judeo-Christianity, abandons it, and allows the original to be lost. The Latin Church is divided. The learned doctors, such as St Jerome, see the apocryphal character of the whole composition, and reject it with disdain, whilst St Ambrose makes more use of it than of no matter what other holy book, and distinguishes it in no way from the revealed Scriptures. Vigilance detects there the germ of its heresy as to the uselessness of prayers for the dead. The Liturgy borrows from it. Roger Bacon quotes it with respect. Christopher Columbus finds in it arguments for the existence of another world. The enthusiasts of the sixteenth century

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nourish themselves upon it. Antoinette Bourignon, the illuminée, sees in it the most beautiful of the holy books.

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In reality, few books have furnished so many elements of Christian theology as this anti-Christian work. Limbo, original sin, the small number of the elect, the eternity of the pains of hell, the punishment by fire, the free choice of God, have there found their crudest expression. If the terrors of death have been greatly aggravated by Christianity, it is upon books like this that the responsibility must rest. The sombre office, so full of grandiose dreams, which the Church recites over the coffins, appears to have been inspired by the visions, or, if you choose, by the nightmares of Esdras. Christian iconography itself, borrowed much from these bizarre pages, in all that relates to the representation of the state of the dead. The Byzantine mosaics, and the miniatures which offer representations of the Last Judgment, seem to be based upon the description which our author gives of the place of departed spirits. From its assertions principally is derived the idea that Esdras recomposed the lost Scriptures. The angel Uriel owes to him his place in Christian art. The addition of this new celestial personage to Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael gives to the four corners of the Throne of God, and consequently to the four cardinal points, their respective guardians. The Council of Trent, whilst excluding from the Latin Canon the book so much admired by the Early Fathers, did not forbid it to be reprinted at the end of the editions of the Vulgate, in a different character. If anything proves the promptitude with which the false prophecy of Esdras was received by the Christians, it is the use which was made of it in the little treatise of Alexandrian exegesis, imitated from the Epistle to the Hebrews, to which the name of Barnabas was attached from a very early date. The author of this treatise cites the false Esdras as he quotes Daniel, Enoch, and the old prophets. One feature of Esdras is especially striking—the wood from which the blood flows—in which is naturally seen the image of the Cross. Now everything leads us to believe that the treatise attributed to Barnabas was composed, like the Apocalypse of Esdras, in the reign of Nerva. The writer applies, or rather alters to make applicable to his time, a prophecy of Daniel concerning ten reigns (Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vespasian, Titus), and a little king (Nerva), who shall humiliate the three (Flavius), reduced to one (Domitian), who have preceded him. The facility with which the author has been able to adopt the prophecy of the false Esdras, is so much the more singular, since few Christian doctors express as energetically as he the necessity for an absolute separation from Judaism. The Gnostics in this respect have said nothing stronger. The author presents himself to us as an ex-Jew, well versed in the Ritual, the agada, and the rabbinical disquisitions, but strongly opposed to the religion which he has left. Circumcision appears to him to have always been a mistake of the Jews—a misunderstanding into which they have been betrayed by some perverse genius. The Temple itself was a mistake; the worship which was practised in it was almost idolatrous; it rested wholly upon the Pagan idea that God could be shut up in a house. The Temple destroyed through the fault of the Jews, would never be re-erected; the true

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Temple is that spiritual house which is raised in the hearts of Christians. Judaism, in general, has been only an aberration, the work of a bad angel, who has led the Jews in opposition to the commands of God. What the author fears most is lest the Christian should have only the air of a Jewish proselyte. All has been changed by Jesus, even the Sabbath. The Sabbath formerly represented the end of the world; transplanted to the first day of the week, it represents, by the joy with which it is celebrated, the opening of a new world inaugurated by the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Sacrifices and the Law are alike at an end. The whole of the Old Testament was but a symbol. The cross of Jesus solves all problems; the author finds it everywhere, by means of bizarre ghematrioth. The Passion of Jesus is the propitiatory sacrifice of which others were merely the image. The taste which Egypt, ancient Egypt and Jewish Egypt, had for allegories, appears to revive in these explanations, wherein it is impossible to see anything besides arbitrary turns. Like all the readers of the apocalypses, the author believed that he was on the eve of the Judgment. The times are evil; Satan has all power over earthly matters; but the day is not far distant when he and his will alike perish. “The Lord is at hand with his recompense.” The scenes of disorder which followed each other from day to day in the Empire gave, moreover, only too much reason for the sombre predictions of the pseudo-Esdras and the pretended Barnabas. The reign of the feeble old man whom all parties had agreed to put into power, in the hours of surprise which followed the death of Domitian, was an agony. The timidity with which he was reproached was really sagacity. Nerva felt that the army always regretted Domitian, and bore only with impatience the domination of the civil element. Honest men were in power, but the reign of honest men, when it is not supported by an army, is always weak. A terrible incident showed the depth of the evil. About the 27th October 97 the Prætorians, having found a leader in Casperius Ælianus, besieged the palace, demanding with loud cries the punishment of those who had slain Domitian. Nerva’s somewhat soft temperament was not suited to such scenes. He virtuously offered his own life, but he could not prevent the massacre of Parthenius and of those who had made him Emperor. The day was decisive, and saved the Republic. Nerva, like a wise man, understood that he ought to associate with himself a young captain whose energy should supply what he was deficient in. He had relations, but, attentive only to the good of the state, he sought the worthiest. The Liberal party counted amongst its members an admirable soldier, Trajan, who then commanded upon the Rhine at Cologne. Nerva chose him. This great act of political virtue assured the victory of the Liberals, which had remained always doubtful since the death of Domitian. The true law of Cæsarism, adoption, was found. The military were bridled. Logic required that a Septimus Severus, with his detestable maxim, “Please the soldier; mock at the rest,” should succeed Domitian. Thanks to Trajan, the catastrophe of history was adjourned and retarded for a century. The evil was conquered, not for a thousand years, as John believed, nor even for four hundred years, as the pseudo-Esdras dreamed, but for a hundred years—which is much.

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CHAPTER XVII. TRAJAN—THE GOOD AND GREAT EMPERORS.

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THE adoption of Trajan assured to civilised humanity after cruel trials a century of happiness. The Empire was saved. The malignant predictions of the apocalypse makers were completely contradicted. The world still desired to live: the Empire, in spite of the fall of the Julii and the Flavii, found in its strong military organisation resources which the superficial provincials never suspected. Trajan, whom the choice of Nerva was to carry to the Imperial throne, was a very great man, a true Roman, master of himself, cool in command, of a grave and dignified bearing. He had certainly less political genius than a Cæsar, an Augustus, a Tiberius, but he was their superior in justice and in goodness, while in military talent, he was the equal of Cæsar. He made no profession of philosophy like Marcus Aurelius, but he equalled him in practical wisdom and benevolence. His firm faith in Liberalism never faltered; he showed, by an illustrious example, that the heroically optimist party which makes us admit that men are good when they are not proved to be bad, may be reconciled with the firmness of a sovereign. Surprising thing! this world of idealogues and of men of opposition, whom the death of Domitian carried into power, knew how to govern. He frankly reconciled himself to the necessity, and it was then seen how excellent a thing is a monarchy made by converted Republicans. The old Virginius Rufus, the great citizen who had dreamed all his life of a Republic, and who did all that he could to get it proclaimed at the death of Nero as it had been at the death of Caligula, Virginius illustrious for having many times refused the Empire, was completely won over, and served as a centre for that distinguished society. The Radical party renounced its dream, and admitted that if the principate and liberty had until then been irreconcilable, the happiness of the times had made such a miracle easy. Galba had been the first to recognise that combination of apparently contradictory elements. Nerva and Trajan realised it. The Empire with them became Republican, or rather the Emperor was the first and only Republican in the Empire. The great men who are praised in the world which surrounds the sovereign are Thrasea, Helvidius, Senecion, Cato, Brutus, the Greek heroes who expelled the tyrants from their country. Therein lies the explanation of the fact that after the year 98 nothing more is heard of protests against the principate. The philosophers who had been until then in some sort the soul of the Radical opposition, and whose attitude had been so hostile under the Flavii, suddenly held their peace: they were satisfied. Between the new régime and philosophy there was an intimate alliance. It must be said that never in the government of human affairs was to be seen a group of men so worthy to preside. There were Pliny, Tacitus, Virginius Rufus, Junius Mauricus, Gratilla, Fannia, noble men, chaste women, all having been persecuted by Domitian, all lamenting some relation, some friend, victim of the abhorred reign.

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The age of monsters had gone by. That haughty race of the Julii, and the families which were allied to them, had unfolded before the world the strangest spectacle of folly, grandeur, and perversity. Henceforward the bitterness of the Roman blood appears exhausted. Rome has sweated away all her malice. It is the peculiarity of an aristocracy which has lived its life without restraint, to become in its old age rigid, orthodox, puritan. The Roman nobility, the most terrible that ever existed, is now distinguished chiefly by refinements, extremes of virtue, delicacy, modesty.

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This transformation was in a great measure the work of Greece. The Greek schoolmaster had succeeded in making himself accepted by the Roman noblesse, by dint of submitting to its pride, its coarseness, its contempt for matters of mind. In the time of Julius Cæsar, Sextius, the father, brought from Athens to Rome the proud moral discipline of Stoicism, the examination of conscience, asceticism, abstinence, love of poverty. After him, Sextius, the son, Sohon of Alexandria, Attala, Demetrius the cynic, Metronax, Claranus, Fabianus, Seneca, gave the model of an active and practical philosophy, employing all means—preaching, direction of conscience—for the propagation of virtue. The noble struggle of the philosophers against Nero and Domitian, their banishments, their punishments, had all ended in making them dear to the best Roman society. Their credit continues increasing until the time of Marcus Aurelius, under whom they reigned. The strength of a party is always in proportion to the number of its martyrs. Philosophy had had its own. It, like everything else that was noble, had suffered from the abominable governments under which it had existed; it profited by the moral reaction provoked by the excess of evil. Then arose an idea dear to rhetoricians; the tyrant, born enemy of philosophy; philosophy, the born enemy of tyrants. All the masters of the Antonines are full of this idea; the good Marcus Aurelius passed his youth in declaiming against the tyrants; the horror for Nero and for those Emperors whom Pliny the Elder called “the firebrands of the human race,” fills the literature of the time. Trajan had always for philosophers the greatest regard and the most delicate attentions. Between Greek discipline and Roman pride the alliance is henceforward intimate. “To live as beseems a Roman and a man,” is the dream of everyone who respects himself; Marcus Aurelius is not yet born, but he is here morally; the spiritual matrix from which he will issue, is completely constructed. Ancient philosophy assuredly had days of greater originality, but it had never penetrated life and society more deeply. The differences of the schools were almost effaced; general systems were abandoned; a superficial eclecticism, such as men of the world like when they are anxious to do well, was the fashion. The philosophy became oratorical, literary preaching tending more towards moral amelioration than to the satisfaction of curiosity. A host of persons made it their rule and even the law of their exterior life. Musonius Rufus and Artemidorus were true confessors of their faith, heroes of stoical virtue. Euphrates of Tyre offered the ideal of the gentleman philosopher, his person had a great charm, his manners were of the rarest distinction. Dion Chrysostom created

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a series of lectures akin to sermons, and obtained immense successes, without ever falling short of the most elevated tone. The good Plutarch wrote for the future, Morality in Action, of good sense, of honesty, and imagined that Greek antiquity, gentle and paternal, little resembling the true (which was resplendent with beauty, liberty, and genius), but better suited than the true to the necessities of education. Epictetus himself had the words of eternity, and took his place by the side of Jesus, not upon the golden mountains of Galilee, enlightened by the sun of the kingdom of God, but in the ideal world of perfect virtue. Without a resurrection, without a chimerical Tabor, without a kingdom of God, he preached self-sacrifice, renunciation, abnegation. He was the sublime snow point which humanity contemplates with a sort of terror on its horizon; Jesus had the more lovable part of God amongst men—a smile, gaiety, forgiveness of sins were permitted to him. Literature, on its side, having become all at once grave and worthy, exhibits an immense progress in the manners of good society. Quintilian already, in the worst days of the reign of Domitian, had laid out the code of oratorical probity which ought to be in such perfect accord with our greatest minds of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Rollin, M.M. de Port Royal. Now literary honesty never goes alone; it is only serious ages that can have a serious literature. Tacitus wrote history with a high aristocratic sense, which did not save him from errors of detail, but which inspired him with those outbursts of virtuous passion which have made of him for all eternity the spectre of tyrants. Suetonius prepared himself, by labours of solid erudition, for his part of exact and impartial biographer. Pliny, a man of good birth, liberal, humane, charitable, refined, founds schools and public libraries; he might be a Frenchman of the most amiable society of the eighteenth century. Juvenal, sincere in declamation, and moral in his painting of vice, has fine accents of humanity, and preserves, notwithstanding the stains on his life, a sentiment of Roman pride. It was like a tardy flowering of the beautiful intellectual culture, created by the collaboration of the Greek and the Italian genius. That culture was already stricken with death at the root; but before dying, it produced a last crop of leaves and flowers. The world is then at last to be governed by reason. Philosophy will enjoy for a hundred years the right which it is credited with of rendering people happy. A great number of excellent laws, forming the best part of the Roman law, are of this date. Public assistance begins; children are, above all, the object of the solicitude of the State. A real moral sentiment animates the government; never before the eighteenth century was so much done for the amelioration of the condition of the human race. The Emperor is a god accomplishing his journey upon earth, and signalising his passage by benefits. Such a system must, of course, differ greatly from what we consider as essentially a Liberal government. We should seek vainly for any trace of parliamentary or representative institutions: the state of the world was Incompatible with such things. The opinion of the politicians of the time is that power belongs, by a sort of natural delegation, to honest, sensible, moderate men. That designation was made by the Tatum; when it was once accepted, the Emperor governs the Empire

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as the ram conducts his troop, and the bull his herd. By the side of this a language altogether Republican. With the best faith in the world these excellent sovereigns thought that they would be able to realise a State founded upon the natural equality of all citizens, a royalty having as its basis respect for liberty. Liberty, justice, respect for opponents, were their fundamental maxims. But these words, borrowed from the history of the Greek Republics, where letters were cultivated, had but little meaning in the real society of the time. Civil equality did not exist. The difference between rich and poor was written in the law, the Roman or Italiote aristocracy preserved all its privileges; the Senate, re-established in its rights and dignity by Nerva, remained as much walled in as it had ever been; the cursus honorum was the exclusive privilege of the nobility. The good Roman families have reconquered their exclusive predominance in politics: outside of them, it does not happen. The victory of these families was assuredly a just victory, for under the odious reigns of Nero and Domitian they had given an asylum to virtue, to self-respect, to the instinct of reasonable command, to good literary and philosophical education; but these same families, as usually happens, formed a very closely-enclosed world. The advent of Nerva and Trajan, which was the work of an aristocratic, Liberal-Conservative party, put an end to two things—barrack troubles, and the importance of the Orientals, the domestics, and favourites of the Emperors. The freedmen, people of Egypt and Syria, will no longer be able to trouble all that is best in Rome. These wretches, who made themselves masters by their guilty complaisances in the reigns of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, who had even been the counsellors and the confidants of the debaucheries of Titus before his accession, fell into contempt. The irritation which the Romans felt at the honours decreed to a Herod Agrippa, to a Tiberius Alexander, was not again felt after the fall of Flavius. The Senate increased as much in power; but the action of the provinces was lessened; the attempts to break the ice of the official world were almost reduced to impotence.

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Hellenism did not suffer; for it knew by its suppleness or by its high distinction how to make itself acceptable to the best of the Roman world. But Judaism and Christianity suffered for it. We have seen on two occasions in the first century, under Nero and under the Flavii, Jews and Christians approach the house of the Emperor, and exercise considerable influence there. From Nerva to Commodus they were a thousand leagues apart. For one thing, the Jews had no nobility; the worldly Jews, like the Herodians, the Tiberius Alexanders, were dead; every Jew is henceforward a fanatic separated from the rest of the world by an abyss of contempt. A mass of impurities, ineptitudes, absurdities—that is what Mosaism was for the most enlightened men of the time. The Jews appeared to be at the same time superstitious and irreligious; atheists devoted to the most vulgar beliefs. Their religion appeared like a world turned upside down, a defiance of reason, a pledge to contradict in everything the customs of other people. Travestied in a grotesque fashion, their history served a theme for endless pleasantries; it was generally thought to be a form of the worship of Bacchus. “Antiochus,” it was said, “tried in vain to improve this detestable race.” One accusation especially—that of hating all who were not of them, was murderous, for it was based upon specious motives of a kind to mislead public opinion. Still more dangerous was the idea according to which 135


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the proselyte who attached himself to Mosaism learned as his first lesson to despise the gods, to cast off every patriotic sentiment, to forget parents, children, and friends. Their benevolence, it was said, was but egotism; their morality only apparent; amongst them everything is permitted.

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Trajan, Adrian, Antonine, Marcus Aurelius, held themselves in this way with regard to Judaism and to Christianity in a sort of haughty isolation. They did not know it; they did not care to study it. Tacitus, who wrote for the great world, speaks of the Jews as an exotic curiosity, totally ignored by those to whom he addresses himself, and his errors are surprising. The exclusive confidence of these noble minds in the Roman discipline rendered them careless of a doctrine which presented itself to them as foreign and absurd. History ought to speak only with respect of honest and courageous politicians who lifted the world out of the mire into which it had been cast by the last Julius and the last Flavius; but they had imperfections which were really the result of their qualities. They were aristocrats, men of traditions, of the race of English Tories, drawing their strength from their very prejudices. They were profoundly Roman. Persuaded that no man who is not rich or well-born can possibly be an honest man, they did not feel for the foreign doctrines that weakness which the Flavii, men of lower birth, could not avoid. Their surroundings, the society which rose into power along with them—Tacitus, Pliny—have the same contempt for the barbarous doctrines. A ditch seems to have been dug during the whole of the second century between Christianity and the special world. The four great and good Emperors are clearly hostile to it, and it is under the monster Commodus that we find once more, as under Claudius, under Nero, and under the Flavii, “Christians of the House of Cæsar.” The defects of these virtuous Emperors are those of the Romans themselves,—too much confidence in the Latin tradition, a disagreeable obstinacy in not admitting honour out of Rome, much pride and harshness towards the humble, the poor, foreigners, Syrians, and for all the people whom Augustus disdainfully called “the Greeks,” and to whom he permitted adulations forbidden to the Italiots. These outcasts took their revenge, showing that they also have their nobility and are capable of virtue. The question of liberty is thus raised as it has never been raised before in any of the republics of antiquity. The ancient city, which was only an enlarged family, could have only one religion, that of the city itself; that religion was almost always the worship of mythical founders, of the very idea of the city. When it was not practised, the idea of the city was excluded. Such a religion was logical even when it was intolerant; but Alexander had been unreasonable. Antiochus Epiphanes was so in the highest degree, in wishing to persecute to the profit of a particular religion, since their States resulting from conquest formed various cities whose political existence had been suppressed. Cæsar, with his marvellous lucidity of mind, understood that. Then the narrow idea of the Roman city regained the ascendency, feebly and by short intermissions in the first century, in a manner much followed in the second. Already under Tiberius, a Valerius Maximus, maker of indifferent books, and a dishonest man, preached the religion with an astonishing air of convection. We have seen even Domitian extend a powerful protection to the Latin religion, attempt a sort of union of “the throne and the altar.” All that sprang out of a sentiment analogous to that which attaches to 136


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the Catholicism of our own days, a host of people who believe very little, but who are convinced that this worship is the religion of France. Martial and Statius, gazetteers of the scandalous chronicle of the times, who at heart regret the fine times of Nero, become grave and religious, applaud the censorship of manners, preach respect for authority. Social and political crises usually have the effect of provoking political reactions of this kind. Society in peril attaches itself where it can. A threatened world ranges itself in order of battle; convinced that every thought turns to evil, becomes timid, holds its breath as it were, since it fears that every movement may overthrow the frail edifice which serves it as shelter.

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Trajan and his successors scarcely cared to renew the sad excess of sneaking hypocrisy which characterised the reign of Domitian. Yet these princes and their surroundings showed themselves very Conservative in religion. They saw salvation only in the old Roman spirit. Marcus Aurelius, philosopher though he was, is in no way exempt from superstition. He is a rigid observer of the official religion. The brotherhood of the Salii had no more devout member. He affected to imitate Numa, from whom he claimed to be descended, and maintained with severity the laws which forbade foreign religions. Devotions on the eve of death! The day when one holds most to these memories is the day that in which they go astray. How much injury has accrued to the House of Bourbon through thinking too much of St Louis, and claiming to be descended from Cloris and Charlemagne! To that strong preference for the national worship was joined, with the great emperors of the second century, the fear of the heteria, cœtus illiciti, or associations which might become factions in the cities. A simple body of firemen were suspected. Too many people at a family festivity disquieted the authorities. Trajan required that the invitations should be limited and given by name. Even the associations ad sustinendam tenuiorium inopiam were permitted only in the cities which had special charters for the purpose. In that matter Trajan followed the tradition of all the great Emperors after Cæsar. It is impossible that such measures could have appeared necessary to such great men if they had not been justified in some respects. But the administrative spirit of the second century was carried to excess. Instead of practising public benevolence, as the State had begun to do, how much better it would have been to leave the associations free to exercise it! These associations aspired to spring up in all parts: the State was full of injustice and harshness for them. It wanted peace at any price, but peace, when it is based by authority on the suppression of private effort, is more prejudicial to society than the very troubles of which it is desired to get rid by the sacrifice of all liberty. In that lies the cause of that phenomenon, in itself so singular, of Christianity being found worse under the wise administration of the great emperors of the second century than under the furious rage with which the scoundrels of the first attacked it. The violences of Nero, of Domitian, lasted only a few weeks or months; they were either passing acts of brutality or else the results of annoyances springing out of a fantastic and shady policy. In the interval which passed between the appearance of Christianity and the accession of Trajan, never once do we find the criminal law put

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in force against Christians. Legislation on the subject of the illicit colleges already existed in part, but it was never applied with so much rigour as was done later. On the contrary, the very legal but very governmental rule (as we should say nowadays) of the Trajans and the Antonines, will be more oppressive to Christianity than the ferocity and the wickedness of the tyrants. These great Conservatives of things Roman will perceive, not without reason, a serious danger to the Empire in that too firm faith in a kingdom of God which is the inversion of existing society. The theocratic element which underlies Judaism and Christianity alike terrifies them. They see indistinctly but certainly what the Decii, the Aurelians, the Diocletians will see more clearly after them, all the restorers of the Empire failing in the third century,—that a choice must be made between the Empire and the Church,—that full liberty of the Church means the end of the Empire. They struggle as a matter of duty; they allow a harsh law to be applied, since it is the condition of the existence of society in their time. Thus a fair understanding with Christianity was much more remote than under Nero or under Flavius. Public men had felt the danger, and stood on guard. Stoicism had grown more rigid; the world was no longer for tender souls full of feminine sentiments like Virgil. The disciples of Jesus have now to deal with stern men, inflexible doctrinaires, men sure of being right, capable of being systematically harsh, since they can give proof of acting only for the good of the State, and of saying, with an imperturbable gentleness, “What is not useful to the swarm is no more useful to the bee.” Assuredly, according to our ideas, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius would have done better had they been Liberals altogether, had they fully conceded the right of association, of recognising corporations as being capable of holding property; free, in case of schism, to divide the property of the corporation amongst the members, in proportion to the number of adherents to each party. This last point would have been sufficient to get rid of all danger. Already in the third century it is the Empire which maintains the unity of the Church in making it a rule that he shall be regarded as the true bishop of a church in any city who corresponds with the Bishop of Rome, and is recognised by him. What would have happened in the fourth, in the midst of those embittered struggles with Arianism? Numberless and irremediable schisms. The emperors, and then the barbarian kings, alone could put an end to the matter by limiting the question of orthodoxy to “who was the canonical bishop?” Corporations not connected with the State are never very formidable to the State, when the State remains really neutral, does not assume the office of judge of the denominations, and in the legal proceedings before it for the possession of goods, observes the rule of dividing the capital in strict proportion to numbers. Thus all associations which might become dangerous to the peace of the State may readily be dissolved; division will reduce them to dust. The authority of the State alone can cause schisms in bodies of this kind to cease; the neutrality of the State renders them incurable. The Liberal system is the surest solvent of too powerful associations, as has been proved on many occasions. But Trajan and Marcus Aurelius did not know this. Their error in this as in so many other points where we find their legislative work defective, was one which centuries alone could correct.

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Permanent persecution by the State. Such, then, is in brief the story of the era which is now opening for Christianity. It has been thought sometimes that there was a special edict in these terms:—Non licet esse Christianos, which served as basis for all the proceedings against the Christians. It is possible, but it is not necessary, to suppose that there was. Christians were, by the very fact of their existence, in conflict with the laws concerning association. They were guilty of sacrilege, of lèse majesté, of nightly meetings. They could not render to the Emperor the honours which a loyal subject should. Now the crime of lèse majesté was punished with the most cruel tortures: no one accused of the crime was exempt from the torture. And there was that sombre category of flagitia nomini cohærentia, crimes which it was not necessary to prove, which the name of Christian alone was supposed to be sufficient to prove à priori, and which entailed the character of hostis publicus. Such crimes were officially prosecuted. Such, in particular, was the crime of arson, constantly kept in mind by the remembrance of 64, and also by the persistence with which the apocalypses returned to the idea of a final conflagration. To this was joined the constant suspicion of secret infamies, of nightly meetings, of guilty commerce with women, young girls, and children. From thence to judge the Christians capable of every crime and to attribute to them all misdeeds, was but one step, and that step the crowd rather than the magistracy took every day. 208

When to all this is added the terrible discretion which was left to the judges, especially in the choice of punishment, and it will be understood how, without exceptional laws, without special legislation, it was possible to produce the desolating spectacle which the history of the Roman Empire presents at its best periods. The law may be applied with greater or less rigour, but it is still the law. This condition of things will last like a low and slow fever throughout the second century, with intervals of exasperation and remission in the third. It will end only with the terrible outburst of the first years of the fourth century, and will be definitely closed by the edict of Milan of 313. Every revival of the Roman spirit will be a redoubling of persecution. The emperors who, on divers occasions in the fourth century, undertook to restore the Empire, are the persecutors. The tolerant emperors—Alexander, Severus, Philip—are those who have no Roman blood in their veins, and who sacrifice Latin traditions to the cosmopolitanism of the East. Venerate the Divine in all things and everywhere, according to the usages of the nation, and force others to honour him. Hate and punish the partisans of foreign ceremonies, not merely out of respect for the gods, but especially because those who introduce new divinities thereby spread the taste for foreign customs, which leads to conjurations, to coalitions to associations, things which agree in no way with the Monarchy. Neither permit any man to profess at atheism or magic. Divination is necessary; let augurs and auspices be officially named, therefore, to whom those who wish to consult them may address themselves, but let there be no free magicians, for such persona, mixing some truths with many lies, may urge the citizens to rebellion. The same thing may be said of many of those who call themselves philosophers; beware of them; they only do mischief to private persons and to the peoples.

It was in such terms that a statesman of the generation which followed the Antonines summed up their religious policy. As in a time nearer to our own, the State thought itself to be displaying

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immense ability when it made use of superstition as a means of government. The municipalities enjoyed the same right by delegation. Religion was only a simple affair of the police,—a system of absolute isolation, where every movement is repressed, where every individual act is accounted dangerous, where the isolated individual, without a religious bond with other men, is no more than a purely official being, placed between a family reduced to the paltriest proportions and a state too great to be a country, to form the mind, to make the heart beat; such was the ideal which was dreamed of. Everything that was thought capable of affecting men, of producing emotion, was a crime which was to be prevented by death or exile. It was in this way that the Roman Empire killed the antique life, killed the soul, killed science, formed that school of heavy and restricted minds, of narrow politics, which, under the pretence of abolishing superstition, brought about in reality the triumph of theocracy. A great intellectual decline was the result of these efforts to restore a faith which no one held. A sort of commonplaceness spread itself over beliefs, and took away from them everything that was serious. Free-thinkers, innumerable in the century before and the century after Jesus Christ, diminished in numbers and disappeared. The easy tone of the great Latin literature was lost, and gave place to a heavy credulity. Science extinguished itself from day to day. After the death of Seneca it could hardly be said that there was a single savant who was altogether a rationalist. Pliny the elder is curious, but is no critic. Tacitus, Pliny the younger, Suetonius, avoid all expression of opinion on the inanity of the most ridiculous imagination. Pliny the younger believes in childish ghost stories. Epictetus desires to practise the established religion. Even a writer as frivolous as Apuleius believes himself, when the gods are in question, obliged to take the tone of a rigid Conservative. A single man about the middle of this century appears altogether free from supernatural beliefs—Lucan. The scientific spirit which is the negation of the supernatural, exists no longer save amongst an extremely small number; superstition invades everything, enervates all reason. Whilst religion was corrupting philosophy, philosophy sought for apparent reconciliations with the supernatural. A foolish and hollow theology, mixed with imposture, came into fashion Apuleius will soon call the philosophers “the priests of all the gods.” Alexander of Abonotica will found a religion upon conjuring tricks. Religious quackery, miracle-mongering, relieved by a false varnish of philosophy, became the fashion. Apollonius of Tyana afforded the first example of it, although it would be difficult to say who this singular personage was in reality, It was at a later date that he was imagined to be a religious revealer, a sort of philosophical demi-god. Such was the promptitude of the decadence of the human mind that a wretched theurgist who, in the time of Trajan, would hardly have been accepted by the Gapers of Asia Minor, became a hundred years afterwards, thanks to shameless writers, who used him to amuse a public fallen altogether into credulity, a personage of the first order, a divine incarnation whom they dared to compare with Jesus. Public instruction obtained from the emperors much more attention than under the Cæsars and even under the Flavii; but there was no question of literature; the grand discipline of the mind which

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comes especially from science will obtain from these professors but little profit. Philosophy was specially favoured by Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius; but philosophy, which is the supreme object of life, which includes everything else, can scarcely be taught by the State. In any case, that instruction affected the people very little. It was something abstract and elevated, something which passed over their heads, and as, on the other hand, the Temple gave nothing of that moral teaching which the Church has more recently dispensed, the lower classes stagnated in a deplorable condition of abandonment. All this implies no reproach upon the great emperors who did not succeed in the impossible task of saving the ancient civilisation. Time failed them. One evening, after having endured during the day the assault of declaimers who promised him an infinite glory if he converted the world to philosophy, Marcus Aurelius wrote upon his tablets the following reflection, for his own use only:—“The universal cause is a torrent which draws all things with it. How simple are these pretended politicians who imagine that they can manage affairs by the maxims of philosophy. They are children who are babbling still. Do not hope that there will ever be a Republic of Plato; content thyself with small improvements, and if thou succeedest, do not imagine that that will be a small thing. Who can in effect change the inward dispositions of men? And without the change of hearts and of opinions, of what avail is all the rest? Thou wilt never do more than make slaves and hypocrites. The work of philosophy is a simple and a modest thing: far from us be all this pretentious gibberish?” Ah! honest man! To sum up! Notwithstanding all its defects, society in the second century was making progress. There was intellectual decadence but moral improvement, as appears to be the case in our own days in the upper ranks of French society. The ideas of charity, of assistance to the poor, of disgust at the (gladiatorial) spectacles, increased everywhere. So much did this excellent spirit preside over the destinies of the Empire, that at the death of Marcus Aurelius Christianity seemed to be brought to a standstill It pressed forward, on the contrary, with an irresistible movement when in the third century the noble maxims of the Antonines were forgotten. As we have already said, Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, prolonged the life of the emperors for a hundred years; we may almost say that they retarded the advance of Christianity for the same time. The progress which Christianity made in the first and in the third centuries was gigantic as compared with that of the second. In the second century, Christianity was confronted by a great force, that of practical philosophy labouring rationally for the amelioration of human society. From the time of Commodus, individual egotism, and what may be called the egotism of the State, left no place for ideal aspirations except in the Church. The Church thus became the asylum of all the heart and soul; shortly after, civil and political life concentrated themselves equally within it.

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CHAPTER XVIII. EPHESUS—THE OLD AGE OF JOHN—CERINTHUS—DOCETISM.

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DOUBT, which is never absent from this history, becomes always an opaque cloud when it is a question of Ephesus and of the dark passions which agitated it. We have admitted as probable the traditional opinion, according to which the Apostle John, surviving the majority of the disciples of Jesus, having escaped from the storms of Rome and Judea successively, took refuge in Ephesus, and there lived to an advanced age, surrounded with the respect of all the Churches of Asia. Irenæus, without doubt, on the authority of Polycarp, affirming that the old Apostle lived until the reign of Trajan, appears to us to have even heard him. If these facts are true, they must have had grave consequences. The memory of the punishment which John had escaped at Rome, caused him to be classed amongst the martyrs even during his lifetime, in the same way as his brother James. In connecting the words in which Jesus had announced that the generation which listened to him should not pass away before his appearance in the clouds, with the great age which the only surviving Apostle of Jesus had attained, the logical idea that that disciple should never die was arrived at—that is to say, that he would see the inauguration of the Kingdom of God without first tasting death. John related, or allowed it to be believed, that Jesus after his resurrection had had on that subject an enigmatical conversation with Peter. Hence resulted for John, in his very lifetime, a sort of marvellous halo. Legend began to deal with him even before the grave received him. The old Apostle, in these last years veiled in mystery, appears to have been much beset. Miracles and even resurrections from the dead were ascribed to him. A circle of disciples gathered around him. What passed in that private cœnaculum? What traditions were elaborated there? What stories did the old man tell? Did he not soften in his last days the strong antipathy which he had always shown to the disciples of Paul? In his narratives did he not seek, as happened more than once in the lifetime of Jesus, to ascribe to himself the first place by the side of his Master, to put himself nearest to His heart? Did some of the doctrines which were described later as Johannian begin already to be discussed between the aged and weary master and the young and bright spirits in search of novelties, seeking perhaps to persuade the old man that he had always had on his own account the ideas which they suggested? We do not know; and here is one of the gravest difficulties which encompass the origin of Christianity. This time, in effect, it is not only the exaggeration and the uncertainty of the legends of which we have to complain. There was probably in the bosom of that delusive Church of Ephesus a disposition towards dissimulation and pious frauds which has made the task of the critic who is called upon to disentangle such confusion, singularly difficult. Philo, at about the time when Jesus lived, had developed a philosophy of Judaism, which, although prepared by previous speculations of Israelitish thinkers, took under his pen only a definite form. The basis of that philosophy was a sort of abstract metaphysic, introducing into the one God 142


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various hypostases, and snaking of the Divine Reason (in Greek Logos, in Syro-Chaldaic Memera) a sort of distinct principle from the Eternal Father. Egypt and Phœnicia already knew of similar doublings of one same God. The Hermetic Books were later to erect the theology of the hypostases into a philosophy parallel to that of Christianity. Jesus appears to have been left out of these speculations, which, had he known of them, would have had few charms for his poetic imagination and his loving heart. His school, on the contrary, was, so to speak, besieged by it; Apollos was perhaps no stranger to it. St Paul, in the latter part of his life, appears to have allowed himself to be greatly preoccupied with it. The apocalypse gives us the mysterious name of its triumphant Λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ. Judeo-Christianity, faithful to the spirit of orthodox Judaism, did not allow such ideas to enter their midst, save in the most limited fashion. But when the Churches out of Syria were more and more detached from Judaism, the invasion of the new spirit was accomplished with an irresistible force. Jesus, who at first had been for his hearers only as a prophet, a Son of God, in whom the most exalted had seen the Messiah or that Son of Man whom the pseudo-Daniel had shown as the brilliant centre of future apparitions, became now the Logos, the Reason, the Word of God. Ephesus appears to have been the place where this fashion of regarding the part of Jesus took the deepest root, and from which it spread over the Christian world. It is not in effect with the Apostle John alone that tradition connects the solemn promulgation of this novel dogma. Around John tradition shows us his doctrine raising storms, troubling consciences, provoking schisms and anathemas. About the time at which we have arrived, there appeared at Ephesus, coming from Alexandria like another Apollos, a man who appears, after a generation, to have had many points of likeness with this last. The man in question was Cerinthus, which others call Merinthas, without its being possible to know what mystery is hidden under that assonance. Like Apollus, Cerinthus was born a Jew, and before becoming acquainted with Christianity had been imbued with the Judeo-Alexandrine philosophy. He embraced the faith of Jesus in a manner altogether different from that of the good Israelites who believed the kingdom of God realised in the Idyll of Nazareth, and of the pious Pagans, whom a secret attraction drew towards that mitigated form of Judaism. His mind, besides, appears to have had little fixity, and to have been willingly carried from one extreme to the other. Sometimes his conceptions approached those of the Ebionites; sometimes they inclined to millenarianism; sometimes they floated in pure gnosticism, or presented an analogy with those of Philo. The creator of the world and the author of the Jewish law—the God of Israel, in short—was not the Eternal Father; he was an angel, a sort of demigod, subordinated to the great and Almighty God. The spirit of this great God, long unknown to the world, has been revealed only in Jesus. The Gospel of Cerinthus was the Gospel of the Hebrews, without doubt translated into Greek. One of the characteristic features of the Gospel was the account of the baptism of Jesus, after which a divine spirit, the spirit of prophecy, at that solemn moment descended upon Jesus, and raised him to a dignity which he had not previously had. Cerinthus thought that even until his baptism Jesus was simply a man, the most just and the most wise of men it is true; by his baptism, the spirit of the omnipotent God came to dwell in him. The

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mission of Jesus thus become the Christ, was to reveal the Supreme God by his preaching and his miracles; but it was not true in that way of seeing him that the Christ had suffered upon the Cross; before the Passion, the Christ, impassible by nature, separated himself from the man Jesus; he alone was crucified, died and rose again. At other times Cerinthus denied even the Resurrection, and pretended that Jesus would rise again with all the world at the Day of Judgment.

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That doctrine, which we have already found at least in germ amongst many of the families of the Ebionim, whose propaganda was carried on beyond the Jordan in Asia, and which in fifty years Narcion and the Gnostics would take up with greater vigour, appeared a frightful scandal to the Christian conscience. In separating from Jesus the fantastic being called Christos, it did nothing less than divide the person of Jesus, carrying off all personality from the most beautiful part of his active life, since the Christ found himself to have been in him only as something foreign and impersonal to him. It was thought indeed that the friends of Jesus, those who had seen and loved him, child, young man, martyr, corpse, would be indignant. The memories presented Jesus to them as amiable as God, from one moment to mother; they wished that he should be adopted and revered altogether. John, it would seem, rejected the doctrines of Cerinthus with wrath. His fidelity to a childish affection might alone excuse certain fanatical traits which are attributed to him, and which, besides, appear to have been not out of keeping with his habitual character. One day on entering the bath at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus, he exclaimed:—“Let us fly; the building will fall in, since Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is there!” These violent hatreds produce sectaries. He who loves much, hates much. On all sides the difficulty of reconciling the two parts of Jesus, of causing to co-exist in the same being the wise man and the Christ, produced imaginations like those which excited the wrath of John. Docetism was, if we may so express it, the heresy of the time. Many could not admit that the Christ had been crucified and laid in the tomb. Some like Cerinthus admitted a sort of intermittance in the divine work of Jesus; others supposed that the body of Jesus had been fantastic, that all his material life, above all, his life of suffering, had been but apparitional. These imaginations came from the opinion, very wide spread at that period, that matter is a fall, a degradation of the spirit; that the material manifestation is the degradation of the idea. The Gospel history is thus volatilised as it were into something impalpable. It is curious that Islamism, which is only a sort of Arab prolongation of Judeo-Christianity, should have adopted this idea about Jesus. At Jerusalem, in particular, the Mussulmans have always denied absolutely that Isa died upon Golgotha; they pretend that someone like him was crucified in his stead. The supposed place of the Ascension upon the Mount of Olives is for the Shaykhs the true Holy Place of Jerusalem connected with Isa, for it is there that the impassible Messiah, born of the sacred breath and not of the flesh, appeared for the last time united to the appearance which he had chosen.

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Whatever he may have been, Cerinthus became in the Christian tradition a sort of Simon Magus, a personage almost fabulous, the typical representative of Docetic Christianity, brother of Ebionite

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and Judeo-Christian Christianity. As Simon Magus was the sworn enemy of Peter, Cerinthus was considered to be the bitter opponent of Paul. He was put on the same footing as Ebion; there was soon a habit of not separating them, and as Ebion was the abstract personification of the Judeo-Christian-speaking Hebrew, Cerinthus became a sort of generic word to designate Judeo-Christianity-speaking Greek. Phrases like the following were coined:—“Who dares to reproach Peter with having admitted Pagans into the Church? Who showered insults upon Paul? Who provoked a sedition against Titus the uncircumcised? It was Ebion: it was Cerinthus”—phrases which, taken literally, cause it to be supposed that Cerinthus had had a part in Jerusalem in the earliest ages of the Church. As Cerinthus has left no writings, the ecclesiastical tradition went on in all that concerned him from one inexactitude to another. In this tissue of contradictions there is not one word of truth. Cerinthus was really the first heretic, the author of a doctrine destined to remain a dead branch in the great tree of the Christian doctrine. In opposing itself to him, in denying his claims, the Christian Church made the greatest step towards the constitution of an orthodox faith.

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By these struggles, and these contradictions in effect, Christian theology developed itself. The person of Jesus, and the singular combination of man, and the Divinity that were believed to exist in him, formed the basis of these speculations. We shall see gnosticism come to light in a current of like ideas, and seek in its turn to decompose the unity of the Christ; but the orthodox Church will be steady in repelling such conceptions; the existence of Christianity, founded upon the reality of the personal action of Jesus, was at this price. John, without doubt, consoled himself for these aberrations, the fruits of a mind strange to the Galilean tradition, by the fidelity and affection with which his disciples surrounded him. In the first rank was a young Asiatic, named Polycarp, who must have been about thirty years of age during the extreme old age of John, and who appears to have been converted to the faith in Christ in his infancy. The extreme respect which he had for the Apostle made him look upon him with the curious eye of youth, in which everything enlarges and transforms itself. The living image of this old man had fixed itself in his mind, and throughout his life he spoke of it as of a glimpse of the Divine world. It was at Smyrna that he was chiefly active, and it is not impossible that he had been selected by John to preside over the already ancient Church in that city, as Irenæus has it. Thanks to Polycarp, the memory of John remained in Asia, and consequently at Lyons, and amongst the Gauls, a living tradition. Everything that Polycarp said of the Lord, of his doctrine, and of his miracles, connected him as having received it from the eye-witnesses of the Life of Jesus. He was accustomed to express himself thus:—“This I have from the Apostles.” . . . “I who have been taught by the Apostles, and who have lived with many of those who have seen the Christ.” This way of speaking caused it to be supposed that Polycarp had known other Apostles besides John—Philip, for example. It is, however, more probable that there was some hyperbole here. The expression “the Apostles,” without doubt means John, who might besides be accompanied by many

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unknown Galilean disciples. We may also understand thereby, if we choose, Presbyteros Joannes and Aristion, who, according to certain texts, would have been the immediate disciples of the Lord. As to Caius, Diotrephes, Demetrius, and the pious Cyria whom the Epistles of the Presbyteros present as making part of the Ephesian circle, it would be to risk by dwelling too strongly on these names, discussing beings who, as the Talmud says, “have never been created,” and who owe their existence only to the artifices of forgers, or even, like Cyria, to misunderstandings. Nothing, in short, is more doubtful than everything which relates to this homonym of the Apostle, this Presbyteros Joannes, who only appears near to John in his later years, and who, according to some traditions, succeeded him in the presidency of the Church of Ephesus. His existence, however, seems probable. The title of Presbyteros may be the appellation by which he was distinguished from Apostolos. After the death of the Apostle, he may have long continued to describe himself as Presbyteros, omitting his name. Aristion, whom very ancient information places by the side of the Presbyteros as a traditionist of the highest authority, and who appears to have been claimed by the Church of Smyrna, is also an enigma. All that can be said is that there was at Ephesus a group of men who, towards the end of the first century, gave themselves out as the last eye-witnesses of the Life of Jesus. Papias knew them, or at least came very near to them, and collected their traditions.

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We shall see later the publication of a Gospel, of an altogether special character, produced by this little circle, which appears to have obtained the entire confidence of the old Apostle, and which perhaps believed itself authorised to speak in his name. At the period at which we are, and before the death of John, some of his disciples, who appear to have surrounded him, and, as it were, to have monopolised the old age of the last survivor of the Apostles, did they not seek to make use of the rich treasure which he had at their disposal? We may suppose so; we ourselves were formerly inclined that way. We think now that it is more probable that some part of the Gospel which bears the name of John may have been written by himself, or by one of his disciples during his lifetime. But we persist in believing that John had a manner of his own of telling the life of Jesus, a manner very different from the narratives of Batanea, superior in some respects, and in particular the parts of the life of Jesus which were passed in Jerusalem afforded him more room for development. We believe that the Apostle John, whose character appears to have been sufficiently personal, and who, during the life-time of Jesus, aspired with his brother to the first place in the Kingdom of God, gave himself with much simplicity that place in his narrative. If he had read the Gospels of Mark or of Luke, which is quite possible, he must have found that there was not sufficient mention of him, that the importance attributed to him was not so great as he had had. He claimed as is known to have been, the disciple whom Jesus especially loved; he wished that it should be believed that he had played the first part in the Gospel drama. With the vanity of an old man he assumed all the importance, and his long stories have frequently no other object than that of showing that he had been the favourite disciple of Jesus,—that at solemn moments he had rested upon his heart,—that Jesus had confided to him his mother, that in a host of circumstances where the first place had been given to Peter, it really belonged to him—John. His great age gave rise to all kinds of reflections, 146


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his longevity passed for a sign from Heaven. As, furthermore, his surroundings were not distinguished by absolute good faith, and as even a little charlatanism may have been mixed up with them, we can imagine what strange productions might spring up in this nest of pious intrigues around an old man whose head might be weak, and who found himself powerless in the hands of those who took care of him. 222

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John continued a strict Jew to the end, observing the Law in all its rigour; it is doubtful whether the transcendental theories which began to be disseminated as to the identity of Jesus with the Logos can ever have been comprehended by him; but, as happens in schools of thought in which the master attains a great age, his school went on without him and outside of him, even whilst pretending to base itself upon him. John appeared fated to be made use of by the authors of fictitious pieces. We have seen how much there was that was suspicious in the origin of the Apocalypse; objections almost equally grave may be made to theories which maintain the authenticity of this singular book, and which declare it apocryphal. What shall be said of that other eccentricity, that a whole branch of the ecclesiastical tradition, the school of Alexandria, has determined not merely that the Apocalypse shall not be John’s, but that it belongs to his opponent Cerinthus. We shall find the same equivocations surrounding the second class of Johannian writings which will soon be produced, and one thing only remaining clear—that John cannot have been the author of the two series of works which bear his name. One of the two series, at all events, may possibly be his; but both are certainly not. There was great emotion on the day which witnessed the death of the Apostle in whom for many years had been summed up the whole Christian tradition, and by whom it was believed that there was still connection with Jesus, and with the beginning of the new word. All the pillars of the Church had disappeared. He whom Jesus, according to the common belief, had promised not to allow to taste of death until he came again, had in turn gone down into the grave. It was a cruel deception, and in order to justify the prophecy of Jesus, it was necessary to have recourse to subtleties. It was not true, said the friends of John, that Jesus had announced that his beloved Apostle should remain alive until his reappearance. He had simply said to Peter, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” a vague formula which left the field open to all sorts of explanations, and allowed it to be believed that John, like Enoch, Elias, Esdras, were held in reserve until the coming of the Christ. It was now in any case a solemn moment. No one now could say, “I have seen him.” Jesus and the first years of the Church of Jerusalem were lost in an obscure past. The importance then passed to those who had known the Apostles, to Mark and to Luke, disciples of Peter and Paul, to the daughters of Philip, who continued his marvellous gifts. Polycarp all his life quoted the connection which he had had with John. Aristion and Presbyteros Johannes lived upon the same memories. To have seen Peter, Andrew, Thomas, Philip became the leading qualification in the eyes of those who wished to know the truth as to the appearances of the Christ. Books, as we have said twenty times, counted for very little; oral tradition was everything. The transmission of the doctrine, and the transmission of apostolic powers, were regarded as part of a kind of 147


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delegation, of ordination, of consecration, the primary source of which was the apostolic college. Soon every Church wishes to show the succession of the men who made the chain going back in a right line to the Apostles. Ecclesiastical precedence was regarded as a sort of inoculation with spiritual powers, suffering no interruption. The ideas of the social hierarchy thus made rapid progress; the episcopate consolidated itself from day to day.

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The tomb of John was shown at Ephesus ninety years later; it is probable that upon this venerable monument was raised the basilica which afterwards became celebrated, and the site of which appears to have been in the neighbourhood of the present citadel of Aïa Solouk. By the side of the tomb of the Apostle was to be seen in the third century a second tomb, which was also attributed to a person named John, whence resulted great confusion. We shall have to speak of it again.

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CHAPTER XIX. LUKE, THE FIRST HISTORIAN OF CHRISTIANITY. WITH John disappeared the last man of the strange generation which had believed itself to have seen God upon the earth, and had hoped not to die. It was about the same time that that charming book appeared which has preserved to us across the mists of legends the image of the age of gold. Luke, or whoever the author of the third Gospel may have been, undertook that task, which was congenial to his refined soul, to his pure and gentle talents. The prefaces which stand at the head of the third Gospel and at the head of the Acts appear at the first glance to indicate that Luke conceived his work as consisting of two books, one of which contained the Life of Jesus, the other the history of the Apostles as he had known them. There are, however, strong reasons for believing that the compilation of the two works was separated by some interval. The preface to the Gospel does not necessarily imply the intention of composing the Acts. It may be that Luke added this second book to his work only at the end of several years, and at the request of persons with whom the first book had had so much success. 225

This hypothesis is supported by the part which the author has taken in the first lines of the Acts relative to the ascension of Jesus. In the other Gospels the period of the apparitions of Jesus fades away little by little, without any definite end. The imagination comes to desire a final catastrophe; a definite way of escaping from a state of things which could not continue indefinitely. This myth, the completion of the legend of Jesus, was slowly and painfully evolved. The author of the apocalypse in 69 certainly believed in the Ascension. Jesus, according to him, is carried up into heaven and placed by the throne of God. In the same book the two prophets copied from Jesus, killed like him, rise after three and a half days; after their resurrection, they ascend to heaven in a cloud in the sight of their enemies. Luke, in his Gospel, leaves the matter in suspense, but at the beginning of the Acts he relates, with all desirable accompaniments, the crowning event of the life of Jesus. He knows even how long the life of Jesus lasted beyond the tomb. It was forty days, a remarkable coincidence with the apocalypse of Esdras. Luke at Rome may have been one of the earliest readers of this document, which must have made a profound impression upon him. The spirit of the Acts is the same as that of the third Gospel: gentleness, tolerance, conciliation, sympathy with the humble, aversion from the proud. The author is certainly he who wrote, “Peace to men of good will.” We have explained elsewhere the singular distortions which these excellent intentions have made him give to historic accuracy, and how his book is the first document of the mind of the Roman Church, indifferent to facts and dominated in all things by the official tendencies. Luke is the founder of that eternal fiction which is called ecclesiastical history, with its insipidity, its habit of smoothing

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off all angles, its foolishly sanctified turns. The à priori of a Church always wise, always moderate, is the basis of his narrative. The principal point for him is to show that the disciples of Paul are the disciples not of an intruder but of an apostle like the others who has been in perfect communion with the others. The rest is of small consequence to him. Everything passes as in an idyll. Peter was at heart of Paul’s opinion; Paul was of the opinion of Peter. An inspired assembly has seen all the members of the apostolic college united in the same thought. The first Pagan baptism was performed by Peter; Paul, on the other hand, submitted to the legal prescriptions, and observed them publicly at Jerusalem. All frank expression of a decided opinion is repugnant to this prudent narrator. The Jews are treated as false witnesses because they quote an authentic statement of Jesus, and attribute to the Founder of Christianity an intention of bringing about changes in Mosaism. According to the occasion, Christianity is nothing else than Judaism, or else it is quite a different thing. When the Jew bows before Jesus, his privilege is loudly recognised. Luke then has the most unctuous words for these elders of the family who must be reconciled with the younger brothers. But that does not prevent him from insisting complacently on the Pagans who have been converted, or from opposing them to the hardened Jew, uncircumcised of heart. He may see that at bottom his sympathies are with the former. He greatly prefers the Pagans who are Christians in spirit, the centurions who love the Jews, the plebeians who avow their humility. Return to God, faith in Jesus,—these are matters which equalise all differences, extinguish all rivalries. It is the doctrine of Paul set free from those rudenesses which fill the life of the Apostle with bitterness and disgust. From the point of view of historical value, two parts, absolutely distinct, ought to be made in the Acts, according to which Luke relates the facts of the life of Paul, of which he had personal knowledge, or as he presents to us the accepted theory of his times as to the first years of the Church at Jerusalem. The first years were like a distant mirage, full of illusions. Luke was as ill-placed as possible to understand that world which has disappeared. All that had happened during the years which followed the death of Jesus, was regarded as symbolical and mysterious. Across that deceiving vapour, everything became sacramental. Thus were formed, besides the myth of the Ascension of Jesus, the narrative of the descent of the Holy Ghost, which was connected with the day of the Feast of Pentecost, the exaggerated ideas of the community of goods in the Primitive Church, the terrible legend of Ananias and Sapphira, the fancies which were indulged in as to the altogether hierarchical character of the College of the Twelve, the contradictions as to the gift of tongues, the effect of which was to transform into a public miracle a spiritual phenomenon of the interior of the Churches. All that relates to the institution of the Seven, the conversion of Cornelius, the Council of Jerusalem, and the decrees which are supposed to have been issued from thence by a common consent, arise out of the same tendency. It is now very difficult to discover in these curious pages the truth of the legend or even of the myth. As the desire of finding a Gospel basis for all the dogmas and the institutions which were hatched out every day had encumbered the life of Jesus with fabulous anecdotes, so the desire of finding for these same institutions, for these same dogmas, an apostolic basis, charged the history of the first years of the Church at Jerusalem, with a host of narratives

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conceived à priori. To write history ad narrandum, non ad probandum, is a feat of disinterested curiosity of which there is no example in the creative periods of the faith.

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We have had too many occasions to show in detail the principles which govern the narrative of Luke, to be compelled to revert to them here. The reunion of the two parties into which the Church of Jesus was divided, is its principal object. Rome was the point where that supreme work was accomplished. Clemens Romanus had already preluded it. He had probably never seen either Peter or Paul. His great practical sense showed him that the safety of the Christian Church required the reconciliation of its two founders. Did he inspire St Luke, who appears to have been in communication with him, or did these two pious souls fall spontaneously into agreement as to the direction which it was desirable to give to Christian opinion? We do not know, for want of documents. What we do know is that it was a Roman work. Rome possessed two Churches, one coming from Peter, and one from Paul. To those numerous converts who came to Jesus, some by way of the school of Peter, and others by way of the school of Paul, and who were tempted to cry out, “What! are there then two Christs?” it was necessary to be able to say, “No. Peter and Paul are in perfect agreement. The Christianity of the one is the Christianity of the other.” Perhaps a slight colouring was on this account imported into the Gospel legend of the miraculous Draught of Fishes. According to the account of Luke, the nets of Peter were not able to contain the multitude of fishes which were anxious to be captured; Peter is obliged to make signs to his collaborators to come to his aid; a second ship (Paul and his friends) is filled in the same way as the first, and the haul of the kingdom of God is superabundant. Something analogous to this may be found in what happened about the time of the Revolution, in the party which undertook to restore the worship of the French Revolution. Amongst the heroes of the Revolution, the struggles had been ardent and bitter; there was hatred even to the death. But twenty-five years afterwards nothing remained of all that but a great neutral result. It was forgotten that the Girondins, Danton, Robespierre, had cut off each other’s heads. Save for some few and rare exceptions, there were no longer any partisans of the Girondins, of Danton, or of Robespierre; all were partisans of what was considered their common work—that is to say, the Revolution. In the same Pantheon were placed as brethren men who had proscribed each other. In great historical movements there is the moment of exaltation when men associated in view of a common work separate from each other or kill each other for a shade of difference; then comes the moment of reconciliation, when it is sought to prove that these apparent enemies understood each other and laboured for the same end. At the end of a certain time, out of all these disagreements comes forth a single doctrine, and a perfect agreement reigns between the disciples of the men who anathematised each other. Another essentially Roman feature of Luke, is one which brings him into closer relation with Clement, is his respect for the Imperial authority, and the precautions which he takes not to wound it. We do not find amongst these two writers the bitter hatred of Rome which characterises the

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authors of the apocalypse and the Sibylline poems. The author of the Acts avoids everything which could present Rome as the enemy of Christianity. On the contrary, he endeavours to show that on many occasions they have defended Paul and the Christians against the Jews. There is never an insulting word for the civil magistrates. If he stops short in his narrative at the arrival of Paul at Rome, it is perhaps because he does not wish to be compelled to relate the monstrosities of Nero. Luke does not admit that the Christians may ever have been legally compromised. If Paul had not appealed to the Emperor, he might have been acquitted. A judicial afterthought in perfect agreement with the era of Trajan preoccupies him: he wishes to create precedents, to show that there is no method of prosecuting those who had been so often acquitted. Bad processes do not repel him. Never have patience and optimism been pushed farther. The taste for persecution, the joy of sufferings endured for the name of Jesus, fill the soul of Luke, and make his book the manual par excellence of the Christian missionary. The perfect unity of the book scarcely allows us to decide whether Luke in composing it had under his eyes previously-written documents, or if he was the first to write the history of the Apostles from oral tradition. There were many Acts of the Apostles, just as there were many Gospels; but whilst several Gospels have been retained in the Canon, only a single book of Acts has been preserved. The “Preaching of Peter,” the object of which was to present Jerusalem as the source of all Christianity, and Peter as the centre of the Hierosolymitan Christianity, is perhaps as ancient at bottom as the Acts; but Luke certainly did not know it. It is gratuitous also to suppose that Luke revised and completed, in the sense of the reconciliation of the Judeo-Christian with Paul, a more ancient document composed to the greater glory of the Church of Jerusalem and the Twelve. The design of putting Paul on a level with the Twelve, and, above all, to connect Peter and Paul, is manifest in our author; but it appears that he followed in his narrative only the framework of a long-established oral tradition. The chiefs of the Church of Rome appear to have a consecrated manner of relating the apostolic history. Luke conformed to it, adding a sufficiently detailed memoir of Paul, and towards the end some personal recollections. Like all the historians of antiquity, he did not deny himself the use of a little innocent rhetoric. At Rome his Greek education had been completed, and the sentiment of oratorical composition in the Greek manner awoke in him.

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The book of the Acts, like the third Gospel written for the Christian society of Rome, remained for a long time confined to it. So long as the Church developed herself by direct tradition and by internal necessities, only a secondary importance was attached to it, but when the decisive argument in the discussions relative to the ecclesiastical organisations was to remount to the primitive Church as to an ideal, the book of the Acts became of the highest authority. It told of the Ascension, the Pentecost, the Cœnaculum, the miracles of the apostolic Word, the Council of Jerusalem. The foregone conclusions of Luke imposed themselves upon history; and even to the penetrating observers of the modern criticism, the thirty years which were most fertile in ecclesiastical annals, were known only by him. The material truth suffered from it, for that material truth Luke scarcely knew, while he cared still less about it; but almost as much as the Gospels, the Acts fashioned the 152


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future. The manner in which things are told is of more consequence in great secular developments than the manner in which they happened. Those who constructed the legend of Jesus have a part in the work of Christianity almost equal to his; that which made the legend of the primitive Church has weighed with an enormous weight in the creation of that spiritual society where so many centuries have found the repose of their souls. Multitudinis credentium erat cor unum et anima una. When one has written that, one has thrust into the heart of humanity the goad which never allows it to rest until what may have been discovered, and what has been seen in slumber, and what has been seen in dreams, and touched that of which we have dreamed. 232

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CHAPTER XX. SYRIAN SECTS—ELKASAÏ. WHILST the Western Churches, yielding more or less to the influence of the Roman spirit, moved rapidly towards an orthodox Catholicism, and aspired to give to itself a central government excluding the varieties of the sects, the Churches of the Ebionim in Syria were crumbling away more and more, and wasted themselves in all sorts of aberrations. The sect is not the Church; too often, on the contrary, the sect eats away the Church and dissolves it. A veritable Proteus, Judeo-Christianity engaged itself by turns in the most opposite directions. Notwithstanding the privilege enjoyed by the Syrian Christians of possessing the members of the family of Jesus, and of attaching to itself a tradition much closer than those of the Churches of Asia, of Greece, and of Rome, it is not to be doubted that, left to themselves, these little associations would have melted away like a dream at the end of two or three hundred years. On the one hand, the exclusive use of Syriac deprived them of all fertile contact with the works of Greek genius; on the other, a host of Oriental influences, full of danger, acted upon them, and threatened them with a prompt corruption. Their imperfect reasoning powers delivered them over to the seductions of the theosophic follies—of Babylonian, Persian, or Egyptian origin; which, in about forty years, caused the nascent Christianity that grave malady of Gnosticism, which can only be compared to a terrible croup, from which the child barely escapes by a miracle.

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The atmosphere in which these Ebionite Churches of Syria, and beyond the Jordan, lived, was exceedingly disturbed. Jewish sects abounded in these districts, and followed an altogether different course from that of the orthodox doctors. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Judaism, deprived of the prophetic spur, had only two poles of religious activity—the Casuistic, represented by the Talmud, and the mystical dreams of the new-born Cabbala. Lydda and Jabneh were the centres of the religious elaboration of the Talmud; the country beyond Jordan served as a cradle to the Cabbala. The Essenians were not dead; under the names of Essenes, Ossenes, or Osseens, they were scarcely to be distinguished from Nazarenes or Ebionites, and continued their special asceticisms and fastings with so much the more ardour since the destruction of the Temple had suppressed the ritualism of the Thora. The Galileans of Judah, the Gaulonite, existed, it appears, as a Church apart. It is scarcely known what the Masbotheans were, still less what were the Genisti, the Meristi, and some other obscure heretics. The Samaritans were divided on their side into a crowd of sects, more or less connected with Simon of Gitton. Cleobius, Menander, the Gorotheans, the Sebueans, are already Gnostics: the Cabbalistic mysticism ran high amongst them. The absence of all authority still permitted the gravest confusions. The Samaritan sects which swarmed by the side of the Church sometimes entered within its limits or sought to force their way in. We may connect with these times the book of the 154


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Grand Exposition attributed to Simon of Gitton. Menander and Capharateus had succeeded to all the ambitions of Simon. He, like his master, imagined that he possessed the supreme virtue hidden from the rest of men. Between God and the creation he placed an innumerable world of angels, over whom magic had all power. Of that magic he pretended to know the profoundest secrets. It appears that he baptised in his own name. This baptism conferred the right to the resurrection and to immortality. It was at Antioch that Menander reckoned the greatest number of followers. His disciples sought, as it would seem, to usurp the name of Christians, but the Christians vigorously repulsed them and gave them the name of Menandrians. It was the same with certain Simonian sectaries named Eutychites, worshippers of Eons, against whom were brought the gravest accusations. Another Samaritan, Dositheus or Dosthaï, played the part of a sort of Christ, of Son of God, and sought to pass himself off as the great prophet equal to Moses of whom the promise might be read in Deuteronomy (xviii. 15), and in these feverish times he was constantly expected. Essenism, with its tendency to multiply angels, was at the root of all these aberrations; the Messiah himself was no more than an angel, and Jesus, in the Churches placed under that influence, risked the loss of his beautiful title of Son of God, to become only a great angel—an Eon of the first rank.

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The intimate connection which existed between Christians and the mass of Israel, the want of direction which characterised the trans-Jordanic Churches, caused each of these sects to have its counterpart in the Church of Jesus. We do not well understand what Hegesippus endeavours to say when he traces for the Church of Jerusalem a period of absolute virginity, finishing about the time at which we now are, and when he attributes all the evil of the time which followed to a certain Trebuthis, who, out of spite at not having been named bishop, infected the Church with errors borrowed from seven Jewish sects. What is true is that in the lost provinces of the East strange alliances were produced. Sometimes even the mania for incoherent mixtures did not stop at the limits of Judaism; the religions of Upper Asia furnished more than one element to the cauldron in which the most discordant elements fermented together. Baptism is a rite originally from the region of the Lower Euphrates; but baptism was the most common feature amongst the Jewish sects which sought to free themselves from the Temple and the priests at Jerusalem. John the Baptist still had disciples. The Essenians, the Ebionites, were almost all given to ablutions. After the destruction of the Temple, baptism gained greater strength. The sectaries plunged into water every day and on any excuse. We heard about the year 80 accounts which appeared to come from this sect. Under Trojan, the fashion of baptism redoubled. This growing favour was due in part to the influence of a certain Elkasaï, who we may suppose to have been in many ways the imitator of John the Baptist and of Jesus. This Elkasaï appears to have been an Essene of the country beyond Jordan. He had, perhaps, resided in Babylonia, whence he pretended to have brought the book of his revelation. He raised his prophetic standard in the third year of the reign of Trajan, preaching repentance, and a new baptism more efficacious than all these which had preceded it, capable, in a word, of washing away

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the most enormous sins. He presented, as a proof of his divine mission, a bizarre apocalypse, probably written in Syriac, which he sought to surround with a charlatanesque mystery, by representing it as having come down from heaven at Sera, the capital of the fabulous country of the Serans, beyond Parthia. A gigantic angel, thirty-two leagues in height, representing the Son of God, there played the part of revealer; by his side, a female angel of the same height, the Holy Spirit, appeared like a statue in the clouds between two mountains. Elkasaï, now the depositary of the book, transmits it to a certain Sobiaï. Some fragments of this strange document are known to us. Nothing there rises above the level of a vulgar mystifier, who wishes to make his fortune with pretended formulas of expiation and ridiculous mummeries. Magic formulas composed of Syriac phrases read backwards, puerile predictions as to lucky and unlucky days, mad medicine of exorcisms and sortileges, prescriptions against devils and dogs, astrological predictions—such is the Gospel of Elkasaï. Like all the makers of apocalypses, he announced catastrophes for the Roman Empire, the date of which he fixed for the sixth year after Trajan. Was Elkasaï really Christian? It has sometimes been doubted. He spoke often about the Messiah, but he equivocated concerning Jesus. It may be imagined that, walking in the footsteps of Simon of Gitton, Elkasaï knew and copied Christianity. Like Mahomet, at a later period, he adopted Jesus as a divine personage. The Ebionites were the only Christians with whom he had relations; for his Christology is distinctly that of Ebion. By its example, he maintained the Law, circumcision, the Sabbath, rejected the ancient prophets, hated Paul, abstained from flesh, and turned towards Jerusalem in prayer. His disciples appear to have approached Buddhism; they admitted many Christs, passing one into the others by a sort of transmigration, or rather a single Christ incarnating himself and appearing in the world at intervals. Jesus was one of these apparitions, Adam having been the first. These dreams make one think of the avatars of Vishnu and the successive lives of Krishna

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We feel in all this the crude syncretism of a sectary very like Mahomet, who coolly jumbles together and confounds the ideas which he gleans from right and left according to his caprice or interest. The most recognisable influence is that of Persian naturalism and the Babylonian Cabbala. The Elkasaïtes adored water as the source of life, and detested fire. Their baptism administered, “in the name of the Most High God, and in the name of the Son, the great King,” effaced all sins and cured all sickness, when to it was joined the invocation of seven mysterious witnesses, the heaven, water, the holy spirits, the angels of prayer, oil, salt, earth. From the Essenes Elkasaï borrowed fasting, the horror of bloody sacrifices. The privilege of announcing the future and of healing the sick by magical operations, was also a pretension of the Essenes. But the morals of Elkasaï resembled those of these good Cenobites as little as might be. He reproved virginity, and, to avoid persecution, he allowed the simulation of idolatry, even to denying with the mouth the faith professed.

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These doctrines were more or less adopted by all the Ebionite sects. The living impress of them may be found in the pseudo-Clementine narratives, the work of the Ebionites at Rome, and vague reflections of them in the epistle falsely attributed to John. The book of Elkasaï was, however, not known by the Greek and Latin Churches until the third century, and had amongst them no success. It was, on the other hand, adopted with enthusiasm by the Osseans, the Nazarenes, and the Ebionites of the East. All the region beyond Jordan, Perea, Moab, Iturea, the country of the Nabatheans, the banks of the Dead Sea towards Arnon, were filled with these sectaries. Later they were called Samseans, an expression of obscure meaning. In the fourth century the fanaticism of the sect was such that people caused themselves to be killed for the family of Elkasaï. His family, in fact, still existed and carried on its vulgar charlatanry. Two women, Marthous and Marthana, who claimed descent from him, were almost worshipped; the dust of their feet, their spittle, were treated as relics. In Arabia, the Elkasaïtes, like the Ebionites and the Judeo-Christians in general, lived close to Islam and were confounded with it. The theory of Mahomet as to Jesus is scarcely separable from that of Elkasaï. The idea of the Kibla, or direction for prayer, perhaps comes from the trans-Jordanic sectaries.

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It is impossible to insist too strongly on the point that before the great schism of the Greek and Latin Churches, equally orthodox and Catholic, there had been another schism—an Oriental, a Syrian schism, if we may so explain it—which put out of the pale of Christianity, or, more exactly, left upon its confines a whole world of Judeo-Christian or Ebionite sects, in no way Catholic (Essenians, Osseans, Samseans, Jesseans, Elkasaïtes), in whose midst Mahomet learned Christianity, and of which Islam was the result. A proof, in some sort still a living proof, of this great fact, is the name of Nazarenes, which Mussulmans have always given to Christians. Another proof that the Christianity of Mahomet was Ebionism of Nazarism is that obstinate docetism which has caused it to be believed by the Mussulmans of all times that Jesus was not crucified in person,—that a ghost alone suffered in his place. We might fancy that we heard Cerinthus, or some of the Gnostics so energetically opposed by Irenæus. The Syriac name of these various sects of Baptists was Sabiin, the exact equivalent of “baptisers.” This is the origin of the name of Sabiens which serves even now to designate the Mendaïtes, the Nazarenes, or Christians of St John, who drag out their poor existence in the marshy district of Wasith and of Howeysa, not far from the confluence of the Tigris and of the Euphrates. In the seventh century Mahomet treated them with a special consideration. In the tenth the Arab polygraphs called them Elmogtasileh, “those who bathed.” The first Europeans who knew them took them for disciples of John the Baptist, who had quitted the banks of the Jordan before receiving the preaching of Jesus. It is hardly possible to doubt the identity of these sectaries with the Elkasaïtes, when we find them calling their founder El hasih, and, above all, when we study their doctrines, which are a sort of Judeo-Babylonian Gnosticism analogous in many ways to that of Elkasaï. The use of

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ablutions, the taste for astrology, the habit of ascribing books to Adam as the first of revelators, the qualities attributed to angels, a sort of naturalism and of belief in the magical virtue of the elements, the horror of celibacy, are so many features common to the Elkasaïtes and to the sectaries of Bassora. Like Elkasaï the Mendaïtes believed in water as the principle of life; fire as a principle of darkness and destruction. Although they lived far from the Jordan, that stream is always the baptismal stream. Their antipathy for Jerusalem and Judaism, the dislike which they manifested for Jesus and for Christianity, did not prevent their organisation of bishops, priests, and faithful from recalling in all respects the organisation of Christianity, or their liturgy from being copied from that of a Church, and bordering upon true Sacraments. Their books do not appear to be very ancient, but they seem to have replaced older ones. Of this number was perhaps the Apocalypse or Penitence of Adam, a singular book about the celestial liturgies for every hour of the day and night, and upon the sacramental acts which belong to each. Does Mendaïsm come from a single source—Essenism and Jewish baptism? Certainly not. In many respects a branch of the Babylonian religion may be seen in it, that religion may have entered into close alliance with a Judeo-Christian sect, itself already impressed with Babylonish ideas. The unbridled syncretism which has always been the rule with Oriental sects, renders an exact analysis of such monstrosities impossible. The ulterior relations of the Sabiens with Manicheism remain very obscure. All that can be said is that Elkasaïsm lasts even in our own days, and represents alone in the marshes of Bassora the Judeo-Christian sects which formerly flourished beyond Jordan.

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The family of Jesus which still survived in Syria was undoubtedly opposed to these unhealthy dreams. About the time we are considering, the last nephews of the Galilean founder died out, surrounded with the most profound respect by the trans-Jordanic communities, but almost forgotten by the other Churches. After their appearance before Domitian, the sons of Jude, returned to Batanea, were considered martyrs. They were placed at the head of the Churches, and they enjoyed a preponderating authority until their death, under Trajan. The sons of Cleophas during this time appear to have continued to bear the title of presidents of the Church of Jerusalem. To Simeon, son of Cleophas, had succeeded his nephew Judah, son of James, to whom appears to have succeeded another Simeon, the great-grandson of Cleophas. An important political event occurred in the year 105, in Syria, which had grave consequences for the future of Christianity. The Nabathean kingdom, which, until then, had remained independent, bordered Palestine on the east and included the cities of Petra, of Bostra, and in fact, if not in law, the city of Damascus, was destroyed by Cornelius Palma, and became the Roman province of Arabia. About the same time the little royalties feudatory to the Empire which until then were maintained in Syria, the Herods, the Soëmi of Edessa, the little sovereign of Chalcis, of Arbila, the Solencides of the Comagena, had disappeared. The Roman domination then assumed in the East a regularity which it had never had before. Beyond its frontiers there was only the inaccessible desert. The trans-Jordanic world which until then entered into the Empire only by its most westerly parts, 158


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was there swallowed up wholly. Palmyra, which so far had given to Rome only auxiliaries, entered altogether into the Roman domination. The entire field of Christian work is henceforward submitted to Rome, and is about to enjoy the absolute repose which the end of the pre-occupations of local patriotism brings about. All the East adopted Roman manners; the cities until then Oriental were rebuilt according to the rules of contemporary art. The prophecies of the Jewish apocalypses were not fulfilled. The Empire was at the height of its power; one single government extended from York to Assouan, from Gibraltar to the Carpathians and to the Syrian desert. The follies of Caligula and of Nero, the wickedness of Tiberius and Domitian, were forgotten. In that immense area there was only one natural protestation—that of the Jews; all bent without murmuring before the greatest force which had ever been seen in the world until then.

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CHAPTER XXI TRAJAN AS A PERSECUTOR—LETTER OF PLINY. IN a multitude of ways this force was benevolent. There were many countries, and, in consequence, many wars. With the reforms which might be hoped for from the excellent statesmen who were at the head of affairs, the aims of humanity seemed to be attained. We have already shown how that species of golden age of the Liberals, that government of the wisest and most honest men was hard,—worse, in a sense, than that of Nero and Domitian. Cold, correct, moderate statesmen, knowing only the law, applying it even with indulgence, could not fail to be persecutors; for the law was a persecutor; it did not permit what the Church of Jesus regarded as of the very essence of its divine institution.

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Everything proves, in fact, that Trajan was the first systematic persecutor of Christianity. The proceedings against the Christians, without being very frequent, took place many times under his reign. His political principles, his zeal for the official religion, his aversion for everything that resembled a secret society, involved him in it. He was equally urged forward by public opinion. Outbreaks against the Christians were not rare. The government, whilst satisfying its own suspicions, acquired by its severities against the calumniated sect a varnish of popularity. The riots and the persecutions which followed them, were altogether local in character. There was not under Trajan what under Decius and Diocletian was called a general persecution, but the condition of the Church was unstable and unequal. It was dependent upon caprices, and such caprices as came from the crowd were usually more to be feared than those of the agents of authority. Amongst the agents of authority themselves, the most enlightened—Tacitus, for example, and Suetonius—nourished the most deeply-rooted prejudices against “the new superstition.” Tacitus regards it as the first duty of a good statesman to stifle at the same time both Judaism and Christianity, “melancholy offshoots of the same stalk.” That becomes manifest in a very sensible manner when one of the most honest, the most upright, the most educated, the most liberal men of the time found himself brought by his duties into the presence of the problem which was coming to the front, and was beginning to embarrass the best minds. Pliny was named in the year 111 Imperial Legate Extraordinary in the provinces of Bithynia and Pontus, that is to say, in all the north of Asia Minor. This country had until then been governed by annual pro-consuls, senators drawn by lot, who had administered it with the greatest negligence. In some respects liberty had gained thereby. Shut off from high political questions, these administrators of a day occupied themselves less than they might have done with the future of the Empire. The public treasury had fallen into a state of extreme dilapidation; finances and the public works of the province were in a pitiable state; but whilst they were occupied in amusing or enriching

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themselves, these governors bad left the country to follow its own instincts at will. Disorder, as often happens, had profited by liberty. The official religion had to sustain it only the support which it received from the Empire: abandoned to itself by those indifferent prefects, it had fallen altogether into disrepute. In certain districts, the temples were in ruins. The professional and religious associations, the heteries, which were so strongly to the taste of Asia Minor, had been infinitely developed; Christianity, profiting by the facilities offered by the officials charged with its suppression, gained in all districts. We have seen that Asia and Galatia were the places where in all the world the new religion had found the greatest favour. Thence it had made surprising progress towards the Black Sea. Manners were altogether changed. Meats offered to idols, which were one of the sources of the provision of the markets, could not be sold. The firm knot of faithful might not be very numerous, but around it sympathetic crowds were grouped, half initiated, inconstant, capable of hiding their faith at the appearance of danger, but at bottom not detaching themselves from it. There were in those corporate conversions fashionable enthusiasms, gusts of wind which from time to time carried to the Church, and took away from it, waves of unstable populations, but the courage of the leaders was superior to all trials; their hatred of idolatry led them to brave everything to maintain the point of honour of the faith which they had embraced.

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Pliny, a perfectly honest man and scrupulous executor of the Imperial orders, was soon at work to bring back to the provinces which had been entrusted to him both order and law. Experience was wanting to him; he was rather an amiable man of letters than an able administrator; in almost all matters of business he was in the habit of consulting directly with the Emperor. Trajan answered him, letter for letter, and that precious correspondence has been preserved to us. Upon the daily orders of the Emperor everything was watched over, reformed; he required authorisations for the smallest matters. A formal edict suppressed the heteries; the most inoffensive corporations were dissolved. It was the custom in Bithynia to celebrate certain family events and local festivities by great assemblies in which a thousand persons might be gathered. They were suppressed. Liberty, which in most cases slips into the world in a surreptitious fashion only, was reduced to almost nothing. It was inevitable that the Christian Churches should be attacked by a meticulous policy which saw everywhere the spectre of the heteries, and disquieted itself over a society of five hundred workmen instituted by authority to act as firemen. Pliny often met on his path innocent sectaries, the danger of whom he did not readily see. In the different stages of his career as an advocate and magistrate he had never been concerned in any proceedings against the Christians. Denunciations now multiplied daily; arrests must follow. The Imperial Legate, following the summary procedure of the justice of the time, made some examples; he decided to send to Rome those who were Roman citizens; he put two deaconesses to the torture. All that he discovered appeared to him childish. He

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wished to shut his eyes, but the laws of the Empire were absolute; the informations passed all measure; he found himself in the way to put the entire country under arrest.

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It was at Amisus, on the border of the Black Sea, in the autumn of the year 112, that this difficulty became a dominant care for him. It is probable that the last incidents which disturbed him had taken place at Amastris, a city which in the second century was the centre of Christianity in Pontus. Pliny, according to custom, wrote of it to the Emperor: I consider it my duty, sire, to refer to you all matters on which I have doubts. Who can direct my hesitations or instruct my ignorance better than you? I have never taken part in any proceedings against the Christians, hence I know not whether I ought to punish or to hunt them out, nor how far I ought to go. For example, I do not know if I ought to make any distinction of age, or if in such a matter there ought to be no difference between youth and ripe age; if I must pardon upon repentance, or if he who has become altogether a Christian ought to profit by ceasing to be one; if it is the name itself apart from all crime that should be punished, or the crimes which are inseparable from the name. In the meantime, the course which I have adopted with regard to all those who have been brought before me as Christians, has been to inquire first if they are Christians; those who have avowed themselves to be such, I have interrogated a second time; a third time threatening them with punishment; those who have persisted, I have sent to death; one point in effect beyond all doubt for me being that, whether the fact admitted be criminal or not, that inflexible obstinacy and persistency deserved to be punished. There are some other unhappy persons attacked with the same madness, who, in view of their rank as Roman citizens, I have directed to be sent to Rome. Then in the course of the process the crime as generally happens, branching out widely, many species of it are presented. An anonymous libel has been deposited containing many names. Those who have denied that they either were or had been Christians, I have thought it right to release, when after me they have invoked the gods, when they have offered incense and wine to your image, with which I have supplemented the statues of the divinities, and when, moreover, they have cursed Christus, all which things I am assured they could not be forced to do if they were Christians. Others named by the informer have said that they were Christians, and immediately have denied that they were, avowing that they had been, but asserting that they had ceased to be, some for three years, some for still longer, others for as many as twenty years. All these also have paid honour to your image, and to the statues of the gods, and have cursed Christ. Now these affirm that all their offence or all their error was confined to meeting habitually on fixed days before sunrise to sing together alternately (? antiphonically) a hymn to Christus as God, and to swear not to such and such certain crimes, but not to commit thefts, highway robbery, adultery, not fail to keep sworn faith, not to refuse to restore a pledge; that that done they

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used to retire, then to meet together again to take a meal, but an ordinary and perfectly innocent meal; that even that had ceased, since by your orders I had forbidden the hateries. That made it necessary in my eyes to proceed to discover the truth by the torture of two servants, of those whom they call deaconesses. I found nothing but an evil, unmeasured superstition. So, suspending the inquiry, I resolved to consult you. The business has appeared to me to require that I should do so, especially because of the number of those who are in peril. A great number of persons in effect, of every age, of every condition, of both sexes, are called to justice or will be; it is not only in the cities, but in the towns and in the rural districts that the contagion of this superstition has spread. I think that it may yet be stopped and remedied. Already it is reported that the temples which were almost abandoned, have begun to be frequented once more, that the solemn festivals which had long been interrupted, have recommenced, and that the flesh of victims (“meats offered to

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idols”) is again exposed, though the buyers have been few. From which it may readily be believed how great a number of men may be reclaimed if a place of repentance be left open.

Trajan answered: Thou hast followed the path thou should’st have taken, my dear Secundus, in examining the cases of those who have been brought before thy tribunal as Christians. In such a matter it is impossible to devise a fixed rule for all cases. They should not be sought out. If they are denounced and are convicted, they must be punished in such a way, however, that he who denies that he is a Christian, and who proves his words by his acts,—that is to say, by addressing his supplications to our gods, shall obtain pardon as a reward for his repentance, whatever may have been the suspicions which weigh upon him for the past. As for anonymous denunciations, we most not take account of the species of accusation which is brought, for this concerns a detestable example which is no longer of our time.

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No more misunderstandings! To be a Christian, is to be in disagreement with the law, is to merit death From Trajan’s time Christianity is a crime against the State. Some tolerant Emperors of the third century will alone consent to shut their eyes and allow men to be Christians if they chose. A good administration, according to the most benevolent ideas of the Emperors, ought not to try to find too many criminals; it does not encourage informers, but it encourages apostacy by pardoning renegades. To teach, to advise, to reward the most immoral acts, that which most lowers a man in his own eyes, appears wholly natural. Here is the error into which one of the best governments that ever existed has allowed itself to be drawn, because it has touched matters of conscience, and has preserved the old principle of the State religion, a principle which was natural enough in the small cities of antiquity, which were only an extension of the family, but dangerous in a great Empire composed of parts having neither the same history nor the same moral needs. It is equally evident from these invaluable documents that Christians were not persecuted as Jews, as has been the case under Domitian. They are persecuted as Christians. There is no longer any confusion in the judicial world, though in the world outside it still existed. Judaism was not a crime: it had even outside its days of revolt, its guarantees, and privileges. Strange thing! Judaism, which revolted thrice against the Empire with a nameless fury, was never officially persecuted; the evil treatment which the Jews endured are, like those of the Rayahs in Mahometan countries, the consequence of a subordinate position, not a legal punishment; very rarely, in the second and third century, because he will not sacrifice to idols or to the image of the Emperor. More than once even we find the Jews protected by the administration against the Christians. On the contrary, Christianity, which was never in revolt, was in reality outside the law. Judaism had, if it may be so expressed, its Concordat with the Empire; Christianity had none. The Roman policy felt that Christianity was the white ant which was eating away the heart of antique society. Judaism did not aspire to penetrate the Empire; it dreamed of its supernatural overthrow; in its hours of insanity it took arms, killed everyone, struck blindly, then, like a raving madman, allowed itself to be chained after its paroxysm, whilst Christianity continued its work slowly, gently. Humble and modest in appearance, it had a boundless ambition; between it and the Empire the struggle was to the death. 163


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Trajan’s answer to Pliny was not a law; but it supposed laws and fixed the interpretation of them. The temperaments indicated by the wise Emperor should have been of small consequence. It was too easy to find pretexts, for the ill-will with which Christians were regarded to find itself hampered. A signed denunciation relating to an ostensible act was all that was necessary. Now the attitude of a Christian in passing before temples, his questions in the markets as to the origin of the meats he found there; his absence from public festivals, pointed him out at once. Thus local persecutions never ceased. It was less the Emperors than the Pro-Consuls who persecuted. All depended upon the good or the ill-will of the governors, and the good-will was rare. The time had gone by when the Roman aristocracy would receive these exotic novelties with a sort of benevolent curiosity. It had now but a cold disdain for the follies it declined out of pure moderation and pity for human weaknesses to suppress at a moment’s notice. The people, on the other hand, showed themselves fanatical enough. He who never sacrificed, or who, in passing before a sacred edifice. did not waft it a kiss of adoration, went in danger of his life. 249

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CHAPTER XXII. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH. ANTIOCH had its part, and a very violent one, in those cruel measures which proved to be so absolutely inefficacious. The Church of Antioch, or, at least, the fraction of that Church which attached itself to St Paul, had at this moment a chief, regarded with the most profound respect, who was called Ignatius. This name is probably the Latin equivalent of the Syriac name Nourana. The reputation of Ignatius had spread through all the Churches, especially in Asia Minor. Under circumstances which are unknown to us, probably as the result of some popular movement, he was arrested, condemned to death, and, as he was not a Roman citizen, ordered to be taken to Rome to be delivered to the beasts in the amphitheatre. For that fate the noblest victims were reserved, men worthy to be shown to the Roman people. The journey of this courageous confessor from Antioch to Rome along the coasts of Asia, Macedonia, and Greece was a sort of triumphal progress. The Churches of the cities at which he touched flocked around him, asking for his counsels. He, on his part, wrote letters full of instruction, to which his position, like that of St Paul, prisoner of Jesus Christ, gave the highest authority. At Smyrna, in particular, Ignatius found himself in communication with all the Churches of Asia. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, saw him, and retained a profound memory of him. Ignatius had from that place an extensive correspondence: his letters were received with almost as such respect as the apostolic writings. Surrounded by couriers of a sacred character, who came and went, he was more like a powerful personage than a prisoner. The spectacle impressed the very Pagans, and served as the foundation for a curious romance which has been handed down to us. 250

Almost the whole of the authentic epistles of Ignatius appear to have been lost. Those which we possess under his name addressed to the Ephesians, to the Magnesian, to the Tralliens, to the Philadelphians, to the Smyrniotes, to Polycarp, are apocryphal. The four first were written from Smyrna; the two last from Alexandria-Troas. The six works are more or less feeble reproductions of the same original. Genius and individuality are absolutely wanting. But it appears that amongst the letters which Ignatius wrote from Smyrna, there was one addressed to the faithful at Rome, after the manner of St Paul. This piece, such as we have it, impressed all ecclesiastical antiquity. Irenæus, Origen, and Eusebius cite it and admire it. Its style has a harsh and pronounced flavour, something strong and popular; pleasantry is pushed even to playing upon words; as a matter of taste, certain points are urged with a shocking exaggeration, but the liveliest faith, the most ardent thirst for death, have never inspired such passionate accents. The enthusiasm of the martyr who for six hundred years was the dominant spirit of Christendom, has received from the author of this extraordinary fragment, whoever he may be, its most exalted expressions.

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After many prayers I am permitted to see your holy faces; I have even obtained more than I asked; for if God give me grace to endure to the end, I hope that I shall embrace you as the prisoner of Jesus Christ. The business has begun well, seeing that nothing prevents me from awaiting the lot which has been appointed to me. Verily it is for you that I am concerned. I fear lest your affection should be hurtful to me. You would risk nothing, but I should lose God himself if you succeed in saving me . . . Never again shall I find such an opportunity, and you, if you will have the charity to remain quiet, never will you have taken part in a better work. If you keep silence, in short, I shall belong to God; if you love my flesh, 1 shall again be cast into the conflict. Let me suffer whilst the altar is ready, so that, united in chorus by love, you may sing to the Father in Christ Jesus,—“Oh, great goodness of God who hath deigned to bring the Bishop 251

of Syria from the rising to the going down of the sun!” It is good to lie down from the world with God that we may rise with him. You have never done evil to any; why then begin to-day? You have been masters to so many others! I ask but one thing; do what you teach, what you prescribe. Ask only for me strength from within and from without, so that I may be not only called Christian but really a Christian, when I shall have passed away from this world. Nothing that is visible is good. What thou seest is temporal. What thou seest not is eternal. Our God, Jesus Christ, existing in his father, appears no more. Christianity is not only a work of silence; it becomes a work of splendour when it is hated of the world. I write to the Churches: I inform all that I am assured of dying for God, if you do not prevent me. I beg you not to prove yourselves by your intemperate goodness my worst enemies. Let me be the food of beasts, thanks to whom it shall be given me to enjoy God; I am the wheat of God, I must be ground by the teeth of beasts that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rejoice therefore that they shall be my tomb, and that nothing shall be left of my body, that my funeral shall thus cost no man aught. Then shall I be truly the disciple of Christ, when the world shall see my body no more. From Syria to Rome, upon land, upon sea, by day and by night, I fight already against the beasts, chained as I am to ten leopards (I speak of the soldiers who guard me, and who show themselves the more cruel the more good is done to them). Thanks to their ill-treatment, I am formed, “but I am not thereby justified.” I shall gain, I assure you, when I find myself face to face with the beasts which await me. I hope to meet them in good temper; if needs be, I will caress them with my hands, that they may devour me alone, and that they may not, as they have done to some, show themselves afraid to touch me. If they do it unwillingly, I will force them. Forgive me. I know which is best for me. It is now that I begin to be a true disciple. No! no power, visible or invisible, shall prevent me from rejoicing in Jesus Christ. Fire and cross; troops of beasts; broken bones; limbs lopped off; crushing of the whole body, all the punishments of the devil, may fall upon me, if only I may rejoice in Jesus Christ . . . My love has been crucified, and there is no longer in me ardour for the material part; there is within me only a living water which murmurs and says to me, “Come to the Father.” I take pleasure no longer in corruptible food, nor in the joys of this life. I desire the bread of God, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born in the end of time, of the race of David, and of Abraham; and I desire to drink his blood, which is incorruptible

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love and life eternal.

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Sixty years after the death of Ignatius, the characteristic phrase of this fragment, “I am the wheat of God,” was traditional in the Church, and was repeated to sustain the courage of martyrs. Perhaps this was a matter of oral tradition; perhaps also the letter is authentic at bottom—I mean as to those energetic phrases by which Ignatius expressed his desire to suffer, and his love for Jesus. In the authentic narrative of the martyrdom of Polycarp (155), there are, it would appear, allusions to the very text of that Epistle to the Romans which we now possess. Ignatius becomes thus the great master of martyrdom, the exciter to enthusiasm for death for Jesus. His letters, true or superstitious, were the collection from which might be drawn striking expressions and exalted sentiments. The deacon Stephen had by his heroism sanctified the Diaconate and the ecclesiastical ministries; with still great splendour the Bishop of Antioch surrounded with an aureole, the functions of the Episcopate. It was not without reason that writings were attributed to him in which those functions were hyperbolically depicted. Ignatius was really the patron saint of the Episcopate, the creator of the privilege of the chiefs of the Church, the first victim of their redoubtable duties.

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The most curious thing is that this history, told more recently by one of the most intelligent writers of the age by Lucian, inspired him with the principal features of his little picture of manners, entitled “Of the Death of Peregrinus.” It is scarcely to be doubted that Lucian borrowed from the narratives of Ignatius the passages in which he represents his charlatan playing the part of Bishop and Confessor, chained in Syria, shipped for Italy, surrounded by the faithful with cares and attentions, receiving from all parts deputations of ministers sent to console him. Peregrinus, like Ignatius, addresses from his captivity to the celebrated towns which he finds upon his way, letters full of counsels and of exhortations that they should observe the laws; he institutes, in view of these messages, missions clothed with a religious character; finally he appears before the Emperor, and defies his power, with an audacity which Lucian finds impertinent, but which the admirers of the fanatic represent as a movement of holy liberty. In the Church the memory of Ignatius was especially exalted by the partisans of St Paul. To have seen Ignatius was a favour almost as great as to have seen St Paul. The high authority of the martyr was one of the reasons which contributed to the success of this group, whose right to exist in the Church of Jesus was still so greatly contested. Towards the year 170, a disciple of St Paul, zealous for the establishment of episcopal authority, conceived the project, in imitation of the pastoral epistles attributed to the Apostle, of composing, under the name of Ignatius, a series of epistles designed to inculcate an anti-Jewish conception of Christianity, as well as ideas of strict hierarchy and Catholic orthodoxy in opposition to the errors of the Docetists and of certain Gnostic sects. These writings, which it was desired should be regarded as having been collected by Polycarp, were accepted with enthusiasm, and had in the constitution of discipline and dogma a commanding influence. By the side of Ignatius we may see, in the oldest documents, two persons figure who appear to have been associated with him, Zozimus and Rufus. Ignatius does not appear to have had travelling

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companions; Zozimus and Rufus were perhaps persons well known in the ecclesiastical circles of Greece and of Asia, and recommended by their high devotion to the Church of Christ.

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About the same time another martyr may have suffered, to whom his title of head of the Church of Jerusalem and his relationship with Jesus gave great notoriety. I mean Simeon, son, or rather great-grandson, of Cleophas. The opinion decided amongst the Christians, and probably accepted by those around them, according to which Jesus had been of the race of David, attributed this title to all his blood-relations. Now in the state of effervescence in which Palestine was, such a title could not be borne without risk. Already under Domitian we have seen the Roman authority entertain apprehensions apropos of the pretensions avowed by the sons of Jude. Under Trajan the same disquietude came to light. The descendants of Cleophas, who presided over the Church of Jerusalem, were too modest to boast much of a descent which non-Christians might perhaps have disputed, but they could not hide it from the affiliated of the Church of Jesus; from those heretics—Ebionites, Essenes, Elkasaïtes—some of whom were hardly Christians. A denunciation was addressed by some of those sectaries to the Roman authority, and Simeon, son of Cleophas, was brought to judgment. The Consular Legate of Judea at this moment was Tiberius Claudius Atticus, who appears to have been the father of the celebrated Herod Atticus. He was an obscure Athenian, whom the discovery of an immense treasure had suddenly enriched, and who by his fortune had succeeded in obtaining the title of surrogate consul. He showed himself, in the circumstances of this case, extremely cruel. During many days he tortured the unhappy Simeon, without doubt to force him to reveal pretended secrets. Atticus and his assessors admired his courage, but he finished by crucifying him. Hegesippus, from whom we have these details, assures us that the accusers of Simeon were themselves convinced that they were of the race of David, and perished with him. We ought not to be too much surprised by such denunciations. We have already seen that the internal rivalries of the Jewish and Christian sects had the greatest share in the persecution of the year 64, or at least in the deaths of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Rome at that period appears to have had no martyrs. Among the Presbyteri and Episcopi who governed that capital Church are reckoned Evarestes, Alexander, and Xystus, who appear to have died in peace.

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CHAPTER XXIII. END OF TRAJAN—REVOLT OF THE JEWS.

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TRAJAN, the conqueror of the Dacii, adorned with all the triumphs, arrived at the highest degree of power which man had until then attained, revolved, notwithstanding his sixty years, boundless projects with regard to the East. The limit of the Empire in Syria and in Asia Minor was as yet but ill-assured. The recent destruction of the Nabathean kingdom postponed for centuries all danger from the Arabs. But the kingdom of Armenia, although in law vassal to the Romans, constantly inclined towards the Parthian alliance. In the Dacian war, the Arsacides had had relations with Decebalus. The Parthian Empire, master of Mesopotamia, menaced Antioch, and created, for provinces incapable of defending themselves, a perpetual danger. An Eastern expedition, having for its object the annexation to the Empire of Armenia, Osrohenia and Mygdonia, countries which in effect, after the campaigns of Lucius Verus and of Septimius Severus, belonged to the Empire, would have been reasonable. But Trajan did not take sufficient account of the state of the East. He did not see that beyond Syria, Armenia, and the north of Mesapotamia, which it is easy to make the rampart of Western civilisation, extends the ancient East; traversed by nomadic tribes, containing, side by side with the cities, indocile populations, amongst which it is impossible to establish order after the European fashion. This East has never been conquered by civilisation in a durable manner; even Greece reigned there only in the most transitory way. To hew out Roman provinces in a world totally different in climate, races, manner of living, from what Rome had hitherto assimilated, was a veritable chimera. The Empire, which had need of all its strength against the German impulse on the Rhine and the Danube, was about to prepare upon the Tigris a struggle not less difficult, for supposing that the Tigris had really become in all its course a river-frontier, Rome would not have had behind the great ditch the support of the solid Gallic and Germanic populations of the West. Through not having understood that, Trajan made a mistake which can only be compared with that of Napoleon in 1812. His expedition against the Parthians was analogous to that of the Russian campaign. Admirably planned out, the expedition started with a series of victories, then degenerated into a struggle against nature, and concluded with a retreat which cast a sombre veil over the end of a most brilliant reign. Trajan left Italy, which he was not again to see, in the month of October 113. He passed the winter months at Antioch, and in the spring of 114 began the campaign of Armenia. The result was prodigious: in September, Armenia was reduced to a Roman province; the limits of the Empire extended to the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. Trajan rested the following winter at Antioch.

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vassal to the Parthians, was mistress of Nisibe. As in 70, it no doubt resisted the Romans, but it was necessary to yield. Trajan passed the following winter at Antioch, where, on the 13th December, he was nearly destroyed in a frightful earthquake which destroyed the city, and from which he escaped only with the greatest difficulty. The year 116 witnessed miracles: the times of Alexander seemed restored. Trajan conquered Adiabene, beyond the Tigris, in spite of a vigorous resistance. There he should have stopped. Pushing his fortune to its limit, Trajan penetrated to the heart of the Parthian Empire. The strategy of the Parthians, like that of the Russians in 1813, consisted in at first offering no resistance. Trajan marched without opposition as far as Babylon; took Æsiphon, the western capital of the Empire, thence descended the Tigris to the Persian Gulf, saw those distant seas which appeared to the Romans only as a vision, and regained Babylon. Then the black spots began to accumulate upon the horizon. Towards the end of 116 Trajan heard at Babylon that revolt had broken out behind him. The Jews had without doubt taken a great part in it. They were numerous in Babylonia. The relations between the Jews of Palestine and those of Babylonia were continual—the doctors passed from one country to the other with great facility. A vast secret society escaping thus from all supervision created a political vehicle of the most active kind. Trajan confided the duty of crushing this dangerous movement to Lusius Quietus, chief of the Berber cavalry, who had placed himself with his goum at the service of the Romans, and had rendered the greatest services in the Parthian wars. Quietus re-conquered Nisibe, Edessa; but Trajan began to see the impossibilities of the enterprise in which he was engaged, and meditated retreat. 258

Disquieting news reached him, blow upon blow. The Jews were everywhere in revolt. Nameless horrors passed in Cyrenaica. The Jewish fury attained to heights which had never yet been known. This poor people again lost their heads. Perhaps there was already, in Africa, a presentiment of the revival of fortune which was awaiting Trajan; it may be that the Jewish rebellions of Cyrene, the most fanatical of all, were anticipated on the faith of some prophet, that the day of wrath against the Pagans had arrived, and that it was time to begin the Messianic exterminations. All the Jews were agitated as under a demoniacal attack. It was less a revolt than a massacre, with details of indescribable ferocity. Having at their head a certain Lucora, who enjoyed amongst his friends the title of King, these madmen set to work to butcher Greeks and Romans, eating the flesh of those whom they had slaughtered, making belts of their bowels, rubbing themselves with their blood, skinning them and clothing themselves with the skin. Madmen were seen sawing unfortunate men in two through the midst of their bodies. At other times the insurgents delivered the Pagans to the beasts, in memory of what they themselves had suffered, and forced them to fight with each other like gladiators. Two hundred and twenty thousand Cyreneans are believed to have been slaughtered in this way. It was almost the entire population: the province became a desert. To repeople it, Hadrian was obliged to bring colonists from other places, but the country never again flourished as it had done under the Greeks.

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From Cyrenaica the epidemic of massacre extended to Egypt and to Cyprus. The latter witnessed atrocities. Under the leadership of a certain Artemion the fanatics destroyed the town of Salamine and exterminated the entire population. The number of Cypriotes butchered, was estimated at 240,000. The resentment for such cruelties was such that the Cypriotes decreed the exclusion of the Jews from their island in perpetuity; even the Jew cast upon their coast by the act of God was put to death. In Egypt the Jewish insurrection assumed the proportions of a veritable war. At first the rebels had the advantage. Lupus, Prefect of Egypt, was obliged to retreat. The alarm in Alexandria was acute. The Jews, to fortify themselves, destroyed the Temple of Nemesis raised by Cæsar to Pompey. The Greek population succeeded, however, not without a struggle, in gaining the upper hand. All the Greeks of Lower Egypt took refuge with Lupus in the city, and made there a great entrenched camp. It was time. The Cyreneans, led by Lucora, came to join their brethren of Alexandria, and to form with them a single army. Deprived of the support of their Alexandrini co-religionists, all killed or prisoners, but strengthened by bands from other parts of Egypt, they dispersed themselves, killing and plundering, over the Thebaïd. They especially sought to seize the functionaries who tried to gain the cities of the coast, Alexandria and Pelusia. Appian, the future historian, then young, who exercised municipal functions in Alexandria, his country, was nearly captured by these madmen. Lower Egypt was inundated with blood. The fugitive Pagans found themselves pursued like wild beasts; the deserts by the side of the Isthmus of Suez were filled with people who hid themselves and endeavoured to come to an understanding with the Arabs, so as to escape from death.

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The position of Trajan in Babylonia became more and more critical. The wandering Arabs in the space between the two rivers mused him much difficulty. The impregnable stronghold of Hatra, inhabited by a war-like tribe, stopped him altogether. The surrounding country is aeserted, unhealthy, without wood or water, desolated by mosquitoes, exposed to frightful atmospheric troubles. Trajan committed, without doubt from a sense of honour, the mistake of wishing to reduce it As later Septimus Severus and Ardeschir Babek, he failed. The army was frightfully wasted with sickness. The city was a great centre of sun-worship; it was thought that the god was fighting for his temple; storms breaking out at the moment of attack, filled the soldiers with terror. Trajan, who was already suffering from the malady which carried him off a few months later, raised the siege. The retreat was difficult, and marked by more than one partial disaster. About the month of April 117, the Emperor set out on his return to Antioch, sad, ill, and irritable. The East had conquered him without fighting. All those who had bowed before the conqueror raised their heads again. The results of three years of campaigning, full of marvellous struggles against nature, were lost. Trajan had to begin over again, if he were not to lose his reputation for invincibility. All at once grave news came to prove to him what grave dangers were concealed in the situation created by the recent reverses. The Jewish revolt, until then limited to Cyrenaica and Egypt, threatened to extend itself through Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia. Always on the watch for

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signs of weakness in the Roman Empire, the enthusiasts fancied for the tenth time that they saw the preliminary signs of the end of an abhorred domination. Excited by books like Judith and the apocalypse of Esdras, they believed that the day of Edom was come. The cries of joy which they had uttered at the deaths of Nero and Domitian, they uttered once more. The generation which had made the great Revolution had almost disappeared; the new had learned nothing. These hard heads, obstinate and full of passion, were incapable of enlarging the narrow circle of iron that an inveterate psychological heredity had riveted around them. What passed in Judea is obscure, and it is not proved that any positive act of war or of massacre took place there. From Antioch, where he resided, Adrian, Governor of Syria, appears to have succeeded in maintaining order. Far from encouraging rebellion, the doctors of Jabneh had shown, in the scrupulous observation of the Law, a new way of arriving at the peace of the soul. Casuistry had in their hands become a plaything, which like all playthings ought to invite much to patience. As to Mesopotamia, it is natural that a half-subdued population which a year before were in arms, and amongst whom there were not merely dispersed Jews but Jewish armies and dynasties, should have broken out after the check of Hatra, and upon the first indications of the approaching death of Trajan. It appears, besides, that the Romans acted with vigour, often upon mere suspicion They feared that the example of Cyrenaica, of Egypt, and of Cyprus might be contagious. Before the massacres had broken out, Trajan confided to Lucius Quietus the duty of expelling all the Jews from the conquered provinces. Quietus went thither as to an expedition. This African, cruel and pitiless, supported by light Moorish cavalry, men who rode bare-backed without saddle or bridle, went like the modern Bashi-Bazouk, massacring right and left. A very large part of the Jewish population of Mesopotamia were exterminated. To reward the services of Quietus, Trajan detached Palestine from the province of Syria for him, and created him Imperial Legate, thus placing him in the same rank as Adrian. The revolt of Cyrenaica, of Egypt, and of Cyprus, still continued. Trajan chose one of his most distinguished lieutenants, Marcius Turbo, to suppress it. He gave him a land and a sea force, and numerous cavalry. A regular war with many battles was required to put an end to these madmen. There were regular butcheries. All the Cyrenian Jews, and those from Egypt who had joined them, were massacred. Alexandria—the blockade raised at last—breathed once more, but the destruction of the city had been considerable. One of the first acts of Hadrian after becoming Emperor, was to repair the ruins and to give himself out as the restorer. Such was this deplorable movement, in which the Jews appear to have been wrong from the first, and which finished by ruining them in the opinion of the civilised world. Poor Israel fell into furious madness. These horrible cruelties, so far removed from the Christian spirit, widened the ditch of separation between Judaism and the Church. The Christian, becoming more and more of an idealist, consoled himself more and more by his gentleness, by his resigned attitude. Israel had made himself a cannibal, rather than allow his prophets to be liars. Pseudo-Esdras, twenty years before, contented himself with the tender reproach of a pious soul which thinks itself forgotten of God: now it is a question of killing everybody, of annihilating the Pagans, that it may not be said 172


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that God has failed to keep his promise to Jacob. Every great fanaticism, pressed by the ruin of its hopes, ends in madness, and becomes a peril to the reason of all humanity. The material diminution of Judaism, as the result of this inept campaign, was very considerable. The number of those who perished was enormous. From that moment the Jewry of Cyrene and Egypt almost disappeared. The powerful community of Alexandria, which had been an essential element of Oriental life, was no longer important. The great synagogue of Diapleuston, which passed in the eyes of the Jews for one of the wonders of the world, was destroyed. The Jewish quarter near the Lochias became a field of ruins and of tombs. 263

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CHAPTER XXIV. DEFINITIVE SEPARATION OF THE CHURCH AND THE SYNAGOGUE. FANATICISM knows no repentance. The monstrous error of 117 scarcely left more than the recollection of a festivity in the Jewish mind. Amongst the number of days when fasting was forbidden, and mourning must be suspended, figures the 12th December, the iom Traïanos or “day of Trajan,” not because the war of 116-117 gave reason for any anniversary of victory, but because of the tragic end which the agada ascribed to the enemy of Israel. The massacres of Quietus remained, on the other hand, in tradition, under the name of polémos schel Quitos. A progress of Israel in the way of mourning was attached to it:— After the polémos schel Aspasionos, crowns and the use of tambourines are forbidden to bridegrooms. After the polémos schel Quitos, crowns were forbidden to brides, and the teaching of the Greek language to one’s son was prohibited. After the last Polémos, the bride was forbidden to go out of the town in a litter. Thus every folly brought about a new sequestration, a new renunciation of some part of life. Whilst Christianity became more and more Greek and Latin, and its writers conformed to a good Hellenic style, the Jew interdicted the study of Greek, and shut himself up obstinately in his unintelligible Syro-Hebraic dialect. The root of all good intellectual culture is cut off for him for a thousand years. It is especially in this period that the decisions were given which present Greek education as an impurity, or at best as a frivolity.

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The man who announced himself at Jabneh, and grew from day to day as the future chief of Israel, was a certain Aquiba, pupil of the Rabbi Tarphon, of obscure origin, unconnected with the great families who held the chairs and filled the great offices of the nation. He was descended from proselytes, and had had a poverty-stricken youth. He was, it would seem, a sort of democrat, full at first of a ferocious hatred against the doctors in the midst of whom he might one day sit. His exegesis, and his casuistry, were the height of subtlety. Every letter, every syllable of the Canonical texts, became significant, and attempts were made to draw meanings from them. Aquiba was the author of the method which, according to the expression of the Talmud, “from every feature of a letter draws whole bushels of decision.” We can only admit that in the revealed Code there was the least that was voluntary, the smallest liberty of style, or of orthography. Thus the particle which is the simple mark of the objective case, and which may be inserted or omitted in Hebrew, furnished puerile inductions.

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This touched madness; we are only two steps from the Cabbala and the Notarikon, silly combinations, in which the texts represent no longer the language of humanity, but is taken for a divine book of magic. In detail the consultations of Aquiba are recommended by their moderation, the sentences which are attributed to him have even the marks of a certain liberal spirit. But a violent fanaticism spoiled all his qualities. The greatest contradictions spring up in those minds which are at once subtle and uncultivated, whence the superstitious study of a solitary text had banished the right sense of language and of reason. Incessantly travelling from synagogue to synagogue in all the countries of the Mediterranean, and perhaps even amongst the Parthians, Aquiba kept up amongst his co-religionaries the strange fire with which he himself was filled, and which soon became so melancholy for his country.

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A monument of the mournful sadness of these times appears in the apocalypse of Baruch. The work is an imitation of the apocalypse of Esdras, and, like it, is divided into seven visions. Baruch, secretary to Jeremiah, receives from God the order to remain in Jerusalem, to assist in the punishment of the guilty city. He curses the fate which has given him birth, only that he may witness the outrages offered to his mother. He prays God to spare Israel. But for Israel, who wilt praise him? Who will explain his law? Is the world then destined to return to its primitive silence? and what joy for the Pagans if they are able to go into the countries of their idols to rejoice before them over the defeats which they have inflicted upon the true God. The divine interlocutor answers that the Jerusalem which had been destroyed was not the Eternal Jerusalem, prepared since the times of Paradise, which was shown to Adam before his fall, and a glimpse of which was seen by Abraham and Moses. It was not the Pagans who destroyed the city; it was the wrath of God which annihilated it. An angel descends from heaven, carries all the sacred objects from the Temple, and buries them. The angels then demolish the city. Baruch sings a song of mourning. He is indignant that nature should continue her course, that the earth smiles, and is not burned up by an eternal midday sun. Labourers, cease to sow, and thou, O Earth, cease to bring forth harvests; wherefore dost thou waste thy wine, O thou Vine, since Zion is no more? Bridegrooms, denounce your rights; virgins, deck yourselves no more with crowns; women, cease to pray that ye may become mothers. Henceforth the barren shall rejoice, and the fruitful mothers shall weep; for why bring forth children in sorrow, whom ye must bury with tears? Henceforth, speak no more of charms; neither discuss beauty. Take the keys of the sanctuary, O priests, cast them towards heaven, return them to the Lord, and say to him,—“Preserve now thine own house!” And ye, O virgins, who sew your linen and your silk with the gold of Ophir, hasten and cast all into the fire, that the flames may carry all these things to him that hath made them, and that our enemies may not rejoice in them. Earth, attend! Dust take heart, to announce in Sheol and say to the dead:

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“Happy are ye as compared with ourselves!”

Pseudo-Baruch, no better than pseudo-Esdras, can render account of the conduct of God towards his people. Assuredly the turn of the Gentiles will come. If God has given to his people such severe lessons, what will he do with those who have turned his benefits against him? But how explain the 175


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fate of so many of the just who have scrupulously observed the Law and have been exterminated? Why has not the Eternal had pity upon Zion for their sakes? Why has he taken account only of the wicked? “What hast thou done with thy servants?” cries the pious writer. “We can no longer understand why thou art our Creator. When the world had no inhabitants, thou didst create man as minister of thy works, to show that the world existed only for man, and not man for the world. And now, behold, the world which thou hast made for us lasts, and we, for whom thou hast made it, disappear.” God answers that man has been made free and intelligent. If he has been punished, it is only his desert. This world for the just man is a trial; the world to come will be a crown. Length of time is a relative matter. Better to have commenced by ignominy and finished with happiness than to have begun in glory and finished in shame. Time is, moreover, pressing on, and will go by much more quickly in the future than in the past. “If man had but this life,” answers the melancholy dreamer, “nothing could be more bitter than his fate. How long shall the triumph of impiety continue? How long, O Lord! wilt thou leave it to be believed that thy patience is weakness? Arise; close Sheol; forbid it henceforward to receive fresh dead men; and cause limbo to give up the souls that are enclosed therein. Behold how long Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the others, who sleep in the earth, have been waiting, those for whom thou hast said that the world was created! Show thy glory; delay it no longer.”

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God contents himself with saying that the time is fixed and that the end is not far distant. The Messianic sorrows have already begun; but the signs of the catastrophe will be isolated, partial, so that men shall scarcely be able to see them. At the moment when it shall be said, “The Almighty has forgotten the earth,” when the despair of the just shall be at its height, this shall be the hour of awakening. Signs shall stretch forth over the whole universe. Palestine alone shall be safe from calamity. Then the Messiah shall be revealed. Behemoth and Leviathan shall serve as food to those who shall be saved. The earth shall yield up ten thousand for one; a single stem of the vine shall have a thousand branches; every branch shall bear a thousand grapes, and every grape shall yield a hogshead of wine. Joy shall be perfect. In the morning a breath shall leave the bosom of God, bearing the perfume of the most exquisite flowers; in the evening, another breath bearing a wholesome dew. Manna shall fall from Heaven. The dead who sleep in hope of the Messiah shall rise. The receptacles of the souls of the just shall open; the multitude of happy souls shall be all of one mind; the first shall rejoice and the last shall not be sad. The impious shall be consumed with rage, seeing that the moment of their punishment is come. Jerusalem shall be renewed, and crowned for Eternity. The Roman Empire then appears to our seer like a forest which covers the earth; the shadow of the forest veils the truth; all that there is of evil in the world hides itself there and finds a shelter. It is the harshest and the worst of all the Empires which succeed each other. The Messianic Kingdom, on the contrary, is represented by a vine under whose shadow a sweet and gentle spring arises which

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runs towards the forest. In approaching this last, the current changes into impetuous waves which uproot it as well as the mountains which surround it. The forest is carried away, until there remains of it nothing but a cedar. This cedar represents the last Roman sovereign remaining standing when all the legions shall have been exterminated (according to us, Trajan, after his reverses in Macedonia). He is overthrown in his turn. The vine then says to him:— Is it not thou, O Cedar! who art the relic of the forest of malice; who seizest upon what does not belong to thee; who never hast pity upon that which is thine own; who wouldest reign over that which was far from thee; who boldest in the nets of impiety all that approacheth thee; and who art proud as though thou couldest never be uprooted? Behold thine hour is come. Go, O Cedar; share the fate of the forest which has disappeared before thee, and let thine ashes mingle with it.”

The cedar is short, is cast down to the earth, and fire is kindled. The chief is enchained and brought upon Mount Sion. There the Messiah convicts him of impiety, shows him the wickedness which has been wrought by his armies, and kills him. The vine then extends itself on all sides and covers the earth; the earth reclothes itself with flowers which never fade. The Messiah will reign until the end of the corruptible world. The wicked, during this time, shall burn in a fire where none shall pity them.

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Oh, blindness of man, who will not discern the approach of the Great Day! On the eve of the event they will live calm and careless. They will see miracles without understanding them; true and false prophecies shall grow in all parts. Like pseudo-Esdras, our visionary believes in the small number of the elect, and in the enormous number of the damned. “Just men rejoice in your sufferings; for a day of trial here below, ye shall have an eternity of glory.” Like pseudo-Esdras again he disquiets himself with great naïveté concerning the physical difficulties of the Resurrection. In what form shall the dead arise? Will they keep the same body that they had before? Pseudo-Baruch does not hesitate. The earth will restore the dead which have been entrusted to her, as she has received them. “She shall give them back,” saith God, “as I have given them to her.” That will be necessary to convince the sceptical of the resurrection; they must have ocular evidence of the identity of those whom they have known. After the judgment, a marvellous change will be wrought. The damned shall become more ugly than they were; the just shall become beautiful, brilliant, glorious; their figures shall be transformed into a luminous ideal. The rage of the wicked shall be frightful, seeing those whom they have persecuted here below glorified above them. They will be forced to assist at this spectacle, before being taken away for punishment. The just shall see marvels; the invisible world shall be unrolled before them; the hidden times shall be discovered. No more old age; equal to the angels: like the stars; they may change themselves into whatever form they will; they will go from beauty to beauty, from glory to glory; all Paradise shall be open to them; they shall contemplate the majesty of the mystical beasts which are under the throne; all the armies of angels shall await their arrival. The

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first who enter shall receive the last, the last shall recognise those whom they knew to have preceded them.

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These dreams are pervaded by some glimpses of a sufficiently lucid good sense. More than pseudo-Esdras, pseudo-Baruch has pity on man, and protests against a theology which has no bowels. Man has not said to his father, “Beget me,” nor has he said to Sheol, “Open to receive me.” The individual is responsible only for himself; each of us is Adam for his own soul. But fanaticism leads him soon to the most terrible thoughts. He sees rising from the sea a cloud composed alternately of zones of black and of clear water. These are the alternations of faith and unfaith in Israel. The angel Ramiel, who explains these mysteries to him, has judgments of the most sombre rigorism. The fine epochs are those in which they have massacred the nations which sinned, and burned and stoned the heterodox, when they dug up the bones of the wicked to burn them, when every sin against legal purity was punished with death. The good King “for whom the celestial glory was created,” is he who does not suffer an uncircumcised man upon the earth. After the spectacle of the twelve zones a deluge of black water descends, mingled with stenches and with fire. It is the period of transition between the kingdom of Israel and the coming of the Messiah—a time of abominations, of wars, of plagues, of earthquakes. The earth seems to wish to devour its inhabitants. A flash of lightning (the Messiah) sweeps out all, purifies all, cures all. The miserable survivors of the plagues shall be given over to the Messiah, who will kill them. All who have not oppressed Israel shall live. Every nation which has governed Israel with violence shall be put to the sword. In the midst of these sufferings the Holy Land alone shall be at peace and shall protect its people. Paradise shall then be realised upon earth; no more pain, no more suffering, no more sickness, no more toil. Animals shall serve man spontaneously. Men will still die, but never prematurely; women shall feel no more the pangs of travail; the harvest shall be gathered without effort; the houses shall be built without fatigue. Hatred, injustice, vengeance, calumny, shall disappear.

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The people received the prophecy of Baruch with delight. But it was only right that the Jews dispersed in distant countries should not be deprived of so beautiful a revelation. Baruch wrote, therefore, to the ten tribes and a half of the dispersion, a letter which he entrusted to an eagle, and which is an abridgment of the entire book. There, even more clearly than in the book itself, may be seen the fundamental idea of the author, which is to bring about the return of the dispersed Jews to the Holy Land, that land alone during the Messianic crisis being able to offer them an assured asylum. The day is approaching when God will return to the enemies of Israel the evil which they have done to his people. The youth of the world is past; the vigour of creation is spent. The bucket is near to the well; the ship to the port; the caravan to the city; life to its end. We see the infidel nations prosperous, although they act with impiety; but their prosperity is like a vapour. We see them rich although they act with iniquity; but their riches will last them as long as a drop of water. We see the

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solidity of their power, although they resist God; but it is worth no more than spittle. We contemplate their splendour whilst they do not observe the precepts of the Most High; but they shall vanish away like smoke. . . . Let nothing which belongs to the present time enter into your thoughts; have patience, for all that has been promised shall happen. We will not stop over the spectacle of the delights which foreign nations may enjoy. Let us beware lest we be excluded at once from the heritage of two worlds; captives here, tortured hereafter. Let us prepare our souls that we may rest with our fathers and may not be punished with our enemies.

Baruch receives the assurance that he will be taken to heaven like Enoch without having tasted death. We have seen that favour granted, in like manner, to Esdras, by the author of the apocalypse which is attributed to this last.

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The work of the pseudo-Baruch, like that of the pseudo-Esdras, was as successful amongst the Christians as amongst the Jews—perhaps even more so. The original Greek was soon lost, but a Syriac translation was made which has come down to us. The final letter alone, however, was adapted for the use of the Church. This letter forms an integral part of the Syriac Bible, at least amongst the Jacobites, and lessons are taken from it for the Burial Office. We have seen pseudo-Esdras also furnish for our office for the dead some of its most gloomy thoughts. Death, in fact, appears to reign as mistress in these last fruits of the wandering imagination of Israel. Pseudo-Baruch is the last writer of the apocryphal literature of the Old Testament. The Bible which he knew is the same as that which we perceive behind the Epistle of Jude and the pretended Epistle of Barnabas, that is to say, the canonical books of the Old Testament. The author adds, whilst putting them on the same footing, books recently fabricated, such as the Revelations of Moses, the Prayer of Manasseh, and other agadic compilations. These works, written in a biblical style, divided into verses, became a sort of supplement to the Bible. Often even, precisely because of their modern character, such apocryphal productions had greater popularity than the ancient Bible, and were accepted as Holy Scripture on the day of their appearance, at least by the Christians, who were more easy in that respect than the Jews. For the future there will be no more of these books. The Jews compose no more pasticcios of the Sacred Text; we feel amongst them even fears and precautions on this subject. Hebrew religious poetry of a later date seems to be expressly written in a style which is not that of the Bible.

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It is possible that the troubles in Palestine, under Trajan, may have been the occasion for transporting the Beth-din of Jabneh to Ouscha. The Beth-din, as far as possible, must be fixed in Judea; but Jabneh, a mixed town, sufficiently large, not far from Jerusalem, might become uninhabitable for the Jews after the horrible excesses which they had committed in Egypt and Cyprus. Ouscha was an altogether obscure part of Galilee. The new patriarchate was of much less importance than that of Jabneh. The patriarch of Jabneh was a prince (nasi); he had a sort of court; he drew a great prestige from the pretensions of the family of Hillel to descend from David. The supreme council of the nation was now going to reside in the obscure villages of Galilee. “The institutions of Ouscha”—that is to say, the rules which were settled by the doctors of Ouscha—had 179


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none the less an authority of the first order: they occupied a considerable place in the history of the Talmud. What was called the Church of Jerusalem continued its tranquil existence a thousand leagues removed from the seditious ideas which animated the nation. A great number of Jews were converted, and continued to observe strictly the prescriptions of the Law. The chiefs of that Church were, moreover, taken from amongst the circumcised Christians, and all the Church, not to wound the rigorists, constrained itself to follow the Mosaic rules. The list of these bishops of the circumcision is full of uncertainties. The best-known appears to have been one named Justus. The controversy between the converted and those who persisted in pure Mosaism was active but less acrimonious than after Bar Coziba. A certain Juda ben Nakouza appears to have played an especially brilliant part. The Christians endeavoured to prove that the Bible did not exclude the divinity of Jesus Christ. They insisted upon the word Elohim, upon the plural employed by God upon several occasions (for example, in Genesis i. 26), upon the repetition of the different names of God, etc. The Jews had no difficulty in showing that the tendencies of the new sect were in contradiction with the fundamental doctrines of the religion of Israel.

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In Galilee, the relations of the two sects appear to have been friendly. A Judeo-Christian of Galilee, Jacob of Caphar-Shekaniah, appears about this time to have been much mixed up with the Jewish world of Sephoris, of the little towns of the neighbourhood. Not only did he converse with the doctors and quote to them pretended words of Jesus, but he practised, like James, the brother of the Lord, spiritual medicine, and pretended to cure the bite of a serpent by the name of Jesus. Rabbi Eliezer was, it is said, persecuted as inclined to Christianity. Rabbi Joshua ben Hanania died preoccupied with the new ideas. Christians repeated to him in every tone that God had turned away from the Jewish nation: “No,” he answered, “His hand is still stretched out over us.” There were conversions in his own family. His nephew Hananiah being come to Caphar-Nahum, “was bewitched by the minim” to such a point that he was seen on an ass on the Sabbath day. When he came to the house of his uncle Joshua, he cured him of the sorcery by means of an ointment, but insisted upon his retirement to Babylon. At another time the Talmudist narrator appears to desire that it shall be believed that amongst Christians infamies existed like those which were laid to the charge of the pretended Nicholas. Rabbi Isaiah of Cæsarea included in the same curse the Judeo-Christians who supported these polemics and the heretical population of Caphar-Nahum, the primary source of all the evil. In general the minim, especially those of Caphar-Nahum, passed for great magicians, and their successes were attributed to spells and to ocular illusions. We have already seen that until the third century at least Jewish doctors continued to work their cures in the name of Jesus. But the Gospel was cursed: reading it was strictly forbidden; the very name of Gospel gave rise to a play upon words which made it signify “evident iniquity.” A certain Eliza ben Abouyah, surnamed Aher, who professed a species of gnostic Christianity, was for his former co-religonists the type of a perfect

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apostate. Little by little the Judeo-Christians were placed by the Jews in the same rank as the Pagans, and much below the Samaritans. Their bread and their wine were held to be unclean; their means of cure proscribed; their books considered as repertoires of the most dangerous magic. Hence, the Churches of Paul offered to the Jews who wished to be converted a more advantageous position than the Judeo-Christian Churches, exposed as they were on the part of Judaism to all the hatred of which brothers who have quarrelled are capable. The truth of the apocalyptic image was striking. The woman protected by God, the Church, had truly received two eagles’ wings to fly into the desert far from the crises of the world and from its sanguinary dramas. There she grew in peace, and all that was done against her turned to her. The dangers of her first childhood are passed; her growth is henceforward assured.

END OF THE GOSPELS.

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APPENDIX. THE inaccuracy of the information furnished by the Gospels as to the material circumstances of the life of Jesus, the dubiety of the traditions of the first century, collected by Hegesippus, the frequent homonyms which occasion so much embarrassment in the history of the Jews at all epochs, render the questions relating to the family of Jesus almost insoluble. If we hold by a passage from the synoptic Gospels, Matt. xiii. 55, 56; Mark vi. 3, Jesus should have four brothers and several sisters. His four brothers were called James, Joseph or Jose, Simon, and Jude, respectively. Two of these names figure, in fact, in all the ecclesiastical and apostolic traditions as being “brothers of the Lord.” The personage of “James, brother of the Lord,” is, after that of St Paul, the most perfectly sketched of any of the first Christian generation. The Epistle of St Paul to the Galatians, the Acts of the Apostles, the superscriptions of the authentic epistles, or those not ascribed to James and Jude, the historian Josephus, the Ebionite legend of Peter, the old Judeo-Christian historian Hegesippus, are agreed in making him the chief of the old Judeo-Christian Church. The most authentic of these proofs, the passage in the Epistle to the Galatians, gives him distinctly the title of ἀδελφὸς τοῦ Κυρίου.

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One Jude appears also to have a most indisputable right to this title. The Jude whose epistle we possess gives himself the title of ἀδελφὸς δε Ἰαχώβου. A person of the name of James, of sufficient importance to be taken notice of, and who was given the authority to call himself His brother, can hardly be the celebrated James of the Epistle to the Galatians, the Acts, of Josephus, of Hegesippus, of the pseudo-Clementine writings. If this James was “brother of the Lord,” Jude, the true or supposed author of the epistle which forms a part of the canon, was then also a brother of the Lord. Hegesippus certainly understood him so to be. This Jude, whose grandson (ὑιωνοί) was sought out and presented to Domitian as the last representative of the race of David, was, in the view of the antique historian of the Church, the brother of Jesus according to the flesh. Several reasons lead even to the supposition that this Jude was in his turn the chief of the Church of Jerusalem. Here is then a second personage who is included in the series of the four names given by the synoptic Gospels as those of the brothers of Jesus. Simon and Jose are not known otherwise than as brothers of the Lord. But there would be nothing singular in the fact that two members of the family should remain obscure. What is much more surprising is that in reconciling other facts furnished by the Gospels, Hegesippus, and the oldest traditions of the Church of Jerusalem, a family of cousins-german of Jesus is formed, bearing almost the same names which are given by Matthew (xiii. 55) and by Mark (vi. 3), as those of the brothers of Jesus. In fact, amongst the women whom the synoptics place at the foot of the cross of Jesus, and who testify to the resurrection, there is found one “Mary,” mother of James the Less (ὁ μιχρός) and of

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Jose (Matt. xvii. 56; Mark xv. 40, 47; xiv. 1; Luke xxiv. 10). This Mary is certainly the same as the one whom the fourth Gospel (xix. 25) places also at the foot of the cross, who is called Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Κλωπᾶ (which signifies without doubt “Mary, the wife of Clopas”), and which makes her a sister of the mother of Jesus. The difficulty which is thus occasioned by the two sisters being called by the same name is hardly taken into account by the fourth Evangelist, who only once gives to the mother of Jesus the name of Mary. Be this as it may, we have already two cousins-german of Jesus called James and Jose. We find, moreover, a Simon, son of Clopas, whom Hegesippus and all those who have transmitted to us the memories of the primitive Church of Jerusalem, represented as the second Bishop of Jerusalem, and as having been martyred under Trajan. Finally, there are traces of a fourth member of the family of Clopas in that Jude, son of James, who appears to have succeeded Simeon in the See of Jerusalem. The family of Clopas appearing to have retained in an all but hereditary manner the government of the Church of Jerusalem from Titus to Hadrian, it is not too bold to assume that the James, the brother of this Jude, was James the Less, son of Mary Cleophas. We have thus three sons of Clopas called James, Jose, Simeon, exactly like the brothers of Jesus mentioned by the synoptics, without speaking of a hypothetical grandson in whom was revived the same identical name. Two sisters bearing the same name was indeed a very singular fact. What is to be said of a case in which these two sisters should have had at least three sons bearing the same name? No criticism can admit the possibility of such a coincidence. It is evident that we shall have to seek some solution which shall dispose of that anomaly.

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The orthodox doctors, since St Jerome, thought to remove the difficulty by taking it for granted that the four personages enumerated by Mark and Matthew as brothers of Jesus were, in reality, his cousins-german, sons of Mary Cleophas. But this is inadmissible. Many other passages assume that Jesus had full brothers and sisters. The arrangement of the little scene recounted by Matthew (xiii. 54, et seq., and Mark vi. 2, et seq.) is very significant. There the “brothers” are immediately related to the “mother.” The anecdote (Mark iii. 31, et seq.; Matt. xii. 46, et seq.) gives rise to still less ambiguity. Finally the whole of the Jerusalemitish tradition distinguishes clearly the “brothers of the Lord” from the family of Clopas. Simeon, son of Clopas, the second Bishop of Jerusalem, is called ἀνεψιὸς τοῦ σωτῆρος. Not a single one of the ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ Κυρίου bears after his name the addition of τοῦ Κλωπᾶ. Notoriously James, brother of the Lord, was not the son of Clopas; if he had been, he would have also been the brother of Simeon, his successor. Now Hegesippus does not believe this. When we read chapters xi. and xxxii. of the third book of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, we are convinced of it. The chronology will no longer permit of such a supposition. Simeon died at a very old age, in the reign of Trajan. James died in the year 62, also very old. The difference between the ages of the two brothers might thus have been forty years or thereabout. Hence the theory which sees the ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ Κυρίου in the sons of Clopas is inadmissible. Let it be added that in the Gospel of the Hebrews, which is often so superior to the other synoptic texts, Jesus

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directly calls James “my brother,” an expression altogether exceptional, and which people would certainly never employ to a cousin-german. Jesus had full brothers and sisters. Only it is possible that these brothers and sisters were but half-brothers and half-sisters. Were these brothers and sisters likewise sons and daughters of Mary? This is improbable. In fact, the brothers appear to have been much older than Jesus. Now Jesus was, as it would appear, the first-born of his mother. Jesus, moreover, was, in his youth, designated at Nazareth by the name of “Son of Mary.” For this we have the most undoubted testimony of the Gospels. This assumes that he was known for a long time as the only son of a widow. In fact, such appellations were only employed where the father was dead, and when the widow had no other son. Let us instance the case of Piero dells Francesca, the celebrated painter. In fine, the myth of the virginity of Mary, without excluding absolutely the idea that Mary may have had afterwards other children by Joseph, or have been remarried, fits in better with the hypothesis that she had only one son. No doubt, the legend is so constructed as to do the greatest violence to truth. Nevertheless, we must remember that the legend now in question was elaborated by the brothers and cousins of Jesus themselves. Jesus, the sole and tardy progeny of the union of a young woman and a man already reached maturity, offered perfect opportunity for the opinions according to which his conception had been supernatural. In such a case, the divine action appeared so much the more striking in proportion as nature seemed the more impotent. People take a pleasure in representing children, predestined to great prophetic vocations, as being born to old men or of women who have been for a long time sterile—Samuel, John the Baptist, and Mary herself are conspicuous instances. The author, also, of the Protovangile of James, St Epiphanes, etc., ardently insists upon the great age of Joseph, induced thereto, no doubt, by à priori motives, yet guided also in this latter by a just opinion as to the circumstances in which Jesus was born. 281

These difficulties could be readily enough removed, if we were to assume that Joseph had before been married, and had, by this marriage, sons and daughters, in particular, James and Jude. These two personages, and James, at least, appear to have been older than Jesus. The hostile disposition which was attributed at first to the brothers of Jesus by the Gospels, the singular contrast which the principles and the species of life led by James and Jude, and those of Jesus presents, is, in such a hypothesis, somewhat less unaccountable than on the other suppositions that have been made to get rid of these contradictions. How could the sons of Clopas be cousins-german of Jesus? They may have been by the same mother, Mary Cleophas, as the fourth Gospel would have us believe, or by the same father, Clopas, who is made out by Hegisippus to be a brother of Joseph, or on both sides at once; for it was actually possible that the two brothers may have married two sisters. Between these three hypotheses, the second is much the more probable. The hypothesis as to two sisters bearing the same name, is extremely problematical. The passage in the fourth Gospel (xix. 25) may contain an error. Let no 184


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add that, according to one interpretation, a laborious one, it is true, yet, nevertheless, admissible, the expression ἡ ἀδελφὴ τῆς μητρός αὐτοῦ does not refer to Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Κλωπᾶ, but to a distinct nameless personage, such as was the mother of Jesus herself. The aged Hegisippus, so preoccupied with everything touching the family of Jesus, appears to have known quite well the truth upon this point. But bow can we admit that the two brothers Joseph and Clopas had three or even four sons bearing the same names? Let us examine the list of the four brothers of Jesus given by the synoptics—James, Jude, Simon, Jose. The first two have a well-authenticated title to be styled brothers of the Lord; the two last, outside the two Synoptic passages, have no valid claim to it. Just as in the case of the two names Simon and Simeon, Jose or Joseph, which are to be found elsewhere in the list of the sons of Clopas, we are led to adopt the following hypothesis: that the passages in Mark and in Matthew, in which are enumerated the four brothers of Jesus, contain an inadvertence; that as regards the four personages named by the synoptics, James and Jude were indeed brothers of Jesus and sons of Joseph, but that Simon and Jose have been placed there by mistake. The compiler of that little writing, like all the agadists, lays little store by exactness of material details, and, like all the evangelical narrators (except the fourth), was dominated by the cadence of Semitic parallelism. The necessities of locution may have drawn them into making an enumeration, the turn of which required four proper names. As he only knew two full brothers of Jesus, he was, perforce, compelled to associate with them two of their cousins-german. In fact, it seems that Jesus had indeed more than two brothers. “Have I not the right to have a wife,” says St Paul, “like the other Apostles, like the brothers of the Lord, like Cephas?” According to all tradition, James, the brother of the Lord, was not married. Jude was married, but that was not sufficient to justify the plural used by St Paul. There would need to have been a good many of these brothers, seeing that the exception in the case of James did not hinder St Paul from regarding generally the brothers of the Lord as married. Clopas seems to have been younger than Joseph, and his eldest son must have been younger than the eldest son of the latter. It is natural that, if his name was James, a custom might exist in the family of calling him ὁ μιχρός, in order to distinguish him from his cousin-german of the same name. Simeon may have been fifteen years younger than Jesus, and, strictly speaking, died in the reign of Trajan. Nevertheless, we prefer to believe that the member of the Cleophas family martyred under Trajan belonged to another generation. Mere data regarding the age of James and Simeon are, moreover, very uncertain. James must have died at ninety-six, and Simeon at a hundred-and-twenty. This last assumption is, on the face of it, inadmissible. On the other hand, if James had been ninety-six, as it is pretended, in 62, he must have been born thirty-four years before Jesus, which is a thing very unlikely.

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It remains to inquire whether any of these brothers of cousins-german of Jesus did not figure in the lists of the Apostles which have been conserved to us in the synoptics and by the author of the Acts. Although the college of the Apostles and that of the brothers of the Lord were two distinct groups, it has nevertheless been considered as possible that a few of the personages may have 185


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constituted a part of both. Indeed the names of James, Jude, and Simeon are to be found in the lists of the Apostles. James, the son of Zebedee, has nothing to do with this discussion, no more than has Judas Iscariot. But what are we to think of this James, son of Alpheus, whom the four lists of the Apostles (Matt. x. 2, et seq.; Mark iii. 14, et seq.; Luke v. 13, et seq.; Acts i. 13, et seq.) include in the number of the Twelve? People have often identified the name of Ἀλφαὶος with that of Κλεοπᾶς, by means of ‫חלפי‬. This is indeed a reconcilement which is altogether false. Ἀλφαῖος is the Hebrew name ‫חלפי‬, and Κλωπᾶς or Κλεοπᾶς is an abbreviation of Κλεόπατρος. James, the son of Alpheus, has not then the least title to being one of the cousins-german of Jesus. The evangelical personnel possessed in reality four Jameses, one the son of Joseph and brother of Jesus; another, son of Clopas; another, son of Zebedee; another, son of Alpheus. The list of the Apostles given by Luke in his Gospel and in the Acts contains one Ἰούδα Ἰάχωβου, whom it has been attempted to identify with Jude, brother of the Lord, by assuming that it was necessary to understand ἀδελφός between the two names. Nothing could be more arbitrary. This Judas was the son of James, otherwise unknown. The same must also be said of Simon the Zealot, whom people have tried, without a shadow of reason, to identify with the Simon that we find classed (Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3) among the brothers of Jesus. To sum up, it does not appear that a single member of the family of Jesus formed a part of the college of the Twelve. James himself was not of that number. The only two brothers of the Lord whose names we are sure of knowing were James and Jude. James was not married, but Jude had children and grandchildren; the latter appeared before Domitian as descendants of David, and were presidents of churches in Syria.

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As for the sons of Clopas, we know three of them, one of whom appears to have had children. This family of Clopas, after the war of Titus, held the highest positions in the Church of Jerusalem. A member of the Clopas family was martyred under Trajan. After that, we hear no more of the descendants of the brothers of the Lord, nor of descendants of Clopas.

THE END

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Indexes Index of Scripture References Genesis 1:26 Deuteronomy 18:15 32:15 Psalms 95:8 Isaiah 8:14-15 53:12 60:17 Ezekiel 8:3 Zechariah 9:9 Matthew 10:2 12:46 12:46-50 13:54 13:55 13:55 13:55-56 13:58 17:56 Mark 3:14 3:31 3:31-35 6:2 6:3 6:3 6:3 6:5 6:45-8:26 6:50-51 7:24 13:1-37 14:1 15:40 15:47 16:8 Luke 1:3 5:13 9:51-18:14 24:10 John 19:25 19:25 Acts 1:13 25:1-26:32 Hebrews 3:7 James 2:5-6 Revelation 12:14

Index of Greek Words and Phrases

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• ἀδελφὸς δε Ἰαχώβου: 1 • ἀδελφὸς τοῦ Κυρίου: 1 • ἀδελφός: 1 • ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ Κυρίου: 1 2 • ἀνεψιὸς τοῦ σωτῆρος: 1 • Ἀλφαὶος: 1 • Ἀλφαῖος: 1 • ἐκκλησία: 1 • ἐπίσκοποι: 1 2 • ἐπίσκοπος: 1 • Ἐπερδή περ πολλοί επιχείρησαν: 1 • ἡ ἀδελφὴ τῆς μητρός αὐτοῦ: 1 • ἡ καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία: 1 • Ἰγνάτιος ὁ και Θεοφορος: 1 • Ἰούδα Ἰάχωβου: 1 • ὁ ἄρχων αἰῶνος τούτου: 1 • ὁ και Θεοφορος: 1 • ὁ μιχρός: 1 2 • ὑιωνοί: 1 • ὕδωρ ζῶν: 1 • Επἰγρὰψατέ μοι: 1 • Ζῶσι τῷθεῷ: 1 • Θεοφόρος: 1 • Κλεόπατρος: 1 • Κλεοπᾶς: 1 2 • Κλωπᾶς: 1 • Λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ: 1 • Λεχθέντα ἢ πραχθέντα: 1 • Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Κλωπᾶ: 1 2 • πρεσβύτεροι: 1 2 • συναγωγή: 1 • τοῦ Κλωπᾶ: 1 • τρία μυστήρια κραυγῆς: 1

Index of Latin Words and Phrases •Ama tanquam osurus: 1 •Coenaculum: 1 •Diaconi: 1 2 3 189

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•Dominus et Deus noster: 1 •Episcopi: 1 2 3 4 5 •Equidem plura transcribo quam credo.: 1 •Magnificat, Gloria in Excelsis, Nunc Dimittis, Benedictus: 1 •Multitudinis credentium erat cor unum et anima una.: 1 •Nec meiere fas est!: 1 •Non licet esse Christianos: 1 •Presbyteri: 1 2 3 •ad gallinas albas: 1 •ad narrandum, non ad probandum: 1 •ad sustinendam tenuiorium inopiam: 1 •agapes: 1 •cœnaculum: 1 •cœtus illiciti: 1 •criterium: 1 •cursus honorum: 1 •dicta: 1 •episcopi: 1 2 3 •evocatus: 1 •exordium: 1 •fiscus Judaïcus: 1 2 •fiscus judaicus: 1 •flagitia nomini cohærentia: 1 •gens Flavia: 1 •hostis publicus: 1 •ignavia: 1 •illuminati: 1 •impietas: 1 •improfessi: 1 2 •improfessus: 1 •lapilli: 1 •pius: 1 •presbyteri: 1 2 •pronaptuaria: 1 •recutiti: 1 •religio: 1 •sanctissimus censor: 1 •schola: 1

Index of French Words and Phrases

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•bourgeoisie: 1 2 •en bloc: 1 •en rapport: 1 •illuminée: 1 •lèse majesté: 1 2 3 •naïveté: 1 •point d’appui: 1 •régime: 1 2 •spirituelle: 1 •tour de force: 1

Index of Pages of the Print Edition i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix 10 xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284

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The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book VI. The Reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. (A.D. 117-161) by

Ernest Renan


About The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book VI. The Reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. (A.D. 117-161) by Ernest Renan Title: URL: Author(s): Publisher: Publication History: Rights: Date Created: CCEL Subjects:

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book VI. The Reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. (A.D. 117-161) http://www.ccel.org/ccel/renan/hadrian_pius.html Renan, Ernest (1823-1892) Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library London: Mathieson & Company: 1890 (?) Copyright Christian Classics Ethereal Library 2005-05-20 All; History

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book VI. The Reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. (A.D. 117-161)

Ernest Renan

Table of Contents About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. ii Title Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 1 Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 3 Chapter I. Hadrian.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 6 Chapter II. The Re-building of Jerusalem.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 12 Chapter III. The Relative Tolerance of Hadrian—The First Apologists.. . . . p. 15 Chapter IV. The Johannine Writings.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 19 Chapter V. The Beginning of a System of Christian Philosophy.. . . . . . . p. 25 Chapter VI. Progress of the Episcopate.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 32 Chapter VII. Forged Apostolical Writings.—The Christian Bible.. . . . . . . p. 39 Chapter VIII. Millenarianism—Papias.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 44 Chapter IX. The Commencement of Gnosticism.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 50 Chapter X. Basilidies, Valentinus, Saturninus, Carpocrates.. . . . . . . . . . p. 56 Chapter XI. The last Revolt of the Jews.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 65 Chapter XII. Disappearance of the Jewish Nation.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 73 Chapter XIII. The Talmud.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 80 Chapter XIV. The Mutual Hatred of Jews and Christians.. . . . . . . . . . . . p. 87 Chapter XV. Antonius Pius.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 96 Chapter XVI. The Christians and Public Opinion.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 101 Chapter XVII. The Sects at Rome—The Cerygmass—the Roman Christian—Definitive Reconciliation of Peter and Paul.. . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 106 Chapter XVIII. Exaggeration of St Paul’s Ideas—Marcion.. . . . . . . . . . . p. 116 Chapter XIX. The Catholic Apology—St Justin.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 121 Chapter XX. Abuses and Penitence—New Prophecies.. . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 129 Chapter XXI. Roman Pietism—The Shepherd of Hermas.. . . . . . . . . . . p. 133 Chapter XXII. Orthodox Asia—Polycarpus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 140 Chapter XXIII. Martydom of Polycarpus.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 148 Chapter XXIV. Christianity amongst the Gauls—The Church of Lyons.. . . . p. 154 Chapter XXV. The Strife at Rome—Martyrdom of St Justin—Fronton.. . . . p. 158 Chapter XXVI. The Apocryphal Gospels.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 163 Chapter XXVII. Apocryphal Acts and Apocalypses.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 171 Appendix I.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 177 Appendix II.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 183 Indexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 188 Index of Scripture References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 188 iii


Greek Words and Phrases. . . . . . Hebrew Words and Phrases. . . . . Latin Words and Phrases. . . . . . . French Words and Phrases. . . . . . Index of Pages of the Print Edition.

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i

THE HISTORY OF THE


BOOK VI. COMPRISING

THE REIGNS OF

HADRIAN AND ANTONINUS PIUS (A.D. 117-161)

BY

ERNEST RENAN Member of the French Academy, and of the Academy of Inscriptions and Fine Arts.

London:

Ernest Renan


MATHIESON & COMPANY 25 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E.C.

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LONDON PRINTED BY THE TEMPLE PUBLISHING COMPANY.

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Ernest Renan

PREFACE.

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I THOUGHT at first that this Sixth Book would finish the series of volumes which I have devoted to the history of the origins of Christianity. It is certain that at the death of Antoninus, circa A.D. 160, the Christian religion had become a complete religion, having all its sacred books, all its grand legends, the germ of all its dogmas, the essential parts of its liturgies; and in the eyes of most of its adherents, it was a religion standing by itself, separated from and even opposed to Judaism. I, however, thought it right to add a last work, containing the ecclesiastical history of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, to the preceding books. In the truest sense, the reign of Marcus Aurelius belongs to the origins of Christianity. Montanism is a phenomenon of about the year 170, and is one of the most notable events of early Christianity. After more than a century had elapsed since those strange hallucinations which had possessed the apostles at the Last Supper at Jerusalem, suddenly in some remote districts of Phrygia there sprung up again prophecy, the glossolalia, those graces which the author of the Acts of the Apostles praises so much. But it was too late: under Marcus Aurelius, religion, after the confused manifestations of Gnosticism, had more need of discipline than of miraculous gifts. The resistance that orthodoxy, as represented by the episcopate, was able to offer to the prophets of Phrygia, was the decisive act of the constitution of the Church. It was admitted that, above individual inspiration, there existed the average judgment of the universal conscience. This average opinion, which will triumph in the course of the history of the Church, and which, representing as it did relative good sense, constituted the power of that great institution, was already perfectly characterised under Marcus Aurelius. A description of the first struggles which thus took place between individual liberty and ecclesiastical authority, seemed to me to be a necessary part of the history which I wished to trace of rising Christianity. But besides that, there was another reason that decided me to treat the reign of Marcus Aurelius in its relations to the Christian community in the fullest detail. It is partial and unjust to represent the endeavours of Christianity as an isolated fact, as a unique, and, in a manner, a miraculous attempt at religious and social reform. Christianity was not alone in attempting what it alone was able to carry out. Timidly still in the first century, openly and brilliantly in the second, all virtuous men of the ancient world were longing for an improvement in morals and in the laws, and piety thus became a general requirement of the time. With regard to high intellectual culture, the century was not what the preceding age had been; there were no men of such large minds as Cæsar, Lucretius, Cicero and Seneca, but an immense work of moral amelioration was going on in all directions, and philosophy, Hellenism, the Eastern creeds and Roman probity, contributed equally to this. The fact that Christianity has triumphed is no reason for being unjust towards those noble attempts which ran parallel with its own, and which only failed because they were too aristocratic, and did not possess enough of that mystic character which was formerly necessary in order to attract the people. In order to be perfectly just, the two attempts ought to be studied together, allowances ought to be made for both, and it ought to be explained why one has succeeded whilst the other has not. 3


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The name of Marcus Aurelius is the most noble among all that noble school of virtue which tried to save the ancient world by the force of reason, and thus a thorough study of that great man belongs essentially to our subject. Why did not that reconciliation between the Church and the Empire, which took place under Constantine, take place under Marcus Aurelius? It is all the more important to settle this question, as already in this volume we shall see that the Church identifies her destinies with those of the Empire. vi

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In the latter half of the second century, some Christian doctors of the highest authority seriously faced the possibility of making Christianity the official religion of the Roman world, and it might almost be said that they divined the great events of the fourth century. Looked at closely, that resolution by which Christianity, having entirely changed its past, has become the protégé, or perhaps we had better say the protector, of the State, from having been persecuted by it, ceases to be surprising. St Justin and Melito foresaw this quite clearly. St Paul’s principle, “All power is of God,” will bear its fruits, and the Gospel will become, what Jesus certainly did not foresee, one of the bases of absolution. Christ will have come into the world to guarantee the crowns of princes, and in our days a Roman Pontiff has tried to prove that Jesus Christ preached and died to preserve the fortunes of the wealthy, and to consolidate capital. As we advance in this history, we shall find that documents become more certain, and preliminary discussions less necessary. The question of the Fourth Gospel has been so often treated in the preceding volumes, that we need not return to that subject now. The falseness of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which are attributed to St Paul, has been already demonstrated, and the apocryphal character of the Second Epistle of St Peter is shown by the few pages which are devoted to that work. The problems of the epistles attributed to St Ignatius, and of the epistle attributed to St Polycarp, are absolutely identical, and attention need only be drawn to what has been said in the introduction to our preceding work. Nobody has any further doubt about the approximate age of the Pastor of Hermas. The account of Polycarp’s death bears the same characteristics of authenticity as the epistle to the faithful at Lyons and Vienne, which will be mentioned in our last book, and to discriminate between the authentic and the supposititious works of St Justin, does not require the same lengthy explanation as the introductions to the former volumes naturally did. It can plainly be seen, and all signs seem to point to the fact, that we are approaching the end of the age of origins. Ecclesiastical history is about to begin. The same interest is felt in it, but everything takes place in the full light of day, and for the future, criticism will no longer encounter those obscurities which can only be got over by hypotheses or bold speculation. Hic cestus artemque repono. After Irenæus and Clement of Alexandria, our old works on Ecclesiastical History of the seventeenth century are almost sufficient. Any one who reads in Fleury the two hundred and twenty pages that correspond to our seven volumes, will perceive all the difference. The seventeenth century only cared to know

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what was quite clear, and all origins are obscure; but for the philosophic mind, they are of unequalled interest. Embryogeny is from its very essence the most interesting of sciences, for by it we can penetrate the secrets of nature, its plastic force, its final aims, and its inexhaustible fecundity.

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THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. CHAPTER I. HADRIAN. TRAJAN’S health was daily growing worse, and so he set out for Rome, leaving the command of the army at Antioch to Hadrian, his second cousin, and grand-nephew by marriage. He was forced to stop at Selinus, on the coast of Cilicia, by inflammation of the bowels, and there he died August 11, 117, at the age of sixty-four. The condition of affairs was very unfortunate: the East was in a state of insurrection; the Moors, the Bretons, the Sarmatians were becoming menacing, and Judea, subjugated but still in a state of suppressed agitation, appeared to be threatening a fresh outbreak. A somewhat obscure intrigue, which appears to have been directed by Plotina and Matidias, bestowed the Empire on Hadrian, under these critical circumstances.

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It was an excellent choice, for though he was a man of equivocal morals, he was a great ruler. Intellectual, intelligent, and eager to learn, he had more greatness of mind than any of the Cæsars, and from Augustus down to Diocletian, no other Emperor did so much for the constitution as he did. His administrative capacities were extraordinary, as, although he administered too much, according to our ideas, he nevertheless administered well. He was the first to give the Imperial Government a definite organisation, and his reign marked a principal epoch in the history of Roman law. Up till his time, the house of the sovereign had been the house of the highest personage in the land,—an establishment composed like any other of servants, freemen, and private secretaries. Hadrian organised the palace, and for the future it was necessary to be a knight in order to arrive at any office in the household, and the servants in Cæsar’s palace became public functionaries. A permanent council of the prince, composed chiefly of jurisconsults, undertook all definite public powers; those senators who were specially attached to the government already were made comtes (counts); everything was done through regular offices, in the constitution of which the senate took its proper share, and not through the direct will of the prince. It was still a state of despotism, but of despotism which was analogous to that of the old French royalty, kept in check by independent councils, law courts, and magistrates. The social ameliorations which took place were still more important, for everywhere a really good and great spirit of liberalism was manifested; the position of slaves was guaranteed, the condition of women was raised, paternal authority was restricted within certain limits, and every remaining vestige of human sacrifices was abolished. The Emperor’s personal character responded

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to the excellence of these reforms, for he was most affable towards those of lowly station, and never would allow himself to be deprived of his greatest pleasure—that of being amiable—under the pretext of his imperial greatness. In spite of all his failings, he was a man of a quick, unbiassed, original intellect. He admired Epictetus and understood him, without, however, feeling obliged to follow out his maxims. Nothing escaped him, and he wished to know everything; and as he did not possess that insolent pride and that fixed determination which altogether excluded the true Roman from all knowledge of the rest of the world, Hadrian had a strong inclination for everything that was strange, and would wittily make fun of it. The East, above all, had strong attractions for him, for he saw through Eastern impostures and charlatanism, and they amused him. He was initiated into all their absurd rites, fabricated oracles, compounded antidotes, and made fun of the medicine; and, like Nero, he was a royal man of letters and an artist, while the ease with which he learnt painting, sculpture, and architecture was surprising. Besides this, he also wrote tolerable poetry, but his taste was not pure, and he had his favourite authors and singular preferences; in a word, he was a literary smatterer, and a theatrical architect. He adopted no system of religion or of philosophy, but neither did he deny any of them, and his distinguished mind was like a weather-cock, which moves its position with every wind; his elegant farewell to life, which he murmured a few moments before his death, “Animula, vagula, blandula,” gives us his measure exactly. For him, whatever he examined into ended in a joke, and he had a smile for everything that was an object of his curiosity. The sovereign power itself could not make him more than half serious, and his bearing always had that easy grace and negligence of the most fluctuating and changeable man that ever existed.

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All that naturally made him tolerant. He did not indeed abrogate the laws which indirectly struck at Christianity, and so put it continually in the wrong, and he even allowed them to be applied more than once, but he personally very much modified the effect of them. In this respect he was superior to Trajan, who, without being a philosopher, had very fixed ideas about State affairs, and to Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, who were men of high principle, but who thought that they did right in persecuting the Christians. In this respect Hadrian’s laxity of morals was not without a good effect, for it is the peculiarity of a monarchy that the defects of sovereigns serve the public good even more than their better qualities. The immorality of a really witty man, of a crowned Lucian, who looks upon the whole world as some frivolous game, was more favourable to liberty than the serious gravity and lofty morality of the most perfect Emperors. Hadrian’s first care was to settle the difficulties of the accession which Trajan had left him. He was a distinguished military writer, but no great general. He clearly saw how impossible it would be to keep the newly conquered provinces of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, and so he gave them up. That must have been a very solemn hour, when, for the first time, the Roman eagles 7


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retreated, and when the Empire was obliged to acknowledge that it had exceeded its programme of conquest, but it was an act of wisdom. Persia was as inaccessible for Rome as Germany, and the mighty expeditions which Crassus, Trajan, and Julian had led into that part of the world failed, whilst less ambitious expeditions—those of Lucius Verus and of' Septimus Severus, whose object was not to attack the very foundations of the Parthian Empire, but to detach the feudatory provinces which bordered on the Roman Empire, from it—succeeded. The difficulty of relinquishing conquests, which was so humiliating to the Roman mind, was increased by the uncertainty of Hadrian’s adoption by Trajan. Lucius Quietus and Marcus Turbo had an almost equal right to adoption with him, from the importance of the last commission that they had carried out. Quiltus was killed, and it may be supposed that, eager as they were to find out the deaths of their enemies, in order to discover in them a token of celestial vengeance, the Jews saw in this tragic death a punishment for the new evils which the fierce Berber had inflicted on them. Hadrian was a year on his return journey to Rome, thus at once beginning those roaming habits which were to make his reign one continual rush through the provinces of the Empire. After another year devoted to the gravest cares of government administration, which was fertile in constitutional reforms, he started on an official progress (tour) and successively visited Gaul, the banks of the Rhine, Britain, Spain, Mauritania and Carthage, and his vanity and antiquarian tastes made him dream of becoming the founder of cities, and the restorer of ancient monuments. Moreover, he did not approve of the idleness of garrison life for soldiers, and he found a means of occupying them in great public works, and that is the reason for these innumerable constructions—roads, ports, theatres—temples which date from Hadrian’s reign. He was surrounded by a crowd of architects, engineers, and artists, who were enrolled like a legion. In each province where he set his foot, everything seemed to be restored and to spring up afresh. At the Emperor’s suggestion, enormous public companies were formed to carry out great public works, and generally the State appeared as a shareholder. If any city had the smallest title to celebrity, or was mentioned in classical authors, it was sure to be restored by this archæological Cæsar; thus he beautified Carthage and added a new quarter to it; and in all directions towns which had fallen into decay rose up from their ruins, and took the name of Colonia Ælia Hadriana. After a short stay in Rome, during which he extended the circumference of the pomœsium (the symbolical, not actual wall of the city), he started, during the course of the year 121, on another journey, which lasted nearly four years and a half, and during which he visited nearly the whole of the East. This journey was even more brilliant than the former, and it might have been said that the ancient world was coming to life again beneath the footsteps of a beneficent deity. Thoroughly acquainted with ancient history, Hadrian wished to see everything, was interested in everything, and wished to have everything restored that had existed formerly. Men sought to revive the lost arts, in order to please him, and a neo-Egyptian style became the fashion, as did also a neo-Phœnician. Philosophers, rhetoricians, critics, swarmed about him, and he was another Nero without his follies. A number of ancient civilisations which had disappeared, aspired after their 8


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resuscitation, not actually, but in the writings of historians and archæologists. Thus Herennius, Philo of Byblos, tried—very likely under the direct inspiration of the Emperor himself—to discover ancient Phœnicia. New fêtes, the Hadrianian Games, which the Greeks introduced—recalled for the last time the splendour of Hellenic life; it was like a universal restoration to life of the ancient world, a brilliant restoration indeed, but it was hardly sincere, and rather theatrical, and each country found, in Rome’s comprehensive bosom, its former titles of nobility again, and became attached to them. Whilst studying that singular spectacle, one cannot help thinking of that and of resurrection from the dead which our own century has witnessed, when, in a moment of universal goodwill, it began to restore all things, to rebuild Gothic churches, to re-establish pilgrimages which had fallen into neglect, and to reintroduce fêtes and ancient customs. Hadrian, the turn of whose mind was more Greek than Roman, favoured this ecclectic movement, and contributed powerfully towards it, and what he did in Asia Minor was really prodigious. Cyzicus, Nicaea, Nicomedia, sprang up again, and everywhere temples of the most splendid works of architecture, immortalised the memory of that learned sovereign, who seemed to wish that another world, in all the freshness of its youth, should date from him. Syria was no less favoured. Antioch and Daphne became the most delightful places of abode in the world, and the combinations of picturesque architecture, the imagination of the landscape painter, and the forces of hydraulic power, were exhausted there. Even Palmyra was partially restored by the great imperial architect, and, like a number of other towns, took the name of Hadrianople from him.

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Never had the world had so much enjoyment or so much hope. The Barbarians beyond the Rhine and the Danube were hardly thought about, for the liberal spirit of the Emperor caused a sort of feeling of universal contentment; and the Jews themselves were divided into two parties. Those who were massed at Bether, and in the villages south of Jerusalem, seemed to be possessed by a sort of sombre rage. Their one idea was to take the city, to which access was denied them, by force, and to restore to the hill which God had chosen for his own, its former honours. Hadrian had not at first been obnoxious to the more moderate party, especially to the half-Christian, half-Essenian survivors of the Egyptian catastrophe under Trojan. They could imagine that he had ordered the death of Quietus to punish him for his cruelty towards the Jews, and perhaps for a moment they conceived the hope that the ecclectic Emperor would undertake the restoration of Israel, as another caprice amongst so many. In order to inculcate these ideas, a pious Alexandrian took a form of thought that had already been consecrated by success. In his poem he supposed that a Sybil, sister of Isis, had had a disordered vision of the trials which were reserved for the latter centuries. Hatred for Rome bursts out at the very beginning:— O Virgin, enervated and wealthy daughter of Latin Rome, who hast joined the ranks of slavery whilst drunk with wine, for what nuptials hast thou reserved thyself! How often will a cruel mistress tear these delicate locks!

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The author, who is a Jew and a Christian at the same time, looks upon Rome as the natural enemy of the saints, and to Hadrian alone he pays the homage of admiring him thoroughly. After enumerating the Roman Emperors, from Julius Cæsar to Trajan, by the nonsensical process of ghematria, the Sybil sees a man ascend the throne— Who has a skull of silver, who will give his name to a sea. He will be unequalled in every way and know everything. Under thy reign O excellent, O eminent and brilliant sovereign, and under thy offspring, the events which I am about to mention shall take place.

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According to custom, the Sybil now unfolds the most gloomy pictures; every scourge is let loose at the same time, and mankind becomes altogether corrupt. These are the throes of the Messianic child-birth. Nero, who had been dead for more than fifty years, was still the author’s nightmare. That destructive dragon, that actor, that murderer of his own relations, and assassin of the chosen people, that kindler of numberless wars, will return to put himself on an equality with God. He weaves the darkest plots amongst the Medes and Persians who have received him; and, borne through the air by the Fates, he will soon arrive to be once more the scourge of the West. The author vomits forth an invective, fiercer still than that with which he began:— Unstable, corrupted, reserved for the very lowest destinies, the beginning and end of all suffering, because in thy bosom creation perishes and is born again continually, source of all evil, scourge, the point where everything ends for mortal men, who has ever loved thee? who does not detest thee internally? what dethroned king has ended his life in peace within thy walls? By thee the whole world has been changed in its innermost recesses. Formerly there existed in the human breast a splendour like a brilliant sun; it was the rays of the unanimous spirits of the prophets, which brought to all the nourishment of life, and thou hast destroyed these good gifts. Therefore, O imperious mistress, origin and cause of all these great evils, sword and disaster shall fall on thee . . . Listen, O scourge of humanity, to the harsh voice which announces thy misfortunes.

A divine race of blessed Jews, come down from heaven, shall inhabit Jerusalem, which shall extend as far as Jaffa, and rise to the clouds. There shall be no more trumpets or war, but on every side eternal trophies shall rise, trophies consecrating victories over evil. Then there shall come down from heaven once more an extraordinary man, who has stretched out his hands over a fruitful wood, the best of the Hebrews, who formerly stopped the sun in his course by his beautiful words and his holy lips.

This is doubtlessly Jesus, Jesus, in an allegorical manner, by his crucifixion, playing the part of Moses stretching out his arms, and of Joshua the saviour of the people.

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Cease at length to break thy heart, O daughter of divine race, O treasure, O only lovely flower, delightful brightness, exquisite plant, cherished germ, gracious and beautiful city of Judea, always filled with the sound of inspired hymns. The impure feet of the Greeks, their hearts filled with plots, shall not tread thy soil under them, but thou shalt be surrounded by the respect of thy illustrious children, who shall deck thy table in accord with the sacred muses, with sacrifices of all kinds, and with pious prayers. Then the just who have suffered pain and anguish will find more pleasure than they have suffered ills. These, on the contrary, who have hurled their sacrilegious blasphemies towards heaven will be reduced to silence and to hide themselves till the face of the world changes. A rain of burning fire shall descend from heaven, and men shall no longer gather in the sweet fruits of the earth; there shall be no more sowing, no more labour, till mortals recognise the supreme, immortal, eternal God, and till they leave off honouring mortals, dogs, and

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vultures, to which Egypt wishes men to offer the homage of profane mouths and foolish lips. Only the sacred soil of the Hebrews will bear those things that are refused to other men; brooks of honey shall burst from the rocks and springs, and milk like ambrosia shall flow for the just, because they have hoped, with ardent piety and lively faith, in one only God, the Father of all things, One and Supreme.

At last the runaway parricide, who has been announced three times, enters upon the scene again. The monster inundates the earth with blood, and captures Rome, causing such a conflagration as has never been seen. There is a universal overturning of everything in the world; all kings and aristocrats perish, in order to prepare peace for just men—that is to say, for Jews and Christians, and the author’s joy at the destruction of Rome breaks out a third time.:— Parricides, leave your pride and your culpable haughtiness, for you have reserved your shameful embraces for children and placed young girls, who were pure up till that time, in houses of ill-fame where they have been subjected to the vilest outrages . . . Keep silence, wicked and unhappy city, thou that wast formerly full of laughter. In thy bosom the sacred virgins will no longer find again the holy fire that they kept alive, for that fire, which was so preciously preserved, went out of its own accord, when I saw for the second time another temple fall to the ground, given up to the flames by impure hands, a temple which flourishes still, a permanent sanctuary of God, built by the saints, and incorruptible throughout eternity . . . It is not, indeed, a god made of common clay that this race adores; amongst them the skilful workman does not shape marble; and gold, which is so often employed to seduce men’s souls, is no object of their worship, but by their sacrifices and their holy hecatombs they honour the great God whose breath animates every living thing. 11

A chosen man, the Messiah, descends from heaven, carries off the victory over the Pagans, builds the city beloved of God, which springs up again more brilliant than the sun, and founds within it an incarnate temple, a tower with a frontage of several stadii, which reaches up to the clouds, so that all the faithful may see the glory of God. The seats of ancient civilisation—Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome—disappear one after the other; above all, the giant monuments of Egypt fall over and cover the earth; but a linen-clad priest converts his compatriots, persuades them to abandon their ancient rites, and to build a temple to the true God. That, however, does not arrest the destruction of the ancient world, for the constellations come in contact with each other, the celestial bodies fall to the earth, and the heavens remain starless. Thus we see that under Hadrian there existed in Egypt a body of pious monotheists for whom the Jews were still pre-eminently the just and holy people, in whose eyes the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem was an unpardonable crime, and the real cause of the fall of the Roman Empire; who entertained a cause for hatred and calumny against Flavius; who hoped for the restoration of the Temple and of Jerusalem; who looked on the Messiah as a man chosen of God; who saw that Messiah in Jesus, and who read the Apocalypse of St John. Since then, Egypt has for a long time made us grow accustomed to great singularities in all that concerns Jewish and Christian history, and its religious development did not proceed pari passu with that of the rest of the world. Accents such as we have just beard could hardly find an echo either in pure Judaism or in the Churches of St Paul. Judea, above all, would never have consented, even for an hour, either to regard Hadrian as the best of men, or to found such hopes upon him.

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CHAPTER II. THE RE-BUILDING OF JERUSALEM. DURING his peregrinations in Syria, Hadrian saw the site where Jerusalem had stood. For fifty-two years the city remained in its state of desolation, and offered to the eye nothing but a heap of immense blocks of stone lying one on another. Only a few groups of miserable houses, belonging to Christians for the most part, stood out from the top of Mount Sion, and the site of the Temple was full of jackals. One day, when Rabbi Aquiba came on a pilgrimage to the spot with some companions, a jackal rushed out of the place where the Holy of Holies had stood. The pilgrims burst into tears, and said to each other: “What! is this the place of which it is written that any profane person who approaches it shall be put to death, and here are jackals roaming about in it!” Aquiba, however, burst out laughing, and proved to them the connexion between the various prophecies so clearly, that they all exclaimed: “Aquiba, thou hast consoled us! Aquiba, thou has consoled us!” These ruins inspired Hadrian with the thought with which all ruins inspired him, namely, the desire to rebuild the ruined city, to colonise it, and to give it his name or that of his family Thus Judea would become once more restored to cultivation, and Jerusalem, raised to the rank of a fortified place in the hands of the Romans, would serve as a check upon the Jewish population. All the towns of Syria, moreover,—Gerasae, Damascus, Gaza, Peah,—were being rebuilt in the Roman manner, and were inaugurating new eras. Jerusalem was too celebrated to be an exception to this movement of historical dilettantism and of general restoration.

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It is very probable that if the Jews had been less unanimous in their views, if some Philo of Byblos had existed amongst them to represent to him the Jewish past as nothing but a glorious and interesting variety amongst the different literatures, religions, and philosophies of humanity, the curious and intelligent Hadrian would have been delighted, and re-built the Temple, not exactly as the Doctors of the Law would have wished it, but in his ecclectic manner, like the great amateur of ancient religions that he was. The Talmud is full of conversations between Hadrian and celebrated rabbis, which of course are fictitious, but which correspond very well with the character of this Emperor, who had a great mind, and was a great talker, very fond of asking questions, curious about strange matters, anxious to know everything, that he might make fun of it afterwards. But the greatest insult that can be shown to absolutists is to be tolerant towards them, and in this respect the Jews resembled exactly the enthusiastic Catholics of our days. Men of such convictions will not be satisfied with their reasonable share; they want to be everything. It is the highest indignity for a religion which looks upon itself as the only true one to be treated like a sect amongst many others; they would rather be outside the pale of the law, and be persecuted; and this violent situation appears to them a mark of divinity. The faithful are pleased at persecution, for in the very fact that

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men hate them, they see a mark of their prerogative, for the wickedness of men, according to them, is naturally an enemy to truth.

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There is nothing to prove that when Hadrian wished to rebuild Jerusalem, be consulted the Jews, or wished to come to any agreement with them. Nothing either leads us to believe that he entered into any relations with the Christians of Palestine, who, externally, had less to distinguish them from the Jews than Christians of other countries. In the eyes of the Christians, all the prophecies of Jesus would have been overthrown if the Temple had been rebuilt, whilst amongst the Jews there was a general expectation that it would be rebuilt. The Judaism of Jabneh, without Temple, without worship, had appeared as a short interregnum, and all uses which presupposed a still existing Temple, were preserved. The priests continued to receive the tithe, and the precepts of Levitical purity were still strictly observed. The obligatory sacrifices were adjourned till the Temple should be rebuilt, but Jews alone could rebuild it; the slightest deviation from any injunction of the Law, would have been quite enough to cause the cry of Sacrilege to be raised. It was better in the eyes of pious Jews, to see the sanctuary inhabited by beasts of prey, than to owe its re-building to a profane jester, who afterwards would not have failed to utter some epigram about those extraordinary gods whose altars he nevertheless restored. For the Jews, Jerusalem was something almost as sacred as the Temple itself. In fact, they did not distinguish one from the other, and at that time they already called the city by the name of Beth hammigdas. The only feeling which the hasidim felt when they heard that the city of God was going to be rebuilt without them, was one of rage. It was very shortly after the extermination which Quietus and Turbo had carried out, and Judea was weighed down by an extraordinary terror. It was impossible to move, but from that time forward it was allowable to foresee in the future a revolution that should be even more terrible than those which had preceded it,

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About 122, probably, Hadrian issued his orders, and the reconstruction commenced. The population consisted chiefly of veterans and strangers, and no doubt it was not necessary to keep out the Jews, as their own feelings would have been enough to have caused them to flee. It seems that, on the other hand, the Christians returned to the city with a certain amount of eagerness, as soon as it was habitable. It was divided into seven quarters or groups of houses, each with an amphodarch over it. As the immense foundations of the Temple were still in existence, that seemed the fittest spot on which to place the principal sanctuary of the new city. Hadrian took care that the temples which be erected in the Eastern Provinces should call to mind the Roman religion, and the connection between the provinces and the metropolis. In order to point out the victory of Rome over a local religion, the temple was dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus, the god of Rome, above all others a god whose attitude and grave demeanour recalled Jehovah, and to whom, since the time of Vespasian, the Jews had paid tribute. It was a tetrastyle building, and like in most of the temples erected by Hadrian, the entablature of the pediment was broken by an arch, under which was placed a colossal figure of the god.

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The worship of Venus was no less intended than that of Jupiter by the choice of the founder of the colony. Everywhere Hadrian built temples to her, the protectress of Rome, and the most important of his personal edifices was that great temple of Venus and Rome, the remains of which can still be seen near the Coliseum, and so it was only natural that Jerusalem should have, by the side of its temple of Jupiter Capitolinus its temple of Venus and Rome. It happened that this second temple was not far from Golgotha, and this fact gave rise, later on, to singular reflections on the part of the Christians. In this close approximation they thought that they discerned an insult to Christianity, of which Hadrian certainly never thought. The works proceeded but slowly, and when, two years later, Hadrian retraced his steps towards the West, the new Colonia Ælia Capitolina was still more a project than a reality. For a long time a strange story went about amongst the Christians, to the effect that a Greek of Sinope, called Aquila, who was nominated overseer of the works for the rebuilding of Ælia by Hadrian, knew the disciples of the Apostles at Jerusalem, and that, struck by their piety and their miracles, he was baptised. But no change in his morals followed on his change of religion. He was given to the follies of astrology; every day he cast his horoscope, and was looked upon as a learned man of the first order in such matters. The Christians regarded all such practices with an unfavourable eye, and the heads of the Church addressed remonstrances to their new brother, who took no notice of them, and set himself up against the views of the Church. Astrology led him into grave errors on fatalism and man’s destiny, and his incoherent mind tried to associate together things which were utterly opposed to each other. The Church saw that he could not possibly merit salvation, and he was driven outside the pale, in consequence of which he always entertained a profound hatred for her. His relations with Adrian may have been the reason why that Emperor seems to have had such an intimate acquaintance with the Christians.

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CHAPTER III. THE RELATIVE TOLERANCE OF HADRIAN—THE FIRST APOLOGISTS. THE period was one of toleration. Colleges and religious societies were on the increase everywhere. In A.D. 124, the Emperor received a letter from Quintus Licinus Silvanus Granianus, Pro-consul of Asia, which was written in a spirit very much the same as that which dictated to Pliny that beautiful letter of his, so worthy of an upright man. Roman functionaries of any weight all objected to a procedure which admitted implicit crimes that individuals were supposed to have committed, because of the mere name they bore. Granianus showed how unjust it was to condemn Christians on the strength of vague rumours, which were the fruit of popular imagination, without being able to convict them of any distinct crime, except that of their Christian profession. The drawing by lot for the appointments to the Consular Provinces having taken place a short time afterwards, Caius Minutius Fundanus, a philosopher and distinguished man of letters, a friend of Pliny and of Plutarch, who introduces him as asking questions in one of his philosophic dialogues, succeeded Granianus, and Hadrian answered Fundanus by the following rescript

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Hadrian to Minicius Fundanus. I have received the letter which Licinius Granianus, an illustrious man whom you have succeeded, wrote to me. The matter seemed to me to demand inquiry, for fear lest people who are otherwise peacefully disposed may be disquieted, and so a free field be opened to calumniators. If therefore the people of your province have, as they say, any weighty accusations to bring against the Christians, and if they can maintain their accusation before the tribunals, I do not forbid them to take legal steps; but I will not allow them to go on sending petitions and raising tumultuous cries. In such a case, the best thing is for you yourself to hear the matter. Therefore if anyone comes forward as an accuser, and proves that the Christians break the laws, sentence them to punishments commensurate to the gravity of the offence. But, by Hercules, if anybody denounces one of them calumniously, punish the libeller still more severely according to the degree of his malice.

It would seem that Hadrian gave similar replies to other questions of the same nature. Libels against the Christians were multiplying everywhere, and they paid very well, for the informer got part of the property of the accused if he were found guilty. Above all, in Asia the provincial meetings, accompanied by public games, almost invariably ended in executions. To crown the festivities, the crowd would demand the execution of some unfortunate creatures. The redoubtable cry:—The Christians to the lions, became quite common in the theatres, and it was a very rare occurrence when the authorities did not yield to the clamour of the assembled people. As has been seen, the Emperor opposed such wickedness as far as he could; the laws of the Empire were really alone to blame for giving substance to vague accusations which the caprice of the multitude interpreted according to its own pleasure. Hadrian spent the winter of 125-126 at Athens. In this meeting-place for all men of culture he always experienced the greatest enjoyment. Greece had become the plaything to amuse all Roman men of letters. Quite reassured as to the political consequences, they adopted, the easy liberalism

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of restoring the Pnyx, the popular assemblies, the Areopagus; of raising statues to the great men of the past, of giving the ancient constitutions another trial, and of setting up Pan-hellenism—the confederation of the so-called free states— again. Athens was the centre of all this childish folly. Enlightened Mæcenases—especially Herod Atticus, one of the most distinguished spirits of the age, and those Philopappuses, the last descendants of the Kings of Commagene and of the Seleucidæ, who about this time raised a monument on the hill of the Museum, which still exists,—had taken up their abode there. This world of professors, of philosophers, and of men of enlightenment, was Hadrian’s real element. His vanity, his talent, his taste for brilliant conversation, were quite at their ease amongst colleagues whom he honoured by making himself their equal, without, however, the least yielding his royal prerogative. He was a clever arguer, and thought that he only owed the advantage, which of course always remained with him, to his own personal talent. It was an unlucky thing for those who hurt his feelings or who got the better of him in an argument. Then the Nero whom, though carefully hidden, he always had in him, suddenly woke up. The number of new professorial chairs that he founded, or of literary, pensions that he bestowed, is incalculable. He took his titles of archon and agonothetes quite seriously. He himself drew up a constitution for Athens, by combining in equal proportions the laws of Draco and of Solon, and wished to see whether they would work satisfactorily. The whole city was restored. The temple of the Olympian Jupiter, near the river Ilisus, begun by Pisistratus, and one of the wonders of the world, was finished, and the Emperor took the title of Olympian. Within the city, a vast square, surrounded by temples, porticos, gymnasia, establishments for public instruction, dated from him. All that is certainly very far from possessing the perfection of the Acropolis, but these buildings excelled anything that had ever been seen, by the rarity of their marbles and the richness of their decorations. A central Pantheon contained a catalogue of the temples which the Emperor had built, repaired or ornamented, and of the gilts which he had bestowed on Greek or barbarian cities; and a library, open to every Athenian citizen, occupied a special wing. On an arch, which remains to our day, Hadrian was made equal to Theseus, and one of the Athenian quarters was called Hadrianopolis. Hadrian’s intellectual activity was sincere, but he lacked a scientific mind. In those meetings of sophists all questions, human and divine, were discussed, but none were settled, nor does it seem that they went so far as complete rationalism. In Greece the Emperor was looked upon as a very religious and even as a superstitious man. He wished to be initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis, and, on the whole, Paganism was the only thing that gained by all this. As, however, liberty of discussion is a good thing, good always results from it. Phlegon, Hadrian’s secretary, knew a little about the legend concerning Jesus, and the wide expansion which the spirit of controversy assumed under Hadrian gave rise to an altogether new species of Christian literature, the apologetic, which sheds so much brightness over the century of the Antonines.

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Christianity, preached at Athens seventy-two years previously, had borne its fruit. The Church at Athens had never had the adherents nor the stability of certain others; its peculiar character was to produce individual Christian thinkers, and so apologetic literature naturally sprang from it.

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Several persons, who were specially called philosophers, had adhered to the doctrine of Jesus. The name philosopher implied severity of morals, and a distinguishing dress,—a sort of cloak, which sometimes made the wearer the subject of the jokes, but more often, the respect, of the passers by. When they embraced Christianity, the philosophers took care neither to repudiate their name nor their dress, and from that there proceeded a category of Christians unknown till then. Writers and talkers by profession, these converted philosophers became, from the very first outset, the doctors and polemical members of the sect. Initiated into Greek culture, they were far greater dialecticians, and had greater aptitude for controversy, than purely apostolic preachers, and from that moment Christianity had its advocates. They disputed, and others disputed with them. In the eyes of the government they were much more likely to be taken seriously than those good people without any education who were initiated into an eastern superstition. Up till then Christianity had never ventured to address a direct demand to the Roman authorities to have the false position in which it found itself rectified. Certainly the characters of some of the preceding Emperors did not by any means invite any such explanations, and any petition would have been rejected unread. Hadrian’s curiosity, his facile mind, the idea that he was pleased when some new fact or argument was presented to him, now encouraged overtures which would have had no object under Trajan. To this was added an aristocratic feeling, which was alike flattering to the sovereign and the apologist. Christianity was already beginning to let the policy be seen which it was to follow from the beginning of the fourth century, and which consisted, above all, in treating with sovereigns over the heads of the people. “We will dispute with you, but it is too much honour for the common herd to give it our reasons.” The first attempt of this sort was the work of a certain Quadratus, an important personage of the third Christian generation, and of whom it was said that he had even been a disciple of the Apostles. He sent an apology for Christianity to the Emperor, which has been lost, but which was very highly thought of during the first centuries. He complained of the annoyances to which wicked people subjected the faithful, and proved the harmlessness of the Christian faith. He went still further, and tried to convert Hadrian by arguments drawn from the miracles of Jesus. Quadratus alleged that even in his time some of those whom the Saviour had healed or raised from the dead were known to be alive. Hadrian would certainly have been very much amused to see one of those venerable centenarians, and his freedman Phlegon would have embellished his treatise on cases of longevity with the fact, but it would not have convinced him. He had witnessed so many other miracles, and the only conclusion he drew from them was that the number of incredible things in this world is infinite. In his teratological collections, Phlegon had introduced several of the miracles of Jesus, and certainly Hadrian had conversed with him more than once on this subject.

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Another apology, written by a certain Aristides, an Athenian philosopher and a convert to Christianity, was also presented to Hadrian. Nothing is known about it, except that amongst the Christians it was held in as high repute as the one of which Quadratus was the author. Those who had the opportunity of reading it, admired its eloquence, the author’s intellect, and the good use he made of passages from heathen philosophers to prove the truth of the doctrines of Jesus.

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These writings, striking as they were by their novelty, could not be without their effect upon the Emperor. Singular ideas with regard to religion crossed his mind, and it seems that more than once he showed Christianity marks of true respect. He had a large number of temples or basilicas built, which bore no inscription, nor had they any known purpose. Most of them were unfinished or not dedicated, and they were called hadrianea, and these empty, statueless temples lead us to believe that Hadrian bad them built so purposely. In the third century, after Alexander Severus had really wished to build a temple to Christ, the Christians spread the idea that Hadrian had determined to do the same, and that the hadrianea were to have served to introduce the new religion. They said that Hadrian had been stopped because, on consulting the sacred oracles, it was found that if such a temple were built the whole world would turn Christian, so that all the other temples would be abandoned. Several of these hadrianea, especially those of the Tiberiad and Alexandria, became, in fact, churches in the fourth century. Even the follies of Hadrian with Antinous possessed an element of the Christian apology. Such a monstrosity seems the culminating point of the reign of the devil. That recent God, whom all the world knew, was made great use of to beat down the other gods, who were more ancient and so easy to lay hold of. The Church triumphed, and later the period of Hadrian was looked upon as the luminous point in a splendid epoch in which the truths of Christianity shone without any obstacle in all eyes. They owed some thanks to a sovereign whose defects and good qualities had had such favourable results. His immorality, his superstitions, his empty initiation into impure mysteries were not forgotten; but in spite of all, Hadrian remained, at any rate in the opinion of part of Christianity, a serious man, endowed with rare virtues, who gave to the world the last of its beautiful days.

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CHAPTER IV. THE JOHANNINE WRITINGS. IT would appear that about this time a mystical book was heard of, of which the faithful thought a great deal; it was a new Gospel, far superior, as was said, to those which were already known; a really spiritual Gospel, as much above St Mark and St Matthew as mind is above matter. That Gospel was the production of that disciple whom Jesus loved,—of St John, who, having been his most intimate friend, naturally knew much that others were ignorant of, so as even to be able on many points to rectify the manner in which they had represented matters. The text in question was a great contrast to the simplicity of the first Evangelical narratives; it put forward much higher pretensions, and certainly it was the intention of those who propagated it that it should replace those humble accounts of the life of Jesus with which men had been contented hitherto. The writer, who was still spoken of in a mysterious manner, had leant upon the Master’s breast, and alone knew the divine secrets of his heart.

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This new work came from Ephesus, that is to say, from one of the principal homes of the dogmatic elaboration of the Christian religion. It is quite possible that John may have passed his old age and finished his days in that city. It is at least quite certain that in the early ages of Christianity there were those at Ephesus who claimed St John as their own, and did all they could for his aggrandisement. St Paul had his Churches which ardently cherished his memory, and St Peter and St James had also their families by spiritual adoption. The adherents of St John, therefore, wished that he should be in the same position; they desired to make him St Peter’s equal; and it was maintained, to the detriment of the latter, that he had held the first rank in the Gospel history, and as the existing accounts did not bear out these pretensions sufficiently, recourse was had to one of those pious frauds which, in those days, caused nobody any scruples. Thus it may be explained how, shortly after the apostolic age, there emerged obscurely from Ephesus a class of books which were destined to obtain in later times a higher rank than all the other inspired writings in the system of Christian theology. It can never be admitted that St John himself wrote these words, and it is even very doubtful whether they were written with his consent in his old age, and by any one of his own immediate surroundings. It seems most probable that one of the Apostle’s disciples who was a depository of many of his reminiscences, thought himself authorised to speak and to write in his name—some twenty-five or thirty years after his death—what he had not, to his followers' great regret, authoritatively put down during his lifetime. Certainly Ephesus had its own traditions about the life of Jesus, and, if I may venture to say so, a life of Jesus for its own particular use. These traditions dwelt especially in the memory of two persons who were looked upon, in those parts, as the two highest authorities with regard to Gospel history, namely, one man who bore the same name as the 19


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Apostle John, and who was called Presbeteros Johannes, and a certain Aristion, who knew many of the Lord’s discourses by heart. At about this time Papias consulted these two men as oracles, and carefully noted their traditions, which he intended to insert into his great work, The Discourses of the Lord. One remarkable feature in the Presbuteros was the opinion which he gave regarding St Mark’s Gospel. He considered it altogether insufficient, and written in complete ignorance of the exact order of the events of the life of Jesus. Presbuteros Johannes evidently thought that he knew the real facts much better, and, if he really wrote it, his tradition must altogether differ from the plan of that of Mark. We are inclined to think that the fourth Gospel represents the traditions of this Presbuteros and of Aristion, which might go back as far as the Apostle John. It seems, moreover, that to prepare the way for this pious fraud a preliminary Catholic Epistle, attributed to John, was published preliminarily, which was intended to accustom the people of Asia to the style which it was intended to make them receive as that of the Apostle. In it the attack against the Docetæ—who at that time formed the great danger to Christianity in Asia—was opened. An ostentatious stress was laid on the value of the Apostle’s testimony, as he had been an eye-witness of the Gospel facts. The author, who is a skilful writer after his own fashion, has very likely imitated the style of St John’s conversation, and that small work is conceived in a grand and lofty spirit, in spite of some Elcesaitic peculiarities. Its doctrine is excellent, and it inculcates mutual charity, love for mankind, and hatred for a corrupt world; and its touching, vehement, and penetrating style is absolutely the same as that of the Gospel; and its faults—its prolixity, and dryness—the results of interminable discourses full of abstruse metaphysics and personal allegations, are far less striking in the Epistle.

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'The style of the pseudo-Johannic writings is something quite by itself, no model for which existed before the Presbuteros. It has been too much admired; for whilst it is ardent and occasionally even sublime, it is somewhat inflated, false, and obscure, and it altogether lacks simplicity. The author relates nothing, he merely demonstrates dogmatically, and his long account of miracles, and of those discussions which turn on misapprehensions, and in which the opponents of Jesus are made to play the parts of idiots, are most fatiguing. How preferable to all this verbiose pathos is the charming style, altogether Hebrew as it is, of the Sermon on the Mount, and that clearness of narrative which constitutes the charm of the first Evangelists. No need for them to repeat continually that they that saw it bear record, and that their record is true; for their sincerity, unconscious of any possible objection, has not that feverish thirst for those repeated attestations which go to prove that incredulity and doubt have already sprung up. One might almost say, from the slightly exalted style of this new narrator, that he feared that he might not be believed, and that he sought to dupe the religious belief of his readers by his own emphatic assertions. Whilst insisting strongly on his qualities as an eye-witness, and on the value of his own testimony, the author of the fourth Gospel never once says I, John, for his name does not appear in the whole course of the work, but only figures as its title; but there is not the slightest doubt that

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John is the disciple intended or designated in a hidden manner in different passages of the book, nor is there any doubt that the forger intended to cause it to be believed that that mysterious personage was the author of the book. It was merely one of those small literary artifices such as Plato is so fond of affecting, and the result is that the recital is often very elaborate, and contains investigations, observations, and literary pranks which are totally unworthy of an Apostle. Thus John mentions himself without mentioning his own name, and praises himself without doing it openly, and he does not debar himself from that literary method which consists in showing, in a very carefully-managed semi-light, those secrets which one keeps to oneself without revealing them to every chance corner. How pleasant it is to be guessed at, and to allow others to draw conclusions favourable to oneself, to which oneself only gives a half expression. The two objects which the author had in view were to prove the divinity of Jesus to those who did not believe in Him, but, even more than that, to make a new system of Christianity prevail. As miracles were the proofs, above all others, of His divine mission, he improves on the accounts of the wonders that disfigure the earlier Gospels. It seems on the other hand that Cerinthus was one of the manufacturers of these strange books. He had become almost like John’s spectre, and the versatility of his mind now attracted him to, and then repelled him from, those ideas which were agitating religious circles at Ephesus, so that at the same time he was regarded as the adversary whom the Johannine writings were striving to combat, and as the veritable author of those writings; and the obscurity that reigns over the Johannine question is so dense that it cannot be said that it must be wrong to attribute the authorship to him. If it be a fact, it would correspond very well to what we know of Cerinthus, who was in the habit of covering his thoughts under the cloak of an apostolic name, and it would explain the mystery as to what became of that book for nearly fifty years, and the vehement opposition which it encountered. The ardour with which Epphianius combats this opinion would lead us to believe that it is not without foundation, for in those dark days everything was possible; and if the Church, when it venerates the fourth Gospel as the work of St John, is the dupe of him whom she looks upon as one of her most dangerous enemies, it is not, after all, any stranger than so many other errors which make up the web of the religious history of humanity.

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It is quite certain, however, that the author is at the same time the father and the adversary of Gnosticism, the enemy of those who allowed the real human nature of Jesus to evaporate in a cloudy Docetism, and the accomplice of those who would make him a mere divine abstraction. Dogmatic minds are never more severe than they are towards those from whom they are divided by a mere shade of difference. That Anti-Christ whom the pseudo-John represents as already in existence, that monster who is the very negation of Jesus, and whom he cannot distinguish from the errors of Docetism, is almost he himself. How often in cursing others, does one curse oneself! and thus in the bosom of the Church, the personality of Jesus became the object of fierce strife. On the one hand there was no checking the torrent which carried away every one to the most exaggerated ideas as to the divinity of the founder of Christianity, and on the other hand it was of the highest importance 21


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to uphold the true character of Jesus, and to oppose the tendency which so many Christians had towards that sickly idealism which was soon to end in Gnosticism. Many spoke of the Eon Christos as of a being that was quite distinct from the man called Jesus, to whom it was united for a time, and whom it abandoned at the moment of the crucifixion. Cerinthus had maintained this, and so did Basilides, and to such heresy a tangible Word must be opposed, and this was just what the new Gospel did. The Jesus whom it preaches is in some respects more historical than the Jesus of the other evangelists, and yet he is only a metaphysical first principle, a pure conception of transcendental theosophy. This may shock our tastes, but theology has not the same requirements as æsthetics, and the conscience of Christianity, after trying in vain for a hundred years to settle what right conception it should make to itself of Jesus, at last found rest. 30

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In loin was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to became the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.—ST JOHN, I. 1-14.

What follows is not less surprising. We have before us a life of Jesus which is very different to that which the writings of Mark, Luke. or the pseudo-Matthew have put before us. It is evident that those three Gospels, and others of the same sort, were but little known in Asia, or at any rate had very little authority there. During his lifetime, John no doubt, was in the habit of relating the life of Jesus on a totally different plan to that slight Galilean outline which the traditionists of

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Batanea had created, and which served as a model after them. He knew that Jerusalem had been one of the chief centres for Jesus' activity, and he drew persons and details which the first narrators were unacquainted with, or had neglected. As to Jesus' discourses as given in the Galilean tradition, the Church at Ephesus, supposing that they were known there, allowed them to fall into oblivion. According to the spirit of the age, there was no more difficulty in putting discourses into Jesus' mouth which were intended to found such and such doctrines, than the authors of the Thora and the prophets of old found in making God speak according to their own prejudices. Thus the fourth Gospel came to be produced, and though it is of no value if we wish to know how Jesus spoke, it is superior to the synoptic Gospels in the order of facts. The various visits of Jesus to Jerusalem, the institution of the eucharist, his anticipated agony, a number of circumstances relating to the Passion, the Resurrection and his life after he had risen; certain minute details, e. g., concerning Cana, the apostle Philip, the brothers of Jesus, the mention of Cleopas as a member of his family, are so many features, which assure to the pseudo-John an historical superiority over Mark and pseudo-Matthew. Many of these details might be drawn from John’s own accounts of events which had been preserved, whilst others sprang from traditions which neither Mark nor he who amplified his narrative under the name of Matthew, knew anything about. In several cases in fact, where pseudo-John deviates from the arrangement of the synoptic narrative, he presents singular features of agreement with Luke, and the Gospel according to the Hebrews. Moreover, several features of the fourth Gospel are to be found in Justin, and in the pseudo-Clementine romance, although neither Justin nor the author of the romance knew the fourth Gospel. It is clear, therefore, that, besides the synoptists, there existed a collection of traditions, and of ready-made expressions, which were, so to speak, scattered about in the atmosphere, which the fourth Gospel partially represents to us; and to treat this Gospel as an artificial composition with no traditional basis is to mistake its character just as seriously as when it is looked upon as a document at first hand, and original from beginning to end.

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The discourses which are put into the mouth of Jesus in the fourth Gospel are certainly artificial, and without any traditional basis, and criticism ought to put them on the same footing as the discourses with which Plato honours Socrates. There are two striking omissions in it; it does not contain a single parable, nor a single apocalyptic discourse about the end of the world, and the appearance of the Messiah; and one feels that the hopes of an approaching manifestation in the clouds had partly lost their force. According to the fourth Gospel, Jesus' real return after he had left the world, would be the sending of the Paraclete, his other self, who would comfort his disciples for his departure. The author takes refuge in metaphysics, because material hopes, already at times appear to him mere chimeras, and the same thing seems to have happened to St Paul. The taste for abstraction was the reason why then little weight was attached to what is regarded as the most really divine in Jesus. Instead of that refined feeling of the poetry of the earth which fills the Galilean Gospels, we find here nothing but a dry system of metaphysics and dialectics, which turn on the ambiguity between the literal and the figurative sense. In the fourth Gospel, indeed, Jesus speaks 23


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for himself, for he makes use of language which no one could be expected to understand, as he uses words in a different sense to their general acceptation, and then is angry because he is not understood. This false situation produces an impression of fatigue in the end, and at last one thinks that the Jews were excusable for not comprehending those new mysteries which were presented to them in such an obscure fashion.

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These defects are the consequence of the exaggerated attitude which the author has given to Jesus, for it is one which naturally excludes anything natural. He declares Himself to be the Truth and the Life, and that he is God, and that no one can come to the Father but by him. Such weighty and solemn assertions could not be made without an air of shocking presumption. In the synoptic Gospels, he does not assert that he is God, but reveals himself by the charm of his impersonal discourses, whereas, in this one, the Deity argues in order that he may prove its Divinity. It is as if the rose were to dispute in order to prove that it is fragrant. The author, in such a case, cares so little for probabilities that at times there is nothing to indicate where the discourses of Jesus finish and the dissertations of the narrator begin. At other times he reports conversations at which nobody could have been present, and one feels that his true object is not to relate words which were really spoken, but that above all he wishes to impress the mark of authority on some cherished ideas of his own, by putting them into the mouth of the Divine Master.

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CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNING OF A SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

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THAT religious philosophy which serves as the basis for all those exemplications which were so foreign to the mind of Jesus, is by no means original. Philo had expounded its essential principles more harmoniously and logically. Both Philo and the author of the fourth Gospel attach very little importance to the fulfilment of the words of the Messiah or to apocalyptic belief. All the imagination of popular Judaism is replaced by metaphysics in the structure of which Egyptian theology and Greek philosophy had their full share. The idea of Incarnate Reason, i.e., of Divine Reason assuming a finite shape, is quite Egyptian. From the earliest ages down to the Hermes Trismegistos books, Egypt proclaimed a God, living alone in substance, but eternally begetting his own likeness, one, and yet twofold at the same time. The Sun is that firstborn, proceeding eternally from the Father, that Word who made everything that exists, and without whom nothing has been made. On the other hand, it had for a long time been the tendency of Judaism, in order to escape from its somewhat dry system of theology, to create a variety of the Deity by personifying abstract attributes, such as Wisdom, the Divine Word, Majesty, the Presence. Already in the ancient books of wisdom, in the Proverbs and in Job, Wisdom personified plays the part of an assessor to the Divinity. Metaphysics and Theology, so severely restrained by the Mosaic law, took their revenge, and would soon invade everything. The expression dabar, in Chaldean, memara, i.e., “the Word,” become especially fruitful. Ancient texts made God speak on all solemn occasions, which justified such phrases as: “God does everything by His word; God created everything by His word.” Thus people were led to regard “the Word” as a divine minister, as an intermediary by whom God works on the outer world. By degrees this intermediary was substituted for God in visible manifestations in apparitions, in all relations of the Deity with man. That mode of expression had much greater consequences amongst the Egyptian Jews who spoke Greek. The word Logos, corresponding to the Hebrew dabar, and the Chaldean memara, and having the twofold meaning of The Word, and also of Reason, enabled them to enter into a whole world of ideas in which they reunited, on the one hand, the symbols of Egyptian theology which are mentioned above, and on the other, certain Platonic speculations. The Alexandrine Book of Wisdom, which is attributed to Solomon, already delights in those theories. There the Logos appears as the metationos, the assessor of the Deity, and it soon became usual to attribute to the Logos all that ancient Jewish philosophy, said of the Divine Wisdom. The Breath of God (rouah), which is mentioned at the beginning of Genesis as life giving, becomes a sort of Demiurge by the side of dabar.

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Philo combined such forms of expression with his notions of Greek philosophy. His Logos is the Divine in the universe—it is an exteriorised God; it is the legislator, the revealer, the organ of God as regards spiritual man. It is the Spirit of God,—the wisdom of Holy Scripture. Philo has no idea of the Messiah, and establishes no connection between his Logos and the divine being which was dreamt of by his compatriots in Palestine. He never departs from the abstract, and for him the Logos is the place of spirits just as space is the place of bodies; and he goes so far as to call it “a second God,” or “the man of God;” that is to say, God, considered as anthropomorphous. The end of man is to know the Logos, to contemplate reason; that is to say, God and the universe. By that knowledge man finds life, the true manna that nourishes.

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Although such ideas were, by their origin, as far as possible, removed from Messianic ideas, one can see that a sort of effusion might be brought about between them. The possibility of a full incarnation of the Logos is quite in accordance with Philo’s ideas. It was a generally received opinion, that in all the various divine manifestations in which God wished to make Himself visible, it was the Logos who assumed the human form. These ideas were favoured by numerous passages in the most ancient historical books, where “the Angel of Jehovah,” Maleak Jehovah, indicates the divine appearance which shows itself to men, when God, who is ordinarily hidden, reveals Himself to their eyes. This Maleak Jehovah frequently does not differ at all from Jehovah himself, and it is a habit with translators of a certain period to substitute that word for Jehovah, whenever God is supposed to have appeared on earth, and thus the Logos came to play the part of an anthropomorphous God. It was therefore natural that the appearance of the Messiah should he attributed to the Logos, and that Messiah should be considered as the incarnate Logos. Certainly the author of the book of Daniel had no idea that his Son of Man had anything in common with the Divine Wisdom, whom, in his time, some Jewish thinkers were already elevating into a personality; but with the Christians the two ideas were very easily reconciled. Already, in the Apocalypse the triumphant Messiah is called “the Word of God,” and in St Paul’s later Epistles, Jesus is separated almost altogether from his human nature. In the fourth Gospel, the identification of Christ and the Word is an accomplished fact, and the national avenger of the Jews has totally disappeared under a metaphysical conception; henceforth, Jesus is the Son of God, not by virtue of a simple Hebrew metaphor, but in a strictly theological sense. The very slight reputation in which the writings of Philo were held in Palestine, and amongst the popular classes of Jews, must be the only explanation why Christianity did not bring about such a necessary evolution till such a late period, but this evolution took effect in several directions simultaneously, for St Justin has a theory which is very similar to that of pseudo-John, and yet he did not take it from the gospel that bears his name.

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Side by side with the theory of the Logos and of the Holy Spirit was developed that of the Paraclete, who was not kept very distinct from the former. In Philo’s philosophy, Paraclete was an epithet of, or an equivalent for, Logos. For Christians he became a sort of substitute for Jesus,

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proceeding from the Father as he did, and who was to console the disciples for the absence of their Master when he should have left them. That Spirit of Truth, which the world does not know, is to inspire the Church throughout all time. Such a manner of raising abstract ideas into personalities was quite in keeping with the fashion of the time. Allius Aristides, who was a contemporary and a compatriot of the author of the fourth Gospel, expresses himself in his sermon on Ath n , in a manner which is hardly distinguishable from that of the Christians:— She dwells in her father, closely united to his essence; she breathes in him, and is his companion and counsellor. She sits at his right hand and is the supreme minister of his orders, and their wills are so conjoined that to her may be attributed all her father’s acts.

It is well known that Isis played the same part with regard to Ammon.

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The profound revolution which each idea must introduce into the manner of looking at the life of Jesus is self-evident. For the future he was to have no more human qualities, and would know neither temptation nor weakness. In him everything existed before it happened; everything was settled a priori, nothing happened naturally; He knew his life in advance, and did not pray to God to save him from that fatal hour. One fails to see why he lived this life which was forced upon him, gone through merely as a part, without any sincerity about it. But, however revolting such a change may be to our feelings, it was necessary. The Christian conscience desired more and more that everything in the life of their founder should be supernatural. Marcion, without knowing the writings of pseudo-John, did exactly the same thing as he did, for he manipulated St Luke’s Gospel till he had got rid of every trace of Judaism or reality from it. Gnosticism was to go even further, for that school Jesus was to become a mere entity, an won, an eternal intelligence that had never lived. Valentine and Basilides really only go a step further along the road on which the author of the fourth Gospel had gone. They all use the same specific terms: Father (in the metaphysical sense), Word, Arch , Life, Truth, Grace, Paraclete, Fulness, Only Son. The origins of Gnosticism and that of the fourth Gospel meet in the far distance; they both start from the same point in the horizon without our being able, on account of the distance, to point out more precisely the circumstances which attended their common appearance, for in such a thick atmosphere the visual rays of criticism are apt to become confused. Naturally, the conditions under which a book became known, were so different then to what they are now, that we must not be surprised at singularities which would be inexplicable in these days. Nothing is more deceiving than to imagine to ourselves writings of that date, as a printed book, offered to everybody’s reading, with newspapers to review the new work, favourably or otherwise. All the Gospels were written for restricted circles of readers, and no edition aspired to being the last and final one. It was a species of literature which could be practised at will, like the legends of Hasan and Hossein amongst the modern Persians. The fourth Gospel was a composition

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of the same order. In the first instance the author may have written it for himself and a few friends as his conception of the life of Jesus. There is no doubt that he communicated his work with great reserve to those who knew that such a work could not have originated with John, and up till the end of the second century the work encountered nothing but indifference and opposition. During that time the Gospels which are called synoptic give the outlines of the life of Jesus, and the tone of the discourses attributed to him is that of Matthew and Luke. Towards the end of the second century, however, the idea of a fourth Gospel was accepted, and pious legends and mystic reasons were discovered to support this tetrad. To sum up, it seems most probable that, several years after the Apostle John’s death, somebody or other determined to write in his name, and to his honour a gospel that should represent, or should be supposed to represent, his traditions. The definite success of the book was just as brilliant as its beginning had been obscure. This fourth Gospel, the last to appear, which had been manipulated in so many respects, where Philonian tirades were substituted for the actual discourses of Jesus, took more than half a century to assume its place, but then it triumphed all along the line. It was very convenient for the theological and apologetic requirements of the time, to have a sort of metaphysical drama which could escape from the objections which a Celsus was already preparing, instead of a small, very human history of a Jewish prophet in Galilee. The Divine Word in the bosom of God; the Word creating all things; the Word made flesh, dwelling amongst men, so that certain privileged mortals had the happiness of seeing and even touching him! flaying regard to the especial turn of the Greek intellect, which seized upon Christianity at a very early date, this seemed most sublime, and a whole system of theology after the manner of Plotinus might be extracted from it. The freshness of the Galilean idyl, illuminated by the sun of the kingdom of God, was but little to the taste of true Greeks. They naturally preferred a gospel in which they were transported to abstract dreams, and from which the belief in the approaching end of the world was banished. In the present instance, there was no mention of a material appearance in the clouds, no more parables, no persons possessed of devils, nothing about the kingdom of God or of the Jewish Messiah, no millennium, not even any more Judaism. It was forgotten and condemned; the Jews are held up to reprobation as enemies of the truth, for they would not receive the Word which came amongst them. The author will know nothing of them, except that they killed Jesus; just as amongst the modern Persian Sh ies, the name of Arab is synonymous with an impious man and a miscreant, as Arabs slew the holiest amongst the founders of Islam. The literary faults of the fourth Gospel thus make up its general character. It frees Christianity from a number of its original chains, and gives it free scope for that which is essential for any innovation, i.e., ingratitude towards what has preceded it. The author seriously believes that no prophet ever came out of Galilee. Christian metaphysics already sketched out in the Epistle to the Colossians, and in that which is called the Epistle to the Ephesians, are fully developed in the fourth Gospel. It would be dear to all those who, humiliated at the fact that Jesus was a Jew, would neither hear of Judeo-Christianity, nor of the millennium, and who would have liked to have burnt the 28


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Apocalypse. Thus the fourth Gospel takes its stand, in the great work of separating Judaism from Christianity, far above St Paul. He wished that Jesus had abrogated the Law, but he never denies that he lived under the Law. His disciple St Luke, by a certain devout improvement, presents Jesus to our view as fulfilling all the precepts of the Law. St Paul thought that the prerogatives of the Jews were still very great; whilst, on the other hand, the fourth Gospel shows a great antipathy to the Jews, both as a nation and as a religious society. Jesus, speaking to them, says: “Your law,” and there is no question now of justification by faith or by works, for the problem has gone far beyond the bounds of those simple terms. The knowledge of the truth and science have now become essential, and men are to be saved by their gnosis, their initiation into certain secret mysteries, so that Christianity has become a sort of hidden philosophy which certainly neither Paul nor Peter ever dreamt of. The future belonged altogether to transcendental idealism. This Gospel, attributed to the well-beloved disciple, which transports us at first into the pure atmosphere of the Spirit and of Love, which substitutes the love of truth for everything else, and proclaims the sway of Mount Gerizim and of Jerusalem equally at an end, was bound in time to become the fundamental Gospel of Christianity. No doubt it will be said that this was a great historical and literary error; but it was also a theological and political necessity of the first order. The idealist is always the worst revolutionary, and a definite rupture with Judaism was the indispensable condition of the foundation of a new religious system. The only chance of success that Christianity had was, that it should be a perfectly pure form of worship, independent of any material creed. “God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” If Jesus is understood in such a manner, he is no longer a prophet, and Christianity under that aspect is no longer a sect of Judaism; it becomes the Religion of Reason, and thus it came about that the fourth Gospel imparted consistency and stability to the Apostolic work. Whoever its author was, he was the cleverest of all the apologists. He was, successful in bringing Christianity out of its old beaten tracks that had got too narrow for it; which all the Christian orators of our time have attempted in vain. He betrayed Jesus in order to save him, just as those preachers do who put on a pretence of liberalism, and even of socialism, to win over those who may possibly be seduced by those words through a pious fraud. The author of the fourth Gospel has withdrawn Jesus from the Jewish reality in which he was lost, and has launched him boldly into metaphysics. That purely spiritual philosophical manner of understanding Christianity, to the detriment of facts, and to the profit of the mind, found in this singular book an example to encourage, and authority to justify it. Only those who are not well acquainted with religious history will be surprised to see such a part filled by an anonymous writer in the history of Christianity. The editors of the Thora, most of the Psalmists, the author of the book of Daniel, the first editor of the Hebrew Gospel, the author of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which are attributed to St Paul, gave works of the greatest importance to the world, and yet they are anonymous. If it is admitted that the Gospel and the Epistle which is so closely connected with it are the work of Presbuteros Johannes, it might be 29


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thought that it would be all the less difficult to accept those writings as the works of St John, since the forger’s name was John, and he appears often to have been confounded with the apostle. He was merely called Presbuteros, and after the falsely so-called Epistle of John, there are two short letters by some one who seems to call himself “The Elder.” The style, the thoughts, and the doctrine are very nearly the same as in the Gospel and Epistle said to be written by St John. We believe that Presbuteros was also the author of them; but this time he did not wish to pass off his slight works as those of John; and, like the letters to Timothy and Titus, they ought rather to be called specimens of the pastoral style than Epistles. Thus, in the first, the name of the person for whom it is intended is left a blank, and is filled up with the formula: “To the Elect Lady;” In the second, the person to whom it is written is given as Gaius, which was often the equivalent for our So and so. In these short letters some resemblance to the pseudo-Johannine Epistle, and to those of St Paul, has been discovered, and it is probable that our Presbuteros has sometimes concealed his identity behind these anonymous presbuteroi who had seen the Apostles, and whose traditions Irenæus so mysteriously reproduces. At the end of the third century two tombs were mentioned at Ephesus, which were held in the highest veneration, and to both of which the name of John was given. In the fourth century when, from the passage in Papias, the idea of the distinct existence of Presbuteros Johannes was being firmly established, one of these tombs was allotted to the Apostle and the other to the Presbuteros. We shall never know the exact truth of those extraordinary combinations in which history, legends, fable, and, up to a certain point, pious fraud were all united in proportions which we cannot separate now. An Ephesian called Polycrates, who was destined to become, one day, with his whole family, the centre of Asiatic Christianity, was converted A.D. 131, and this Polycrates fully admitted the pseudo-Johannine tradition, and cited it most confidently in his old age.

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Everybody allows that the last chapter of the fourth Epistle is an appendix which was added after the work had been written, though possibly it was added by the author himself; in any case, the source from which it was drawn is the same. It was desirable to complete all that had to do with the relations between Peter, and John by some touching feature, and the author shows that he is a great partisan of Peter, and does his best to pay homage to him in his rank as supreme pastor which was attributed to him in various degrees. He also makes a point of explaining the views that prevailed about the long life of John, and of showing how the aged Apostle might die without the edifice of the promises of Jesus and of Christian hopes falling into ruins at his decease. Men began to fear that the unequalled privilege of those who had seen the Word during his life on earth might discourage future generations, and already that profound saying, which was attributed to Jesus, “Blessed are those that have not seen and yet have believed,” was incorporated into a Gospel anecdote. With the Johannine writings begins the era of Christian philosophy and of abstract speculation, which had hitherto found but little room in the world, whilst at the same time dogmatic intolerance

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increased most lamentably. The more fact of saluting a heretic was represented as an act of communion with him. How far we are from Jesus here! He wished us to salute everybody, even at the risk of saluting the unworthy, in imitation of our Heavenly Father, who looks on all with a paternal eye, but yet how it was to be obligatory to ascertain the opinions of anyone before saluting him. The essence of Christianity was transferred to the realm of dogma; gnosis was every thing, and salvation consisted in knowing Jesus and knowing him in a certain manner. Theology, that is to say, a rather unwholesome application of the intellect, was the result of the fourth Gospel, and the Byzantine world, from the beginning of the fourth century, wore itself out by this study, which would have had just as fatal consequences for the West if the demon of subtility had not found firmer muscles and less volatile brains to deal with. In this matter Christianity decidedly turned its back on Judaism; and Gnosticism, which is the highest expression of speculative Christianity, had some reason for pushing its hatred of Judaism to the highest point. The latter made religion consist in outward observances, and left everything that bordered on philosophic dogma as a matter of private opinion, and the Cabala and Pantheism would naturally find an easy development by the side of observances which were carried to the minutest details. A Jewish friend of mine, as liberal a thinker as can be found, and at the same time a scrupulous Talmudist, said to me, “One makes up for the other. Close observances are a compensation for wideness of ideas, and our poor humanity has not enough intelligence to support liberty in two directions at the same time. You Christians did wrong in insisting that the bonds of communion should consist in certain beliefs, for a man does what he pleases, but he believes what he can, and I would rather go without pork all my life, than be obliged to believe in the dogmas of the Trinity and of the Incarnation.”

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CHAPTER VI. PROGRESS OF THE EPISCOPATE.

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THE progress of the Church in discipline and in her hierarchy was in proportion to her progress in dogma. Like every living body she developed an astonishing instinctive cleverness in completing all that was still wanting for her solid foundation and her perfect equilibrium. As the hopes for the end of the world, and of the reappearance of Messiah become fainter, Christianity obeyed two natural tendencies; the one to reconcile itself with the empire as well as it could, and then to organise itself so that it might become lasting. The first church at Jerusalem, the first churches of St Paul, were not established with any view to their endurance, for they were only so many assemblies of the saints at the end of the world, who were preparing themselves by prayer and divine rapture for the coming of God. The Church felt that now the time had come for her to be an abiding city and a real society. The strangest movement that ever took place in a democracy took place within the Church. The ecclesia, the voluntary reunion of persons meeting on a footing of equality amongst themselves, is the most democratic thing that can be imagined; but the ecclesia, the club has that fatal defect which causes every association of that kind to fall to pieces, and that defect is anarchy, the ease with which schisms arise. But more fatal still are the contentions for pre-eminence in the midst of small confraternities which have been founded on an altogether spontaneous vocation. That seeking after the highest place was the principal evil which affected the Christian churches, and which caused the greatest trouble to the simple and faithful members of the flock. It was thought that this danger might be prevented by supposing that Jesus, in a similar case, could have taken a child and said to the contending parties, “This is the greatest.” On different occasions the Master had, as was said, opposed the ecclesiastical primacy, brotherly as it was, to that of the depositories of worldly authority who were given to assume a masterful manner. But that was not enough, and the association of Christians would soon be menaced by a great danger, if some salutary institution did not rescue it from its own internal abuses.

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Every ecclesia presupposes a small hierarchy of its own,—what we call in these days a committee, a president, assessors, and a small body of assistants. Democratic clubs take care that these functions shall be as limited as possible both as to time and privileges, but there is something precarious in that, and the result has been that no club has outlived the circumstances which called it into existence. The synagogues had a much longer continuance, although the personnel was never a clerical body. The reason for that is, the subordinate position which Judiasm held for centuries, so that the pressure from without counterbalanced the unwholesome effects of internal divisions. If the Christian Church had suffered from the same want of discretion, she would no doubt have missed her destinies; and if ecclesiastical powers had continued to be regarded as emanating from 32


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the Church itself, she would have lost all her hieretic and theocratic character; but, on the other hand, it was fated that the clergy should monpolise the Christian Church, and should substitute itself in her place. Speaking in her name, representing itself in everything as her sole authorised agents, that clergy would constitute her strength, but would at the same time be her canker-worm, and the chief cause of her future decline.

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History has no example of a more wonderful transformation. What happened in the Christian Church is just what would happen in a club, if the members were to abdicate all their powers into the hands of the committee, and the committee to abdicate theirs into the hands of the president, so that neither those who were present, nor the seniors in office, would have any deliberative voice; no influence, no control over the management of the funds, so that the president might be able to say “I, alone, am the club.” The presbutoroi (the elders), the episcopi (the officers, overseers), very soon became the only representatives of the church, and very shortly after another and even more important revolution took place. Amongst the presbutoroi and the episcopi there was one, who, because he habitually took the principal seat, became presbuteros, or episcopos par excellence. The form of worship contributed very powerfully towards this. Only one priest could be celebrant of the eucharist at the same time, and he obtained an extreme importance; and that episcopos became, with surprising rapidity, the chief amongst the presbyterate and those of the whole church. His seat, placed apart from the others, assumed the shape of an arm-chair, and became the seat of honour—the sign of the Primacy, and from that time such church had only one chief presbyter, who called himself episcopos, to the exclusion of all the rest. By his side were to be seen a number of deacons, widows, a council of presbutoroi, but the great step had been taken; the bishop had become the sole successor of the apostles, the professor of the true religion was altogether thrust aside. The apostolic authority, which was supposed to be transmitted by the imposition of hands, had altogether destroyed the authority of the community, and then, the bishops of the different churches coming to an understanding amongst themselves, will, as we shall see, constitute the universal church into a sort of oligarchy, which will hold synods, censure its own members, decide questions of faith, and, in herself, constitute a real sovereign power. Within a hundred years the change was almost accomplished. When Hegesippus, during the second half of the second century, travelled throughout the whole of Christendom, he remarked nothing but the bishops; everything for him resolves itself into a question of canonical succession, and the living sentiment of the churches exists no longer. We shall show that that revolution was not accomplished without protest, and that the author of the Pastor, for example, still tried, in opposition to the growing influence of the bishops to maintain the equal authority of the presbutoroi. But aristocratic tendency carried the day; on the one side were the shepherds, on the other, the flocks. The primitive equality existed no longer, and, henceforth the Church was to be nothing but an instrument in the hands of those who directed her; and they held their authority, not from the community in general, but from a spiritual heredity from a pretended transmission which went back

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in a continuous line to the apostles themselves. It will be seen at once that the representative system could not even in the slightest degree become the system of the Christian Church.

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In one sense it may be said that this was a falling off, a diminution of that spontaneity which had hitherto been such a creative power. It was evident that ecclesiastical forms were about to absorb and to destroy the work of Jesus, and that all free manifestations of Christian life would soon be stopped. Under episcopal censorship, the glossolalia, prophecy, the creation of legends, and the production of new sacred books, would be withered-up faculties, and the Christian graces would be reduced to official sacraments. In another sense, however, such a transformation was an essential condition of the strength of Christianity. In the first place, the concentration of their forces became necessary, as soon as the churches became at all numerous, for relations between these small religious societies would have been quite impossible, unless they had an accredited representative who was entitled to act for them. It is, moreover, an incontestable fact that, without episcopacy, the churches which were momentarily drawn together by the recollections of Jesus would have been dispersed again. The divergencies of doctrine, the different turns of thought, and, above all, rivalries and unsatisfied self-love, would have had a vast influence on disunion and dismemberment, and, at the end of three or four centuries, Christianity would have come to an end like the worship of Nithras, or, like so many sects, have ended, being unable to withstand the force of time. Democracy is at times eminently creative, but only on the conditions that conservative and aristocratic institutions spring from it, which prevent the revolutionary fever to be prolonged indefinitely. That is the real miracle of infant Christianity. It produced order, a hierarchy, authority, obedience from the ready subjection of men’s wits; it organised the crowd and disciplined anarchy, and it was the spirit of Jesus with which his disciples were so deeply imbued, that spirit of meekness, of self-denial, of forgetfulness of the present, the pursuit of spiritual joys which destroys ambition, that preference for a childlike mind, these words of Jesus, “Let him who would be first among you become as he that serveth,” that worked this miracle. The impression which the apostles left behind them also did its share. They and their immediate vicars had an uncontested power over all the churches, and as episcopacy was supposed to have inherited apostolic powers, the apostles governed even after their death. The idea that the chief officer of the Church holds his mandate from the members of that Church who have appointed does not appear once in the literature of that time, and thus the Church escaped, by the supernatural origin of her power, from anything that is defective in delegated authority. Legislative and executive authority can come from the majority, but the sacraments and the dispensations of divine grace have nothing to do with universal suffrage, for such privileges come only from heaven, or, according to the Christian formularies, from Jesus Christ, who is himself the source of all grace and of all good. Properly speaking, the bishops had never been nominated by the whole community. It was quite sufficient for the spontaneous enthusiasm of the first churches that he should be designated by the

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Holy Ghost, that is to say, that electoral means should be employed which extreme simplicity alone could excuse. After the apostolic age, and when it became necessary that that sort of divine right with which the apostles and their immediate disciples were supposed to be invested, should be supplemented by some ecclesiastical decision, the elders chose their president from among themselves, and submitted his name to popular approval. As this choice was never made without the people’s opinion having been consulted in the first instance, this approval, or rather the vote by raising the hand, was nothing more than a mere formality, but it was enough to preserve the recollection of the gospel ideal, according to which the spirit of Jesus essentially dwelt in the community, The election of deacons was also of a double nature, for they were nominated by the bishop, but they had to be approved by the community before the choice could be valid. It is a general law of the Church that the inferior never nominates his superior, and this is one of the reasons which still gives to the Church, in spite of the totally different tendency of modern democracy, such a great power of reaction.

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In the churches of St Paul this movement towards a hierarchy and an episcopate was particularly felt. The Jewish Christian churches, which had less life in them, remained synagogues, and did not land so immediately in clericalism, and thus, by writings attributed to St Paul, arguments for the doctrine which it was sought to inculcate were created. There was no controverting an epistle of St Paul, and several passages of the authentic epistles of that apostle already taught the doctrine of a hierarchy and of the authority of the elders. For the sake of even more decisive arguments, three short epistles were forged, which were supposed to have been written by Paul to his disciples Timothy and Titus. The author of these apocryphal epistles had not got the Acts of the Apostles, and he only knew the apostolical journeys of St Paul vaguely and not in detail. As very few people had any more precise notions about them, he was not gravely compromised, and, besides, at that period, there was such a lack of critical feeling, that it did not strike any one that texts must necessarily agree. Some passages in those three epistles are also so beautiful, that the question might be asked, whether the forger had not some authentic letters of St Paul in his possession which he embodied in his apocryphal compositions? These three short works, evidently the production of the same pen, and written most likely at Rome, are a sort of treatise on ecclesiastical duties, a first attempt at false decretals, a code for the use of churchmen. Episcopacy is a grand thing, and the bishop is a sort of model of perfection, set up before his subordinates. He must, therefore, be irreprehensible in the eyes of the faithful and of others; he must be sober, chaste, amiable, kind, just, not proud, given to hospitality, moderate, inoffensive, free from avarice, and earning his livelihood honestly. He may drink a little wine for his health’s sake, but he must not marry more than once. His family must be grave like himself, and his sons submissive, respectful and free from any suspicion of dissolute morals. If anyone cannot rule his own house, how can he take care of the Church of God? Orthodox above everything;

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attached to the true faith, the sworn enemy of error, and he is to preach and to teach. For such functions neither a novice must be taken, lest such a rapid elevation should make him be lifted up with pride, nor a man capable of a sudden attack of rage, nor anyone exercising a calling that is looked down upon, for even unbelievers ought to respect a bishop, and not have anything to say against him. The deacons must be as perfect as the bishops; serious, not double-tongued, drinking little wine, not given to filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. So must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. They must be husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well, and as a trial is necessary for such difficult functions, no one is to be raised to them till after a kind of noviciate.

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Widows were an order in the Church, and their first duty was to perform their household duties, if they had any to fulfil. They who were widows indeed, and desolate, ought to trust in God, and continue in supplications and prayers night and day, but such as live in pleasure are dead whilst they live. These interesting but feeble persons were subject to a certain rule; they had a female superior, and every Church had side by side with its deacon also its widow, whose duty it was to watch over the younger widows, and to exercise a sort of female diaconate. The author of the false epistles to Timothy and Titus wishes that the widow thus chosen should not be less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one man, well reported of for good works, if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints' feet. But he instructs Timothy to refuse the younger widows, for they will wax wanton against Christ and marry, and withal they learn to be idle, wandering about front house to house, and not only idle, but tattlers also, and busybodies, speaking things that they ought not. “I will therefore that the younger widows marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. For some are already turned aside from Satan.” (1 Tim. v. passim.) Widows who are without means are to be relieved by the Church, whereas those who have relations are to be kept at their expense. From all this may be seen what a complete society the church already was. Every class had its own particular functions in it, and represented a member of the social body; all had their duties, were it only slaves, the power of the precepts of Jesus was to be admired by their virtuous life. As examples of this, slaves were particularly relied upon, and they are reminded that none can honour the new doctrine mere than they. If their master were a heathen, they were to be counted worthy of all honour, that the name of God and His doctrine might not be blasphemed; and if they had believing masters, they were not to be despised because they were brethren, but they were to be served because they were faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. Of course there was no word of emancipation. The aged men were to be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith; the aged women, in behaviour such as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, for they should be like catechists and teach the young women to be sober and love their husbands and their children; to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their

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own husbands, that the word of God might not be blasphemed. The young men were to he exhorted to be sober minded. The married women’s part is humble indeed, but still a beautiful one.

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In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with plaited hair, or gold or pearls or costly array; but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Nevertheless she shall be saved in childbearing, if she continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.” (1 Tim. ii. 9-15.)

All should be submissive, as subjects, obedient, gentle, inoffensive, enemies to revolution, interested in the preservation of public peace, which alone would allow them to lead their usual holy life. They need not be surprised if they were persecuted, that was the natural lot of Christians. They ought to be the very opposite to the heathen. A man who only follows the dictates of nature is the slave of his desires, carried away by sensuality, wicked, envious, hating and hateful. The transformation which makes the natural man one of the elect is not the fruit of his own merits, but of the compassion of Jesus Christ, and of the efficacy of his sacraments.

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This short Epistle, which is already quite Catholic, is a true type of the ecclesiastical spirit, and for seventeen centuries has been the manual of the clergy, the gospel of seminaries, the rule of that spiritual policy as it is carried out by the Church. Piety, which is the soul of the priest, the secret of his resignation and of his authority, is the foundation of this spirit. But the pious priest has his rights; those of reprimanding and correcting—respectfully, indeed, in the case of old people, but always with firmness. “Preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine” (2 Tim. iv. 2). Simple in his life, asking only for food and raiment, the “Man of God,” as our author calls him, was sure to be an austere man, often an imperious ruler. “Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father, and the younger men as brethren; the elder women as mothers, the younger as sisters, in all purity.” After that one feels that the Christian society cannot be a free one, for every individual member of it will be watched and censured, and will not have the right to say to his fellow citizen, “What business is my belief or my conduct to you? I am doing you no wrong.” The believer will say that in believing differently to what he does, he is being wronged, and that he has the right of protesting. Against such an idea, so totally opposed to liberty, princes and laymen must rightly soon revolt. “A man that is an heretic after a first and second admonition reject.” (Titus iii. 10.) Nothing could be less in keeping with the maxims of a man of liberal education. The heretic has his opinions as well as you, and he may be right, and politeness certainly requires you to pretend to believe so in his presence. The world is no monastery, and the advantages, which, as is alleged, are obtained by censure and accusation, bring more evils in their train than they hoped to avoid.

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In the Epistles to Timothy and Titus orthodoxy has made as much progress as episcopacy. Already there is a rule of faith, a Catholic centre in existence, which excludes everything that does not receive its life from the parent stem as dead branches. The heretic is a guilty man, a dangerous being, who must be avoided. He has every vice, is capable of every crime, and acts which are even laudable in the Christian priest, such as a wish to direct women on certain matters of internal government, are acts of usurpation on his part. The heretics of whom the author is thinking seem to be the Essenes, the Elkasaites, Jewish Christian sectaries, who occupied their minds with genealogies of æons, who insisted on certain acts of abstinence and on a rigorous distinction between things pure and impure, who condemned marriage, and who yet were great seducers of women, whom they overcame by holding out to them the bait of an easy way of expiating their sins, whilst at the same time they might procure sensual pleasure for themselves. One feels that this is approaching very near to Gnosticism and Montanism, and the proposition, that the resurrection was already an accomplished fact reminds us of Marcion. The expressions concerning Christ’s Divinity gain in vigour, though still surrounded by some difficulties. A wonderful amount of good practical sense rules everything, however. The ardent pietist who composed these Epistles, does not for a moment lose himself in the dangerous paths of quietism. He repeats almost ad nauseam that the woman has no right to devote herself to the spiritual life, except when she has no family duties to fulfil; that her principal duty is to bear and bring up children, and that it is a mistake to pretend to serve the Church if everything is not well ordered at home. Besides that, the piety which our author preaches is one of an altogether spiritual kind, and is one of feeling in which bodily exercise (1 Tim. iv. 8) and abstinence profit little. St Paul’s influence is felt, a sort of mystic sobriety, and, amidst the strangest aberrations of faith in a supernatural direction, these writings contain a large amount of what is upright and sincere. The composition of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus most likely coincided with what may be called the publication of St Paul’s Epistles. Up till that time those letters had been scattered, and each church had kept those which had been addressed to them, whilst several had been lost. At about the period of which we are now speaking they were collected, and the three short epistles, which were looked upon as a necessary complement of St Paul’s writings, were embodied with them. They were most likely published at Rome, and the order which the first editor adopted has always been preserved. They were divided into two categories, Epistles to churches and to individuals, and in each of these categories the epistles were arranged according to stichometry, that is, according to the number of lines in the manuscript. Certain copies soon contained the Epistle to the Hebrews, and its very place at the end of the volume, out of all order as regards its length, ought to suffice to prove that it was incorporated into St Paul’s Epistles at some later period.

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CHAPTER VII. FORGED APOSTOLICAL WRITINGS.—THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE.

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MEANWHILE, however, the world would persist in not coming to an end, and it required all that inexhaustible measure of patience, self-denial and gentleness which formed the basis of the character of every Christian, when they saw how slowly the prophecies of' Jesus were being accomplished. The years went by, and the vast Northern glorious light in the centre of which, it was believed, the Son of Man would appear did not yet begin to dawn in the clouds. Men grew weary of seeking for the cause of this delay, and whilst some grew discouraged, others murmured. St Luke, in his Gospel, announced that he would avenge his Elect speedily, that the long-suffering of God would come to an end, and that, by praying day and night under their persecution, the elect would obtain justice like the importunate widow did over the unjust judge. Nevertheless, they began to be tired of waiting. That generation which was not to have passed away before the appearance of Christ in His Glory must all have been dead. More than fifty years had passed since those events had taken place, which were only to precede the accomplishment of the prophecies of Jesus by a very little. All the towns in Judea had heard Christian preachers, and malicious men began to make this the occasion of mocking. The reply of the faithful was that the first rule of the true believer was not to calculate dates. “He will come like a thief in the night,” said the wise; “The appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in his own times he shall show,” says the author of the Epistle to Timothy; and, meanwhile, that good and practical pastor laid down rules which, admitting the approaching end of the world, did not contain much sense, and men aspired to escape from that provisional state in which those who believed in the hourly appearance of the Messiah would always have remained enthralled. Then it was that a pious writer, in order to make these doubts cease, had the idea of disseminating amongst the faithful an epistle that was attributed to Peter. The Churches of St Paul had just collected their master’s works, and made important additions to them. It appears that a Christian of Rome, who belonged to that group which wished to reconcile St Peter and St Paul at any price, wished to enlarge the very slight literary legacy which the Galilean apostle had left behind him. Already there was one epistle which bore the name of the chief of the apostles, and by taking it for a foundation, and embodying in it phrases borrowed from all sides, there resulted a “Second Epistle of Peter” which, it was hoped, would circulate on the same footing as the former. Nothing was neglected in the composition of the second epistle to make it coextensive in authority with the first. Whilst composing this little work, the author certainly had before him the short letter of the Apostle Jude, and, no doubt, supposing that it was very little known, he did not

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scruple to incorporate it almost wholly into his own writing. He was penetrated by the spirit of St Paul’s Epistles, of which he possessed the complete edition; and he also made use of the Apocalypse of Esdras or of Baruch. He even attributed to Peter expressions and direct allusions to gospel facts, and to an allegation in St Paul’s Epistles, which certainly never found place in anything that Cyphus dictated. The pious forger’s object was to reassure the faithful about the long delay of Messiah’s second coming, to show that Peter and Paul were agreed on this fundamental mystery of the Christian faith, and to combat the errors of Gnosticism. In several churches his Epistle was favourably received, but protests were also raised against it, which the orthodox canon of Scripture did not put an end to for a long time. The teaching of the Epistle, however, is quite worthy of the apostolic age, by its purity and loftiness of thought. The Elect become participators of the divine nature because they renounce the corruptions of the world. Patience, sobriety, piety, paternal love, horror of heresy, to wait, to be always waiting and expecting, is the whole Christian life (2 Peter iii. 1, et seq.).

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With the Second Epistle of Peter ended, about a hundred years after the death of Jesus, the cycle of writings, which were called, later on, the New Testament, in contradiction to the Old. This second Bible, which was inspired by Jesus, although there is not a single line of his in it, was far from admitting any settled canon; many small works, all more or less pseudo-epigraphs, were admitted by some and discarded by others. The new writings were, as yet, very little circulated, and very unequally read, and the list was not looked upon as final; and we shall see that other works, such as the Pastor of Hermas, take their place by the side of writings which were already sacred, almost on a footing of equality. Yet the idea of a new revelation was already fully accepted. In the so-called “Second Epistle of St Peter,” St Paul’s Epistles are ranked amongst the Scriptures, and this was not the first time that such an expression had been used. Christianity had thus its sacred book, an admirable collection, which would be sure to make its fortune in those far ages when the immediate recollection of its origin was lost, and no religions were worth anything except by their written texts. Of course the Jewish Bible maintained all its authority, and continued to be looked upon as the direct revelation of God. That ancient Canon and the apocryphal writings that had been appended to it (such as the Book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, etc., etc.) were looked upon, above all, as the immediate revelation of God. It was not touched; whereas, with regard to the new Scriptures, neither additions nor suppressions, nor arbitrary manipulations were forbidden. Nobody had any scruple in attributing to the Apostles and Christ himself such words and writings as they thought good, useful, and worthy of such a divine origin. If they had not said all those beautiful things, they could have said them, and that was enough. An ecclesiastical usage, that of reading aloud in churches, was an incentive to these sort of frauds, and made them almost necessary. In their meetings, the reading of the prophetical and apostolical writings was to take up all the time that was not occupied by the mysteries and the sacraments. The prophetical and the genuine apostolical writings were

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soon exhausted, and so something fresh was required: and to provide for the constantly occurring requirements of these readings, any edifying work was eagerly welcomed, as long as it had the slightest appearance of apostolicity, or bore the most distant resemblance to the writings of the ancient prophets. 62

Thus Christianity had accomplished the first duty of a religion, which is to introduce a new sacred book to the world. Another Bible had been added to the old one, which was much inferior to it in classic beauty, but was very efficacious for the conversion of the world. The old Hebrew language, that venerable aristocratic instrument of poetry, of the feelings of the soul and of passion, had been dead for centuries. The Semetic-Aramean patois of Palestine, and that popular Greek, which the Macedonian conquest had introduced into the East, and which the Alexandrian translators of the Bible raised to the height of a sacred language, could not act as the organs for those literary master-pieces; but although it lacked genius, it possessed goodness; and though it had no great writers, it had men who were filled with Jesus, and who have given us the reflex of his spirit. The New Testament introduced a new idea into the world, that of popular beauty, and in any case there is no book which has dried so many tears and soothed so many hearts as it has. We cannot speak in a general manner of the style of the New Testament, because its writings are divided into four or five different styles. All these various parts, however, have something in common, and it is just that something which imparts their power and success to them. Though written in Greek, their conception is Semetic. Such phrases, without any circumlocution, that language whose everything is black or white, sunshine or darkness, as, “Jacob have I loved; but Esau have I hated,” to express “I preferred Jacob to Esau,” have carried away the world by their rugged grandeur. Our races were not used to Oriental fulness, to such energetic partiality, to this manner of procedure, all at once used, as it were, by bounds; and so they were overcome and crushed, and even at this present time that style constitutes the great power of Christianity which fascinates souls and wins them over to Jesus.

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The canon of Old Testament Scripture, which the Christians admitted, was, as far as regarded the essential works, the same as that of the Jews. Christians who were ignorant of Hebrew read these ancient writings in the Alexandrine version, which is called the Septuagint, and which they reverenced as equal to the Hebrew text, and where the Greek version adds expansions to the original, as is the case in Esther and Daniel, these additions were accepted. Less severely guarded than the Jewish canon, the Christian admitted besides such books as Judith, Tobias, Baruch, the Fourth Book of Esdras, the assumption of Moses, Enoch, and the Wisdom of Solomon, which the Jewish rabbis excluded from the sacred volume and even systematically destroyed; whilst such books as Job, the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, were very little read by people who looked, above all things, for edification, on account of their bold or altogether profane character. The books of the Maccabees were preserved rather as instructive or pious books, than as sources of inspiration.

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The Old Testament, which has been mauled in different ways, and been interpreted with all the latitude that a text without vowels allows of, was the storehouse for the arguments of Christian apologists and Jewish polemics. Most frequently these disputes took place in Greek, and though the Alexandrine versions were used, they daily became more and more insufficient. The advantages which the Christians gained from them made the Jews suspicious of them, and a saying was disseminated, which was reputed to be prophetic, in which some wise men of old had announced all the evil that should some day spring from those accursed versions. The day on which the Septuagint version was made was compared to that on which the golden calf was cast, and it was even asserted that that day was followed by three days of darkness. On the other hand, the Christians admitted the legends which represented this version as having been miraculously revealed. Rabbi Aquiba and his school had invented the absurd principle, that nothing in the whole Bible is insignificant, that every letter was written with some particular purpose, and has some influence on the sense. From thenceforward the Alexandrine translators who had done their work by human means, like philologists and not like cabalists, did not seem as if they could be of any use in the controversies of the time; unreasonable objections to grammatical peculiarities were brought forward, and they wished for translations of the Bible, in which every Hebrew word, or rather root, should be rendered by a Greek word, even if the translation had no sense in consequence. Aquila was the most celebrated of those who were devoted to a senseless literal translation. His work dates from the twelfth year of Hadrian’s reign. Although he was a mere proselyte, he had very likely been educated by Aquiba, and, in fact, his exegesis is an exact pendant to the rabbi’s casuistry. A Greek word corresponds exactly to every Hebrew word, even when nothing but nonsense is the result.

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The Christians soon got to know Aquila’s translation, and they were much vexed at it, for, as they were accustomed to depend on the Septuagint for their texts, they saw that this new translation would overthrow all their methods and their apologetic system. One passage especially troubled them very much. The churches wished at any price to see the prophetic announcement of the birth of Jesus from a virgin from Isaiah 7, xiv., which indeed means something quite different, but where the word παρθένος, employed for the Hebrew alma, and applied to the mother of the symbolical Emmanuel, God with us, is rather peculiar. Aquila overthrew this little scaffolding by translating alma by νεᾶνις. They declared that it was pure wickedness on his part, and a system of pious calumnies was invented to explain how, having been a Christian, he learned Hebrew and devoted himself to that tremendous work merely for the sake of contradicting the Septuagint, and to do away with the passages that proved that Jesus was the Messiah. The Jews, on the other hand, delighted at the apparent exactness of the new version, openly proclaimed their preference for it over the Septuagint. The Ebionites or Nazarenes also frequently used it, for the manner in which Aquila had rendered the passage of Isaiah enabled them to prove that Jesus was merely the son of Joseph. 42


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However, Aquila was not the only one who translated Hebrew after Rabbi Aquiba’s method. The Greek version of Ecclesiastes, which forms part of the Greek Vulgate, presents the very same peculiarities which Rabbi Aquiba caused the translators of his school to adopt, and yet that version is not by Aquiba.

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CHAPTER VIII. MILLENARIANISM—PAPIAS.

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THE most different tendencies were apparent in the Church of Jesus, which demonstrated the wonderful fecundity of the newly-awakened conscience in the bosom of humanity; but which at the same time created an immense danger for that newly-born institution. Thousands of hands, so to say, were tearing the new religion to pieces, some wishing to keep it within the Jewish pale, whilst others wished to sever every bond between it and that Judaism from which it had sprung. The second coming of Jesus, and the idea of his rule for a thousand years, were the two questions which brought these two contrary feelings most prominently forward. The Gnostics, and, up to a certain point, the author of the Epistle of St John, no longer paid any regard to the fundamental doctrines of the first century. They did not any longer trouble themselves much about the end of the world: it was relegated to the background, where it had scarcely any meaning, and these lofty dreams ought now to be forgotten by every one. In Asia Minor the greater number of Christians lived upon that idea, and refused to go any further in search of the truth as to the meaning of Jesus; and in close approximation to that school where, it would seem, the Johannistic writings were being thought out, a man who might have some intercourse with the authors of these writings was working on a totally different, or rather I should say on a totally opposite, line of thought. But we must speak of Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, the most striking personality at a period when two Christians could still differ from each other to an extent which we cannot picture to ourselves now. It has often been thought that Papias was one of St John’s disciples, but this must certainly be a mistake. He never saw any of the Apostles, as he belongs to the third generation of Christians, but no doubt he consulted those who had seen them. He was a very careful man, a searcher after truth in his own fashion, and one who knew the Scriptures thoroughly. He made it his occupation zealously to collect the words of Jesus, to comment on those words in their most literal sense, to classify them according to their matter, and, in a word, to gather together all the traditions of the apostolic age which had already disappeared. He therefore undertook an investigation of vast extent, which he carried on according to rules such as a sound judgment would prescribe. Dissatisfied with the small books which were said to be an exact picture of the life of Jesus, he thought he could do better, and laid claim to giving the true interpretation of Jesus' doctrine. He only believed in original teaching, and so he spent his life in questioning those who might know something about primitive tradition. “I am not,” he says, in his preface, “like most of those who allow themselves to be captivated by a flow of words; all I cared for were those which teach the truth. Full of mistrust for the extraordinary precepts which have got about, I only wish to know those that the Saviour had entrusted to his disciples, and which spring from truth itself. If, for example, I were to meet any 44


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one who had been a follower of the elders, I should ask him, What did Andrew say? What did Peter say? What did Philip, Thomas, James, John, or any other of the disciples of our Lord say? What do Aristion and Presbuteros Johannes, disciples of the Saviour, say? For I did not think that all the books could bring me so much profit as data collected from living and permanent tradition.”

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No Apostle had been alive for some time when Papias conceived this project, but there were still persons living who had known some of the members of that first upper chamber. The daughters of Philip, who had reached an extreme old age, and who were not quite in their right mind, filled Hierapolis with their wonderful stories, and Papias had seen them. At Ephesus and at Smyrna Presbuteros Johannes and Aristion both asserted that they were the depositants of precious traditions which it seems they said they had received from the Apostle John. Papias did not belong to that school which was attached to John, and from which it is said the fourth Gospel proceeded, though it is probable that he knew Aristion and Presbuteros. His was composed, in a great part, of quotations borrowed from conversations of these two persons who in his eyes were evidently the best representatives of the apostolic chain and of the authentic doctrine of Jesus. It is needless to say that the Jewish Christian Papias does not mention the Apostle St Paul, either directly or indirectly. This attempt to reconstruct the teaching of Jesus by mere oral tradition a hundred years after his death would have been a paradox if Papias had refused to make use of the written texts, and in this respect his method was not so exclusive as he seems to imply in his preface. Whilst preferring oral tradition, and whilst, perhaps, not assigning any absolute value to any of the texts which were in circulation, he read the Gospels of which copies came into his possession. It is certainly vexing that we cannot judge for ourselves how much he knew in this respect. But here Eusebius appears to have been very far-sighted. According to his usual custom, he read the works of Papias pen in hand, to note his quotations from the canonical writings, and he only found two of our Gospels—that of St Mark and of St Matthew—mentioned. Papias noticed a curious opinion of Presbuteros on Mark’s Gospel, and the citations by which this latter traditionalist excused, as he imagined, the disorder and the fragmentary character of the compilation of the said Evangelist. As to the Gospel attributed to St Matthew, Papias looked upon it as a free and tolerably faithful translation of the Hebrew work written by the Apostle of that name, and he valued it especially on account of the authentic words of Jesus which were to be found in it. Besides this, he met with an anecdote in Papias, which formed part of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, but he is not sure that the Bishop of Hierapolis took them from that Gospel.

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Thus it will be seen that this learned man who was so well acquainted with the Scriptures, who had been in the habit of associating, so it was said, with the disciples of John, and had learnt from them the words of Jesus, did not yet know St John’s Gospel, a work which appears to have been produced only a few miles from the town in which he was living. Certainly if Eusebius had found any traces of it in the writings of the Bishop of Hierapolis, he would have mentioned it, just as he tells us that he found quotations from the first Epistle of John. It is a singular fact that Papias, who

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does not know St John’s Gospel, knows the Epistle attributed to him, and which is, in a manner, intended to prepare the way for the Gospel. Perhaps the forgers communicated this Epistle to him, but not the Gospel, as they feared his stringent criticism, or perhaps some time elapsed between the Epistle and the Gospel. One can never touch on this question of the writings said to be John’s without meeting with contradictions and anomalies.

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From this mass of conscientious research Papias composed five books which he called Exegeses or “Expositions of the Words of the Saviour,” and which he certainly looked upon as a correct representation of the teachings of Jesus. The disappearance of this work is the most regrettable loss which the field of primitive Christian literature has ever sustained. If we had Papias' book, no doubt a large number of difficulties which confront us in that obscure history would be removed, and most likely that is the very reason why we do not possess it. His work was written from so personal a point of view that it became a scandal for orthodoxy. The four Gospels had an authority which excluded every other, and in fifty years we shall find mystical reasons why there should be four and why there could not be more than four. No author who declared that he did not think much of those holy texts could possibly be looked upon with favour. Besides this, Papias, although he seems to be a very severe critic, was really extremely credulous. He added things to the Gospels which, not being protected by the authority of inspiration, seemed shocking and absurd. St Mark, with his ponderous thaumaturgy, appears reasonable beside the extravagant wonders which he alleges. The teaching and the parables which he attributes to Jesus are, to say the least of it. extraordinary and absurd, and the whole had that fabulous character which the Gospel accounts, or at least those of the first three, avoided so carefully. The miracles that he attributed to Philip, on the authority of his old, half-crazy daughters, exceeded everything, and those which he alleged Justus Barsabbas worked, went beyond tradition, whilst his account of the death of St John, and especially that of Judas, was such as nobody had ever heard before. He even seemed to be versed in the dreams of Gnosticism when he asserts that God gave the government of the world to angels, who acquitted themselves badly of their duty. But his wild millenarianism damaged Papias more than anything else in the mind of all the orthodox. His mistake was that he accepted the apocalypse of the year 68 in the sense that its author meant. With the Seer of Patmos he admitted that after the first resurrection of the dead Christ would reign personally on earth for a thousand years. This is what he makes Jesus say, according to a tradition that had been handed down by the presbuteroi:—

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A day will come in which vines shall grow, each of which shall contain ten thousand stems; and each stem shall have ten thousand branches; and each branch, ten thousand shoots; and on each shoot there shall be ten thousand grapes; and each grape, when pressed, shall produce twenty-five thousand hogsheads of wine. And when one of the saints shall seize one of the bunches of grapes, another bunch will cry out, “Take me for I am better; and bless God for me.” And each grain of wheat shall produce ten thousand ears; and each ear shall produce ten thousand grains; and each grain, ten thousand pounds of flour. And it shall be the same with the fruit trees as with all cereals, with herbs, according to

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their different properties. And all animals that live on the simple fruits of the earth shall be peaceful and kind towards each other, obedient and respectful towards men.

It was added that Judas refused to believe all these fine things, and from the day that he heard his Master speak thus he became a semi-unbeliever. Besides this, Papias did not make use of any great amount of discernment in his choice of the words of Jesus when he attributed to him such which appear to have been scattered about in the Jewish apocalypses, and which may be seen more particularly in the Apocalypse of Baruch. His book was directly opposed to the proposition which the other held so dear, and proved how valuable the written Gospels were, by checking the manner in which the traditional words of Jesus were degraded. Already Montanist ideas, with their simple materialism, were making themselves felt, and, like certain Gnostics, Papias could not understand any perfect innocence of life without a total abstention from animal food. The relative good sense of the Galilean dreams had disappeared to make way for the extravagancies of the far East, and so the impossible was sought after, and a sort of subversive gentleness of humanity, such as India alone, as the price of her political annihilation, has been able to realise in life.

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The orthodox Church perceived the danger of these chimeras very quickly, and the millenium, above all, became an object of repugnance for every Christian of common sense. Minds who, like Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria, Eusebius, and the Hellenistic Fathers, saw nothing but a revealed philosophy in Jesus, made it their chief business not to attribute to him or to the apostles an opinion which daily became more self-evidently absurd, and to remove from the very threshold of Christianity that fatal objection that the dominant idea of its founders was a manifest dream. Every possible means were sought for to get rid of the apocalypse, and the fidelity of Papias, who was most strongly imbued of all the ecclesiastical writers with the primitive ideas to tradition, was fatal to him. Men strove to forget him, his works were not copied, and only curious readers cared for his writings: and Eusebius, whilst respecting him, says clearly that he was a man of small mind, without any judgment. Papias' mistake was that of being too conservative, and by being the friend of tradition he seemed to be behind everybody else. The progress of Christianity would naturally make of him an inconvenient man, and a witness to be suppressed, whilst in his own time he certainly responded to the state of many men’s minds. The millennists looked upon him as their principal authority; Irenæus esteems him openly, and places him immediately after the Apostles, on the same footing as Polycarp, and calls him by a name which is very appropriate to his character: “A Father of the Church.”1 The Bishop of Lyon thought that his discourses on the vines of the kingdom of David were beautiful and authentic. Irenæus allows these dreams of a concrete idealism, coarse as they may be, whilst Justin has heard of them, and Tertullian and Commodian exceed the materialism of 1

Ἀρχαῖος ἀνήρ (vide Liddell and Scott in verb:)—Translator.

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Papias himself. St Hippolytus, Methodius, Nepos, Bishop of Arsinœ in Egypt, Victorinus Pettavius, Lanctantius, the Apollinarists, St Ambrose, Sulpicius-Severus—or St Martin—believe the old tradition in this respect. Up to the fifth century the faithful who were most oxthodox Christians maintained that after the coming of Antichrist, and the destruction of all the nations, there would be a resurrection of the just only; that those who were then on the earth, good and bad, would be preserved alive: the good to obey the just who had been raised as their princes, and the bad to be altogether subject to them. A Jerusalem, consisting altogether of gold, cypress, and cedar, rebuilt by the nations, who should come, led by their kings, to work at the re-erection of its walls,—a restored Temple, which should become the centre of the world,—crowds of victims around the altar,—the gates of the city open day and night in order to receive the tribute of the people,—pilgrims coming in their due order according as they were allowed to come every week, every month, or every year,—the saints, the patriarchs, and the prophets passing a thousand years in one perpetual Sabbath in perfect agreement with the Messiah, who would give them a hundred fold all that they have given up for him—this was the essentially Jewish Paradise of which many dreamed, even in the times of St Jerome and St Augustine. Orthodoxy fought against these ideas; but as they were openly expressed in many passages of the Fathers, they were never strictly qualified as heresies. St Epiphanius, who was a man of most strict research, who tried to enlarge his catalogue of heresies by making two or three sects out of one, has not devoted a special chapter to the millenarians—and to be consistent he must first of all have got rid of the Apocalypse of the received Canon of Scripture; and so, in spite of the most ingenious attempts of the Greek Fathers, every attempt to do so was unsuccessful. Besides this there were degrees in the materialism of those simple believers. Some, like Irenæus, saw in the first resurrection nothing but a beginning of incorruption, a means of becoming accustomed to the sight of God, a period during which the saints would enjoy the conversation and the companionship of the angels, and would treat about spiritual matters with them. Others only dreamt of a gross paradise of eating and drinking. They asserted that the saints would spend all that time in feasts of carnal pleasure, and that children would be born during Messiah’s reign; that the lords of that new world would wallow in gold and precious stones, and that every creature would immediately obey their slightest desire. The ideas of the infinite, of the immortality of the soul, were so far absent from these Jewish dreams that a thousand years seemed enough for the most exacting minds. A man must have been very greedy of life if at the end of that time he had not been surfeited with it. In our eyes, a paradise of a thousand years seems only a small thing, as every year would bring us nearer to the time when everything would vanish. The last years which preceded annihilation would seem to us to be a hell, and the thought of the year 999, would be quite enough to poison the happiness of the foregoing years. But it is no good to ask for logic to try and solve the intolerable destiny which falls to the lot of man. Carried away irresistibly to believe in what is right, and cast into a world that is injustice itself, requiring an eternity to make good his claims, and stopped short by the grave, what can he 48


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do? He clings to the coffin and yields his flesh to his fleshless bones, his life to the brain full of rottenness, light to the closed eye, and pictures to himself chimeras that he would laugh at in a child, so that he may not have to avow that God has been able to mock his own creatures to the extent of laying upon them the burden of duty without any future recompense. 75

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CHAPTER IX. THE COMMENCEMENT OF GNOSTICISM. AT this period Christianity was a newborn child, and when it emerged from its swaddling-clothes, a most dangerous sort of croup threatened to choke it. The root of this illness was partly internal, partly external, and in some respects the child had been born with the germs of it. In a great measure, however, the illness came from without, and the unhealthy locality in which the young Church dwelt caused it a sort of poisoning to which it very nearly succumbed. As the Church grew more numerous and began to develop a hierarchy, the docility and self-denial of the faithful began to have its merit. It seemed to be irksome to walk like a lost sheep amongst the close ranks of the whole herd, and so men wished to leave the crowd and have rules for themselves: the universal law seemed to be a very commonplace matter. In all directions small aristocracies were formed in the Church which threatened to rend the seamless robe of Christ, and two of them were marked by rare originality. One was the aristocracy of piety, Montanism; the other, the aristocracy of science, was Gnosticism. This latter was the first to develop itself. To minds that were initiated into the philosophical subtleties of the times, the ideas and the government of the Church must have appeared very humble, for the via media of relative good sense to which orthodoxy adhered did not suit all men’s minds, and refined intellects asserted that they had loftier ideas about the dogmas and the life of Jesus than the vulgar herd who took matters literally, and gave themselves up without reasoning to the direction of their pastors; and sublimity of doctrine was sought, whereas it ought to have been received with the cheerfulness of a pure heart, and embraced with a simple faith. 76

Jesus and his immediate disciples had altogether neglected that part of the human intellect which desires to know; with knowledge they had nothing to do, and they only addressed themselves to the heart and the imagination. Cosmology, psychology, and even lofty theological speculations, were a blank page for them, and very likely they were right. It was not the part of Christianity to satisfy any vain curiosity; it came to console those who suffer, to touch the fibres of moral sense, and to bring man into relation not with some one or abstract logos, but with a heavenly Father full of kindness, who is the author of all the harmonies and of all the joys of the universe. Especially towards the end of his life St Paul felt the want of a speculative theology, and his ideas became assimilated to those of Philo, who a century before had striven to impart a rationalistic turn of mind to Judaism. About the same time the Churches of Asia Minor launched forth into a sort of cabala which connected the part of Jesus with a chimerical ontology and an indefinite series of avatars. The school from which the fourth Gospel sprung felt the same need of explaining the miracles of Galilee by theology, and so Jesus became the Divine logos made flesh, and the altogether Jewish

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idea of the future appearing of the Messiah was replaced by the theory of the Paraclete. Cerinthus obeyed an analogous tendency. At Alexandria this thirst for metaphysics was even more pronounced, and produced strange results, which it is time for us to study now.

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In that city a crude and unwholesome mass of all theologies and all cosmogonies had been formed, which, however, was often traversed by rays of genius, and which was a doctrine that set up the pretension of having discovered the formula of the absolute, and gave himself the ambiguous title of Gnosis—“perfect science.” The man who was initiated into the chimerical doctrine was called Gnosticos—the man of perfect knowledge. At that time, Alexandria was, after Rome, the spot where men’s minds were in the most unsettled state. Frivolity and superficial eclecticism produced altogether unforeseen effects, and everything got mixed up together in those wild and fantastic brains. Thanks to an often unconscious charlatanism, the weightiest problems of life were turned into mere cases of filching, and every question about God and the world were solved by juggling with words and hollow formulas, and real science was dispensed with by tricks of legerdemain. It must be remembered that the great scientific institutions founded by the Ptolomies had disappeared or fallen into complete decay, and the only guide which can prevent mankind from talking nonsense—that is, exact science—existed no longer. Philosophy did exist still, and was trying to raise its head again, but great minds were scarce. Platonism had gained the upper hand over all the other Greek systems in Egypt, and in Syria, which was a great misfortune, for Platonism is always dangerous, unless corrected by a scientific education. There were no more any men of taste refined enough to appreciate the wonderful art in Plato’s Dialogues, for most received those charming philosophical fancies in a clumsy spirit; but instruction such as they conveyed, which rather satisfied the imagination than the reason, would please Eastern ideas. The germ of mysticism which they contained made its impress on those races who could not receive pure and simple rationalism. Christianity followed the general fashion, and already Philo had sought to make Platonism the philosophy of Judaism, and those Fathers of the Church who had any weight were Platonists.

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To accommodate itself to this unnatural fusion, Greek genius, healthy and intelligible as it was, had to make many sacrifices. Philosophers were to believe in ecstasies, in miracles, in supernatural relations between God and man. Plato becomes a theosophist and a mystagogue, and the invocation of good spirits is taken as a serious matter, and whilst the scientific spirit disappears altogether, that habit of mind which was fortified by mysteries begins to gain the upper hand. In those small religious assemblies of Eleusius and Thrace, where men were in the habit of throwing dust into their own eyes so as to imagine that they knew the unknowable, it was already asserted that the body was the prison of the soul, that the actual world was a decadence from the divine world; teaching was divided into esoteric and exoteric, and men into spiritual, animal, and material beings. The habit of clothing doctrine in a mythical form after the manner of Plato, and of explaining ancient texts allegorically after the manner of Philo, became general. The highest bliss was to be initiated

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into pretended secrets, into a superior gnosis. These ideas of a chimerical intellectual aristocracy daily gained ground. and the truth was looked upon as a privilege reserved for a small number of the initiated, and thus every master became a charlatan who sought to increase the number of his customers by selling them the secret of the absolute.

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The fields of the propaganda of the gnosis and of Christianity in Alexandria were very closely allied. Gnostics and Christians resembled each other in their ardent wish to penetrate into religious mysteries without any positive science, of which they were both equally ignorant, and this brought about their sublime amalgamation. On the one hand, the Gnostics, who alleged that they embraced every belief, and accustomed as they were to look upon the gods of the nations as divine æons much inferior to the supreme God, wished to understand Christianity, and received Jesus enthusiastically as an incarnate æon to be placed side by side with so many others, giving him a chief place in their formulae of the philosophies of history. On the other hand, Christians who had any intellectual requirements, and who wished to attach the Gospel to some system of philosophy, found what they required in the obscure metaphysics of the Gnostics. Then there happened something quite analogous to what happened about fifty years ago, when a certain philosophical system, whose programme, like that of Gnosticism, was to explain everything, and to understand everything, adopted Christianity, and proclaimed itself to be Christian in a superior sense, and Catholic and Protestant theologians might be seen at the same time adopting a number of philosophical ideas which they thought were compatible with their theology, because they did not wish to appear strange to their century. The Fathers of the Church insist upon it that all this rank and poisonous growth had its origin in the Samaritan sects which sprang from Simon of Gitto (Simon Magus), and he certainly seems already to have presented most of the features which characterise Gnosticism. The Great Announcement, which he certainly did not write himself, but which most likely represents his doctrines, is an altogether Gnostic work. His followers Menander, Cleobius, and Dosistheus seem to have had the same views, and all Catholic writers make Menander to be the father of all the great Gnostics of Hadrian’s time. If we are to believe Plotinus on the other hand, a travestied and disfigured Platonic philosophy was the only origin of Gnosticism. Such explanations appear to be altogether insufficient to account for such a complicated fact. There were Christian, Jewish, Samaritan Gnostics, but there were also non-Christian Gnostics. Plotinus, who wrote a whole book against them, never imagined that he had anything to do with a Christian sect. The systems of the Samaritan Gnostics, those of Basilides, of Valentinus, of Saturninus, present such shrinking similarities that one must suppose that they have a common origin, though they do not seem to have borrowed from each other. They must therefore have dipped into an earlier source, to which Philo, Apollos, and St Paul, when he wrote his Epistle to the Colossians, contributed, and from which the Jewish cabala also seems to have proceeded.

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It is an impossible task to unravel all that contributed to the formation of that strange religious philosophy. Neo-platonism, a tissue of poetical dreams, the ideas that men had in consequence of apocryphal traditions about Pythagorism, already supplied models for a mythical philosophy bordering on religion. About the very time when Basilides, Valentinus, and Saturninus were developing their dreams, one of Hadrian’s pensioned orators, Philo of Byblos, gave to the world the old Phœnician theogonies, mixed up as it seems with the Jewish cabala, under a form of divine genealogies which were very analogous to those of the first Gnostics. The Egyptian religion, which was still in a very flourishing state, with its mysterious ceremonies and its striking symbols, Greek mysteries and classical polytheism interpreted in an allegorical sense. Orphism, with its empty formulas; Brahminism, which had become a theory of endless emanations; Buddhism, oppressed by the dream of an expiatory existence, and by its myriads of Buddhas; ancient Persian Dualism, which was so contagious, and to which perhaps the ideas of the Messiah and of the millenium owed their first existence, all these in turn appeared as profound and seductive dogmas to the imaginations of men who were beside themselves between hopes and fears. India, and, above all, Buddhism, were known in Alexandria, and from them the Egyptians borrowed the doctrine of metampsychosis, learning to look on life as the imprisonment of the soul in the body, and the theory of successive deliverances. Gnosticos has the same meaning as Buddha—“he who knows.” Following the Persian view, they took the dogma of two principles independent one of the other,—the identification of matter with evil, the belief that the passions which corrupt the soul are emanations from the body, the division of the world into ministeries or adminstrations which have been entrusted to genii. Judaism and Christianity were mixed up together in this farrago of nonsense, and more than one believer in Jesus thought that he could graft the Gospels on to a ludicrous system of theology which seemed to say something without explaining anything in reality, whilst more than one Israelite was already playing a prelude to the follies of the cabala, which is, as a matter of fact, nothing but Jewish Gnosticism. As we have said, the Church of Alexandria was soon tinged with these chimeras. Philo and Plato already had many readers amongst the faithful who had any education. Many joined the Church, already imbued with philosophy, and found Christian teaching poor and meagre, whilst the Jewish Bible seemed to them to be still more feeble, and, in imitation of Philo, they saw in it nothing but an allegory. They applied the same method to the Gospel, and in some fashion remodelled it, to which it lent itself easily, on account of its plastic character. All the peculiarities of the life of Jesus regained something sublime, according to these new evangelists; all his miracles became symbolical, and the follies of the Jewish ghemetria were heightened and aggravated. Like Cerinthus, these new doctors treated the Old Testament as a secondary revelation, and could not understand why Christianity should maintain any bond of union with that particular God, Jehovah, who is no absolute being. Could there be any stronger proof of his weakness than the state of ruin and desolation in which he had left his own city, Jerusalem? Certainly, they said, Jesus could see further and higher than the founders of Judaism, but his apostles did not comprehend him, and the texts which were

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supposed to represent his doctrine had been falsified. The gnosis alone, thanks to secret tradition, was in possession of the truth, and a vast system of successive emanations contains the whole secret of philosophy and history. Christianity, which was the last act of the tragedy that the universe is constantly playing, was the work of the æon Christos, who, by his intimate union with the man Jesus, saved everything that could be saved in humanity. It will be seen that the Christianity of those sectaries was that of Cerinthus and the Ebionites. Their Gospel conformed to the Hebrew Gospel, and they described the scene of the baptism of Jesus as it was related in that Gospel, and believed, with the Docetm, that Jesus had nothing human but his appearance. The Galilean accounts appeared to them nothing but childish nonsense, altogether unworthy of the Deity, and which must be explained allegorically. For them the man Jesus was nothing, the æon Christos was everything; and his earthly life, far from being the basis of doctrine, was nothing but a difficulty to be got rid of at any price.

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The ideas of the first Christians about the appearance of the Messiah in the heavens, about the Resurrection, and the Last Judgment, were looked upon as antiquated. The moment of the Resurrection for every individual was that at which he became a gnosticos. A certain relaxation of morals was the consequence of these false aristocratic ideas; mysticism has always been a moral danger, for it too easily gives rise to the idea that by initiation man is dispensed from the obligation of ordinary duties. “Gold,” said these false Christians, “can be dragged through the mire without becoming soiled.” They smiled when scruples about meats offered to idols were mentioned to them; they were present at plays and at gladiatorial games; and they were accused of speaking lightly of offences against chastity, and of saying,—“What is of the flesh is flesh, and what is of the spirit is spirit;” and they expressed their antipathy for martyrdom in terms that must have hurt the feelings of real Christians most profoundly. As Christ had not suffered, why should they suffer for him?” The real testimony which they ought to render to God,” they said, “was to know him as he is, it is an act of suicide for a man to confess God by his death.” According to them, the martyrs were nearly always wrong, and the pains that they suffered were the just chastisement for crimes that would have merited death, and which remained hidden. Far from complaining, they ought to be thankful to the law which transformed their just punishment into an act of heroism, and if there were a few rare cases of innocent martyrs, they were analogous to the sufferings of childhood, and fate only was to be blamed for it. The sources of piety, however, were not yet corrupted by a proud rationalism, which generally frees itself from material practices. A liturgy, veiled in secrecy, offered abundant sacramental consolation to the faithful of those singular Churches, and life became a mystery, each one of whose acts was sacred. Baptism was a solemn ceremony, and recalled the worship of Mithra. The formula which the officiating minister pronounced was in Hebrew, and immersion there followed the

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anointing, which the Church adopted later. Extreme unction for the dying was also administered in a manner which would naturally create a great effect, and which the Catholic Church has imitated. Amongst the sectaries, worship, like dogma, was further removed from Jewish simplicity than in the churches of Peter and Paul, and the Gnostics admitted several Pagan rites, chants, hymns, and painted or sculptured representations of Christ. In this respect their influence on the history of Christianity was of the highest order, arid they formed the bridge by which a number of Pagan practices were introduced into the Church. In the Christian propaganda they played a principal part, for, by means of Gnosticism, Christianity first of all proclaimed itself as a new religion which was destined to endure, and which possessed a form of worship and sacraments, and which could produce an art of its own. By means of Gnosticism, the Church effected a juncture with the ancient mysteries, and appropriated to herself all that they possessed that satisfied popular requirements. Thanks to it, in the fourth century, the world could pass from Paganism to Christianity without noticing it, and, above all, without guessing that it was becoming Jewish. The eclecticism and the ingratitude of the Catholic Church are here shown in a wonderful manner. Whilst repudiating and anathematising the chimeras of the Gnostics, orthodoxy received a number of happy popular devotional inspirations from them, and from the theurgical the Church advanced to the sacramental view. Her feasts, her sacraments, her art were in a great measure taken from those sects which she condemned. Christianity, pure and simple, has not left any material object, for primitive Christian archeology is Gnostic. In those small, free, and inventive sects life was without rule but full of vitality. Their very metaphysics already made themselves felt, and faith was obliged to reason. By the side of the Church there was henceforth to be found the school; by the side of the elder, the teacher. Moreover, some men of rare talent, making themselves the organs of those doctrines which had hitherto been without authority, withdrew them from that state of individual speculation in which they might have remained indefinitely, and raised them to the height of a real event in the history of humanity.

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CHAPTER X. BASILIDES, VALENTINUS, SATURNINUS, CARPOCRATES.

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BASILIDES, who seems to have come from Syria to live at Alexandria, in Lower Egypt. and in the adjacent departments, was the first of those foreign dogmatisers to whom one hesitates at times to give the name of Christian. He is said to have been a disciple of Menander, and seems to have had two courses of instruction: the one, which was intended for the initiated, was restricted to religions of abstract metaphysics which were more in keeping with those of Aristotle than those of Christ, and the other was a sort of mythology, founded, like the Jewish cabala, on abstractions, which men took for realities. The metaphysics of Basilides remind us of those of Hegel, because of their unhealthy grandeur. His system owed much to the Stoic cosmogony. Universal life is a development of a πανσπερμα. Just as the seed contains the trunk, the roots, the flowers, and the fruits of the future plant, so the future of the universe is only an evolution. Filiation is the secret of everything; the species is the child of the genius, and is only an expansion of it.The aspiration of creatures is towards the good. Progress is made by that mind which stops between two boundaries (Μεθόριον πνεῠμα),—which, having, as it were, one foot in the ideal and the other in the material world, makes the ideal circulate amongst the material, and continually raises it. A sort of universal groaning of nature, a melancholy feeling of the universe, calls us to final repose, which will consist in the general unconsciousness of individuals in the bosom of God, and in the absolute extinction of every desire. “The good tidings” of progress were brought into the world by Jesus, the son of Mary. Already, before him, chosen heathens and Jews had caused the spiritual element to triumph over the material; but Jesus completely separated these two elements, so that only the spiritual element remained. Thus death could take nothing from him. All men ought to imitate him, to attain the same end. They will do so by receiving the “glad tidings,” that is to say, the transcendent gnosis, eagerly. In order to make these ideas more accessible, Basilides gave them a cosmogonic form analogous to those which were common in the religions of Phœnicia, Persia, and Assyria. It was a sort of divine epopæia, having for its heroes divine attributes personified, and whose diverse episodes represented the strife between good and evil. The good is the supreme god, ineffable and lost in himself. His name is Abraxas. That eternal being develops himself in seven perfections, which form with the Being himself the divine ogdoade. The seven perfections, Nous, Logos, Sophia, etc., by pairing together, have produced the orders of inferior angels (æons, worlds), to the number of three hundred and sixty-five, That number is made up by the letters of the word Abraxas added together according to their numerical value.

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The angels of the last heaven, whose prince is Jehovah, created the earth, which is the most mediocre of the worlds, the most sullied by matter, on the model furnished by Sophia, but under the empire of necessities, which made a mixture of good and evil out of it. Jehovah and the demiurges divided the government of this world between them, and distributed the provinces and the nations amongst themselves. Those are the local gods of the different countries. Jehovah chose the Jews: he is an invading and a conquering God. The Law, his work, is a mixture of material and spiritual views. The other local gods were obliged to coalesce against this aggressive neighbour, who, in spite of the division that had been agreed upon, wished to subjugate all nations to his own. To put an end to this war of the gods, the supreme God sent the prince of the æons, the Nous, his first son, with the mission to deliver men from the power of the demiurge angels. The Nous did not exactly become incarnate. At the moment of baptism the Nous attached to itself the person of the man Jesus, and did not leave it till the moment of the Passion. According to some disciples of Basilides, a substitution took place at that moment, and Simon of Cyrene was crucified in Jesus' stead. The persecutions to which Jesus and the apostles were subjected by the Jews arose from the anger of Jehovah, who, seeing that his rule was threatened, made a last effort to avert the dangers of the future.

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The place which Basilides attributed to Jesus in the economy of the world’s history does not differ essentially from that which is attributed to him in the Epistle to the Colossians and in the pseudo-Johannine Gospel. Basilides knew some words of Hebrew, and had certainly taken his Christianity from the Ebionites. He gave a so-called Glaucias, St Peter’s interpreter, as his master. He made use of the New Testament very nearly as it had been formed by general consent, excluding certain books, particularly the epistles to the Hebrews, to Titus and to Timothy, admitting St John’s Gospel. He wrote twenty-four books of allegorical Expositions of the Gospel, without our being able to tell exactly what texts he made use of. After the example of all the sects that surrounded the Church, and, in a measure, sucked her, Basilides composed apocryphal books,—esoteric traditions attributed to Matthias; revelations borrowed from chimerical people, Barcabban and Barcoph; prophecies of Cham. Like Valentinus, he seems to have composed sacred psalms or canticles. Lastly, besides the commentary on the received Gospels that he had edited, there was a gospel analogous to that of the Hebrews, of the Egyptians, and of the Ebionites, which differed little from that of Matthew, which bore the name of Basilides. His son, Isidore, carried on his teaching, wrote commentaries on the apocryphal prophets, and developed his myths. Weak Christians easily allowed themselves to be seduced by these dreams. A learned and esteemed Christian writer, Agrippa Castor, constituted himself its ardent adversary as soon as it appeared. Theurgy is generally the ordinary companion of religious intemperance. The disciples of Basilides did not invent, but they adopted, the magic virtues of the word Abraxas. They were also reproached with a very lax state of morals. It is certain that when so much importance is attached to metaphysical formulas, simple and good morality seems to be a humble and almost indifferent

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matter. A man who has become perfect by gnosis can allow himself anything. It seems that Basilides did not say that, but he was made to say it, and that was to a certain point the consequence of his theosophy. The saying which was attributed to him,—“We are men, the others are only swine and dogs,” was, after all, only the brutal translation of the more acceptable saying,—“I am speaking for one in a thousand.” The taste for mystery which that sect had, its habit of avoiding the light and hiding itself from the eyes of the multitude, the silence that was exacted from the initiated, gave rise to those rumours. Many calumnies were mixed up with all that. Thus Basilides was accused of having maintained, like all the Gnostics, that it was no crime to renounce apparently the beliefs for which one was persecuted; to lend oneself to acts indifferent in themselves, which the civil law exacted; even to go so far as to curse Christ, so long as in one’s mind one distinguished between the aeon Nous and the man Jesus. Now we have the original text of Basilides, and we find in it a much more moderate criticism of martyrdom than that which his opponents attribute to him. It is true that, attributing no importance whatever to the real Jesus, the Gnostics had no reason to die for him. On the whole they were only semi-Christians. Perhaps the superstitions which sprang from the sect were not the faults of Basilides. Some of his maxims were very beautiful, but his style, from the fragments which we possess, appears to have been obscure and pretentious. Valentinus was certainly superior to him. Something sorrowful, a gloomy and icy resignation makes a sort of bad dream out of the system of Basilides. Valentinus penetrates everything with love and pity. The redemption of Christ has for him a feeling of joy; his doctrine was a consolation for many, and real Christians adopted, or at least admired him.

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That celebrated, enlightened man, born, as it seems, in Lower Egypt, was educated in the schools of Alexandria, and first taught there. He would also appear to have dogmatised in Cyprus. Even his enemies allow that he had genius, a vast amount of knowledge, and rare eloquence. Gained over by the great seductions of Christianity, and attached to the Church, but nourished on Plato, and full of the recollections of profane learning, he was not satisfied with the spiritual nourishment which the pastors gave to the simple: he wanting something higher. He conceived a sort of Christian rationalism, a general system of the world, in which Christianity would have a place in the first rank, but would not be everything. Enlightened and tolerant, he admitted a heathen as well as a Jewish revelation. A number of things in the Church’s teaching appeared to him coarse and inadmissible by a cultivated mind. He called the orthodox “Galileans,” not without a shade of irony. With nearly all the Gnostics, he denied the resurrection of the body, or rather maintained that, as far as regards those who are perfect, the resurrection is accomplished already,—that it consists in the knowledge of the truth,—that the soul alone can be saved. If Valentinus had limited himself to cherishing these thoughts internally, to speaking about them to his friends, and to not frequenting the Church except in so far as it answered to his feelings, his position would have been altogether correct. But he wanted more: with his ideas, he wished to have a place of importance in the Church; and he was wrong, for the order of speculation in which

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he delighted was not one which the Church could encourage. The Church’s object was the amelioration of morals and the diminution of the people’s sufferings, not science or philosophy. Valentinus ought to have been satisfied with being a philosopher. Far from that, he tried to make disciples, like the ecclesiastics. When he had insinuated himself into any one’s confidence, he proposed different questions to him, in order to prove the absurdity of orthodoxy. At the same time, he tried to persuade him that there was something better than that: he expounded that superior wisdom with mystery. If objections were made to him, he would let the discussion drop with an air that seemed to say, “ You will never be anything but a simple believer.” His disciples showed themselves equally unconceivable. When they were asked questions, they wrinkled their brows, contracted their faces, and slipped away, saying, “O depth” If they were pressed, they affirmed the common faith amidst a thousand ambiguities, then returned to their avowal, baffled their opponent, and escaped, saying, “You do not understand anything about the matter.” Already it was the essence of Catholicism not to suffer any aristocracy,—that of elevated philosophy no more than that of pretentious piety. Valentinus’s position was a very false one. In order to make himself acceptable to the people, he conformed his discourses to those of the Church; but the bishops were on their guard, and excluded him. The simple believers allowed themselves to be caught; they even murmured because the bishops drove such good Catholics out of their communion. Useless sympathy! for already the Episcopate had restricted the Church on all sides. Valentinus thus remained in the state of an unfortunate candidate for the pastoral ministry. He wrote letters, homilies, and hymns of a lofty moral tone. The fragments by him that have been preserved have vigour and brilliancy, but their phraseology is eccentric. It resembles the mania which the Saint Simonians had of building up great theories in abstract language to express realities which were almost paltry. His general system had not that appearance of good sense that succeeds with the masses. The pretended Gospel of St John, with its far simpler combinations of the Logos and the Paraclete, had far greater success.

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Valentines starts, like all the Gnostics, from a system of metaphysics whose fundamental principle is that God manifests himself by successive emanations, of which the world is the most humble. The world is a work which is too imperfect for an infinite workman t it is the miserable copy of a divine model at the beginning. The Abyss (Bythos), inaccessible, unfathomable, which is also called Proarché, Propator, Silence (Sigè) is its eternal companion. After centuries of solitude and of dumb contemplation of its being, the Abyss wishes at length to appear in the outer world, and with his companion begets a syzygia, Nous or Monogenes and Alethia (Truth); they beget Logos and Zoe, who in their turn beget Anthropos and Ecclesia. Together with the primordial couple those three syzygias form the ogdoade, and with other syzygias emanated from Logos and Zoe, from Anthropos and Ecclesia the divine Pleroma, the plenitude of the divinity which for the future is conscious of its own existence. These couples fall from perfection in measure as they get further and further from the first source; at the same time, the love of perfection, the regret, the desire to return to their first principle, are awakened in them. Sophia especially makes a bold attempt to 59


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embrace the invisible Bythos, who only reveals himself by his Monogenes (only son). She continually wears herself out, extends herself to embrace the invisible; drawn away by the sweetness of her love, she is on the point of being absorbed by Bythos, of being annihilated. The whole Pleroma is in confusion. In order to re-establish harmony, Nous or Monogenes engender Christos and Pneuma, who pacify the æons, and make equality reign amongst them. Then, out of gratitude for Bythos, who has pacified them, the moons bring together all their perfections, and form the æon Jesus, the firstborn of creation, as Monogenes had been the firstborn of the emanation. Thus Jesus becomes in the inferior world what Christos had been in the divine Pleroma.

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In consequence of the ardour of her insensate passion, Sophia had produced by herself a sort of hermaphrodite abortion without consciousness, Hakamoth, also called Sophia Prunicos, or Prunice, who, driven from the Pleroma, moved about in the void and the night. Moved by compassion for this unfortunate being, Christos, leaning on Stauros (the cross), comes to her aid, gives the erring æon a determinate form and consciousness; but he does not give her knowledge, and Hakamoth, again rejected from the Pleroma, is cast into space. Given up to all the violence of her desires, she brings forth, on the one hand, the soul of the world, and all psychic substances; and on the other, matter. In her, anguish alternates with hope. At one time she feared her annihilation; at other times the recollection of her lost past filled her with joy. Her tears formed the moist element; her smile was the light; her sadness, opaque matter. At last the æon Jesus came to save her, and, in her delight, the poor delivered creature gave birth to the spiritual element,—the third of the elements that constitute the world. Hakamoth, or Prunice, nevertheless does not rest; agitation is her essence; there is a work of God going on in her; she endures a continual flow of blood. The bad part of her activity is concentrated on the demons; the other part, re-united to matter, implants in it the germ of a fire which shall devour it some day. With the psychic element Hakamoth creates the demiurge, which serves her as an instrument for organising the remaining beings. The demiurge creates the seven worlds, and man in the last of these worlds. But the surprising thing is that a superior and altogether divine principle is revealed in man, and that is the spiritual element, which Hakamoth had imparted to her work from oversight. The creator is jealous of his own creature; he lays a snare for him (the prohibition to eat the fruit of Paradise); man falls into it. He would have been eternally lost except for the love which his mother Hakamoth bore him. The redemption of each world has been accomplished by a special saviour. The saviour of men was the son Jesus, clothed by Hakamoth with the spiritual principle; with the psychic principle by the demiurge; with the material principle by Mary; identified lastly with Christos, who, on the day of his baptism, descended on to him in the form of a dove, and did not leave him again till after his condemnation by Pilate. The spiritual principle will persevere in Jesus till the agony on the cross. The psychic and the material principles alone will suffer, and will rise to heaven through the ascension. There were Gnostics before Jesus, but he came to reunite them and to form them into a Church by the Holy Spirit. The Church is made up neither of bodies nor of souls, but of spirits: the Gnostics alone form her component parts. At the end of the world 60


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matter will be devoured by the internal fire which she hides within herself; Christ will reign instead of the demiurge, and Hakamoth will definitely enter into the Pleroma, which will, thenceforward, be pacified.

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Men by their very nature, and independently of their efforts, are divided into three categories, according as the material element, the psychic or animal element, and the spiritual element predominate in them. The heathen are the material men who are irrevocably devoted to the works of the flesh. The simple faithful, the generality of Christians, are the psychic men; in virtue of their intermediate essence, they can rise or fall, lose themselves in matter, or be absorbed into the spirit. The Gnostics are the spiritual men, whether they be Christians, whether they be Jews, like the prophets, or heathens, like the sages of Greece. The spiritual men will some day be joined to the Pleroma. The material men will die altogether; the psychic men will be damned or saved according to their works. External worship is only a symbol, which, though it is good for the psychic mind, is altogether useless for men who give themselves up to pure contemplation. It is an eternal error of the mystic sects who put into their chimeras the initiation above good works, which they leave to the simple. That is the reason why every gnosis, whatever it may do, arrives at indifference to works and contempt for practical virtue, that is to say, at immorality. There is certainly something grand in these strange myths. When it is a question of the infinite, of things which can only be known partially and secretly, which cannot be expressed without being strained, pathos itself has its charms; one takes pleasure in it, like in those somewhat unhealthy poems whose taste one blames, though one cannot help liking them. The history of the world, conceived like an embryo which is seeking for life, which painfully attains consciousness, which troubles everything by its movements, whilst those movements themselves become the cause of progress and end in the full realisation of the vague instincts of the ideal, such are the ideas which are not very far removed from those which we choose at times to express our views about the development of the infinite. But all that could not be reconciled to Christianity. Those metaphysics of dreamers, that system of morality thought out by recluses, that brahminical pride which would have brought back the rule of castes had it been allowed its own way, would have killed the Church, if the Church had not taken the initiative. It was not without reason that orthodoxy kept a middle position between the Nazarenes, who only saw the human side of Jesus, and the Gnostics, who saw nothing but his divine nature. Valentinus made fun of the simple eclecticism which induced the Church to wish to join two contrary elements together. The Church was right. There is no medium between regulated faith and free thought. Whoever does not admit authority puts himself outside the pale of the Church, and ought to turn philosopher. “They speak like the Church,” Irenæus said, “but they think differently.” It was a sad game to play. Valentinus was led to hypocrisy and fraud by the same reasons as Basilides was. To free himself from apostolic chains, he claimed to attach himself to secret traditions and to an esoteric teaching which Jesus was said not to have imparted to any except the most spiritually-minded of his disciples. Valentinus said that he had received that hidden doctrine from a pretended Theodades or Theodas, a disciple of St Paul. He appears to have 61


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called this the Gospel of Truth. Valentinus' Gospel, at any rate, approximated very closely to that of the Ebionites. In it the duration of the appearances of the risen Jesus was extended over eighteen months.

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These despairing efforts to reconcile God and man in Jesus, resulted from difficulties that were inherent in the nature of Christianity. In fact, the travail which was agitating the Christian conscience in Egypt manifested itself also in Syria. Gnosticism appeared in Antioch almost at the same time as it did in Alexandria. Saturninus, or Satorniles, who was said to have been a pupil of Menander, like Basilides was, put forth views which were analogous to those of the latter, though they bore an even stronger impress of Persian dualism. The Pleroma and matter—Bythos and Satan—are the two poles of the universe. The kingdoms of good and evil are the two confines on which they meet. Near those confines the world came into existence, and it was the work of the seven last Eons or demiurges who were wandering in the realms of Satan. Those æons (Jehovah is one of them) divide the government of their work between them, and each appropriates a planet. They do not know the inaccessible Bythos; but Bythos is favourable to them, reveals himself to them by a ray of his beauty, and then hides himself from their admiration. The divine image ceaselessly haunts them, and they create man in the likeness of that image. Man, as he left the hand of the demiurges, was pure matter. He crawled on the earth like a worm, and had no intelligence. A spark from the Pleroma gives him true life. He thinks, and rises to his feet. Then Satan is filled with rage, and dreams of nothing but of opposing this regenerate man, the mixed work of the demiurges and of God, a man who shall spring entirely from himself. Side by side with divine humanity there is for the future the satanic humanity. To crown the evil, the demiurges revolt against God, and separate creation from that superior principle from which it ought to draw its life. The divine spark no longer circulates between the Pleroma and humanity—between humanity and the Pleroma. Man is devoted to evil and to error. Christ saves him by suppressing the action of the God of the Jews, but the strife between the good and evil men continues. The former are the Gnostics; the soul is entirely in them, and consequently they live eternally. On the other hand, the body cannot rise again: it is condemned to perish. Whatever propagates the body propagates the empire of Satan, and, consequently, marriage is an evil. It weakens the divine principle in man, by subdividing that principle to infinity.

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It will be seen that all those sects were equally incapable of giving a serious basis to morality. They even had difficulty in avoiding the breakers of secret debauches and accusations of infamy. Alexandria could not stop on that slippery ground. That extraordinary city was destined to see, at its most brilliant period, all the evils of the age burst forth within it in all their energy. Carpocrates drew from it the deductions of an unwholesome philosophy, which carried the exaggerations of an intemperate supernaturalism amongst all orders, and tossed men to and fro between asceticism and immorality, rarely leaving him in the golden mean of reason. Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes did not recoil before any of the excesses of sensual mysticism, as they proclaimed the indifference

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of actions, the community of women, the holiness of all perversions, as means of delivering the spirit from the flesh. That deliverance of the spiritual man which wrests souls from the wicked demiurges to reunite them to the supreme God, was the work of the sages Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, etc. The statues of those sages were adored,—they were crowned,—incense and even sacrifices were offered to them. According to Carpocrates, Jesus, the son of Joseph, had been the justest man of his time. After having practised Judaism, he recognised its vanity, and by that act of disdain he merited deliverance. Nowhere is it forbidden to aspire to equal and even to surpass him in holiness. His resurrection is an impossibility; his soul alone has been received into heaven; his body remained on earth. The apostles—Peter, Paul, and the others—were not inferior to Jesus, but if any one could arrive at a more perfect contempt for the world of the demiurges, that is to say, for reality, he would surpass him. The Carpocratians claimed to exercise that power by magical operations, by philtres, by witchcraft. It is clear that they were not true members of the Church of Jesus. Nevertheless, the sectaries took the name of Christians, and the orthodox were in despair at it. As a matter of fact, in their conventicles, abominations, such as the calumniators of the Christians reproached the faithful with, took place, and this usurpation of the name caused deplorable prejudices to take deep root amongst the multitude. 99

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Far from exhibiting the slightest complaisance towards the culpable mysteries, the Church only held them in abhorrence and visited them with the most violent anathemas which she could find in her sacred texts. What was said of the Nicolaitanes at the beginning of the Apocalypse was brought to mind. By the name Nicolaitanes, the Seer of Patmos most likely intends to designate St Paul’s partisans: at any rate such a designation has nothing at all to do with the Deacon Nicholas, who was one of the Seven in the Primitive Church of Jerusalem. But that false identification was soon accredited. Scandalous stories were told against the alleged heresiarch which very much resembled those which were told about the Carpocratians. Many aberrations took place on all sides, and no paradox was without its defender. People were found who took the part of Cain, of Esau, of Korah, of the Sodomites, of Judas himself. Jehovah was the evil,—a tyrant filled with hatred, and it had been right to brave his laws. These were kinds of literary paradoxes; just as thirty or forty years ago it was the fashion to set up criminals as heroes, because they were supposed to be in revolt against bad social order. There was a Gospel of Judas. In excuse for this latter, it was said that he had betrayed Jesus with a good intention, because he had found out that his master wished to ruin the truth. The traitor’s conduct was also explained by a motive of interest for humanity. The powers of the world (that is to say, Satan and his agents) wished to stop the work of salvation, by preventing Jesus from dying. Judas, who knew that the death of Jesus on the cross was beneficial, broke the charm, by giving him up to his enemies. Thus he was the purest of spiritual men. These singular Christians were called Cainites. Like Carpocrates, they taught that, in order to be saved, it was necessary to have done all sorts of actions, and, in some manner, to have exhausted all the experiences of life: it is said that they placed the perfection of enlightenment in the commission of the darkest deeds. Every act has an angel who presides over it, and they invoked that angel whilst

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they were doing the act. Their books were worthy of their morals. They had the Gospel of Judas, and some other writings which were made to exhort men to destroy the work of the Creator; one book in particular, called The Ascension of St Paul, into which they seem to have introduced horrible abominations. These were aberrations without any real object, and which certainly the serious-minded Gnostics rejected just as much as the orthodox Christians. The really grave part about it was the destruction of Christianity, which was at the bottom of all these speculations. In reality the living Jesus was suppressed, and only a phantom Jesus, without any efficacy for the conversion of the heart, was left. Moral effort was replaced by so-called science; dreams took the place of Christian realities, and every man arrogated to himself the right to carve out as he chose a Christianity according to his fancy, from the dogmas and earlier books. This was no longer Christianity, it was a strange parasite which was trying to pass for a branch of the tree of life. Jesus was no longer a fact without analogy; he was one of the apparitions of the divine spirit. Docetism, which reduced all the human life of Jesus to a mere appearance, was the basis of all these errors. Still, moderate with Basilides and Valentinus, it becomes absolute with Saturninus, and with Marcion we shall see that the whole of the Saviour’s earthly career is reduced to a pure appearance. 101

Orthodoxy will be able to resist these dangerous ideas, whilst at times allowing itself to be drawn away by their seductive qualities. Gospels, deeply tinged with new ideas, were spread abroad. The “Gospel of Peter” was the expression of pure Docetism. The “Gospel according to the Egyptians” was a remodelling, after the Alexandrine ideas, of the Gospel according to the Hebrews. The union of the sexes was forbidden in it. The Saviour, on being questioned by Salome when his kingdom would come, answered, “When you tread under foot the garment of shame; when two shall make one; when that which is outside shall be like that which is inside, and the male joined to a female shall be neither male nor female.” Interpreted according to the rules of the vocabulary of Philo, these strange words signify that when humanity is no more, the body will be spiritualised and enter into the soul, so that man will be nothing but a pure spirit. The “coats of skins” with which God covered Adam will then be useless; primitive innocence will reign again.

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CHAPTER XI. THE LAST REVOLT OF THE JEWS.

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AFTER staying in Jerusalem for two years, Hadrian got tired of doing nothing, and again began to think of his travels. First of all he paid a visit to Mauritania, and then directed his course for the second time to Greece and the East. He stayed at Athens for nearly a year, and consecrated the edifices that he had ordered to be erected during his first journey; and Greece had one long festival, and seemed but to live in him. In every direction classic recollections revived, and Hadrian made them durable by monuments and columns, and founded temples, libraries, and professorial chairs. The ancient world before dying made its pilgrimage to the places from which it had sprung, and seemed as if it were uttering its last eulogy. The Emperor presided like a pontiff at these innocent solemnities, which hardly amused anybody now but those who were empty-headed and idle. The august traveller then continued his journey through the East, and visited Armenia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Judea. As far as outward appearances went, he was everywhere received as a guardian spirit, and medals which were struck for the occasion bade him welcome in every province. That of Judea is still in existence. Alas; what a falsehood. Below the inscription ADVENTVI AVG. IVDAEAE is to be seen the Emperor in a noble and worthy attitude receiving Judea with kindness, and she is presenting her sons to him. Already the Emperor has the handsome and gentle look of the Antonines, and seems to be the impersonification of calm civilisation educating fanaticism. Children go before him bearing palms, whilst in the middle a Pagan altar and a bull symbolise religious reconciliation; and Judea, a patera in her hand, seems to share in the sacrifice that is being prepared. This is how official optimism instructs sovereigns. The opposition between the East and the West was actually getting more and more accentuated, and the signs of this were so certain that the Emperor could not doubt them—his benevolent eclecticism was, however, at times singularly unsettled.

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From Syria Hadrian went to Egypt by way of Petra. His discontent and his ill temper with the peoples of the East increased daily. A short time before Egypt had been in a state of great agitation. The ancient worships, which were springing into life again, caused a certain amount of fermentation, for it was so long since an Apis had been seen that these ancient chimeras were beginning to be forgotten, when suddenly a clamour arose; that miraculous animal had been found, and as everybody wished to possess it, all tried to get it from the others. The hold of Christianity over Egypt was not so strong as it was elsewhere, for many heathen superstitions were mixed up with it. All these follies only served to amuse Hadrian, and a letter which be wrote about that time to his brother-in-law Servian, has been preserved to us:— I have found that Egypt, my dear Servian, which you praised to me, to be a very flighty country, hanging by a thread, turning round with every breath of fashion. There, those who adore Serapis are Christians at the same time,

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and men who call themselves bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis. There is not a president of a synagogue, not a Samaritan, not a Christian priest, who does not supplement his functions by those of the astrologer, of the diviner, and the charlatan. The patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to adore Serapis, and by the others to adore Christ. It is a seditious, futile, and irrelevant education, and a rich and productive city, where nobody lives in idleness. Some are glassblowers, others papermakers, others again dyers, and all understand and practise some trade. The gouty can find something to do, the shortsighted can obtain employment, the blind are not without occupation, and even the one-armed are not idle. Money is their only god, the divinity which Christians, Jews, people of all sorts, adore. One regrets to find such a low state of morals in a city which by its manufactures and its grandeur is worthy of being the capital of Egypt. I have granted it everything; I have restored its ancient privileges, and given it new ones, and I forced them to thank me whilst I was there; but I had scarcely left when they began to talk about my son Verus, and to say, what no doubt you know, about Antinous. The only revenge that I wish to have is that they may always be forced to eat their own fowls, fecundated in a manner that I do not like to mention. I have sent you some glasses of prismatic colours, which the priests of the temple offered me: they are specially dedicated to you and to my sister. Have them used on festive occasions, only take care that our Africanus does not make too good use of them. 104

From Egypt Hadrian returned to Syria, and there he found the people very badly disposed. They were getting bolder. Antioch gave him an unfavourable reception, and so he went to Athens, where be was worshipped. There he heard of some very serious events, for the Jews were having recourse to arms for the third time. Their attack of furious madness of the year 117 seemed as if it were about to recommence, and Israel disliked the Roman government more than ever. Every malefactor who revolted against the State was a saint, and every brigand became a patriot. It was looked upon as an act of treason to arrest a robber. “Vinegar, off-spring of wine,” said a rabbi to a Jew, whose business it was to arrest evil-doers, “why do you denounce God’s people?” Elijah also met this worthy public officer and exhorted him to give up his odious trade. It seems that the Roman authority also committed more than one mistake. Hadrian’s administration became more and more intolerant towards the Eastern sects, whom the Emperor made fun of. Several lawyers thought that circumcision, like castration, was punishable ill-usage, and so it was forbidden. The cases in which those who had practised epispasm, and had been forced by fanatics to be circumcised over again, would more especially give rise to these prosecutions; and we do not know how far imperial justice advanced along this difficult road which was so opposed to liberty of conscience. Hadrian was certainly not a man given to excessive measures, and in Jewish tradition all the odium of these measures rests on Tineius Rufus, who was the Legate Proprætor of the Province of Judea, and whose name the malcontents changed into Tyrannus Rufus.

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These annoyances, which were so easily avoided in the only cases which were of any importance to pious families, namely, the cases relative to the circumcision of infants, were not the chief cause of the war. What really raised the Israelites to revolt, was the horror that they felt at seeing the transformation of Jerusalem, or, in other words, the progress that the construction of Ælia Capitolina was making. The sight of a Pagan city rising on the ruins of the holy city, the rebuilding of the profaned temple, those heathen sacrifices, those theatres raised with the very stones of that venerated building, those foreigners dwelling in the city which God had loved, all this appeared to them to be the very height of sacrilege and of defiance.

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Far from wishing to return to this profaned Jerusalem, they fled from it like an abomination, whilst the south of Judea was more than ever a Jewish country. A number of large places had sprung up there which could defend themselves, thanks to the position of their houses, which were massed together on the summit of low hills. For the Jews of that district, Bether had become another holy city, and equivalent to Zion. The fanatics procured arms by a singular stratagem. They were bound to furnish the Romans with a certain number of implements of war, and so they manufactured them badly, on purpose that the rejected weapons might come to them. Instead of visible fortifications, they constructed immense tunnels; and the fortifications of Bether were completed by advanced works of broken stone, and all the Jews who remained in Egypt and Libya hastened to swell the number of the rebels.

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We must do that justice to the clear-sighted portion of the nation that they took no part in a movement that presupposed enormous ignorance of the world, and complete blindness as to what they were doing. As a general rule, the Pharisees were defiant and reserved, and many of the doctors of the law fled into Galilee, and into Greece, to avoid the coming storm. Several did not conceal the fact that they were faithful to the Empire, and even attributed a certain legitimacy to it. Rabbi Joshua Ben Hanania seems to have acted in a conciliatory spirit up to his extreme old age; and after him, the Talmudists say, all prudent counsels were lost. Under these circumstances was seen again what had been continually seen for the last hundred years: a nation, which was easily duped at the slightest breath of Messianic hope, would go on in spite of the doctors; they only thought of their casuistry; and if they died, they did not die fighting, but in defending themselves from breaking the law. The Christians resisted the temptation even better. Although revolt might gratify the hatred of some of them for the Roman Empire, a distinct distrust for all that proceeded from fanatical Israel stopped them on the dangerous descent. They had already chosen their part, and the form of their resistance to the Empire was not revolt but martyrdom. They were tolerably numerous in Judea, and, contrary to the orthodox Jews, they might even live in Ælia. Of course the Jews tried to gain over their quasi-compatriots, but the disciples of Jesus were already very far from all earthly politics, for he had buried for ever the hopes of a material patriotism and Messiah. Hadrian’s reign was far from being unfavourable to the Churches, and so they did not move; and some voices were even raised to foretell to the Jews the consequences of their obstinacy, and the extermination that awaited them.

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Every Jewish revolt had, more or less, to do with Messianic hopes, but never before had any one given himself out for the Messiah; but this took place now. No doubt under the influence of Christian ideas, and in imitation of Jesus, a man gave himself out for the long-expected heavenly messenger, and succeeded in seducing the people. We have no clear history of that strange episode, for the Jews, who alone could have informed us what were the secret thoughts and the motive secret of these agitators, have left us nothing but confused pictures of them, like those of a man who has

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been mad. There was no Josephus then, and Barcochebas, as the Christians called him, remains an insoluable problem, and one on which even imagination cannot hope to exercise itself with any hope of reading the truth. The name of his father, or of the place where he was born, was Coziba, and he was always called “the son of Coziba” (Bar or Ben-Coziba), but his real name is unknown. Perhaps his partisans were induced to conceal his name, and that of his family, purposely in the interests of his part as Messiah. He seems to have been a nephew of Rabbi Eleazar of Modin, an Agadist of the highest renown, who had lived very much with Rabbi Gamaliel II. and his companions. One asks oneself whether the recollection of the Maccabees, who were still living at Modin, did not excite Bar-Coziba’s patriotic enthusiasm. There can be no doubt as to his courage, but the scantiness of historical information prevents us from saying more than that. Was he serious? Was he a religious enthusiast or a fanatic? Was he one of those sincere believers in the Messiah who came on to the scene too late? Or are we only to see in this equivocal person a charlatan, an imitator of Jesus, with a totally different object, a common impostor, even a criminal, as Eusebius and St Jerome assert? We cannot tell, for the only circumstance in his favour is that the principal Jewish Doctor of the Law at that period was in his favour, a man who, from his habit of thought, would be far removed from the dreams of an impostor, and that was the Rabbi Aquiba. 108

For many years he had been the chief authority amongst the Jews, and he was compared to Esdras and even to Moses. As a general rule, the doctors were not at all favourable to popular agitators. Taken up with their own discussions, they thought that the destinies of Israel, dependent on the observance of the Law and Messianic dreams, were limited for them to the Mosaic ideal which those who were scrupulously devout realised. How could Aquiba incite the people, whose confidence he enjoyed, to commit a veritable act of folly? Perhaps the fact of his having sprung from the people, and his democratic tendency to contradict the traditions of the Sadducees, may have helped to lead him astray, and perhaps also the absurdity of his exegesis deprived him of all practical rectitude. One can never with impunity play with common sense, or put such pressure on the springs of the intellect as may threaten to snap them. At any rate the fact appears certain, though it is difficult to believe it, that Aquiba recognised Bar-Coziba’s Messianic character. After a fashion he invested him with it before the people when he gave him the commander’s baton and held his stirrup for him when he mounted his war-horse to inaugurate his reign as Messiah. His name of Bar-Coziba was an unhappy one, and lent itself to all kinds of unfortunate allusions. Looking on the bearer of it as the predestined Saviour of Israel, it is said that Aquiba applied the verse from Numbers xxiv. 17: “A star shall arise out of Jacob,” a verse which was supposed to have a Messianic sense to him, and so his name of Bar-Coziba was changed into Bar-Kokaba, “the son of the star.” Bar-Coziba being thus recognised as the man who, without any official title, it is true, but in virtue of a sort of universal acceptance, passed as the religious guide of the people of Israel, became

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the chief of the revolution, and war was decided on. At first the Romans neglected the foolish popular agitations. Bether, in its isolated position, far from the great highroads, did not attract their attention; but when the movement had invaded the whole of Judea, and the Jews began to form threatening bands in all directions, they were obliged to open their eyes. They began to attack the Roman forces, and to lie in ambush for them in a murderous fashion. Besides this, the movement, as happened in 68 and in 117, had a tendency to spread over the rest of the East. Arab brigands who lived near the Jordan and the Dead Sea, who were in a state of anarchy through the destruction of the Nabatæan kingdom of Petra, thought they saw a chance of pillage in Syria and Egypt. The confusion was general. Those who had practised epispasm to escape the capitation tax, submitted anew to a painful operation, so that they might not be excluded from the hopes of Israel; and some thought so surely that the time of Messiah had arrived, that they thought themselves authorised to pronounce the name of Jehovah as it is written. As long as Hadrian was in Egypt and Syria, the conspirators did not let their plans be seen, but as soon as he had gone to Athens the revolt broke out. It appears that the report was spread that the Emperor was ill and attacked by leprosy. Ælia, with its Roman colony, was strongly guarded. The Legio Decima Fratensis was still in garrison there, and no doubt the road between Ælia and Cæsarea, the city which was the centre of the Roman authority, also remained open, and thus ælia was never surrounded by the insurrection. It was easy to keep communications open, thanks to a circle of colonies which were established in the east and north of the city, and especially owing to such places as Nicopolis and Lydda, which were assured to the Romans.

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It is therefore probable that the revolt in its northward progress did not go beyond Bether, and did not reach Jerusalem, but all the smaller towns of Judea which had no garrisons proclaimed the independence of Israel. Bether, in particular, became a sort of small capital, a prospective second Jerusalem side by side with the great Jerusalem which they hoped to conquer soon. Its situation was very strong, as it commanded all the valleys of the revolted country, and was made almost impregnable by means of tremendous outworks, the remains of which may be seen even to this day. The first case of the insurgents was the monetary question. One of the greatest punishments of the faithful Jews was to be obliged to handle money bearing the effigy of the Emperor, and idolatrous figures. For religious purposes, above all, they either sought for coins of the Asmonean princes, which were still current in the country, or else those of the first rebellion, when the Asmonean coinage had been imitated. The new insurrection was too poor and too badly provided with machinery to issue coins of a new mould. They were satisfied with withdrawing the coins bearing the stamp of Flavius and Trajan, and impressing them anew with an orthodox stamp which the people knew, and which had a national meaning for them; and perhaps some ancient coins had been found which facilitated the operation. For this imitation, the handsome coins of Simon Maccabæus, the first Jewish prince who coined money, were especially selected. From their date, which was that of the

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liberty of Israel or of Jerusalem, those coins seemed to have been struck for the very purpose, and those on which was to be seen a temple surmounted by a star, and those which bore only the impress of the two trumpets which were destined, according to the Law, to summon Israel to the Holy War, were more appropriate still. The stamp upon stamp was done very roughly, and on a great number of coins the first Roman impress is still visible. This coinage was called the money of Coziba, or the money of the revolt, and as it was partly fictitious it lost much of its value later on. 111

It was a long and terrible war, and lasted for over two years, whilst the best generals seem to have worn themselves out in it. Tineius Rufus, seeing that he was outnumbered, asked for assistance, and though his colleague Publicius Marcellus, Legate of Syria, hastened to bring it him, both failed. In order to crush the revolt, it was necessary to summon the first captain of his period, Sextus Julius Severus, from Britain. He received the title of Legate of the Province of Judea, in the place of Tineius Rufus, and Quintus Lollias Urbicus was his second in command as Hadrian’s legate. The rebels never showed themselves in the open country, but they were masters of the heights, on which they built fortifications, and between their embattled towns they dug out covered ways, subterranean communications, which were lighted from above by air-holes, which gave air as well as light. The secret passages were places of refuge for them when they were driven back, and enabled them to go and defend another point. Unhappy race! Driven from its own soil, it seemed as if it preferred to bury itself in its bowels rather than leave it, or allow it to be profaned. This war of moles was extremely murderous, and fanaticism reached the same height as in 70. Nowhere did Julius Severus venture to come to an engagement with his adversaries, for, seeing their number and despair, he feared to expose the heavy masses of the Romans to the danger of a war of barricades and of fortified hill tops. He attacked the rebels separately, and, thanks to the number of his soldiers, and to the skill of his lieutenants, he nearly always succeeded in starving them out, by surrounding them in their trenches.

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Bar-Coziba, driven into a corner by impossibilities, became more violent every day, and his rule was that of a king. He ravaged the surrounding country, and did not recoil before the grossest imposture in order to sustain his part as Messiah. The refusal of the Christians to receive him as such, and to make common cause with him, irritated him greatly, and so he resorted to the most cruel persecutions against them. The Messianic character of Jesus was the denial of his own and the principal obstacle to his plans. Those who refused to deny or to blaspheme the name of Jesus were put to death, scourged, tortured. Jude, who seems to have been Bishop of Jerusalem at that time, may have been one of the victims. Enthusiasts looked upon the political indifference of the Christians, and their loyal fidelity to the Empire, as a want of patriotism; but it seems that the more sensible among the Jews openly gave vent to their displeasure. One day when Aquiba, seeing Bar-Coziba, cried out, “Here is the Messiah!” the Rabbi Johaman ben Torta replied, “Aquiba, the grass will be growing between your jaws before the son of David comes.”

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As usual, Rome prevailed in the end, and in turn each centre of resistance fell. Fifty improvised fortresses, which the rebels had built, and nine hundred and fifty-five market towns were taken, and turned into ruins. Beth-Rimmon, on the Idumæan frontier, was the scene of a terrible slaughter of fugitives. The siege of Bether was particularly long and difficult; the besieged endured the last extremities of hunger and thirst, and Bar-Coziba was killed there, though nothing is known of the circumstances of his death.

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The massacre was terrible. A hundred and eighty thousand Jews were killed in the various engagements, whilst the number of those who perished from hunger, by burning, and from sickness, is incalculable. Women and children were murdered in cold blood.Judea literally became a desert, and howling wolves and hyenas entered into the houses. Many towns of Darom were ruined for ever, and the desolate look which the country wears even now is still a living sign of the catastrophe that happened seventeen and a half centuries ago. The Roman army had been sorely tried. Hadrian, writing to the senate from Athens, does not make use of the ordinary preamble which emperors were in the habit of using: Si vos liberique vestri valetis, bene est; ego quidem et exereitus valemus. Severus was rewarded as he deserved for this well-conducted campaign, for, at Hadrian’s suggestion, the senate decreed him triumphal ornaments, and he was raised to the dignity of Legate of Syria. The army of Judea was overwhelmed with rewards, and Hadrian was hailed as Emperor for the second time. Whatever was not killed was sold at the same price as the horses, at the annual fair of the 'I'erebinthe, near Hebron. That was the spot where Abraham was supposed to have pitched his tent when he received the visit of the three Divine Beings. The field in which the fair was held, carefully marked out by a rectangular enclosure, exists still. From that time forward a terrible memento was attached to that place, which, up till then, had been so sacred in their eyes, and they never mentioned the fair of the Terebinthe without horror. Those who were not sold there were taken to Gaza and there put up for sale at another fair that Hadrian had established there. Those unfortunate wretches who could not be got rid of in Palestine were taken to Egypt, and many suffered shipwreck, whilst others died of hunger; others, again, were killed by the Egyptians, who had not forgotten the atrocities which the Jews committed in the same parts eighteen years previously. Two brothers who still kept up the resistance at Kafar-Karouba were killed, with all their followers.

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The subterranean works of Judea, however, still contained a crowd of unfortunate beings, who did not dare to leave them for fear of being killed. Their life was terrible; every sound seemed to herald the approach of the enemy, and in their mad terror they rushed at and crushed each other. The only means they had of assuaging their hunger was by eating the bodies of their neighbours who had died. It seems that, in certain cases, the Roman authorities forbade the burial of corpses, so as to make the impression of their chastisement even greater. Judea was like a vast charnel-house, and those wretches who succeeded in reaching the desert looked upon themselves as favoured by God. 71


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All certainly had not deserved such severe punishment, and in this instance, as happens so often, wise men paid for fools. A nation is a solidarity, and the individual who has contributed nothing towards the faults of his compatriots, who has even groaned under them, is punished no less than the others. The first duty of a community is to check its absurd elements; and the idea of withdrawing from the great Mediterranean confederation that Rome had created, was absurdity itself. Just as history ought to sympathise with those gentle and pacific Jews who only desired freedom to meditate on the Law, so also our principles oblige us to be severe towards a Bar-Coziba who plunged his country into a abyss of ills, and towards an Aquiba who upheld popular follies by his authority. Every one who sheds his blood for the cause which he considers righteous, is deserving of our respect; but we owe him no approval for that. The Jewish fanatics were not fighting for their liberty, but for a theocracy, for liberty to harass the Pagans, and to exterminate everything that appeared to them to be bad. The ideal which they sought after would have been an unsupportable state of affairs. Analogous, as far as intolerance went, to the miserable Asmonean period, it would have been the reign of zealots, radicals of the very worse sort: it would have been the massacre of unbelievers, a Reign of Terror. All the liberals of the second century looked upon it like that. A very intelligent man, who, like the Jews, belonged to a noble and conquered race, Pausanias, the antiquary, expresses himself thus:—“In my time there reigned that Hadrian who showed such respect for all the gods, and who had the happiness of his subjects so much at heart. He undertook no war without being forced to it; and as for the Hebrews who border on Syria, he subjugated them because they had revolted against him.”

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CHAPTER XII. DISAPPEARANCE OF THE JEWISH NATION.

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THE immediate consequence of this mad act of rebellion was a real persecution of Judaism. The Jews were weighed down by a tribute that was heavier still than the fiscus judaicus imposed by Vespasian. The exercise of the most essential practices of the Mosaic religion—circumcision, the observance of the Sabbath and of feasts, apparently insignificant simple usages were forbidden, under pain of death; and even those who taught the Law were prosecuted. Renegade Jews, who had turned spies, tracked the faithful who met in the most secret places to study the sacred code, and the Jews were reduced to reading it on the roofs of the houses. The doctors of the Law were cruelly persecuted, and rabbinical ordination entailed the death penalty both on the ordainer and on the ordinee. There were many martyrs in Judea and Galilee, and throughout the whole of Syria it was a crime to be a Jew. It was now, it appears, that the two brothers, Julianus and Pappus, who are celebrated in Jewish tradition for having preferred death to an apparent violation of the Law committed in public, were executed, and though water in a coloured glass was offered them so that they might pretend to think that they had drunk Pagan wine, they refused to take it. About that period the schools of the Casuists were chiefly taken up with the question of those precepts which might be broken in order to avoid death, and those for which martyrdom ought to be suffered. The doctors generally admit that in times of persecution all observances may be renounced as long as three prohibited things, idolatry, fornication (i.e., unlawful unions), and murder are abstained from. This sensible principle was put forward: “It is suicide to resist the Emperor’s orders.” It was admitted that religious worship might be kept secret, and that the circumcision of children might be announced by the sound of hand-mills instead of with the usual noisy demonstrations. It was also pointed out that, according to Leviticus xviii. 5, the observance of the Law gives life, and so that consequently any one who dies for the Law is responsible for his own death, so that when a man found himself between the two precepts to observe the Law and to preserve his own life, he ought to obey the second, which is the more commanding, at any rate when death is certain, just as, in the case of a serious illness, it is lawful to take remedies which may contain some impure substance. There was another point on which all were agreed, and this was that it was better to suffer death than to violate the slightest commandment publicly; and lastly, they agreed in placing the duty of teaching above all other obligations. At Lydda especially these questions were agitated, and that city had its celebrated martyrs, who were called the murdered of Lydda. The great doubt about Providence that takes possession of the Jew as soon as he is no longer prosperous and triumphant, made the position of those martyrs a particularly cruel one. The Christian, depending as he does altogether on the future life, is never firmer in his faith than when he is being 73


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persecuted; but the Jewish martyr has not the same light. “Where is now your God?” is the ironical question which he constantly fancies that he hears from Pagan lips. To the very last Rabbi Ishmael ben Elischa never ceased to fight against the ideas that sprang up in his mind, and in the minds of his companions, against divine justice. “Do you still trust in your God?” he was asked, and his answer was, “Though he slay me yet will I trust in him,” using the words of Job that have been badly translated. Aquiba, who had been a prisoner for a long time, nevertheless kept up a correspondence with his disciples. “Prepare for death, terrible days are coming,” was the sentence always on his lips. He was put to death because the was betrayed to the Romans for imparting profound doctrine. He is said to have been flayed alive with red-hot iron hooks. Whilst he was being torn to pieces he cried incessantly, “Jehovah is our God! Jehovah is our only God!” and he laid a stress on the word “only” (ehad), till he expired, when a heavenly voice was heard saying, “Happy Aquiba, as you died whilst uttering that word ‘only.’”

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It was not till late, and by means of successive experiences, that Israel arrived at the idea of immortality. Martyrdom made this belief almost a necessity. Nobody could pretend that those scrupulous observers of the Law who died for it had their reward here below. The answer that sufficed for cases like those of Job and Tobias did not suffice here. How could any one talk of a long and happy life for heroes who were expiring under a terrible death? Either God was unjust, or the saints who were thus tormented were great culprits. In the middle ages there were martyrs who accepted this latter doctrine with a kind of despair, and when they were being led to execution, they would maintain that they had deserved it, for they had been guilty of all sorts of crimes. But such a paradox must necessarily be very rare. The reign of a thousand years which was reserved for the martyrs, was the first solution of that difficult problem which was attempted. Then it came to be a received opinion that ascensions to heaven in heart and mind, that revelations, the contemplation of the divine secrets of the cabala, were the martyr’s reward. As the apocalyptic spirit was lost, the tikva, that is, the invincible confidence of man in the justice of God, assumed forms that were analogous to the enduring paradise of Christians. But that article of faith was never an absolute dogma amongst the Jews; no trace of it is found in the Thora; and how could it be supposed that God had expressly deprived the saints of old of such a fundamental dogma? From thenceforward all hopes of seeing the Temple raised up again were lost, and the Jews had even to give up the consolation of living near the holy places. The species of worship that the Jewish people vowed to the soil which they thought God had given them, was the evil that the Roman authorities wished to cure at any price, so that for the future they might cut off the root of Jewish wars. An edict drove the Jews from Jerusalem and its neighbourhood under pain of death, and the very sight of Jerusalem was refused them. Only once a year, on the anniversary of the taking of the city, did they obtain authorisation to come and weep over the ruins of the Temple, and to anoint a hollow stone, which they thought marked the site of the Holy of Holies, with oil; and even that

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permission was dearly bought. “On that day,” says St Jerome, “you might see a mournful crowd, a miserable people, who received no pity, assemble and draw near. Decrepit women, old men in rags, all are weeping, and whilst their cheeks are covered with tears, and they raise their livid arms, and tear their thin hair, a soldier comes up and calls on them for payment, so that they may have the right to weep a little longer.” The rest of Judea was also prohibited ground to the Jews, but not so strictly, for certain localities, such as Lydda, always preserved their Jewish quarters. The Samaritans, who had taken no part in the revolt, hardly suffered less than the Jews. Mount Gerizim, like Mount Moriah, had its temple of Jupiter; the prohibition of circumcision attacked them in the free exercise of their religion; and the memory of Bar-Coziba seems to have been execrated by them.

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The construction of Ælia Capitolina went on more actively than ever, and everything was done to efface the recollection of the past, which had been so threatening. The old name of Jerusalem was almost forgotten, and Ælia took its place throughout the whole of the East, so that a hundred and fifty years later Jerusalem had become a name in ancient geography which nobody knew any more. The city was full of profane edifices, forums, baths, theatres, tetranymphea, etc. Statues were erected in all directions, and the subtle Jewish mind tried to discover mocking allusions in them, which Hadrian’s engineers certainly never intended. Thus over the gate leading to Bethlehem there was a piece of sculpture in marble which they thought resembled a pig, and in that they saw a most insulting piece of irony towards the vanquished people, whilst they forgot that the wild boar was a Roman emblem, and figured on the standards of the legions. The circumference of the city was slightly altered towards the south, and became about what it is now. Mount Zion remained outside the enclosure, and was covered with kitchen gardens. Those parts of the city which were not rebuilt afforded a mass of loose stones which served as a stone quarry for the new buildings. The foundations of Herod’s temple (the present harâm) excited wonder by their strength, and soon the Christians declared that these tremendous layers of stones would only be dislodged at the coming of Antichrist. On the site of the Temple, as has been said, was raised the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Bacchus, Serapis, Astarte, the Dioscuri were associated there with the principal god. As usual, statues of the Emperor were scattered broadcast, and one of them at least was equestrian; whilst the statues of Jupiter and Venus were also set up near Golgotha. When, in later years, the Christians settled their sacred topography, they were scandalised at this proximity, and looked upon it as an outrage; and in the same way they thought that the Emperor had intended to profane Bethlehem by setting up the worship of Adonis there. Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, and Verus occupied themselves in beautifying the city, and improving the highroads that led to it, and these public works irritated the real Jews. “In spite of all, the works of this nation are admirable,” said Rabbi Juda bar Ilaï one day to two of his friends who were seated with him. “They build forums, construct bridges, and establish baths.” “That is much to their merit!” replied Simeon ben Jochaï; “they do it all for their own benefit: they put 75


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brothels into the forums; they have the baths for their own amusement, and they construct the bridges so that they may receive the tolls. 121

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The hatred of Greek life, which was always so active amongst the Jews, was redoubled at the sight of a material renovation which seemed to be its striking triumph. Thus finished the final attempt of the Jewish people to remain a nation which possessed a name and a defined territory. In the Talmud, the war of Bar-Coziba is very rightly called “the war of extermination.” Dangerous movements, which seemed to be the rekindling of the flame, appeared again during the first years of Antoninus: they were easily repressed. From that moment Israel had no longer a fatherland, and then it began its wandering life, which for centuries has marked it as the wonder of the world. Under the Roman sway the civil situation of the Jew was lost without recovery. If Palestine had wished it, it would have become a province like Syria, and its lot would have been neither worse nor better than that of the other provinces. In the first century, several Jews played most extraordinarily important parts. Afterwards that will never be seen, and it seems as if the Jews had disappeared underground: they are only mentioned as beggars who have taken refuge in the suburbs of Rome, sitting at the gates of Aricia, besieging carriages, and clinging to the wheels, so as to obtain something from the pity of travellers. They are a body of raïas, having, it is true, their statutes, and their personal magistrates, but who are outside the pale of common law, forming no part of the State, in some measure analogous to the Zingari in Europe. There was no longer a single rich notable Jew of any consideration associating with men of the world. The great Jewish fortunes did not re-appear again till the sixth century, and then it was chiefly amongst the Visigoths of Spain, in consequence of the false ideas with regard to usury and commerce which were spread abroad by Christianity. Then the Jew became, and continued to be during the greater part of the Middle Ages, a necessary personage without whom the world could not accomplish the simplest transactions. Modern Liberalism alone could put an end to this exceptional situation. A decree of the Constituent Assembly in the year 1791 made them again citizens and members of a nation. In that world which was burnt up by a sort of internal volcanic fire, there were some oases. Some survivors of Sadduceeism, who were treated as apostates by their co-religionists, preserved amidst these mystical dreams the healthy philosophy of Ecclesiasticus. The provincial Jews, who were subject to the Arsaeides, lived tolerably happily, and observed the Law without being interfered with. The composition of a charming book, the date of which is uncertain, and which was not translated into Greek till towards the end of the second century, may be attributed to these provinces. It is a little romance, full of freshness, such as the Jews excelled in, the idyl par excellence of Jewish piety and domestic pleasures. A certain Tobit, son of Tobiel, who sprung from Cades of Naphtali, was taken captive to Nineveh by Shalmaneser. From his childhood he had been a model of goodness, and, far from participating in the idolatry of the Northern tribes, he regularly went to Jerusalem, the only spot that God had chosen as a place of worship, and offered his tithe to the priests, the descendants of Aaron, according

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to the rules of the Teruma and of the Maaser scheni. He was charitable, benevolent, and amiable towards all; he abstained from eating the bread of the heathen, and in return God obtained Shalmaneser’s favour for him, who made him his purveyor. After Shalmaneser’s death. Sennacherib, who had returned furious from his expedition to Jerusalem, began to act very severely towards the Jews; their bodies were lying about unburied in all directions, and were to be seen in heaps outside the walls of Nineveh, and Tobit went and buried them by stealth. The king, surprised at the disappearance of the bodies, asked what had become of them. Tobit was persecuted, hid himself, and lost his property, and only the murder of Sennacherib saved him. He then continued his pious work of burying the Israelites whom he found dead, though his neighbours made fun of him, and asked him what his reward would be. One evening he came back overcome by fatigue; he could not go into his own house, as he was unclean from having touched the dead bodies, so he threw himself at the foot of a wall in the court of his house and went to sleep: an accident deprived him of his eye-sight. Here we have the same problem laid down as in the book of Job, and with the same vigour: a just man not only badly rewarded for his goodness, but struck in consequence of his virtue itself: an act of virtue followed by misfortune resulting from it. How can one allege after that that the servant of Jehovah always receives the reward of his fidelity? His wife asks him where his alms and his good actions are, and what profit he has gained from them. Tobit persists in the affirmation of a true Israelite that God is just and good, and he even carries his heroism so far as to vilify himself so as to justify God; he declares that he has deserved his lot, firstly on account of the sins and omissions that he has been guilty of through ignorance, then because of the sins of his fathers. Because the ancestors of the then existing generation were guilty, therefore that generation is dispersed and dishonoured. Tobit only begs for one favour, which is to die at once, so that he may return to the earth and go to the eternal place.

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Now on that same day, at Ecbatana, another afflicted creature had also asked God for death. That was Sara, the daughter of Raguel, who had been married seven times, and, though she was absolutely pure, had seen her seven husbands strangled on their wedding-night by the wicked demon Aëschmadaëva, who was jealous of her, and killed all those who wished to touch her. Those two prayers were presented at the same time at the throne of God by the Archangel Raphael, who is one of the seven angels that are allowed to penetrate into the sanctuary of the divine glory to carry the prayers of the saints thither. God hears the supplication of these two just and sorely tried persons, and bids Raphael make good the evil. Everybody knows the charming idyl that follows. It has rightly found a place amongst these sacred fables which, reproduced under many different shapes, never weary us. Gentle morality, family feeling, filial piety, the love and the eternal union of the husband and wife, charity towards the poor man, devotion to Israel, have never been expressed in a more charming fashion. Good will to all, strict honesty, temperance, great care not to do to others what one would not wish to have done to oneself; care in the choice of one’s company and to be intimate only with good people, the

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spirit of order, regularity in one’s affairs, judicious family arrangements, that is that excellent Jewish morality which, though it is not exactly that of a nobleman, or of a man of the world, has become the code of the Christian middle classes in its best sense. Nothing is further removed from avarice. That same Tobit, who lives on intimate terms with the persecutors of his co-religionists because it is an advantageous place, lays it down as a principle that happiness consists in a moderate fortune joined to justice; he can put up with poverty with a light heart, and declares that real pleasure consists in giving, and not in laying up treasure. 125

Above all, the ideas of matrimony as developed here are particularly chaste, sensible, and refined. The Jew, with his recollections always fixed on his ancestors the prophets and patriarchs, and persuaded that his race will possess the earth, marries only a Jewess of good family, whose relatives are honourable and known to be so. Beauty is far from being a matter of indifference; but, before everything else, laws and usages and family convenience must be consulted, so that the fortune may not change hands. The man and woman are reserved for one another throughout all eternity. Marriages founded on sensual love turn out badly, but on the other hand, a union founded on real sentiment is the agglutination of two souls: it is blessed by God when it is sanctified by the prayers of the two lovers, and then becomes friendship full of charm, especially when the man maintains that moral superiority over his companion that belongs to him by right. To grow old together, to be buried in the same tomb, to leave their children well married, to see their grand-children, and perhaps the children of the latter, what more can be requisite for happiness? The author, separated from the book of Job by nearly a thousand years, has in reality not an idea beyond that of the old Hebrew book. All ends for eth best, as Tobit dies at a hundred and sixty-eight years of age, having had nothing but happiness since his trials, and being honourably buried by the side of his wife. His son dies at a hundred and twenty-seven years of age, in possession of his own and of his father-in-law’s property. Before dying, he hears that Nineveh is taken, and rejoices at that good news, for what can be sweeter than to see the chastisement of the enemies of Israel?

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Thus God appears like a father who chastises a son whom he loves and then takes pity on him. When the just man suffers, it is as a punishment for his own faults and those of his fathers. But if he humbles himself and prays, God pardons him and restores him to prosperity. Thus to sin is to be one’s own enemy: charity preserves from death, almsgiving saves. What happened to Tobit will happen to Israel. After having chastised it, God will repair its disasters. The Temple will be rebuilt, but not as it was before, and then all those who were dispersed shall be restored to their own country. Israel, thus reunited, will rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple with all the magnificence which was foretold by the prophets, and this time for eternity. It will be a city of sapphires and emeralds; its walls and towers shall be of pure gold; its squares shall be like mosaics of beryl and carbuncle, and its streets shall say Alleluia. All people shall be converted to

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the true God, and shall bury their idols. Happy shall they be then who have loved Jerusalem and pitied her sufferings. As soon as it was translated, that little book came into great favour with the Christians. Some of its features were of a nature to shock the delicacy of a few; it was, in some respects, too Jewish; some places in it might be touched up in a still more edifying manner. Hence arose a series of alterations, whence sprang a variety of Greek and Latin texts. The last alteration, that of St Jerome, which was made with remarkable literary feeling, gave that form to the book which it has in the Latin text of the Vulgate. The awkwardness and the clumsiness of the original have disappeared, and the result of those corrections is a small masterpiece which all succeeding centuries have read and admired.

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The Jewish people are without an equal when it is a question of accentuating and imparting a charm to an ideal of justice and domestic virtues. The Thora is the first book in the world, regarded as a book of devotion, but it is an impracticable code. No society could have lived under it, and the Jews of the time of Bar-Gioras and Bar-Coziba were defending a Utopia when they defended a nationality founded on such principles. History has that sympathy for them which it owes to all those who have been conquered; but how much more was the peaceable Christian and the author of the Book of Tobit, who thought it quite natural not to revolt against Shalmaneser, imbued with the traditions of Israel.

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CHAPTER XIII. THE TALMUD. THE Law, with that calmness of mind that it produced, acted like a sedative which quickly restored serenity to the troubled spirit of Israel. The Jewish quarters of the West do not appear to have suffered much from the follies of their co-religionists of the East. Even in the East peaceable Israelites had not participated in the strife, and soon became reconciled to the conquerors. Some ventured to believe that heaven was favourable to the Romans, and that, after all, the Law, when it was strictly observed in families, always gave the Jews a modus vivendi. Thus order was re-established in Syria sooner than one might have thought. The fugitives from Jerusalem went either to the East to Palmyra, or else into the South towards Yemen, or else to Galilee. That latter country above all received a new impulse from the emigration, and for centuries afterwards remained an almost exclusively Jewish country.

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After the extermination of the year 67, Galilee had been lost to Judaism for some time. Perhaps the revolt of 117 was the reason that the beth-din was transported thither. After the defeat of Bar-Coziba, the inhabitants who had been driven from the South took refuge there in a body and repopulated the villages, and then the beth-din became definitely Galilean. That tribunal had its seat first of all at Ouscha, then in the villages near Sephoris, at Schefaram, at Beth-Shearim, and at Sephoris itself; then it was established at Tiberias, and was not moved till the Mussulman conquest. Whilst Darom was almost forgotten and its schools were declining, whilst even Lydda was falling with wretchedness and ignorance, and was losing the right of fixing the embolismic calculations, Galilee became the centre of Judaism. Meïron, Safat, Gischala, Alma, Casioun, Kafr-Baram, Kafr-Nabarta, Ammouka, were the chief localities of this new development, and were filled with Jewish monuments, and these, nearly all of them reverenced in the Middle Ages as tombs of the prophets, can still be seen in the midst of a country which for the third and fourth time has become desert and desolate. Tiberias was, in a measure, the capital of that kingdom of disputation and subtlety where the last remains of original Jewish activity were exhausted. In fact, in that tranquil country, restored to its favourite retired and studious life, the family life and that of the synagogue, Israel definitely renounced its earthly visions, and sought the kingdom of God, not like Jesus in the ideal, but in the rigorous observance of the Law. From that time forward proselytism disappears by degrees from amongst that people who had been its most ardent followers. A law of Antoninus put a stop to the restrictive measures of Hadrian, and allowed the Jews to circumcise their children; but Modestinus the lawyer draws attention to the fact that such permission applied only to their own children, and exposed those who should perform that operation on any

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one who was not a Jew to capital punishment. Only some madmen, the Siccani, continued their religious ambush, and forced the unhappy wretches whom they could surprise in their houses to choose between circumcision and the dagger. The majority knew nothing of these aberrations. It renounced heroism, and made martyrdom useless by those clever distinctions between the precepts which may be transgressed in order to save one’s life and those for which one must suffer death. And from this sprung a singular spectacle: Judaism, which had given the first martyr to the world, now left the monopoly of it to Christians, so much so that in certain persecutions Christians might be seen figuring as Jews, so that they might enjoy the immunities of Judaism. The latter only had martyrs whilst it was revolutionary; as soon as it renounced politics it settled down altogether, and was satisfied with that tolerance, so closely bordering on independence, that was accorded to it. On the other hand, Christianity, which never had anything to do with politics, reckoned martyrs amongst its ranks, till it in turn became triumphant and persecuting. It was the Talmud that created the Jewish people during that long period of repose. The doctors of old had taught the Law without any logical order, solely according to the cases that were brought before them. Then in their teaching they had followed the order of the hooks of the Pentateuch. With Rabbi Ben Aquiba a fresh distribution was introduced, a kind of classification according to matter, necessitating divisions and subdivisions, like a Corpus juris. Thus a second code, the Mischna, was formed side by side with the Thora. The Scriptures were no longer taken as the foundation, and, to speak truly, with that taste for arbitrary interpretation that had been introduced, the Scriptures had become almost useless. It was no longer a question of understanding the will of the legislator clearly, it was a question of finding at any price, in the Bible, arguments in favour of traditional decisions, and verses to which received precepts could be attached. It is the destiny of religions that the sacred books should always be thus destroyed by commentaries. Sacred books alone do not form religions; it is the force of circumstances, involving a thousand wants of which the first originator could not have dreamt. Thus the coincidence between the sacred books and the religious state of any period is never perfect; the coat does not fit well enough, and then the commentator and the traditionalist come and settle matters. Thus it happens that, instead of studying the sacred book by itself, it was thought better, after a certain time, to read it in the codes which have been extracted from it, or rather which have been adapted to it. The attempt to codify the oral Jewish law was made in different directions at the same time. We have no longer the Mischna of Rabbi Aquiba, nor many others that existed. The Mischna of Juda the Holy, written sixty years later, has thrown those that preceded it into oblivion, but he neither invented all the divisions nor all the titles. Many of the treatises in his compilation had been completely drawn up before his time. Besides that, after Aquiba, the original schools disappeared, and the doctors, full of respect for their predecessors, who seemed to them to be surrounded by the halo of martyrdom, tried no new methods—they were mere compilers.

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Thus the Jews made a new Bible for themselves, which rather threw the first one into the shade, at the same time that the Christians did. The Mischna was their Gospel, their New Testament. The distance between the Christian and the Jewish book is enormous. The simultaneous appearance of the Talmud and the Gospel from the same race of people,—of a slight masterpiece of elegance, lightness, and moral subtlety, and of a ponderous monument of pedantry, of miserable casuistry, and religious formalism, is one of the most extraordinary phenomenons of history. These twins are certainly the most dissimilar creatures that ever issued from the womb of the same mother. There is something barbarous and unintelligible, a disheartening contempt for language and form, an absolute lack of distinction and of talent, that make the Talmud one of the most repulsive books that exist. The disastrous consequences of one of the greatest faults that the Jewish people ever committed, which was to turn their back on Greek discipline, which was the source of all classical culture, are clearly felt in it. That rupture with reason itself placed Israel in a state of deplorable isolation. It was a crime to read a foreign book. Greek literature seemed to be a toy, a female ornament, an amusement beneath the notice of a man who was preoccupied with the study of the Law, a childish science which a man ought to teach his son “ at an hour which is neither day nor night.” As the Thora says, “You shall study the law day and night.” Thus the Thora came to be regarded as the embodiment of all philosophy and all science, and dispensing with any other study. Christianity was less exclusive, and took a large portion of Hellenic tradition into its bosom. Separated from that great source of life, Israel fell into a state of poverty, or rather of intellectual aberration, from which it did not emerge till it came under the influence of the so-called Arabian system of philosophy, that is to say, under the influence of a singularly refracted ray of Greek light. There certainly are in this confused medley of the Talmud some excellent maxims, more than one precious pearl of the kind as those which Jesus adopted and idealised. and which the Evangelists made divine in writing them. From the point of view of the preservation of the individuality of the Jewish people, Talmudism was an heroic party, and such as could scarcely be found in the history of a race. The Jewish nation, dispersed from one end of the world to the other, had no other nationality than the Thora; to maintain this scattered whole, without clergy, bishops, pope, or holy city, without any central theological college, an iron chain was required, and nothing binds men together so firmly as common duties. The Jew, carrying all his religion with him, requiring neither temples nor clergy for his worship, enjoyed incomparable freedom in his emigrations to the end of the world. His absolute idealism made him indifferent to material things; faithfulness to the recollections of his race—the confession of faith (the schema) and the practice of the Law, sufficed him. When one is present at any ceremony in a synagogue, at first sight everything seems modern, borrowed, common-place. In the construction of their places of worship the Jews have never sought a style of architecture which would be peculiar to them. The ministers of religion, with their bands, their three-cornered hat, and their stole, look like parish priests; the sermon is formed on the model of the Catholic pulpit; the lamps, the seats, all the furniture, has been bought in the same shop that supplies the neighbouring parish. Nothing in the singing or the music goes further back than the

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fifteenth century. Some portions of the worship even are imitations of the Catholic form. The originality and the antiquity suddenly burst forth in the profession of faith: 'Hear, O Israel, Adonai, our God, is One, holy is His name!” This headstrong proclamation, this persistent cry, which in the end has carried away and converted the world, constitutes the whole of Judaism. That people has made God, and yet there never was a people less given to disputing about God.

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One very sensible feature, in fact, was to have chosen practice, and not dogma as the basis for religious communion. The Christian is united to the Christian by the same belief; the Jew is united to the Jew by the same observances. By making the union of souls bear on truths of the metaphysical order, Christianity prepared the way for schisms without number; by reducing the profession of faith to the schema, that is to say, to the affirmation of the Divine Unity and to the outward bond of ritual, Judaism got rid of the logical disputes from its midst. The season for excommunication amongst the Jews was generally acts, not opinions. The Cabala always remained a matter for free speculation, and never became a compulsory article of faith; the immortality of the soul was regarded as a consoling hope, and it was allowed without difficulty that religious practices would be abolished when Messiah came, when Jewish principles would be universally adopted. Even the belief concerning Messiah had a doubt cast upon it by a learned doctor, and the Talmud gives his opinion without blaming it. That was very judicious. It is perfect nonsense to be compelled to believe any particular doctrine, whilst the greatest external strictness may be allied to entire liberty of thought. That is the reason of that philosophical independence which ruled in Judaism during the Middle Ages down to our days. Eminent doctors, the oracles of the synagogue, such as Maimonides and Mendelsohn, were pure rationalists. A book like the Iccarim. (Fundamental Principles) of Joseph Albo, which proclaimed that religion and prophecy are only a form of symbolism which is destined to ameliorate man’s moral condition, that all divine laws can be modified, that individual punishments and rewards in the future life are nothing but figures of speech, that such a book, I say, should become celebrated and not incur any anathema, is a fact that is without example in any other religion. And piety did not suffer for it. Those men who had no hope in a future life endured martyrdom with admirable courage, and died accusing themselves of imaginary crimes, so that their death might not be too strong an objection against the justice of God. Great disadvantages counterbalanced the advantages of that severe discipline to which Israel submitted in order to retain the unity of its race. Their ritual united co-religionists amongst themselves, but separated them from the rest of the world, and condemned them to an isolated life. The chains of the Talmud forged those of the Ghetto. The Jewish people, which up till then had been so devoid of superstition, became its most thorough type, and the mocking allusions that Jesus made to the Pharisees were justified. For centuries their literature turned chiefly on the sacred furniture and vestments, and on slaughter houses. That other Bible became a prison in which the new Judaism carried on its unhappy life of reclusion up to our days. Enclosed in that unwholesome encyclopedia, the Jewish intellect got so sharp that it went wrong. For the Israelites the Talmud became a sort of Organon, in every respect inferior to that of the Greeks. The Jewish doctors put 83


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forward the same claims as the jurists who in the sixteenth century declared that they could find a whole system of intellectual culture in Roman Law. In our time, this vast collection, which still serves as the basis for Jewish education in Hungary and in Poland, may be considered as the principal source of the defects which may be remarked occasionally amongst the Jews of those countries. The belief that Talmudic studies supply the place of all others, and make those who devote themselves to them fitted for everything, is the great cause of that presumption, that subtlety, that want of general culture, which so often destroy really fine qualities in the Israelite. 135

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The Jewish mind is endowed with extreme vigour. For centuries it was forced to rave because it was restricted to a narrow and barren circle of ideas. The activity which it displayed was the same as if it had been working in a wide and fertile soil, and thus the result of headstrong work, applied to a thankless dry matter, was mere subtlety. To wish to find everything in texts was to oblige themselves to childish feats of strength. When their natural sense is exhausted, a mystical sense is sought for, and then men set to work to count letters, and to compute them as if they were numbers. The chimeras of the Cabala and of the Notarikon were the last results of that extreme spirit of exactitude and of servile adherence. In such an accumulation of disputes as to the best means of fulfilling the Law, there was the proof of a very ardent religious spirit; but we may be allowed to add that there was in it something of a witticism and of amusement. Ingenious and active men, who were condemned to a sedentary life, driven from public places and from the general society of the time, sought means to get rid of their weariness by combining dialectics with the texts of the Law. Even in our time, in those countries where Jews live exclusively among themselves, the Talmud is, if we may say so, their chief diversion. The meetings which they have to explain its difficulties, and to discuss obscure or imaginary cases, seem to them to be pleasure parties, and those subtleties which we look upon as irksome, have seemed, and still seem, to thousands of men to be the most attractive matter to which human genius can be applied. From that moment the Jews acquired all the faults of isolated men: they became morose and malevolent. Till that time the spirit of Hillel had not altogether disappeared, and at least some gates of the synagogue were open to converts; but now they would have no more proselytes. They asserted that they had the true, the only Law, and at the same time asserted that that Law belonged to them only. Any one who tried to join God’s people was repelled with insults. Certainly it was only right to be discreet, and to inform the neophyte of the dangers and unpleasantnesses that awaited him. But they did not stop there: every proselyte was soon looked upon as a traitor; as a deserter who would make use of Judaism as a short cut to Christianity. It was openly declared that proselytes were Israel’s leprosy, and that these intruders ought to be mistrusted to the twenty-fourth generation. The wise distinctions that the Jews of the first century, and the Haggadists, who took their inspiration from Isaiah and Jeremiah, made with regard to ceremonial, that grand concession that the precept of circumcision only applied to the descendants of Abraham, were all forgotten. From that time forward proselytism was forbidden, and the law of Antoninus, which permitted Jewish children alone to be circumcised, became superfluous; for it was evident that neither the Greek nor Roman 84


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world would resign itself to an ancient African practice which had its origin in a matter of health, but which was not at all fitted for our climate, and which had become oppressive and senseless for the Jews themselves.

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Morals suffered somewhat from so many attacks on nature. Without containing any bad advice, and, even strangely enough, whilst insisting on bashful modesty, the Talmud often mentions lascivious subjects, and takes a tolerably excited imagination on the part of its writers for granted. In the third and fourth centuries, Jewish morals, especially those of the patriarchs and doctors, are said to have been very lax, but, above all things, in this decrepit Israel, reason seems to have been weakened. The supernatural is scattered about lavishly in an insane fashion. Miracles appeared so simple that a hallel, a special prayer, is devoted to them as to one of the most ordinary events of life. There never was any nation which, after a period of extraordinary activity, underwent such a terrible abasement. A small sect, hedged in by numerous rules which prevent it from living the general life, is unsociable by nature, and is necessarily hated and easily gets to hate others in turn. In a large society which is imbued with great liberal principles, as our modern civilisation is, and as in some respects Arabian civilisation, and that of the first half of the Middle Ages were, that causes no great inconvenience. But in a society like that of the Christian Middle Ages, and like in the East in our time, it is the cause of accumulated antipathies and contempt. The Jewish Talmudist, who, wherever he went, was a stranger without a fatherland, often proved himself a scourge for the country to which chance had taken him. We must remember the Jews of the East and of the coast of Barbary, who are filled with hatred when they are persecuted, and are arrogant and insolent as soon as they feel that they are protected. The noble efforts of the Jews of Europe to improve the moral condition of their Eastern brethren are themselves the best proof of the inferiority of these latter. No doubt the detestable social organisation of the East is the primary cause of the evil, but the exclusive spirit of Judaism has also much to do with it. The regulations of the Ghetto are always disastrous, and, I repeat it, that Pharisaism and Talmudism made that rule of reclusion the natural state of the Jewish people. For the Jew, the Ghetto was not so much a restraint coming from outside as a consequence of the Talmudic spirit. Any race would have perished under it, and the manner in which the Jewish people resisted this deleterious mode of life, speaks highly for its moral constitution.

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No one who has any lofty mind can help feeling a profound sympathy for a people which has played so extraordinary a part in this world, that one cannot imagine what would have been the history of the human race if chance had checked the destinies of that small tribe. In judging of that terrible crisis which the Jewish people went through about the beginning of our era, which caused, on the one hand, the foundation of Christianity, and, on the other, the destruction of Jerusalem and the introduction of Talmudism, there are several acts of injustice that have to be repaired. The colours in which the Pharisees are represented in the Gospels have been rather heightened; the Evangelists seem to have written under the influence of the violent ruptures which took place

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between the Christians and the Jews about the time of the siege of Titus. In the Acts of the Apostles, in all that we know about the Church of Jerusalem, and of James, the Saviour’s brother, the Pharisees have a very different part to that which they play in the discourses which the Synoptists attribute to Jesus. Nevertheless, one cannot prevent one’s self from being decidedly with Hillel, with Jesus, with St Paul against Sehamaï, or with the Haggadists against the Halachists. It was the Haggada (popular preaching) and not the Halacha (the study of the Law) which conquered the world. Certainly Judaism, serried, resisting, enclosed between the double hedge of the Law and the Talmud which survived the destruction of the Temple, is still grand and imposing. It has done the greatest service to the human intellect; it saved the Hebrew Bible, which the Christians would probably have allowed to be lost, from destruction. Judaism, since it has been dispersed, has given great men to the world, and some of the highest moral and philosophical characters; and on several occasions it has been a valuable auxiliary to civilisation; but it is no longer that grand, fertile Judaism, carrying in its loins the salvation of the world, which the period of Jesus and of the Apostles presents to our view; it is the respectable old age of a man who once upon a time held the destinies of humanity in his hand, and who afterwards lives in obscurity for many years, still worthy of esteem, but for the future without any providential part to play. St Paul, Philo, the author of the Sibylline verses, and of those attributed to Phocylides, were right then when they rejected the practices of Judaism, whilst they maintained its basis. These practices would have made all conversions impossible, for, scrupulously observed by the majority of the nation, they were, and are still, a real misfortune for it and for those countries which they inhabit in large numbers. The prophets, with their lofty aspirations, and not the Law, with its strict observances, contained the future of the Hebrew people. Jesus is the outcome of the prophets, and not of the Law, whereas the Talmud is the worship of the Law carried to superstition. After having waged relentless war on all idolatries, Israel substituted a fetichism for them, the fetichism of the Thora.

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CHAPTER XIV. THE MUTUAL HATRED OF JEWS AND CHRISTIANS.

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THE Jewish catastrophe of the year 134 was almost as advantageous for the Christians as that of the year 70 had been. In their eyes, everything that savoured of the law of Moses must have appeared to be abrogated without a chance of return; faith alone, and the merits of the death of Jesus, were all that remained. Hadrian did a signal service to Christianity when he prevented a Jewish restoration of Jerusalem. Ælia, peopled, like all the colonies were, by veterans and common people from different parts, was no fanatical city, but, on the contrary, a centre disposed to receive Christianity. As a rule, the colonies were inclined to adopt the religious ideas of the countries to which they were transported. They would not have thought of embracing Judaism, but Christianity, on the other hand, received everybody. During the whole course of its three thousand years of history, it was only for those two hundred years, from Hadrian to Constantine, that human life had unfolded freely within its bosom idolatrous forms of worship, established on the ruins of the Jewish religion, complacently adopted more than one Jewish practice. The Pool of Bethesda continued to be a place of healing, even for the heathen, and to work its miracles as in the times of Jesus and of the apostles, in the name of the great impersonal God. For their part, the Christians continued, without exciting any feeling except one of pious admiration in the breasts of the worthy veterans who formed the colony, to perform their cures by means of oil and sacred washings. The traditions of that Church of Jerusalem were distinguished by a special character of superstition, and, of course, thaumaturgy. The holy places, especially the cave and the manger at Bethlehem, were shown, even to the heathen. Journeys to those places sanctified by Jesus and the apostles, began within the first years of the third century, and replaced the former pilgrimages to the temple of Jehovah. When St Paul took a deputation of his churches to Jerusalem, he took them to the Temple, and surely he was thinking neither of Golgotha nor of Bethlehem. Now on the other hand, men strove to retrace the life of Jesus, and a topography of the Gospel was formed. The site of the Temple was known, and, close to it, the stela of James, the Martyr, brother of the Saviour, was venerated. Thus the Christians reaped the fruits of their prudent conduct during the insurrection of Bar-Coziba. They had suffered for Rome that had persecuted them; and in Syria, at least, they found the prize of their meritorious fidelity. Whilst the Jews were punished for their ignorance and their blindness, the Church of Jesus, faithful to the Spirit of her Master, and, like Him, indifferent to politics, was peaceably developing in Judea and the neighbouring countries. The expulsion of the Jews was also the lot of those Christians who were circumcised and kept the Law, but not of those uncircumcised Christians who only practised the precepts of Noah. That latter circumstance made such a difference for their whole life that men were classified by it, and not by faith or disbelief in Jesus. The Hellenistic Christians formed a group in Ælia, under the presidency of a certain Mark. Till then, what was called the Church of Jerusalem had had no priest who was not circumcised, 87


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and, more than that, out of regard for the old Jewish nucleus, nearly all the faithful of that Church united the observation of the Law with belief in Jesus. From that time the Church in Jerusalem was wholly Hellenistic, and her bishops were all Greeks, as they were called. But this second Church did not inherit the importance of the former one. Hierarchically subordinate to Cæsarea, she only occupied a relatively humble position in the universal Church of Jesus, and nothing more was heard of the Church of Jerusalem till two hundred years later.

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In those countries the controversy with the Jews became an object of paramount importance. The Christians thought them much more difficult to convert than the heathen, and they were accused of subtlety and of bad faith in the discussions. It was alleged that as beforehand they had made up their minds to baffle their antagonists, they only looked at minutiæ, at slight inexactitudes, in which they easily got the better. What was said to them about the life of Jesus irritated them, and no doubt the antipathy that they felt for the accounts of the virginal birth of the pretended Messiah, inspired them with the fable of the soldier and of the prostitute who, according to them, were the real authors of that birth, which was allowed to be irregular. Arguments taken from the Scriptures did not affect them any more, and they lost their patience when certain passages were brought up against them in which it appeared as if God were mentioned in the plural. The passage in Genesis: “LET US make man in our own image,” particularly irritated them. A pretty Haggada was invented to guard against that objection: “When God was dictating the Pentateuch to Moses, and He got to the word naase, ‘let us make,’ Moses was very much astonished, and refused to write it down, and vehemently rebuked the Eternal for thus striking a mortal blow at Monotheism. The Eternal, however, maintained his wording, and said, 'Let him who wishes to be deceived, deceive himself’!” The Jews generally admitted that wherever in the Bible there was a passage that was favourable to the plurality of the Divine persons, God, by special providence, has so disposed matters that the refutation is found side by side with it. The essential matter for the Christians was to prove that Jesus had accomplished all the texts of the prophets and the psalms which were thought to apply to the Messiah. Nothing can equal the arbitrariness with which the Messianic application was carried out. The Christian exegesis was the same as that of the Talmud and of the Midraschim: it was the very denial of the historical meaning. The texts were cut up like so much dead matter, and every phrase, separated from its context, was applied without scruple to the prominent prejudice of the moment. Already the Evangelists who wrote at second hand, especially pseudo-Matthew, had sought for prophetic reasons for all the facts of the life of Jesus. Men went much further than that. Not only did Christian exegetes torture the Septuagint version so as to obtain from it anything that might fit into their thesis and abuse the new translators who weakened the arguments which they drew from it, but they forged some passages. The wood of the cross was introduced into Psalm xcvi. 10, where it had never figured; the descent into hell, into Jeremiah; and when the Jews cried out, protesting that nothing like it was found in the text, they were told that they had mutilated the text out of pure spite and bad faith, and that,. for example, they had cut the account of the prophet being sawn in two by a wood saw out of the 88


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book of Isaiah, because that passage brought to mind the crime which they had committed against Jesus, too well. A convinced and ardent apologist finds no difficulty in anything. They referred to the official registers of the returns of Quirinius, which never existed, and to a pretended report of Pilate to Tiberius, that had been forged.

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Dialogue seemed to be a convenient form by which to attain to the wished-for object in these controversies. A certain Ariston of Pella, doubtlessly the same from whom Eusebius has borrowed the account of the Jewish war under Hadrian, wrote a discussion that was supposed to have taken place between Jason, a Jew who had been converted to Christianity and Papiscus, a Jew of Alexandria, who obstinately adhered to his ancient faith. As usual, the war was waged by means of Biblical texts; Jason proved that all the Messianic passages were accomplished in Jesus. The admirers of the book asserted that Jason’s Hebraic arguments were so strong, and his eloquence so gentle, that there was no resisting it. Papiscus, in fact, at the end of the dialogue, his heart enlightened by the infusion of the Holy Ghost, recognised the truth of Christianity, and asked Jason to baptise him. However, the book was not received with unanimous approval. The author appeared almost too simple-minded, and it was thought what he wrote about the Scripture bordered on the ridiculous. Celsus eagerly seized the opportunity of making fun of it, and Origen only defended it in an embarrassed manner, allowing that it was one of the least valuable books that had ever been written in the defence of religion, and recognising it as more fit to instruct the simple than to satisfy the learned. Eusebius and St Jerome gave it up altogether; it was not copied, and so it was lost. Another very inferior book that appeared in Judea has preserved for us the echo of these intestine broils. The author made use of the wills or rather of the recommendations that he put into the mouths of the patriarchs, Jacob’s sons, as the basis of his writing. The language of the original is that Greek interspersed with Hebraisms which is the language of the greater part of the New Testament writings. The quotations are taken from the Septuagint. The author was a born Jew, but he belonged to Paul’s party, for he speaks of the great apostle in a tone of enthusiasm, and he shows himself most severe towards his former co-religionists, whom he accuses of felony and treason. In the work, traces of nearly all the writings in the New Testament are to be found, and the two Bibles are comprehended under the common term of “The Holy Books,” and the book of Enoch is quite confidently quoted as being inspired. Never was the divinity of Jesus spoken of in grander terms. It was because they had slain Jesus and denied his resurrection that the Jews were captives, dispersed over the whole world, given up to the influence of Satan and of demons. Since their apostacy, the spirit of God has gone over to the heathen. Israel will again be gathered together from the dispersion, but it will have the disgrace of not associating itself till late with the converted Gentiles. A striking vision expresses the sentiments of the author with regard to his ancient race. Napthali relates that one day in a dream he saw himself sitting with his brothers and his father on the shore of the lake Jabneh where they saw a vessel sailing at random. It was laden with mummies, and had neither crew nor captain, and its name was The Ship of Jacob. The patriarchal family embarked on

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it, but soon a terrible tempest arose, and the father, who was holding the rudder, disappeared like a phantom; Joseph saved himself on the mast, the others escaped on ten planks, Levi and Juda on the same one. The shipwrecked men were dispersed in all directions; but Levi, clothed in sackcloth, prayed to the Lord, when the tempest was stilled, the vessel reached the land in the midst of a profound calm, the ship-wrecked men found their father Jacob again, and joy became universal.

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The intention of the author of the testaments of the twelve patriarchs had been to enrich the list of the writings contained in the sacred canon; his book is of the same order as the pseudo-Daniel, the pseudo-Esdras, the pseudo-Baruch, the pseudo-Enoch. Its success, however, was not the same. By its declamatory tone and its emphatic commonplaceness, by an exaggerated severity towards the pleasures of love and the luxury of women, by its severe tirades against the Jews, the book was calculated to edify the pious faithful; but the time for great successes with regard to frauds in the Canon of Scripture was passed; already a tolerably strong hedge surrounded the sacred volume and prevented fresh compositions being furtively inserted. so the book was only received in very restricted fractions of the Church. However, as it was altogether Christian and anti-Jewish, it did not share in the reprobation with which the Greek Church visited apocryphal Jewish and Judeo-Christian literature. Copies of it were multiplied, and the original Greek was preserved in a good number of manuscripts. The philosopher Justin of Neapolis, in Samaria, was a much more valuable defender whom the Church acquired at about that period. His father, Priscus, or his grandfather, Bacchius, doubtlessly belonged to the colony which Vespasian established at Sychem, and which procured for that town the name of Flavia Neapolis. His family was heathen, and gave him a careful Hellenistic education. Justin had more heart and religious requirements than rational faculties. He read Plato, tried the different philosophical schools of his time, and as happens to ardent but not very judicious minds, he found satisfaction in none of them. He required the impossible from those schools. He wanted a complete solution of all the problems which the universe and the human conscience raise. The sincere avowal of powerlessness which his different masters made to him attracted him towards the disciples of Jesus. He was the first man who became a Christian through scepticism, the first who embraced the supernatural, that is to say, the negation of reason, because he was out of temper with reason.

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He has related to us, with too much art for his account to be looked upon as an exact autobiography, how he went through all the sects, his errors, the charm which the Jewish revelation exercised on him when he knew it, and the manner in which the prophets led him to Christ. What struck him above all was the eight of the morality of the Christians and the spectacle of their indomitable firmness. The other forms of Judaism, by which he was surrounded, especially the sect of Simon Magus, only filled him with disgust. The philosophical turn which Christianity was already assuming had great attractions for him. He adhered to the dress of the philosophers, that pallium which was nothing but an index of an austere life devoted to asceticism, and which many Christians

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were fond of wearing. In his eyes his conversion was no rupture with philosophy. He was fond of repeating that he had only begun to be a real philosopher from that day; that he had only abandoned the writings of Plato for those of the prophets, and profane philosophy for a new philosophy—the only sure system, the only one which gives repose and peace to those who profess it. The attraction which Rome possessed over all the sectaries made itself felt by Justin. Shortly after his conversion he set out for the capital of the world, and there it was that he composed those Apologies, which, by the side of Quadratus and Aristides, were the first manifestation of Christianity to the eyes of a public initiated to philosophy. His antipathy for the Jews, which was inflamed by the recollection of the recent acts of violence of Bar-Coziba, inspired him with another work, whose exegesis was as singular as that of Ariston of Pella, and in which error and injustice have perhaps been pushed even further.

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In fact, the parts were changed. The heathen entered the Church in crowds, and became its most numerous members. The two great bonds that attached the new worship to Judaism—the Passover and the Sabbath—were getting looser day by day. Whilst in St Paul’s day the Christian who did not observe the law of Moses was hardly tolerated, and was constrained to make all kinds of humiliating concessions, it was now the Judaising Christian whom it was not wished to exclude from the Church. If he was irreproachable in his faith in Jesus Christ and in his obedience to the commandments, if he was persuaded of the inefficacy of the Law, if he only wished to observe a part of it by way of a pious remembrance, if he would not in any way trouble those Gentiles whom Jesus Christ had truly circumcised and brought out of error, if he was not guilty of any propaganda to persuade those latter to submit to the same practices as he did himself, if he did not hold up these practices as obligatory and necessary for salvation, he might be saved. This, at any rate, was what men of large mind admitted. But there were others who neither dared to have intercourse nor to live with those who observed the Law in any shape. “As for me,” Justin says, “I believe that when a person, from weakness of understanding, wishes to observe as much as he can of that Law which was imposed upon the Jews because of the hardness of their heart, when, at the same time, that person hopes in Jesus Christ, and is determined to satisfy all the eternal and natural duties of justice and of piety, that he makes no difficulty in living with other Christians without wishing to induce them to be circumcised or keep the Sabbath, I believe, I repeat, that such a person ought to be received to friendly intercourse in every way. But any Jews who pretend to believe in Jesus Christ and wish to force the faithful Gentiles to observe the Law, I reject absolutely. . . . Those who, after having known and confessed that Jesus is the Christ, abandon their faith because they are persuaded by these obstinate-minded men in order to go over to the Law of Moses, whatever may be their reason for doing so, will find no salvation unless they acknowledge their fault before their death.”

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Origen looks at matters in a similar fashion. Jews who have become Christians, according to him, have abandoned the Law. Jews who observe the Law as Christians are Ebionites and sectaries, 91


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because they value circumcision and practices that Jesus has abolished. Logic accomplished itself. It was inevitable that a duality which prevented Christians from eating together even at Easter, must end in a complete schism. From the middle of the second century, in fact, the hatred between the two religions was sealed. The quiet disciples of Jesus, and the Jews who were exiled for their territorial fanaticism, became daily more mutually furious. According to the Christians, a new people had been substituted for the ancient. The Jews accused the Christians of apostacy, and subjected them to real persecution. “They treat us like enemies, as if they were at war with us, killing us and torturing us when they can, just as you do yourselves,” Justin said to the Romans.

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Women who wished to become converts were scourged in the synagogues and stoned. The Jews reproached the Christians for no longer sharing the anger and the griefs of Israel. The Christians began to inflict a reproach on the whole Jewish nation which certainly neither Peter, nor James, nor the author of the Apocalypse would have addressed to them, that of having crucified Jesus. Up till then his death had been looked upon as Pilate’s crime, as that of the High Priests and of certain Pharisees, but not of the whole of Israel. Now the Jews were made to appear as a decided nation, one that assassinated God’s envoys and rebelled against the clearest prophecies. The Christians made a sort of dogma out of the non-reconstruction of the Temple, and looked upon those as their most mortal enemies who put forward any pretensions to giving the lie to their prophecies on this matter. As a matter of fact, the Temple was not restored till the time of Omar, that is to say, at the period when Christianity in its turn was conquered at Jerusalem. When Omar wished to be shown the holy site, he found that the Christians had converted it into a place for depositing filth, out of hatred for the Jews. The Ebionites or Nazarenes, who had for the most part retired to the other side of the Jordan, naturally did not share these sentiments. They were a numerous body, and by decrees gained possession of Paneas, all the country of the Nabateans, Hauran, and Moab. They kept up their relations with the Jews and Aquiba, and the most celebrated doctors were known to them; Aquila was their favourite translator, but the mistakes that they made with regard to the period at which those two teachers flourished, proves that they had only received a vague echo of their celebrity. Besides this, the writers of the Catholic Church speak about two sorts of Ebionites, one of which retained all the Jewish ideas, and only attributed an ordinary birth to Jesus, whereas the other agreed with St Paul in admitting that observances were necessary only for Israelites by blood, and admitted that Jesus had a supernatural birth, such as is recounted in the first chapter of Matthew. The dogmas of the Ebionite school followed the same line of development as those of the Catholic Church; by degrees, even in that direction, there was a tendency to elevate Jesus above humanity. Although they were excluded from Jerusalem as being circumcised, the Ebionites of the East were always supposed to dwell in the Holy City. The Ebionites of the rest of the world still looked 92


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upon the Church of Jerusalem as it had been in the time of Peter and James as the peaceful capital of Christendom. Jerusalem is the universal kibla of Judeo-Christianity; the Elkasaites, who observed that kibla to the letter, only symbolised the general feeling. But such a resistance to evidence could not last long. Soon Judeo-Christianity had no longer a mother, and Nazarene or Ebionite traditions existed no longer except amongst the scattered sectaries of Syria. Hated by the Jews, almost strangers to the Churches of St Paul, the Judeo-Christians decreased daily. It was not with them as it was with other Churches, which were all situated in large cities, and participated in the general civilisation, for they were scattered about in unknown villages, to which no rumours from the outside world had access. Episcopacy was the product of great cities: they had no Episcopacy. Thus having no organised hierarchy, deprived of the ballast of Catholic orthodoxy, tossed about by every wind, they were more or less lost in Essenism and Elkaism. With them the Messianic belief resulted in an endless theory about angels. The theosophy and the asceticism of the Essenes caused the merits of Jesus to be forgotten; abstinence from flesh, and the ancient precepts of the Nazarites, assumed an exaggerated importance. The literature of the Ebionites, which was all in Hebrew, appears to have been weak. Only their old Hebrew gospel, which resembled that of Matthew, preserved its value. The converted Jews who knew no Greek were fond of it, and still made it their gospel in the fourth century. Their Acts of the Apostles, on the other hand, were more or less sophisticated. The journeys of Peter, which are scarcely mentioned in the canonical Acts, received a large development through their imagination. They added on to them some wretched apocryphas, which were attributed to some of the prophets and apostles, and in which James seems to have played a principal part. Hatred for St Paul breathes out of all those writings, the like of which we shall find written in Greek at Rome.

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Such a false position was sure to condemn Ebionism to death. “Wishing to maintain an intermediary position,” Epiphanius wittily remarks, “Ebion was nothing, and in him this saying was accomplished: ‘I came near suffering every misfortune, party wall as I am between the Church and the synagogue.’” St Jerome also says that because they wished to be Jews and Christians at the same time, they did not succeed in being either Jews or Christians. Thus at the very birth of Christianity occurred what has happened in nearly all religious movements. The first century of the Hegira witnessed the extermination of the companions, relations, and friends of Mahomet, of all those, in a word, who wished to enjoy the monopoly of that revolution of which they were the authors. In the Franciscan movement, the real disciples of St Francis d’Assisi found, at the end of a generation, that they were dangerous heretics who were given up to the flames by hundreds. The fact is that in those first days of a creative activity ideas progress with giant strides: the imitator soon becomes retrograde, and a heretic amongst his own sect, an obstacle to its views, which wish to progress in spite of him, and thus often insult and kill him. He does not advance any more, and everything is advancing around him. The Ebionim, for whom the first Beatitude had been pronounced (Blessed are the Ebionim!), were now a scandal for the Church, and their pure

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doctrine was looked on as blasphemy. Certainly the jokes of Origen, and the insults of Epiphanius towards the real founders of Christianity, have something offensive about them. On the other hand, it is certain that the Ebionim of Kokaba would not have transformed the world if Christianity had remained a Jewish sect; a small Talmud would have been the result, and the Thora would never have been abandoned. In time the relations of Jesus would have become a religious aristocracy, which would have been intolerable and destructive to the work of Jesus. Like nearly all the descendants of great men, they would have laid claim to the inheritance of his genius, or of his sanctity, and would have treated those with disdain whom Jesus would, with much more reason, have taken as his spiritual family. Like the heirs of some celebrated writer, they would have wished to keep what he had thought and felt for the benefit of all to themselves. The lowly Jesus would have become a principle of vanity for some foolish people; the desposyni would have been persuaded that their great-great uncle had preached and had been crucified to obtain religious titles and honours in the synagogue for them. Jesus seems to have feared this serious mistake; one day, stretching out his hand to his disciples, he said with perfect truth,— Behold, my mother and my brethren. Whoever does the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.

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Ebionism and Nazaraism continued till the fifth or sixth centuries in the more remote parts of Syria, especially in the countries beyond Jordan, which was the refuge of all the sects, as well as in the region of Alep, and in the island of Cyprus. Persecuted by the orthodox emperors, it disappeared in the whirlwind of Islam. In one sense it might be said that it was continued by Islam. Yes, Islamism is, in many respects, the prolongation or rather the revenge of Nazaraism. Christianity, such as the Greek polytheists and metaphysicians had made it, could not suit the Syrians or Arabs, who held strongly to the view of separating God from man, and who required the greatest religious simplicity. The heresies of the fourth and fifth centuries, having their centre in Syria, are a sort of permanent protestation against the exaggerated doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, which the Greek fathers brought so prominently forward. Theodoret asked himself how he, who is the author of life, could become mortal. He, who has suffered, is a man whom God took from our midst. Sufferings belong to man, who is passible. It was the form of the servant which sufered. Ibas, of Edessa, said:— I do not envy Christ, who has become God, for I may become what he has become.

And on Easter Day he ventured to express himself thus: To-day, Jesus has become immortal.

That is the pure Ebionite or Nazarene doctrine. Islamism says nothing more. Mahomet knew Christianity from those communities established beyond the Jordan which were opposed to the Council of Nicæa and to the councils which it developed. For him, Christians are Nazarenes. Mussulman Docetism has its roots in the same sects. If Islamism substitutes the Kibla of Mecca

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for that of Jerusalem, on the other hand it renders the greatest honour to the site of the Temple: the mosque of Omar rises from that ground which was defiled by the Christians. Omar himself worked to clear away the filth, and pure monotheism rebuilt its fortress on Mount Moriah. It is often said that Mahomet was an Arian: that is not exact. Mahomet was a Nazarene, a Judeo-Christian. Under him Semitic monotheism regained its rights, and avenged itself for those mythological and polytheistic complications which Greek genius had introduced into the theology of the first disciples of Jesus.

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There was one direction in which the Hebrew Ebionites were important in the literary work of the Universal Church. The study of Biblical Hebrew, which was so neglected in Paul’s Churches, continued to flourish amongst them. From their midst, or from the midst of neighbouring sects, there sprang the celebrated translators Symmachus and Theodosion. They are represented now as Ebionites now as Samaritans, always as proselytes, deserters, Judaising heretics. The controversies with regard to the Messianic prophecies, especially with regard to the Alma, the alleged virgin mother of Isaiah, brought men back to the study of the text. The Hebrew Gospel and its slightly altered brother the Gospel of St Matthew, with its legends and genealogies at the beginning, were another object of polemics. Symmachus, above all, seems to have been a universally respected doctor in those distant Churches. It was under conditions which differed but little from those that have been described that, apparently, the Syriac version of the Old Testament, called Peschito, was made. According to some, Greeks were its authors; according to others, Judeo-Christians; it is, however, certain that Jews collaborated in it, as it is produced directly from the Hebrew, and as it has some passages which are remarkably parallel with the Targums. According to all appearances, this version was produced at Edessa. Later, when Christianity dominated in those countries, the New Testament writings were translated into a dialect which is altogether analagous to that of the ancient Peschito.

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That school of Hebraising Christians did not outlive the second century. The orthodoxy of the Hellenistic Churches was always suspicious of Hebraic truth; piety did not inspire men with any wish to consult it, and the study of Hebrew offered almost insurmountable obstacles to any one who was not a Jew. Origen, Dorotheus of Antioch, and St Jerome were exceptions. Even Jews who were living in Greek or Latin countries greatly neglected the ancient text. Rabbi Meir, obliged to go to Asia, could not find a Hebrew copy of the book of Esther amongst the inhabitants; he wrote it for them from memory, so that he might be able to read it in the synagogue on the day of Purim. It is certain that, but for the Jews of the East, the Hebrew text of the Bible would have been lost. By preserving that invaluable document of the old Semitic world for us, the Jews have rendered a service to the human race which is equal to that which the Brahmins have rendered it by preserving the Vedas.

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CHAPTER XV. ANTONINUS PIUS. HADRIAN returned to Rome, which he did not leave again, in 135. Roman civilisation had just exterminated one of its most dangerous enemies, Judaism. On all sides there was peace, the respect of peoples, the barbarians apparently submissive, and the mildest maxims of government introduced and carried out.

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Trajan had been perfectly right in believing that men can be governed whilst they are treated with civility. The idea that the State was not only tutelary but also benevolent was taking deep root. Hadrian’s private conduct gave rise to grave reproach; his character got worse as his health became worse, but the people did not notice it. Unexampled splendour and well-being which enveloped everything like a brilliant halo, hid the defective sides of the social organisation. To speak the truth, these defective sides were capable of being corrected. The door was open to any progress. Stoic philosophy was penetrating the legislature, and introducing into it the idea of the rights of man, of civil equality, and of the uniformity of provincial administration. The privileges of the Roman aristocracy were daily disappearing, and the chiefs of society believed in and were working for progress. They were philosophers who, without looking for Utopia, yet desired the greatest possible application of reason to human affairs. That was worth a great deal more than the fanatical and inapplicable Thora, which at best was only good for a very small nation. Men had reason to be satisfied with life, and behind that fine generation of statesmen one could perceive another wiser, more serious, more upright still. Hadrian was amusing himself, and he had the right to do so. His curious and active mind dreamt of all sorts of chimeras at one and the same time, but his judgment was not sure enough to preserve him from faults of taste. At the foot of the hills of Tibur he had a villa built which was, as it were, the album of his journeys and the pandemonium of celebrity. It might have been called the noisy and somewhat bold fair of a dying world. Everything was there: false Egyptian, false Greek, the Lyceum, the Academy the Prytaneum, the Canous, the Alpheus, the vale of Tempe, the Elysian Fields, Tartarus; temples, libraries, theatres, a hippodrome, a naumachia, baths. It was a strange place, and yet attractive I For it was the last place in which men amused themselves, where men of intellect went to sleep to the empty noise of “greedy Acheron.” At Rome the chief care of the fantastic emperor was that senseless tomb, that vast mausoleum, where Babylon was outdone, and which, stripped of its ornaments, has been the citadel of Papal Rome. His buildings covered the world; the atheneums that he founded, the encouragement that he gave to letters and fine arts, and the immunities that he granted to professors, rejoiced the hearts of all men of learning. Unhappily

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superstition, eccentricity, and cruelty more and more gained the upper hand over him as his physical forces left him. He had built himself an elysium, in order not to believe in it, and a hell, to laugh at it; a hall of philosophers, to make fun of them; a canopus, to point out the impostures of priests, and to recall to his mind the foolish festivals of Egypt, that had made him laugh so much. Now, everything seemed to him hollow and empty: nothing more supported him. Perhaps some martyrdoms which took place during his reign, and for which there seems to have been no motive, are to be attributed to the caprices and disorders of his last months. Telesphorus was then the head of the Church at Rome; he died confessing Christ, and passed to the number of the glories of the faith.

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The death of this amateur Cæsar was sad and without dignity, for no really lofty moral sentiment animated him. Nevertheless, in him the world lost a powerful support. The Jews alone triumphed over the agonies of his last moments. It was customary amongst them not to mention him except saying after his name, “May God smash his leg.” He was sincerely attached to civilisation, and understood well what it would come to in time. With him ancient literature and art came to an end. He was the last emperor who believed in glory, just as Ælius Verus was the last man who knew how to enjoy delicate pleasures. Human affairs are so frivolous that brilliancy and splendour must take their share in them. A world will not hold together without that; Louis XIV. knew it, and men lived and live still in his sun of gilded copper. In his own fashion, Hadrian marked a summit, after which a rapid descent commenced. Certainly Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius were vastly his superiors in virtue, but under them the world was getting sad and losing its gaiety, was beginning to wear the monk’s cowl and become Christian; superstition was on the increase. Hadrian’s art, although it also had its gnawing worm, still holds to principles: it is a clever and wise art; afterwards the decadence set in with irresistible force. Ancient society perceives that all is in vain; now, the day when one makes that discovery, one is near death. The two accomplished sages who are going to reign are two ascetics, after their own fashion. Lucius Verus and Faustina will be the unclassed survivors of the ancient elegance. It really was from that time that the world bade farewell to joy, treated the muses as seductresses, will no longer listen to anything but what keeps up its melancholy, and becomes changed into a vast hospital. Antoninus was a St Louis as far as heart and rectitude went, with much more judgment, and a wider range of intellect. He was the most perfect sovereign that ever reigned. He was even superior to Marcus Aurelius, as the reproaches of weakness which may be addressed to the latter cannot be applied to him. To enumerate his virtues would be to enumerate all the qualities of which a perfect man can command. In him all the world saluted an incarnation of the mythical Numa Pompilius. He was the most constitutional of sovereigns, and, of the same time, simple, economical, quite taken up with good deeds and public works, far from any excess, free from rhetoric and any affectation of mind. By his means philosophy really became a power; everywhere philosophers

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were richly pensioned; already he was surrounded by ascetics, and the general direction of the education of Marcus Aurelius was his work.

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Thus the world’s ideal seemed to have been attained, wisdom reigned, and for twenty-three years the world was governed by a father. Affectation, false taste in literature, fell to the ground; people became simple; public instruction became an object of lively solicitude. The condition of the whole world was ameliorated; excellent laws, especially in favour of slaves, were carried; the relief of those who suffered became the object of universal care. The preachers of moral philosophy even surpassed the successes of Dion Chrysostom; the seeking for frivolous applause was the rock which they had to avoid. A provincial aristocracy of upright people who wished to do right, had succeeded the cruel aristocracy of Rome. The force and the loftiness of the ancient world were being lost, and men were becoming good, gentle, patient, humane. As always happens, socialistic ideas profited by that largeness of views and made their appearance, but general good sense and the force of established order prevented them from becoming a public evil. The similarity between these aspirations and those of Christianity was striking, but a profound difference separated the two schools, and was bound to make them hostile to each other. By its hope in the approaching end of the world, by its badly-concealed wishes for the ruin of ancient society, Christianity in the midst of the beneficent empire of the Antonines became a subverter that it was necessary to combat. Always pessimistic, inexhaustible in mournful prophecies, the Christian, far from being of service to national progress, showed that he disdained it. Nearly all the Catholic doctors looked upon war between the empire and the Church as necessary, as the last act in the strife between God and Satan; they boldly affirmed that persecution would last till the end of time. The idea of a Christian empire, though it sometimes presented itself to their mind, seemed to them a contradiction and an impossibility.

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Whilst the world again began to live, the Jews and Christians wished more obstinately than ever that it should be approaching its last hour. We have seen the false Baruch exhaust himself in vague announcements. The Judeo-Christian Sibyl never ceased thundering the whole time. The ever-increasing splendour of Rome was a terrible insult to divine truth, to the prophets, to the saints, and so they boldly denied the happiness of the century. All the natural scourges, which continued to be tolerably numerous, were represented as signs of implacable anger. The past and present earthquakes in Asia were made the most of as signs of fearful terrors. According to the fanatics, the only cause of these calamities was the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. Rome, the harlot, had given herself up to a thousand lovers, who have intoxicated her; in her turn she shall be a slave. Italy, covered with blood from civil wars, had become the haunt of wild beasts. The new prophets, to express the ruin of Rome, employed nearly the same images which had served the Seer of 69 to depict his sombre rage. It was difficult for a society to put up with such attacks, without replying. The Sibylline books which contained those which were attributed to the pretended Hystaspes, and which announced the 98


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destruction of the empire, were condemned by the Roman authorities, and those who possessed them or read them were condemned to death. The uneasy search into the future was a crime under the empire; in fact, such vain curiosity almost always served as a cloak or a wish for revolutions and incitements to murder.

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It would certainly have been worthy of the wise emperor, so many humane reforms, if he had despised the intemperate imagination without a real object, and if he had abrogated the severe laws which, under Roman despotism, weighed on the liberty of worship and of meeting; but evidently no one about thought of it, any more than any one did who was about Marcus Aurelius. The unfettered thinker alone can be quite tolerant; now Antoninus observed and scrupulously maintained the ceremonies of the Roman worship. The policy of his predecessors had been unvarying in that respect. They saw in Christianity a secret anti-social sect which dreamt of the overthrow of the empire; like all the men who were attached to the old Roman principles, they believed it necessary to repress it. There was no necessity for special edicts: the laws against cœtus illiciti and illicita collegia were numerous. The Christians came in a quite regular manner under the power of those laws. It must be observed, first of all, that the true spirit of liberty, as we understand it, was not understood by any one at that time; and that Christianity, when it became the master, did not practise it any more than the heathen emperors; in the second place, that the abrogation of the law of illicit societies would most likely in fact have been the ruin of the empire, founded essentially on this principle that the State cannot admit any society which differs from it into its midst. The idea was wrong, according to our ideas; however, it is quite certain that it was the corner-stone of the Roman constitution. The foundations of the empire would have been thought to be overthrown if those repressive laws which were looked upon as essential conditions to the stability of the State had been relaxed. The Christians seemed to understand this. Far from finding fault with Antoninus personally, they rather looked upon him as having ameliorated their lot. A fact which does this sovereign infinite honour, is that the principal advocate of Christianity ventured to address him with full confidence, in order to obtain redress from a legal situation which he reasonably found unjust and unbecoming in such a fortunate reign. They went further, and there is no doubt that during the first years of Marcus Aurelius different rescripts were forged in the name of Antoninus, which, supposed to be addressed to the Lariseans, the Thessalonians, the Athenians, to all the Greeks, to the Asiatic States, were so favourable to the Church that if Antoninus had really countersigned them he would have been very inconsistent in not turning Christian. These documents only prove one thing,—the opinion which the Christians retained of the excellent emperor. He did not show himself less benevolent towards the Jews, who no longer menaced the empire. The laws forbidding circumcision, which had been the consequence of Bar-Coziba’s revolt, were abrogated, as far as they were vexatious. The Jew was at perfect liberty to sacrifice his sun, but the penalty for practising the operation on a non-Jew was castration, that is, death. Civil jurisdiction within the community does not appear to have been restored to the Jews till later. 99


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Such was the rigour of the established legal order, such was the popular effervescence against the Christians, that even 'during this reign one is sorry to find many martyrs. Polycarp and Justin are the most illustrious amongst them, but they were not the only ones. Asia Minor was stained with the blood of very many judicial murders, which were all provoked by riots; we shall see Montanism rise up like a hallucination of that intoxication for martyrdom. In Rome, the book of the false Hernias will appear to us as if it came out of a bath of blood. Prejudice for martyrdom, questions relating to renegades, or to those who had shown some weakness, fill up the whole book. Justin has described to us on every page Christians as victims who expect nothing but death; their very name, like in the time of Pliny, was a crime.

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Jews and heathens persecute us on all sides; they rob us of our possessions, and only leave us our life when they cannot deprive us of it. They cut off our heads, nail us to the cross, expose us to wild beasts, torture us with chains, with fire, with the most horrible torments. But the more ills we have to endure, the more the number of the faithful increases. The vine-grower prunes his vines to make them shoot out anew; he cuts off the branches that have borne fruit, to make it throw out others more vigorous and fruitful; the same thing happens to God’s people, which is like a fertile vine, planted by its band and that of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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CHAPTER XVI. THE CHRISTIANS AND PUBLIC OPINION. IN order to be just, one must picture to oneself the prejudices amongst which the public then lived. Christianity was very little known. The lower classes do not like distinctions, or for some to live apart by themselves, for others to be more Puritan than they are, and to abstain from feasts and their usages. When one hides oneself, they always suppose that there is something to hide. In all time secret religious rites have provoked certain calumnies, which are always the same. The mysteries by which they are surrounded cause others to believe in unnatural debaucheries, in infanticide, incest, even in anthropophagy. They are tempted to believe that it is a secret camorra, organised in opposition to the laws. Besides this, informing had in ancient law, in spite of the efforts of good emperors, an importance which fortunately it no longer possesses, and thence sprang a type of libel, drawn up, so to say, in advance, from which no Christian could escape.

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Everything was certainly false in those popular rumours, but some badly-understood fact seemed to give some substance to them. Certain inquiries had turned out to the detriment of those who were inculpated. The apologists do not deny it: respect for the matter which had been judged stops them, but they charge the sectaries with the evil, and ask that the faults of some may not be laid to all. The nocturnal gatherings, the signs of recognition, certain eccentric symbols, everything that had anything to do with the mystery in the Eucharist, the sacramental phrases with regard to the body and blood of Christ, excited suspicion. That bread which the Christian woman ate in secret before every meal must have appeared to be a philtre. A number of practices seemed tokens of the crime of magic, which was punished with death. The custom of the faithful to call each other brother and sister, and above all the holy kiss, the kiss of peace, which was given without distinction of sex at the most solemn moment of the assemblage, would be sure to provoke the most unfavourable interpretations in the mind of a public that was incapable of understanding this golden age of purity. The idea of meetings where all familiarities and promiscuities were allowed, naturally arose from such facts, which were distorted by malice and sarcasm. The accusation of atheism was even more redoubtable. It entailed the punishment of death as a parricide, and worked up all superstitions at once. The undissembled aversion of the Christians for the temples, statues, and altars was constantly productive of some incident. There was no scourge, no earthquake, for which they were not held responsible. Every act of sacrilege, every fire in a temple, was attributed to them. Christians and Epicureans were confounded in this respect, and their secret presence in any town caused consternation, which was worked upon to raise the mob. The lower classes were thus the centre of hatred for the Christians. What the authentic acts of the martyrs treat with the greatest contempt, and as the worst enemies of the saints, are the ruffians of

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the large towns. The faithful never looked upon themselves as belonging to the people; they seemed in the towns to form the respectable middle class, very respectful towards the authorities, and very much disposed to come to an understanding with them. To defend themselves before the people seemed to the bishops to be a disgrace: they would only argue with the authorities. How plain it is that the very day the government would relax its rigour, Christianity and it would soon come to an understanding! How clear it is that Christianity would be delighted to be the religion of the government. A singular thing is that the only portion of heathen society with which the Christians had any analogy of opinion was the group of Epicureans. The name of Atheists was equally assigned to the disciples of Jesus and those of Epicurus. They had, in fact, this feature in common, that they denied, though certainly from very different reasons, the puerilely supernatural and the ridiculous wonders in which the people believed. In them the Epicureans saw the impostures of the priests, the Christians the impostures of the devil. What aggravated the case of the Christians was that by their exorcisms they were supposed to be able to stop local wonders, and to impose silence on the oracles which made the fortune of a city or of a country. When Alexander of Abonotica saw that his frauds were discovered, he said,—“There is nothing surprising in that; Pontus is full of Atheists and Christians!” That frightened the people, and restored to the impostor a momentary popularity. He burnt the books of Epicurus, and ordered the partisans of both sects to be stoned. Amastris, a Christian and Epicurean town, was particularly hateful to him. At the beginning of his mysteries there was a cry: “ If there is any Atheist, Christian, or Epicurean here, let him go out!” He himself said: “Put the Christians out!” and the mob replied: “Put the Epicureans out!” In that superstitious country the name Epicurean was synonymous with accursed. Like that of Christian, any one who bore it ran the risk of his life, or at least was put under the ban of society. The Christians made use of the arguments of free-thinkers and of the incredulous to turn the popular beliefs into ridicule, and to fight against fatalism. The oracles were an object of mockery to all men of intellect and common sense; the Christians applauded this quizzing. One curious fact is that of Œnomaüs of Gadara, a Cynic philosopher, who having been deceived by a false oracle, lost his temper, and took his revenge in a book called The Deceits Unveiled, in which he wittily ridiculed as an imposture the superstition of which he had for a moment been the dupe. This book was eagerly received by Jews and Christians. Eusebius has inserted it entire in his Evangelical Preparations, and the Jews appear to have put the author on a footing with Balaam, in the class of involuntary apologists of Israel, and of the apostles amongst the heathen. The Christians and Stoics, between whom there was really more resemblance than between the Christians and the Epicureans, never blended. The Stoics did not make a parade of contempt for public worship. The courage of the Christian martyrs seemed to them foolish obstinacy, an affectation of tragical heroism, a determination to die, which merited nothing but blame. These crowds of infatuated individuals of Asia irritated them. They confounded them with vain and proud Cynics who sought for theatrical deaths, and burnt themselves alive, in order that they might be spoken about. 102


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There was certainly more than one point of resemblance between the Christian philosopher and the Cynic; austere dress, constant declamation against the century, an isolated life, open resistance to the authorities. The Cynics, besides a dress which was analogous to that of the begging friars in the Middle Ages, had a certain organisation, novices, superiors. They were the public professors of virtue, censors, bishops, “angels of the gods,” in their own manner; a pastoral vocation was attributed to them, a mission from Heaven to preach and give advice, a mission that required celibacy and perfect renunciation. Christians and Cynics excited the same antipathy in moderate men, because of their common contempt for death. Celsus reproaches Jesus, like Lucian reproaches Peregrinus, with having spread abroad that fatal error. “What will become of society,” men asked themselves, “if this spirit gets the upper hand, if criminals no longer fear death?” But the immorality, the coarse impudence of the Cynics, would not allow such a confusion, unless to very superficial observers. Nothing that is known of the Cynics authorises the belief that they were anything but attitudinarians and villainous fellows. There is no doubt that in many cases the provocation came from the martyrs. But civil society is wrong to allow itself to be drawn into acts of rigour, even towards those who seem to ask for them. The atrocious cruelty of the Roman penal code creates a martyrology which is itself the source of a vast legendary literature, full of unlikelihoods and exaggeration. Criticism, in exposing what is untenable in the accounts of the acts of the martyrs, has sometimes gone to the opposite extreme. The documents which were at first represented as reports of the trials of the martyrs, have been mostly found to be apocryphal. As the texts of historians, properly so called, relating to persecutions are rare and short; as the collections of Roman laws contain next to nothing about the matter, it was natural that the greatest reserve should be imposed on it. One might be tempted to believe that the persecutions really were only a slight matter, that the number of martyrs was inconsiderable, and that the whole ecclesiastical system on this point is nothing but an artificial structure. By degrees light was thrown on the subject. Even freed from legendary exaggeration, the persecutions remain one of the darkest pages of history, and a disgrace to ancient civilisation. Certainly if we were reduced to the acts of the martyrs to know about the persecutions, scepticism could have a free course. The composition of the acts of the martyrs became at a certain period a species of religious literature for which the imagination, and a certain pious enthusiasm, were much more consulted than authentic documents. With the exception of the letter relative to Polycarp’s death, that which contains the account of the sufferings of the heroes of Lyons, the acts of the martyrs of Africa, and some other accounts which bear the stamp of being written in the most serious manner, one must allow that the documents of this character, which have been too easily accepted as sincere, are nothing but pious romances. We know also that the historians of the empire were singularly poor in detail on what refers to the Christians as well as on other matters. The true documents concerning the persecutions which the Church had to suffer, are the works that compose the primitive Christian literature. These works need not be by the authors to whom they are attributed, to have authority on such a question. There was such a widespread taste at that date for attributing 103


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documents, that a great number of those books which have been left to us by the first two centuries are by uncertain authors; but that does not prevent these books from being exact mirrors of the time at which they were written. The first Epistle attributed to St Peter, the Revelation of St John, the fragment that is called the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of Clement Romanus, even though it be not by him, the totally or partially apocryphal Epistles of St Ignatius and Polycarp, the Sibylline poems that belong to the first or second century, all the original documents that Eusebius has preserved for us on the origin of Montanism, the controversies between the Gnostics and the Montanists about martyrdom, the Pastor of Hermas, the Apologies of Aristides and of Quadratus, of St Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, show at each page a state of violence that weighs on the thoughts of the writer, besets him in a measure, and leaves him with no just appreciation of the situation. From Nero to Commodus, except at short intervals, one might say that the Christian lived continually with the prospect of being put to death before his eyes. Martyrdom is the basis of Christian apology. To listen to the controversialists of the period, it is the sign of the truth of Christianity. The orthodox Church alone has martyrs; the dissenting sects, the Montanists, for example, made ardent efforts to prove that they were not deprived of that supreme criterion of truth. The Gnostics are put under the ban by all the Churches, above all because they declared martyrdom to be useless. In fact then, as Tertullian wishes, persecution was the natural state of the Christian. The details of the acts of the martyrs may be mostly wrong, but the terrible picture that they lay before us, was nevertheless a reality. One has often drawn a wrong picture to oneself of that terrible strife which has surrounded the origins of Christianity with a brilliant halo and impressed on the most beautiful centuries of the empire a hideous blot of blood: one has not exaggerated its gravity. The persecutions were an element of the first order in the formation of that great association of men which was the first to make its rights triumph over the tyrannical pretensions of the State.

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As a matter of fact, men die for their opinions, not for certainties—for what they believe, and not for what they know. A scholar who has discovered a theorem has no need to die in order to attest the truth of that theorem; he proves his demonstration, and that is enough. On the other hand, as soon as it is a question of beliefs, the great sign and the most efficacious demonstration is to die for them. That is the explanation of the extraordinary success which some of the religious attempts of the East have obtained. “You Europeans will never understand anything about religions,” said to me the most intelligent of Asiatics, “for you have never had the opportunity of seeing them formed amongst yourselves; whereas we, on the contrary, see them formed every day. I was there whilst people who were cut to pieces and burnt, suffered the most horrible tortures for days, danced and jumped for joy because they were dying for a man whom they had never known (the Bab), and they were the greatest men of Persia. I, who am now speaking to you, was obliged to stop my legend, which in a manner preceded me, to prevent the people from getting killed for me.”

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Martyrdom does not at all prove the truth of a doctrine, but it proves the impression that it has made on men’s minds, and that is all that is needed for success. The finest victories of Christianity, the conversion of a Justin, of a Tertullian, were brought about by the spectacle of the courage of the martyrs, of their joy under torments, and of the sort of infernal rage which urged the world on to persecute them. 172

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CHAPTER XVII. THE SECTS AT ROME—THE CERYGMAS—THE ROMAN CHRISTIAN—DEFINITIVE RECONCILIATION OF PETER AND PAUL. ROME was at the highest period of her grandeur: her sway over the world seemed uncontested; no cloud was visible on the horizon. Far from growing weaker, the movement that led the provincials, above all those of the East, to come there in crowds, increased in intensity. The Greek speaking population was more considerable than ever. The insinuating Græculus, who was good for every trade, was driving the Italian from the domesticity of great houses; Latin literature was daily losing ground, whilst Greek was becoming the literary, philosophical, and religious language of the enlightened classes, just as it was the language of the lower classes. The importance of the Church of Rome was measuring itself with that of the city itself. That Church, which was still quite Greek, had an uncontested superiority over the others. Hyginus, her chief, obtained the respect of the whole Christian world. Rome was then for the provinces what Paris is in its brilliant days, the city of all contacts, all fecundations. Whoever wished to find a place of mark aspired to go thither; nothing was consecrated but what had received its stamp at that universal exhibition of the productions of the entire universe.

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Gnosticism, with its ambition of setting the fashion in Christian preaching, especially yielded to that tendency. None of the Gnostic schools sprang from Rome, but nearly all came to an end there. Valentinus was the first to try it. That daring sectary may even have had the idea of seating himself on the episcopal throne of the unrivalled city. He showed every appearance of Catholicism, and preached in the absurd style that he had invented. Its success was mediocre; that pretentious philosophy, that unquiet curiosity, scandalised the faithful. Hyginus drove the innovator from the Christian pulpit. From that time forward the Roman Church indicated the purely practical tendency which was always to distinguish her, and showed herself ready quickly to sacrifice science and talent to edification. Another heterodox doctor, Cerdon, appeared at Rome about that time. He was a native of Syria, and introduced doctrines which differed but little from those of the Gnostics of that country. His manner of distinguishing God from the Creator; of placing another unknown god above God, the father of Jesus; of representing one of the gods as just, the other as good, sounds contrary to right. Cerdon found that this world was as imperfect a work as that Jehovah Himself to Whom it was attributed, and who was represented as subject to human passions. He rejected all the Jewish books in a mass, as well as all the passages in Christian writings, from which it might result that Christos had been able to take real flesh. It was quite simple: matter seemed to him to be a deterioration, an evil. The Resurrection was repugnant to him for the same reason. The Church censured him; he submitted, and retracted his opinions, then began to dogmatise afresh, either in public or private.

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Thence arose a most equivocal position. His life was spent in leaving the Church and joining it again, in doing penance for his errors, and in maintaining them afresh. The unity of the Church was too strong in Rome for Cerdon to be able to dream of forming a separate congregation there as he would certainly have done in Syria. He exercised his influence over a few isolated individuals, whom the apparent depth of his language and of doctrines which were then quite novel seduced. A certain Lucain or Lucian is particularly quoted amongst his disciples, without mentioning the celebrated Marcion, who, as we shall see, sprang from him. The abstract Gnosticism of Alexandria and Antioch, appearing under the form of a bold philosophy, found little favour in the capital of the world. It was the Ebionites, the Nazarenes, the Elkasaites, the Essenes, which were all Gnostic heresies in a way, but of a moderate and Judeo-Christian Gnosticism in their affinities, it was those heresies, I say, that swarmed at Rome, which made the legend of Peter, and created the future of that great Church. The mysterious formulas of Elkasaism were usual in their midst, especially for the baptismal ceremony. The neophyte, presented on the edge of a river or a fountain of flowing water, took heaven and earth, air and water, to witness that it was his firm resolve to sin no more. For these sectaries, who sprang from Juda, Peter and James were the two corners of the Church of Jesus. We have often remarked that Rome was always the principal home of Judeo-Christianity. The new spirit, represented by the school of Paul, was checked there by a highly conservative one. In spite of the efforts of conciliatory men, the apostle of the Gentiles had here also obstinate adversaries. Peter and Paul fought their last battle before becoming definitely reconciled in the bosom of the Universal Church for eternity.

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The life of the two apostles was beginning to be much forgotten. They had been dead about seventy-seven years; all who had seen them had disappeared, the greater portion without leaving any writings behind them. One was at perfect liberty to embroider on that still virgin canvas. A vast Ebionite legend had been formed in Rome and was settled at about the time at which we have arrived. St Peter’s journeys and sermons were its principal object. In it the missionary journeys of the chief of the apostles, especially along the coasts of Phœnicia; the conversions which be had effected; his strifes, especially with the great Antichrist who at that time was the spectre of the Christian conscience, Simon Magus, were related. But often in hidden words, under that abhorred name was hidden another personage, the false Apostle Paul, the enemy of the Law, the destroyer of the true Church. The true Church was that of Jerusalem, over which James, the Lord’s brother presided. No apostolate was valid which could not produce letters emanating from that central college. Paul had none, he was therefore an intruder. He was the “enemy” who came behind the real sower to sow the bad seed. With what force, too, Peter exposed his impostures, his false allegations of personal revelations, his ascension into the third heaven, his pretensions of knowing things about Jesus which those who had heard the Gospel had not heard, his disciples' exaggerated conceptions of the divinity of Jesus! At Antioch especially Peter’s triumph was complete. Simon had succeeded in turning the people of that city away from the truth. By a series of clever manœuvres Peter brought one of the victims of Simon’s sorceries, to whom the magician had imparted his own 107


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form, to show himself to the people of Antioch. What was their astonishment on hearing him whom they took for the Samaritan magician, retract in these terms:— I have lied about Peter he is the true apostle of the prophet who was sent by God for the salvation of the world. The angels beat me last night for having calumniated him. Do not listen to me if I speak against him in the future!

Naturally all Antioch returned to Peter and cursed his rival. 176

Thus the real apostle continued his journeys, following the traces of the Samaritan impostor, and arrived at the capital of the empire immediately after him. The impostor redoubled his artifices, invented a thousand spells, and gained Nero’s mind. He even succeeded in passing off as God, and in being adored. His admirers raised altars to him, and, according to the author, these altars were still shown in his time. On the island of the Tiber, in fact, a college of the Sabine god Semo Sancus was established. There there were a number of votive columns, SEMONI DEO SANCO, on which it was easy to read, with a little goodwill, SIMONI DEO SANCTO. The decisive struggle was to take place in the emperor’s presence. Simon’s programme was that he would raise himself into the air, and would hover there like a god. He did raise himself in fact, but on a sign from Peter the skin of his magic was burst, and he fell ignominiously, and was shattered to pieces. A similar accident had happened in the amphitheatre of the Campus Martius under Nero. An individual who had claimed to be able to raise himself into the air like Icarus, fell on to the angle of the emperor’s box, and he was covered with blood. Perhaps some real facts in the life of the Samaritan charlatan served as a foundation for these stories. At any rate the discomfiture of the impostor was represented as Peter’s greatest glory, and by it he really took possession of the eternal city. According to the legend his death followed very soon on his victory; Nero, irritated at the misadventure that had happened to his favourite juggler, put the apostle to death.

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Such is the legend which, started about the year 125 by the passions and rancour of the Jewish party in the Church at Rome, was by degrees softened down, and produced, towards the end of Hadrian’s reign, the work, in ten books, called “The Preaching of Peter,” or “The Journeys of Peter.” The legend had been cut into three parts for the purposes of publication. “ The Preaching” contained the account of Peter’s apostolate in Judea; the Periodi comprised Peter’s journeys and his controversies with Simon in Syria and Phœnicia. His sojourn at Rome and his struggles before the Emperor were the subject of the “Acts of Peter,” another composition which formed, in some sort, the sequel of the Cerygma and of the Periodi. Those accounts of his apostolical journeys, full of charm for the Christian imagination, gave rise to numerous compositions, which soon became romances. The narrative was interspersed with pious sermons; Peter was made the preacher of all good doctrines; the picture of chaste love vivified and imparted warmth to the painting; Christian romance was created, and no essential machinery has been added to it since.

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All that first literature of the Cerygmas and of the Periodi was the work of Ebionite, Essenian, and Elkasaite sectaries. Peter, represented as the real apostle of the Gentiles, was always its hero; James appeared in it as the invisible president of a cœnaculum filled with the divine spirit, having its seat at Jerusalem. Animosity against Paul was evident Like the Essenes and the Elkasaites of the East, those of Rome attached great importance to the possession of a secret literature which was reserved for the initiated, and the commonest frauds were employed to give to those later productions of Christian inspiration an authority which they did not merit.

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The most ancient edition of the Cerygmas of Peter is lost, and we only possess two fragments which form a sort of introduction to the work. The first is a letter in which Peter addresses the book of his Cerygmas to James, “master and bishop of the Holy Church,” and begs him not to communicate it to any heathen, nor even to any Jew with a preliminary test. Peter says that the admirable policy of the Jews ought to be imitated, who, in spite of the diversities of the interpretation to which the Scripture gives rise, have succeeded in keeping the unity of the faith and of hope. If the book of the Cerygmas were to be circulated indiscreetly, it would give rise to schisms. Peter adds,— I do not know that as a prophet, but because I already see the beginning of the evil. Some of those who are of heathen origin have rejected my preaching, which is conformable to the Law, and have attached themselves to the frivolous teaching of the enemy, which is contrary to the Law. During my life people have tried, by different interpretations, to pervert my words, in the sense of destroying the Law. According to them, that is my idea, but I am not bold enough to declare it. God forbid! that would be to blaspheme the Law of God which Moses proclaimed, and whose eternal duration our Saviour attested when He said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle of the Law shall pass away.” This is the truth, but there are some people who think themselves authorised, I do not know how, to expound my thoughts, and who claim to interpret the discourses that they have heard from me more pertinently than I do myself. They put before their catechumens as my true opinion matters of which I have never dreamt. If such lies are produced during my life, what will they not dare to do after my death?

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James decided in fact that the book of the Cerygmas should only be communicated to circumcised men of mature age who aspired to the title of doctor, and who had been tested for at least six years. The initiation was to take place by degrees, in order that if the results of a first experience were bad it might be stopped. The communication was to be made mysteriously, on the very spot where baptism was administered, and with the formulas of baptismal promises according to the Essenean or Elkasaite rite. The person who was initiated was to promise to submit himself to him who gave the Cerygmas, not to pass them on to any one else, not to copy them or allow them to be copied. If some day the books which were given to him as Cerygmas should not appear to him any longer to be true, he was to give them back to him from whom he had received them. On setting out on a journey he was to give them up “to his bishop professing the same faith as himself, and starting from the same principles.” When he was in danger of death he was to do the same thing, if his sons were not yet fit to be initiated. When they had become worthy of it the bishop would give them the books back, as a paternal deposit. The most singular thing is that the sectary is to foresee the case in which he may himself change his religion, and go over to the worship of some strange god. In

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that case, he must swear by his final god, and rob himself of the subterfuge of saying afterwards, to establish the nullity of his oath, that that God did not exist. “If I break my engagements,” the neophyte was obliged to add, “may the universe be hostile to me, as well as the ether that penetrates everything, and the God who is over all, the best, the greatest of beings. And if I come to know any other god, I swear also by that god that I will keep the engagements that I have taken, whether that god exists or does not exist.” Then, as a sign of secret partnership, the initiator and the initiated took bread and salt together.

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The absurdities of the sectaries would have been without any consequence anywhere but in Rome, but everything that referred to Peter assumed considerable proportions in the capital of the world. In spite of its heresies, the book of the Cerygmas was of great interest for the orthodox. The primacy of Peter was proclaimed in it; St Paul was abused, but a few after touches might soften down anything offensive in such attacks. Thus several attempts were made to lessen the singularities of the new book and to adapt it to the wants of the Catholics. This fashion of altering books to suit the sect towhich one belonged was quite usual. By degrees the force of circumstances made itself felt: all sensible men saw that there was no safety for the work of Jesus except in the perfect reconciliation of the two chiefs of Christian preaching. For a long time still Paul had bitter enemies in the Nazarenes, and he had also exaggerated disciples like Marcion. Outside this stubborn right and left, a fusion of the moderate parties took place, who, although they owed their Christianity to one of the schools and remained attached to it, yet fully recognised the right of the others to call themselves Christians. James, who was the partisan of an absolute Judaism, was sacrificed; although he had been the real chief of the Christians of the circumcision, Peter was preferred to him, as he had shown more regard for Paul’s disciples, and James only retained his vehement partisans amongst the Judeo-Christians. It is difficult to say who gained most by that reconciliation. The concessions chiefly came from Paul’s side: all his disciples admitted Peter without difficulty, whilst most of the Christians of Peter rejected Paul. But concessions often come from the strongest. In reality, every day gave the victory to Paul, and every Gentile who was converted made the balance incline to his side. Out of Syria, the Judeo-Christians were, so to say, drowned by the waves of the newly converted. St Paul’s churches prospered; they had sound sense, a sobriety of intellect, and pecuniary resources which the others did not possess. The Ebionite churches, on the other hand, were daily getting poorer. The money of Paul’s churches was used for the support of poor saints who could not gain their own livelihood, but who possessed the living tradition of the primitive spirit. The communities of Christians of heathen origin admired, imitated, and assimilated to themselves the others' elevated piety and strictness of morals. Soon more distinction could be made as regarded the most eminent persons in the Church of Rome. The mild and conciliatory spirit that had already been represented by Clemens Romanus and St Luke prevailed, and the contract of peace was sealed. It was agreed, according to the system of the author of the Acts, that Peter had converted the first fruits of the Gentiles, and that he was the first to deliver them from the yoke of the Law. It was admitted that 110


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Peter and Paul had been the two chiefs, the two founders of the Church of Rome, and thus they became the two halves of an inseparable couple, two luminaries like the sun and the moon. What one taught, the other taught also; they were always agreed, they combated the same enemies, were both victims of the perfidies of Simon Magus; at Rome, they lived like two brothers, the Church of Rome was their common work. Thus the supremacy of that Church was founded for centuries. So from the reconciliation of parties and the settlement of the earlier strifes there sprang a great unity, the Catholic Church, the Church at the same time of Peter and of Paul, a stranger to the rivalries which had marked the first century of Christianity. Paul’s churches had shown the most conciliatory spirit, and they triumphed. The stubborn Ebionites remained Jewish, and shared the Jewish immovableness. Rome was the point where this great transformation took place. Already the high Christian destiny of that extraordinary city was being written in luminous characters. The transference of Easter to the day of the resurrection, which was in some measure the proclamation of the autonomy of Christianity, was accomplished there, at anyrate in the time of Hadrian.

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The fusion that took place between the groups also took place with regard to their writings. Books were exchanged from one country to another. The writings passed from the Judeo-Christian school to that of Paul, with slight modifications. That Cerygma of Peter, which was, in its first shape, so offensive to Paul’s disciples, became the Cerygma of Peter and Paul. They were supposed to have travelled together, sailed in company, preached the gospel everywhere in perfect harmony. The Church of Corinth, especially, claimed to have been founded at the same time by Peter and Paul. The person of Simon Magus, who in the first Ebionite editions of the Cerygma and of the Periodi of Peter, was Paul himself designated by an offensive epithet, was rather a formidable obstacle. In the Cerygma of Peter and Paul the name of Simon was preserved, and restored to its proper sense. As the symbolism of the Ebionite pamphlet was not evident, Simon for the future was the common adversary whom Peter and Paul had pursued together hand in hand. The fundamental condition of the success of Christianity was now settled. Neither Peter nor Paul could succeed separately. Peter was preservation, Paul revolution: both were necessary. It is told in Brittany that when St Peter and St Paul went to preach Christianity in America, they reached a deep and narrow arm of the sea. Although they were agreed on essential points, they determined to establish themselves one on one side and one on the other, so that they might both teach the Gospel in their own fashion; for it seems that, in spite of their intimate fellowship, they could not live together very well. Each of them, according to the custom of the saints of Brittany, set to work to build his chapel. They had the materials, but only one hammer, so that every evening the saint who had worked during the daytime threw the hammer across the arm of the sea to his neighbour. Thanks to the alternative labour resulting from this arrangement, the work went on well, and the two chapels, which are yet to be seen, were built.

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work which was almost as imperious as that which had presided over the formation of the legend of Jesus. The end of the life of Peter and Paul was ordered à priori. It was maintained that Christ had announced Peter’s martyrdom just as he had foretold the death of the sons of Zebedee. A want was felt of associating two persons in death who had been forcibly reconciled. Men wished to prove, and perhaps in that they were not far wrong, that they were put to death at the same time, or at least in consequence of the same event. The spots which were looked upon as having been sanctified by this sanguinary drama were fixed upon at an early date, and consecrated by memoriæ. In such a case, what the people wants always gains the day in the end. There is no popular place in Italy where the portraits of Victor Emmanuel and Pius IX. are not seen side by side, and general belief will have it that those two men, representing principles whose reconciliation is, according to the most general sentiment, necessary to Italy, were really very good friends. If such ideas obtruded themselves into history in our time, one would read some day, in documents which are looked upon as serious, that Victor-Emmanuel, Pius IX. (most probably Garibaldi would be joined in with them) saw each other secretly, understood each other, and liked each other. The association of Voltaire and Rousseau was brought about by analogous necessities. The Middle Ages also tried several times, in order to appease the hatred between Dominicans and Franciscans, to prove that the founders of those two orders had been two brothers,living on the most affectionate terms together, that at first their rules were identical, that St Dominic wore the cord of St Francis, etc. 184

The Cerygma of Peter and Paul was all the more important as it filled up the unfortunate gaps which the Acts of the Apostles showed. In this latter book Peter’s preaching was cut very short, and the circumstances of the apostles' deaths were passed over in silence. The success of a book that represented Peter and Paul going everywhere in company to convert the Gentiles,—going to Rome, preaching there, and both finding the crown of martyrdom there, was assured. The doctrine which they taught, according to this book, was equally removed from Judaism and Hellenism. The Jews were treated by them as enemies of Jesus and of the apostles. At Rome, Peter and Paul announced the destruction of their city, and their perpetual exile from Judea, because they had leaped with joy at the trials of the Son of God. It seems at first sight as if such an important work ought to find a place in the canon of Scripture immediately after the Acts of the Apostles. But the wording of it was incoherent, and incapable of satisfying the whole Christian community in a permanent manner. The evangelical knowledge of the author was too incomplete. He admitted the most childish statements from the Gospel to the Hebrews. Jesus confessed his sins; his mother Mary forced him to be baptised, and at the moment of his baptism the water seemed to be covered with fire. In his discourses to the Gentiles, Paul cited the apocryphal Sibyl of the Jews of Alexandria and of Hystaspes, a heathen prophet who announced the league of the kings against Christ and the Christians, the patience of the martyrs, and the final appearance of Christ, as authorities that ought to convince them. Then, contrary to Paul’s formal

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assertions in the Epistle to the Galatians, Peter and Paul are supposed to have met for the first time in Rome. Other singular opinions soon caused that old compilation to be condemned by the orthodox doctors. The Cerygma of Peter and Paul had only a very uncertain place amongst the canonical writings. The romance of Peter had, from the very beginning, contracted a sort of sectarian bust, which must prevent its being admitted, even after corrections, into the lists of the imposed dogmas. Thus the account of the death of the two apostles, like that of their preaching and journeys, was a matter of caprice, at anyrate as far as regarded form. Simplicity of style, which assures the eternal fortune of a narrative text, something decided in the outline, which makes the reader believe that events could not have happened differently, all those qualities which constitute the beauty of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles, are wanting in the legend of the death of Peter and Paul. Ancient compilations about it existed which have disappeared, but which were not very different from those which have been preserved, and which have fixed the tradition on this important subject. The effect of the legend was abundant and rapid. Rome and all its environs, above all the Via Ostia, were, so to say, filled with pretended recollections of the last days of the apostles. A number of touching circumstances—Peter’s flight, the vision of Jesus bearing his cross, the iterum crucifigi, the last farewell of Peter and Paul, the meeting of Peter with his wife, St Paul at the fountain of Salvian, Plautilla sending the kerchief which kept up her hair to bandage Paul’s eyes—all that made a beautiful whole that only required a clever and simple compiler. It was too late; the vein of the first Christian literature was exhausted; the serenity of the historian of the Acts was lost, and the tone never rose above the level of story or romance. No choice could be made amongst a number of compilations all of which were equally apocryphal; in vain was it sought to cover those feeble accounts with the most venerated names (pseudo-Linus, pseudo-Marcellus); the Roman legend of Peter and Paul always remained in a sporadic state, and was more frequently related by pious guides than seriously read. It was an altogether local affair; no text was consecrated to be read in churches, and none obtained any authority. The creative vein with regard to Gospel literature also grew daily weaker, although it had not absolutely dried up. The Gospel of the Nazarenes, or of the Hebrews, or of the Ebionites, was almost as different in texts as it was in manuscripts. Egypt extracted from them its “Gospel of the Egyptians,” in which the exaggeration of a sickly enthusiasm bordered so closely on immorality. A compilation which had a very great success for a long time was the Gospel of Peter, which was most likely composed at Rome. Justin and the author of the pseudo-Clementine romance seem to have made use of it. It differed little from the Ebionite Gospel, and already showed that prepossession in favour of many which is the feature of the apocryphal writings. Men reflected more and more on the part which would be suitable to the mother of Jesus. They sought to connect her with David’s race; round her cradle miracles were created which were analogous to those which occurred at John Baptist’s birth. A book that was later filled with absurdities by the Gnostics, but which perhaps, when it appeared, did not go beyond the main note of the Catholic Church, the Genna Marias, which differed but little from the writing that is called the Protovangelium of James, satisfied those 113


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wants of the imagination. Legends got more material every day. Men occupied themselves with the evidence of the midwife who attended Mary, and who vouched for her virginity. It did not suffice any longer that Jesus was born in a stable; men wished him, according to certain Jewish ideas which are to be found again in the Haggadic legend of Abraham, to be born in a cave. They tried to turn the journey to Egypt to some account, and as Egypt was the country in which there were the most idols, it was pretended that the mere view of the exiled child sufficed to make all the profane statues fall with their faces to the ground. It was known exactly what trade Jesus carried on. He made carts and other vehicles. They claimed to know the name of the woman who had the issue of blood (Berenice or Veronica), and the statues were shown which she had raised to Jesus in her gratitude. The desire of finding arguments which the heathen could not challenge was the cause of some pious frauds whose success was rapid in that world, which was not hard to please, and which it was intended to impress. The monotheistic Sibyl of Alexandria, which for centuries had not ceased to anounce the ruin of idolatry, was becoming more and more Christian. The authority that was accorded to it was of the first order. The ancient Sibylline collections were continually increasing, by additions in which no trouble was taken to keep up an appearance of probability. The heathen were enraged at what they looked upon as interpolations into venerable books. The Christians answered them with more humour than justice: “Show us any old copies in which those passages are not to be found.” Men of intellect made fun equally of the heathen and Christian Sibyls, and parodied them cleverly, so much so that Origen, for instance, never makes use of these depreciated arguments.

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To these oracles were added those of a certain Hystaspes, under whose name some pretended books on the mysteries of Chaldea were current amongst the heathen. He was made to announce the coming of Christ, the Apocalyptic catastrophes, the end of the world by fire, with an amount of assurance that argued extreme credulity in those to whom they were addressed. About the same time, the documents which were supposed to be official, of Pilate’s administration relating to Jesus, may have been forged. In a controversy with the heathen and the Jews it was a great power to be able to appeal to pretended reports contained in the State archives. Such was the origin of those Acts of Pilate which St Justin, the Quartodecimans, and Tertullian had quoted, and which possessed sufficient importance for the Emperor Maximian II., at the beginning of the fourth century, to look upon it as an act of fair warfare to counterfeit them, in order to cast ridicule and contempt on the Christians. From the moment that it was admitted that Tiberius was officially informed of the death of Jesus, it was natural to suppose that this notification had some effect, and from that fact sprang the opinion that Tiberius had proposed to the Senate to place Jesus in the ranks of the gods. Rome, as has been seen, continued to be the centre of an extraordinary movement. Heretics of all sorts met there, and were anathematised there. The centre of a future orthodoxy was evidently 114


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there. Pius had succeeded Hyginus, and was as firm as his predecessor had been in defending the purity of the faith. Pius is already a bishop in the proper sense of the word. Valentinus and Cerdon, although condemned by Hyginus, were always at Rome, trying to regain their lost ground, retracting at times, received as penitents, then returning to their dreams and continuing to have partisans. At length they were finally excommunicated. Valentinus would seem to have withdrawn to Cyprus; it is tot known what became of Cerdon. His name would have remained unknown if he had not left a disciple behind him who surpassed him in strength of intellect and in activity, and who became the greatest embarrassment for the Church that she had encountered hitherto, towards the middle of the second century.

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CHAPTER XVIII. EXAGGERATION OF ST PAUL'S IDEAS—MARCION. THE great peculiarity of Christianity, the fact of a new religion springing from another religion, and becoming by degrees the negation of the one that had preceded it, naturally gave rise to the most opposite phenomena, till the two forms of worship were completely separated. The reaction would be of two kinds amongst those who did not exactly keep their balance on the narrow edge of orthodoxy. Some, going beyond Paul’s principles, fancied that the religion of Jesus had no connection with the religion of Moses. Others, Judeo-Christians, looked upon Christianity as a mere continuation of the Jewish religion. In general, it was the Gnostics who inclined to the former idea, but those dreamers seemed to be attacked by a sort of practical incapacity. An ardent, intelligent man was found to give the necessary cohesion to the divergent elements, and to form a lasting Church, side by side with that which already called itself— The Universal Church, the great Church of Jesus.

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Marcion was a native of Sinope, a city full of activity, which had already given the two Aquilas, and would later give Theodation, as participators in the religious disputes of the time. He was the son of the bishop of that city, and appears to have been a sailor. Although born a Christian, he had seriously examined his faith, and had devoted himself to the study of Greek philosophy, especially of Stoicism. To that he joined an ascetic appearance and great austerity. His father, as is alleged, was obliged to drive him from his Church, as he was dangerous to the orthodoxy of his faithful hearers. We have already remarked several times on the sort of attraction which brought to Rome, under the pontificate of Hyginus and in the first years of Pius, all those whom the phosphorescent lights of growing Gnosticism seduced. Marcion arrived in the eternal city at the moment when Cerdon unsettled the most sincere believers by his brilliant metaphysics. Marcion, like all the sectaries, first of all showed himself a zealous Catholic. The Church of Rome possessed such great importance that all those who felt any ecclesiastical ambition aspired to govern her. The rich Sinopean apparently made the community a present of a large sum of money, but his hopes were disappointed. He had not that spirit which the Church of Rome has always required in her clergy. Intellectual superiority was but little valued there. His ardent curiosity, his vivacity of thought, and his learning, all appeared dangerous. It could easily be seen that they would not allow him to remain quietly within the narrow limits of orthodoxy. Cerdon, like he did, expiated his pretensions to dogmatic originality in isolation. Marcion became his disciple. The transcendent theories of Gnosticism, taught by that master, must have appeared to be the highest form of Christianity to a mind imbued with philosophical doctrines.

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Moreover, Christian dogma was so little settled as yet that every one of strong individuality aspired to impress it with his own seal. That is enough to explain the intricate roads in which this great man lost himself, without it being necessary to put any faith in the everyday calumnies by which ecclesiastical writers strive to show that the leader of every sect, when he separates himself from the majority of the faithful, obeys the lowest motives. Marcion’s theology only differed from that of the Gnostics of Syria and Egypt by its simplicity. The distinction between the good God and the just God, between the invisible God and the demiurge, between the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians, formed the basis of his system. Matter was the eternal evil. The ancient Law, Jehovah’s work, which was essentially material, interested, severe, cruel and loveless, had only one object: to subject the other peoples, Egyptians, Canaanites, etc., to Jehovah’s people, and it did not even succeed in procuring their happiness, as Jehovah was continually obliged to console them by the promise of sending them his Son. It would have been vain to have expected that salvation from Jehovah if the Supreme God, who was good and invisible and unknown to the world till then, had not sent his Son Jesus, that is to say meekness itself under the apparent form of a man, to combat the influence of the demiurge and to introduce the law of love. The Jews will have their Messiah, son of their God, that is to say, of the demiurge. Jesus is by no means that Messiah; his mission, on the contrary, was to abolish the Law, the prophets, and the works of that demiurge generally; but his disciples understood him wrongly: Paul was the only true apostle. Marcion imposed the task upon himself of finding the ideas of Jesus again which had been obliterated and maladroitly brought back to Judaism by those who succeeded him.

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That was already Manichæism, with its dangerous antithesis, making its appearance in the field of Christian beliefs. Marcion supposes that there are two Gods, one of whom is good and gentle, the other who is severe and cruel. The absolute condemnation of the flesh led him to look upon the continuation of the human race as only serving to prolong the reign of the evil demiurge; he objected to marriage, and would not admit married people to baptism. No sect sought for martyrdom more, nor reckoned, proportionately, more confessors of the faith. According to the Marcionites, martyrdom was the highest Christian liberation, the most beautiful form of deliverance from this world, which is an evil. Bodies do not rise, only the souls of true Christians are brought back to existence. Besides, all souls are not equal, and only arrive at perfection by a series of transmigrations. It will be seen that the doctrine of the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians, and that of the fourth Gospel, was far exceeded. Everything Jewish in the Church became mere dross which must be eliminated. Marcion looked upon Christianity as an entirely new religion, and one without precedent. In that he was a disciple of Paul who had lost his way. Paul believed that Jesus had abolished Judaism, but he did not mistake the divine character of the ancient Law. Marcion, on the contrary, declared that there was no appearance of God in history till Jesus. The Law of Moses was the work of a particular demiurge (Jehovah) whom the Jews adored, and who, to keep them in the fetters of theocracy, gave them priests, and sought to retain them by promises and threats. Such a

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Law, without any superior character, was powerless against evil. It represented justice but not kindness. The appearance of Christ was the manifestation of a complete God who was kind and just at the same time. The Old Testament was not only different from Christianity, it was contrary to it. Marcion wrote a work called Antithesis, in which the two Testaments were put in flagrant contradiction. Apelles, his disciple, wrote a book to show that Moses had written nothing concerning God but what was false and unbecoming. A chief objection to that theory arose from the different Gospels which were then in circulation, and which more or less agreed with what we call the synoptic type. The fourth Gospel had as yet but very little circulation, and Marcion did not know it, otherwise he would have preferred it to the others. In the generally admitted accounts about Jesus, the Jewish impress can be seen on every page; Jesus speaks as a Jew and acts as a Jew. Marcion imposed the difficult task upon himself of changing all that. He composed a Gospel in which Jesus was no longer a Jew, or rather, was no longer a man; he wanted a life of Jesus which should be that of a pure won. Taking St Luke’s Gospel as his basis, which may be called Paul’s Gospel up to a certain point, he remodelled it according to his own ideas, and was not satisfied till Jesus had no more ancestors, parents, forerunners, or masters. If Jesus had only been known to us from texts of that nature, one might doubt whether he had really existed, or whether he were not an à priori fiction, detached from any tie with reality. In such a system, Christ was not born (for Marcion, birth was a stain), did not suffer, did not die. All the Gospel passages in which Jesus recognised the Creator as his father, were suppressed. After his descent into hell he took to heaven with him those persons who were cursed in the Old Testament—Cain, the Sodomites, etc. These poor wanderers, interesting, like all those who have revolted under an ancient fallen régime, came to meet him and were saved. On the other hand, Jesus left Abel, Noah, Abraham, who were servants of the demiurge, that is to say, of the God of the Old Testament, in the dark places of oblivion, as their only merit consisted in having obeyed a tyrant’s laws. It was that God of the Old Testament who caused Jesus to be put to death, and thus worthily crowned an era which had been the reign of evil. It would be impossible to take up a position more utterly opposed to the ideas of Peter, James, and Mark. The last conclusions had been drawn from St Paul’s principles. Marcion put no author’s name to his Gospel, but he certainly looked upon it as “the Gospel according to Paul.” Jesus is no more a man at all, he is the first ideal appearance of a good God, nearly like Schleiermacher understood it sixteen centuries later. A very fine system of morality, summed up in a striving after good, resulted from this spiritualistic and rationalistic philosophy. Marcion was the most original of the Christian masters of the second century after the author of the pseudo-Johannistic writings. But the belief in two gods, which was the foundation of his system, and the colossal historical error which it contained in representing a religion which sprang from Judaism as contrary to Judaism, were profound blemishes which must prevent such a doctrine from becoming those of the Catholicity.

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Its success was extraordinary at first: Marcion’s doctrines spread very quickly over the whole Christian world, but they met with strenuous opposition. Justin, who was then in Rome, combated the innovator in writings which we have not got any longer. Polycarpus received the new ideas with the most lively indignation. It appears that Meliton wrote against them. Several anonymous priests attacked them, and furnished Irenæus with the weapons that he was to use later. Marcion’s position in the Church was a very false one. Like Valentinus and Cerdon, he wished to be part of the Church, and doubtless to preach in it; now the Church of Rome much preferred docility and mediocrity to originality and vigorous logic. Like Valentinus, Marcion made semi-retractations, and retreated; all was useless: the incompatibility was too strong. After being condemned twice, a definite excommunication drove him from the Church. The sum of money which he had given in the first warmth of his faith was refunded to him, and he returned to Asia Minor, where he continued to display immense activity in the propagation of error. It seems that in his latter years he instituted fresh negotiations to attach himself to the Church again, but death prevented their success. Often a certain timidity of character is associated with great speculative boldness, and Marcion seems often to have contradicted himself. On the other hand, such an end answered so perfectly to the wants of orthodox polemics that one must suspect it of having been invented. Apelles restored the Marcionite school to an almost orthodox deism. In any case, Marcion remains the boldest innovator whom Christianity has known, not even excepting St Paul. He never denied the connection between the two Testaments; Marcion opposed them to each other as two antitheses. He even went so far as to claim the right of' re-making the life of Jesus according to his own fashion, and of systematically altering the Gospels. Even St Paul’s Epistles, which he adopted, were arranged and mutilated by him in order to efface the quotations from the Old Testament, and Abraham’s name, which he hated.

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This was the third attempt to make the life of Jesus the life of an abstract being instead of a Galilean reality. The results of different tendencies, which were all equally necessary,—of the wish to idealise a life which became that of a God,—of the desire of denying that that God had a family lineage or country upon earth,—of the impossibility for the Greek Christian to admit that Christianity had anything in common with Judaism, which he despised, these three attempts had very different successes. The author of the pseudo-Johannistic writings set to work in an inconsistent and incoherent manner, but which possessed the advantage of letting an historical biography of Jesus subsist side by side with the theology of the Logos. His attempt was the only one that succeeded, for, whilst looking upon modern Judaism as an evil, and imagining that Truth had descended from heaven with the Logos, he admits that the true Israel has had its mission, and that the world, far from being the work of a demiurge who was hostile to God, was created by the Logos. The Gnostics drowned the Gospel in metaphysics, eliminated every Jewish element, dissatisfied even the Deists, and so destroyed their future. Marcion’s speculations were of a more sober kind; but Christianity was already too much formed, its texts were too settled, its Gospels too much valued, for Catholic opinion to be shaken. Marcion then was nothing but the mere head of a sect, though it is true it was 119


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by far the most numerous before that of Arius. The rage with which orthodoxy pursued him is the best proof of the profound impression that he made on the minds of his contemporaries.

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CHAPTER XIX. THE CATHOLIC APOLOGY—ST JUSTIN.

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A PRINCIPAL fact which may clearly be seen developing from this time forward, is that in the midst of these agitated waves there is a sort of immovable rock, a doctrine between the two extremes, which resists the most diverse attacks, Judeo-Christian and Gnostic exaggerations, and constitutes a central orthodoxy which is destined to triumph over all sects. That universal doctrine which laid claim to priority over all particular doctrines, and to go as far back as the apostles, constitutes the Catholic Church in opposition to heresies. Gnosticism, especially an invincible obstacle in that sort of ecclesiastical tribunal, this was a question of life or death for the Christian religion. The extravagant tendencies of the innovators would have been the annihilation of all unity. Now, as nearly always happens, anarchy created authority, and thus it may be said that in the formation of the Catholic Church Gnosticism and Marcionism played the principal part by antithesis. A man who is very highly esteemed for his profane studies, and his knowledge of the Scriptures—Justin of Neapolis, in Samaria, who had been residing in Rome for several years—taught Christian philosophy and fought energetically for the orthodox majority. He was used to and fond of polemics. Valentinians, Marcionites, Samaritan Jews, heathen philosophers, were in turn the object of his attacks. Justin was not a man of great intellect; he did not know much of philosophy and criticism, and, above all, his exegesis would be looked upon as very defective in our time; but he gives proof of general good sense; he had that sort of mediocre credulity which allows a man to reason sensibly from puerile premisses, and to stop in time so as only to be half ridiculous. His general treatise against heresies, his particular writings against the Valentinians and Marcionites, have been lost, but his works for the general defence of Christianity had an extraordinary success amongst the faithful, and they were copied and imitated; thus, Justin was, in a manner, the first Christian doctor, in the classic sense of the word, whose works have been preserved to no in a relatively complete state.

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Justin, as we have said, had not a strong intellect, but he had a noble and good heart. His great demonstration of Christianity was the persecution of which that doctrine, which was so beneficial in his eyes, was the ceaseless object. The fact that the other sects, the Jews especially, were not persecuted, the joy that the Christians evinced under torture, the calumnies that were spread abroad with regard to the faithful, the number of informers, the peculiar hatred which the princes of this world showed towards the religion of Jesus, a hatred that Justin could only explain to himself by the hatred of evil spirits, all that seemed to him to be a glorious sign of divine truth in favour of the Church. This idea inspired him to take a bold step, to do which he must have been encouraged by the earlier example of Quadratus and Aristides. This was to address himself to the Emperor Antoninus and his two associates, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, in order to obtain redress for a position 121


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which he rightly looked upon as unjust and in contradiction to the liberal principles of the government. The Emperor’s great wisdom, the philosophical tastes of one at least of his associates, Marcus Aurelius, who was then twenty-nine years old, inspired him with the hope that such a great injustice would be made good. Such was the occasion of that eloquent petition which begins thus:— To the Emperor Titus Ælius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius Augustus Cæsar; and to his son Verissimus, a philosopher; and to Lucius, a philosopher, son of Cæsar according to nature, and of Pius by adoption, the friend of knowledge; and to the sacred senate; and to the whole Roman people, for a group of men of every race who are hated and persecuted unjustly, I, one of them, Justin, son of Prixus, grandson of Bacchius, citizens of Flavia Neapolis of Syria, Palestine, I have made this pleading and this request.

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The two titles of Pius and Philosophus obliged those who bear them only to love what is true, and to renounce ancient opinions if they find them bad. The Christians are victims of inveterate prejudice, of calumnies that have been circulated by a united league of all superstitions. They must be punished if they are found guilty of ordinary crimes, but no attention ought to be paid to malevolent rumours. A name in itself is no crime, it only becomes so by the acts that are attached to it. Now the Christians are punished on account of the name they bear, a name that only indicates upright ideas. He who declares that he is not a Christian when he is persecuted, is acquitted without inquiry; he who declares that he is one, is put to death. What is more unreasonable? The life of the confessor and of the renegade ought to be inquired into, to see what good or evil they have done. The reason for this hatred of the Christians is quite simple: it comes from demons. Polytheism was nothing more than the reign of demons. Socrates was the first who wished to overthrow their worship; the demons succeeded in having him condemned as an atheist and an impious man. What Socrates did amongst the Greeks in the name of reason, Reason itself, clothed in a form become man and called Jesus Christ, did amongst the barbarians. This is why the Christians are called Atheists. They are, if by Atheism is understood the denial of the false gods in which men believe, but they are not so in a true sense, since their religion is the pure religion of the Creator, admitting, in the second rank, the worship of Jesus, the Son of God, and in the third rank the worship of the Prophetic Spirit. They do not expect an earthly kingdom, but a divine one. How is it that the authorities do not see that such a faith is a great aid to them in maintaining order in the world? What stronger barrier can there be against crime than the Christian doctrine?

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Here Justin draws a picture of the morality inculcated by Christ according to the texts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and especially according to Matthew. He shows how harmless it is, and how useful to the State. There was no school of philosophy which had not taught one or other of the Christian dogmas, and yet those schools had not been persecuted on that account. The title of Son of God was not so unusual as it appears. A crucified God, born of a virgin, was not unheard of before. Greek mythologies, the thousand religions of the world, have said much stronger things. Was there not a personage called Simon, of the little town of Gitton in Samaria, known to have passed for God at Rome, in the reign of Claudius, on account of his miracles, which he performed by the power of demons? Was not a statue erected to him on the island of the Tiber, between the two 122


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bridges, with this Latin inscription: SIMONI DEO SANCTO? Nearly all the Samaritans and some other nations adore him as the chief God, and look upon a certain Helen, who was a prostitute in her time, and who followed him everywhere, as his chief Ennoia. Menander, one of his disciples, seduced many in an extraordinary manner at Antioch by demons' arts. Marcion, a native of Pontus, who is alive still, another agent of demons, teaches a large number of disciples to rob the Father of the title of Creator and to transfer it to another pretended God. All those people call themselves Christians, as persons who profess different doctrines are called philosophers. Do they practise the monstrous deeds with which Christians are reproached, overturned lamps, nocturnal embraces, promiscuous intercourse, feasts of human flesh? We do not know, is Justin’s answer; in any case, they are not persecuted for the mere fact of their opinions.

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The purity of Christian morals contrasts admirably with the general corruption of the century. The faithful who prohibit marriage live in perfect chastity. A striking example of this was seen at Alexandria. A young Christian, as he wished to give a decisive denial to the calumnies that were spread abroad about the alleged obscene mysteries of their nocturnal reunions, requested Felix, Prefect of Egypt, that a physician, whom he should nominate, might be allowed to castrate him. Felix refused; the young man persisted in his virginity, satisfied with the testimony of his own conscience and the esteem of his brethren. What a contrast to the good Antoninus! The picture of the Christian reunions is chaste and beautiful. First the introduction of those who have just received baptism, that is to say, the “illuminated,” to their place amongst the brethren takes place. Then long prayers are offered up for the whole human race. When prayers are over we mutually kiss each other. Then the bread, a cup of water, and some wine, is brought to the president. He, taking them into his hands, gives praise and glory to the Father of all things, in the name of his Son and of the Holy Ghost; then he thanks God at some length for those gifts which he has bestowed on us. The people show their assent by saying Amen. Then those who are called deacons amongst or give the bread, the wine, and water over which the prayers have been pronounced, to all those who are present, and take them to those who are absent. “This food we call the Eucharist. Only those who believe in the truth of our doctrines, and who have been washed in the laver of regeneration for the remission of sins, and who live according to Christ’s precepts, are allowed to participate in it. For we do not take this food as ordinary bread and wine; but as Jesus Christ, our incarnate Saviour, assumed flesh and blood for our salvation by the word of God, no we are taught that the nourishment over which the prayer composed from the words of Jesus has been pronounced with thanksgiving,—we are taught, I say, that this nourishment, by which our blood and our flesh are nourished by assimilation, are the flesh and blood of Christ Incarnate. For the Apostles, in the memoirs which they have written, and which are called Gospels, tell us that Jesus bade them do this. Taking the bread, he gave thanks, and said: “Do this in remembrance of me; This is my body;” likewise taking the cup be gave thanks, and said: “This is my blood; “ and he reserved that dogma for them alone. If the same thing takes place in the mysteries of Mithra, it is because evil demons, imitating Christ’s institution, have taught how it is

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to be done; for you know, or can know, that the bread and the cup full of water, with certain words pronounced over it, form a part of the ceremonies of initiation. During the days that follow the meetings, we continually remind each other of what has taken place, and those who are able supply the wants of the poor, and we habitually live together. In our oblations we bless the Creator of all things through his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. And on the day which is called the Day of the Sun all those who live in towns or in the country assemble in the same place, and the memorials of the apostles and the writings of the prophets are read, as far as time allows. When the reader has finished, the president addresses words of exhortation and admonition to those who are present, to induce them to conform to such beautiful teaching. Then we all rise together, and send up our prayers to heaven, and, as we have already said, when the prayer is ended the bread and the wine and water is distributed, and he who presides prays and gives thanks with all his night, and the people show their assent by saying “Amen.” Then the offerings over which thanksgivings have been pronounced are distributed; each one receives his share, and that of the absent is sent to them by the deacons. Those who are well off and who wish to give, give what they please, each one as he is disposed. The amount of the collection is handed over to the president; he succours the widows and orphans and those who are m distress through sickness or any other reason, those who are in prison, and strangers who may come; in short, he takes care of all those who are in want. We have this general meeting on the day of the Sun, in the first place, because it is the first day, the day on which God, having metamorphosed darkness and matter, made the world; in the second place, because our Saviour Jesus Christ rose from the dead on that day. They crucified him, in fact, on the day which precedes that of Saturn, and, the day that follows that of Saturn—that is to say, the day of the Sun—having appeared to his apostles and disciples, he taught them those things which we have just submitted to your judgment.

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Justin finished his pleading by quoting a letter of Hadrian to Minicius Fundanus. Believer as he was, he was naturally astonished that men would not yield to such clear arguments, and his manner proves that he thought he should have converted the Cæsars. Certainly the frivolous Lucius Verus did not touch this solemn writing with the tip of his fingers. Perhaps Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius read it; but were they as culpable as Justin believed in not being converted? We cannot pretend to say. Justin had fair game with the immoral fables of Paganism; he demonstrated without difficulty that the Greek and Roman religions were scarcely aught but a tissue of shameful superstitions. But was the unbridled demonology which formed the foundation of all these systems much more reasonable? His confidence in the argument drawn from the prophecies is very artless. Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius did not know the Hebrew literature; if they had known it, they would certainly have found good Justin’s exegesis very trifling. They would have observed, for example, that the 22d Psalm (21) only includes the nails of the Passion by taking the puerile interpretation, contrary to reason, of the Septuagint. The assertion that the Greeks have borrowed all their philosophy from the Jews would have been incredible to them. They would, at best, have found that passage strange, where the pious writer, wishing to prove that the cross is the key to everything, finds this mysterious form in the masts of ships, in the plough and mattock of the labourer, in the workman’s tool, in the human body when the arms are stretched out, in the ensigns

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and trophies of the Romans, in the attitude of the dead emperors consecrated by apotheosis. The direction in which Herod and Ptolemy Philadelphus are thought to have been contemporaries would also, doubtless, have inspired in them some doubts as to the precision of the statement relating to the Septuagint version, the version which serves as the base for all the Messianic reasonings of Justin. If they had been asked to search in the archives of the Empire for the registers of Zuirinius, the acts of Pilate relating to Jesus, they would have had difficulty in finding them. Indeed, the writings of the Sibyl and Hystaspes would have seemed to them of weak authority. They would have been amazed to learn that demons, afraid of the annoyance which these books were going to cause them, had pronounced the penalty of death on these who would read them. 204

It appears that Justin joined to his pleading some illustrations from these apocryphal apologies, and imagined that they would exercise a decisive influence on the minds of the Cæsars. His hopes went beyond that: he demanded that his request should be communicated to the Senate and the Roman people, especially that the falsity of the divinity of Simon the magician should be acknowledged, and that the statue he had at Rome (a certain half column of Semo Sancus) should be officially cast down. Justin’s ardent convictions would allow him no rest. He imagined himself responsible for all the errors he did not combat. The Jews who persisted in not becoming Christians, were the perpetual object of his pre-occupations. He wrote against them in dialogue form, perhaps in imitation of Aristo of Pella, a polemical work which may be reckoned among the most curious literary monuments of budding Christianity.

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Justin supposes that, in his journey from Syria to Rome, about the time of the war of Bar-Coziba, kept back by an accident in navigation at Ephesus, he walked into the alleys of the Xystus, when an unknown person, surrounded by a group of disciples, was struck by the dress he wore, and, approaching him, said, “Hail, philosopher!” He told him, at the same time, that a Socratic sage, whose lessons he had learned at Argos, had instructed him always to respect the philosopher’s mantle, and to seek to have himself instructed by those who wore it. The conversation took a very literary turn, and he found that the unknown was no other than the Rabbi Tryphon or Tarphon, who had fled from Judea to escape the fury of Bar-Coziba’s war, had taken refuge in Greece, and lived oftenest at Corinth. They spoke of God, of Providence, of the immortality of the soul. Justin records how, after having tried all the schools and systems, he has found nothing better than to adhere to Christ. The controversy then becomes lively. Justin accumulates against the Jews the most disdainful reproaches. Not content with having killed Jesus, they would not cease to persecute the Christians. If they did not kill them, it was because power prevented them; but they overwhelmed them with curses, chasing them from the synagogues, and, as often as they could, maltreating, assassinating, and punishing them. The prejudices which the Pagans had against Christianity were inspired by the Jews: they were more guilty of persecutions than even the Pagans who ordered them. They had sent from Jerusalem certain men chosen to spread abroad over the whole world the calumnies with

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which they sought to crush the Christians. They did worse than that; they mutilated the Bible by cutting out the passages which proved the Messiahship and divinity of Jesus. They repelled the LXX. translation, only because that contained the proofs of that very divinity. In controversies they threw out loud cries against the cavils, and the little details they did not comprehend, and refused to see the force of the whole.

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Impartiality compels us to say that if Justin was in those oral disputes such as we see him to be in his book (and unfortunately what we know of his controversies with Cresceus leads us to believe so), the Jews had thoroughly good reason to complain of his inexactness. There never had been a weaker interpreter of the Old Testament. Not only did Justin not know Hebrew, but he had no critical talent; he admitted the most manifest interpretations. His Messianic applications of the texts of the Bible are of the most arbitrary description, and are founded on the errors of the Septuagint. His book certainly did not convert a single Jew, but in the bosom of Catholicism he founded the apologetic exegesis. Almost all the arguments of this order have been invented by St Justin, scarcely any have been added since his time. It is useless to say that the gulf between Judaism and Christianity appears as absolute in this book. Judaism and Christianity are two enemies occupied in doing each other all the evil possible. The Law is abrogated—it has always been powerless to produce justification. Circumcision and the Sabbath not only are abolished things, they were never good things. Circumcision had been imposed by God on the Jews, in foresight of their crimes against Christ and the Christians. “This sign has been given you that you may be separated from other nations and ourselves, and that you should suffer alone that which you now justly suffer, that your country may be rendered desert, your towns delivered to the flames, that strangers may eat your fruits before your eyes, and that no one among you may be able to go up to Jerusalem.” This pretended mark of honour is thus become for the Jews a punishment, a visible sign which marks them out for punishment. The law of the Mosaic precepts has only been instituted because of the iniquities and the hardness of the heart of the people. The Sabbath and the sacrifices have had no other cause. The impossibility which there was for a Jew holding to his old Scriptures, to admit that God had been born and become man, is not even comprehended by Justin. Tarphon would truly have been a most tractable man, if after such controversy he had left his adversary confessing, as Justin pretends, that he had profited much by the discussion.

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Conversions, moreover, became more and more rare. Sides were taken. The moment when dispute is organised is usually that in which already each is hardened in his own view. Transfers have been numerous, so that Christianity had been a badly defined colony, scarcely separate from Judaism. When it is a complete place, guarded by its fortifications, in face of its metropolis, one can no longer pass from one side to another. The Jew, like the Mussulman, will be the most unconvertible of human beings, the most Anti-Christian.

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Justin still lived for some years disputing always against the Jews, the heretics, and the Pagans, writing polemical works without end. An act of juridic severity on the part of Q. Lollius Urbicus, prefect of Rome, will place again the advocate’s pen in his band in the last years of Antoninus' reign. Like nearly all the apologists, he was not a member of the hierarchy. This position without responsibility suits the volunteers of the faith better, and at a pinch allows the Church to disavow them. Justin was always dear to the Catholics. His distance from the sects preserved him from the aberrations which Tatian and Tertullian could not escape. His theology is far from being the orthodox theology of the following ages, but the sincerity of the author made that to be easily shown on his behalf. The Trinity, according to St Justin, was in a state of badly formed embryo; his angels and his demons were conceived in a prodigiously materialistic and infantine fashion; his millenarianism is naive as that of Papias; he systematically grieved St Paul. He believed that Jesus was born in a supernatural fashion, but he knew some Christians who did not admit it. His Gospel differed considerably from some texts held sacred to-day; he made no use of the Gospel called that of John; and the writing that he quotes although approaching most frequently Matthew, sometimes Luke, is not precisely any of the three synoptists. It was probably the Gospel of the Hebrews, called “the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles,” or of Peter, not without analogy with the Gemma Marias, or Protevangel of James, and perhaps identical with the Gospel of the Ebionites. Fables, in any case, abounded in these: they were only a few steps from the puerilities which filled the apocryphal Gospels. But a certain correct sense made Justin avoid these extreme errors. His pagan erudition, all adulterated as it was, struck under-educated people. In fact, he was a splendid pleader. All the apologists who followed him were inspired by him. His admiration for the Greek philosophy could not be to the taste of everyone, but it appeared to be good policy. The time had not yet arrived when insults were hurled against the sages of antiquity: people took the good where they found it; they saw in Socrates a forerunner of Jesus, and in Platonic idealism or sort of pre-Christianity. Justin was as much a disciple of Plato and Philo as he was of Moses and Christ; Moses was older than the Greek sages, and they had borrowed from him their dogmas of natural religion, hence its whole superiority. No theologian had ever opened so widely as Justin the portals of salvation. Revelation, according to him, is a permanent fact in humanity; it is the eternal fruit of the Logos spermaticos, who enlightens naturally the human understanding. All that philosophers and legislators—the Stoics, for instance—ever discovered of good, they owed to the contemplation of the Logos. The Logos is nothing else than reason universally diffused; all who, in whatever country or time they may be, have loved and cultivated reason, have been Christians. Socrates shines in the first rank in this phalanx of the Christians before Jesus. He knew Christ partly. He did not perceive the whole truth, but what he saw was a fraction of Christianity; the combated polytheism, as the Christians do, and be had the honour, like them, to give up his life in the conflict. The Logos descended and resided absolutely in Jesus. He is disseminated among the human souls who have loved the truth and practised good; in Jesus, the Logos is absolutely concentrated.

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With such an idea of reason, it was natural to admit philosophy as an element in the composition of the Christian dogmas. The traces of Greek philosophy are still weak in St Paul and in the pseudo-Johannic writings. In the gnosis, on the contrary, according to Marcion, according to the author of the psuedo-Clementine romance, according to Justin, the Greek philosophy runs with full stream. It was found quite natural to mingle in the Jewish theory of the Logos ideas of the same kind as were believed to be met in Stoicism. Far from renouncing reason, they pretended to give it its share. They held sound philosophy to be the surest ally for Christianity; the great men of the past were considered as the anticipative disciples of Christ, who had come not to overthrow but to purify, complete, and accomplish their work. They admired Socrates and Plato; they were proud of the courage of their great contemporaries, such as Musonius. They said, with a just and large sentiment of truth: “What has been thought or felt before among the Greeks and barbarians, belongs to us.”

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A sort of eclecticism, founded on a mystical rationalism, was the character of this first Christian philosophy. The apologist applied himself to show that the fundamental points of Christianity had not been strange to Pagan antiquity,—that the dogmas on the divine essence, on the Logos, the divine spirit, special providence, prayer, angels, demons, the future life, and the end of the world, might be established by certain profane texts. Even the teaching, most specially Christian, on the birth, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, had analogues in the religions of antiquity. It was maintained that Plato had expressed in the Timæus the doctrine of the Son of God. It was remarked that, in all religions, the ceremonies resembled each other—that the morale is the same throughout all. Far from finding in that an objection, they concluded from this universality the existence of a permanent revelation, of which Christianity had been the most brilliant act.

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CHAPTER XX. ABUSES AND PENITENCE—NEW PROPHECIES. THE Church was like the pious Israel at the time when it built its new temple; with the one hand they fought, with the other they built. The philosophic prepossessions were the act of a very small number. The great Christian work was moral and popular. The Church of Rome especially showed Itself more and more indifferent to these extravagant speculations which delighted minds full of the intellectual activity of the Greeks, but corrupted by the reveries of the East. The disciplinary organisation was the principal work at Rome; that extra-ordinary city applied to that its thoroughly practical genius and its strong energy.

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Penitence had always been a fundamental institution of Christianity. The elect of the future city of God should be absolutely pure. To avoid sin was impossible; it was therefore necessary that means should be found for recovering lost grace. The Church accordingly at an early period erected itself into a tribunal, and transformed repentance into public penitence, imposed by authority and accepted by the delinquent. A mass of questions which were to trouble the Church for a century and a half date from that time. How could people, after having fallen often, become penitent again? Do those means of reconciliation apply to all time? The hypothesis of murder was scarcely thought of; the gentle and timid manners of the sect forbade the idea of a Christian assassin; but adultery in a little congregation of brethren and sisters was common enough. Apostacy, indeed, seeing the bitterness of the persecutions, was not rare. Some, to avoid punishment, went even so far as to curse Christ; some became the denouncers of their brethren; while others contented themselves with a simple denial, “I am not a Christian.” They were ashamed of Christ without exactly blaspheming him. It was this last category of persons who caused the greatest embarrassment. The Church was a source of such gentleness, that the day after their fall, the apostates, the denouncers of their brethren, experienced cruel remorse. They would have desired to re-enter the assembly they had betrayed. The situation of those unfortunates was distressing. Despairing of their salvation, they became the prey of frightful terrors. They could be seen prowling around the Church where they had tasted so many spiritual joys. There was no connection between them and the faithful. With a severity which Jesus would not have approved, but which the gravity of the circumstances excused, they were treated as people infected by the itch, and were called by a cruel pleasantry “the savages, the solitary ones.” Many went to see the confessors in prison and found a sort of austere joy in the hard words which those addressed to them. The larger portion of the faithful considered them as totally dead to the Church, and would not admit that there could be any place of penitence for them there. Some, less harsh, distinguished between those who had blasphemed Christ or denounced their brethren

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and those who had simply denied their faith; these latter could be admitted to repentance. Others, more indulgent still, accorded penitence to those who had denied with the mouth and not with the heart. There was a danger of pushing rigour too far, for the Jews sought to gain to the synagogue those the Church had thus expelled. Besides those great culprits, there were the weak, the uncertain, the worldly—Christians in some sense ashamed, and who dissembled as to their faith, and were thus led unceasingly into semi-apostacies. The Christian profession was something so strict that, if the Christian did not live in the society of his brethren, he was exposed to continual mockery. As he existed only with the end of the world before his mind, the Christian of that time was quite sequestered from public life. Those who were obliged to mix themselves in temporal affairs were led more and more to forsake the society of the saints, and soon to disdain them, to blush for them as brethren, to hear them laughed at without replying. Half-dead to the spiritual life, they fell into doubt. They became rich; they made a separate company, in virtue of the principle that man is led almost necessarily to cultivate the society of persons who have the same fortune as himself. They shunned meeting with the servants of God, fearing that they would ask for alms. The company of the faithful appeared humble; those quitted it in order to lead a more brilliant life with the Gentiles. These worldlings did not abandon God, but they deserted the Church; they kept the faith, but ceased to practise it. Some became repentant, and gave themselves up to works of charity; others, brought into the society of the Pagans, became like them, and abandoned themselves to pleasure. This equivocal middle course did not dispose them to martyrdom. At the least sound of persecution they made an appearance of returning to idols, to escape being disturbed.

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In the very bosom of the Church what imperfection! Such were constantly associated with the congregation, and did not cease to be slanderous, envious, blundering, bold, and presumptuous. The administration of the funds of the Church gave place to such abuses; certain deacons took the supplies of the widows and orphans for themselves. Then the teachers of strange doctrines abounded and seduced the faithful. Placed as judges in the midst of all these troubles, the saints inclined sometimes to indulgence and sometimes to severity. What was serious was that certain sectarian doctors flattered those who had sinned, in the view of personal interest. They sold them indulgence, after a fashion; and in the hope of being recompensed for their casuistry, they told them that they had no need of penitence, and that the pastors were people of an exaggerated severity. The fact is that, in such an assembly of saints, there was scarcely room for lukewarmness. An enthusiastic piety made them believe everything. Prophecy and revelations flourished as in the palmiest days. There resulted serious abuses from this. The individual prophets became the plague of the Church. People went to interrogate them as to the future, even as to temporal affairs. These men received money, and gave the replies which were desired of them. The orthodox admitted that the devils sometimes revealed certain things to impostors, the better to try the righteous; but they maintained that they could always distinguish the prophets of God from frivolous prophets. Naturally

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this caused serious embarrassment, for he whom one called frivolous the other believed guided by “the angel of the prophetic spirit.”

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The orthodox scrupled no more than the heterodox to provide as food for the pious public the most audaciously fabricated revelations, and these revelations were greedily received. Such especially was a prophecy whose title alone marked sufficiently its tendency of spirit. It is related in the book of Numbers that Eldad and Modad, clothed with a portion of the prophetic power of Moses, prophesied out of the ranks and in their entirely individual capacity. Joshua wished them to be silenced. Moses stopped him. “Are you jealous for me?” he asked. “Would to God that all the people of Jehovah were prophets, and that Jehovah sent his spirit upon all!” Eldad and Modad were thus the representatives, among the ancient people, of the individual prophet. They were credited with a book which made much impression on many, and was quoted as inspired Scripture. The symbolism of these new prophets appears sometimes strange and in bad taste. The exhaustion of their species was visible. All these used-up machines produce on us nothing but a result of fatigue and disgust. But for the simple the effect was great; such prophecies fortified the hesitating and warmed the cool. They believed they heard admonitions directly from God.

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An apocalypse attributed to Peter was a very great success; it was admitted into the canon, beside that of John, and read in the greater number of the Churches. Like all apocalypses, it told the faithful of terrors and future calamities; like the Shepherd, of which we shall soon speak, it insisted on the punishment of different sins; like the apocalypse of Esdras, it treated, it would seem, of the state of souls after death. A particular idea of the author is that abortions are entrusted to a guardian angel, who charges himself with their education and development. They suffer the share of sufferings they would have endured if they had lived, and they are saved. The milk that women lose, and which coagulates, is changed into little animalculæ, which devour them at once. From the beginning, the bizarre aspects of the book provoked a strong opposition, and many wished it not to be read in public. This opposition only increased with time. The gloomy images which were to be found in it, however, made them keep it for the readings of the holy week. Then the antipathy of the Greek orthodox Church against apocalypses—an antipathy which was powerless against the apocalypse of John—succeeded in expelling this, and even in destroying it altogether. The habit of public reading of the apostolical and prophetical readings in the Churches consumed, if one may so express it, many books: the circle of received writings was quickly run through, and the readers were thrown with earnestness on the new books which appeared, even when their titles to theopneusty were not very correct. There resulted from this a certain style of habit which went on for ten or twenty years. Sometimes, when the book was out of vogue, they limited its reading to one fixed day yearly. This may be seen clearly in a curious little writing of that time, which has been preserved to us. It is a sort of homily, evidently for the use of the Roman Church, which the anagnost read after 131


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the large readings drawn from the sacred pages. This homily is itself a tissue of quotations taken from the Gospels, the ancient prophecies, and writings which it is now impossible to determine. The most compromising passages of the Gospel of the Egyptians are there quoted side by side with Matthew and Luke, and framed in a style of language destined to excite the piety of the “brethren and sisters.” The writing was attached, as a Roman document, to the epistle of Clement, and, with it, was copied accordingly into a great number of Bibles. 216

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CHAPTER XXI. ROMAN PIETISM—THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS. ONE BOOK had in this fashion a durable success, and served during several centuries for the nourishment of Christian piety. It had as its author a brother of Pius, the bishop of Rome. This personage, who doubtless occupied a considerable place in the Church, conceived the project of striking a great blow, sufficient to awaken the saints. He pretended that, fifty or sixty years before, in the time of the persecution of Domitian, a certain Hermas, an elder of the Church of Rome, had had a revelation. Clement, the guarantee for all the pious frauds of Roman Ebionism, covered the book with his authority, and was believed to have it addressed to the churches of the whole world.

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Hermas, a foundling born in slavery, had been sold, by the proprietor of slaves who had brought him up, to a Roman lady named Rhoda. He had doubtless succeeded in buying his liberty, and setting himself up in life; for at the opening of the work, he is under the blow of annoyances which his wife, his children, and his affairs have caused him, as these last, in consequence of the disagreement of his family, proceed very badly. His sons had even committed the greatest crime of which a Christian could be culpable; they had blasphemed Christ to escape persecution, and had denounced their parents. In the midst of these sorrows, poor Hermas found out Rhoda, whom he had not seen for many years. The small consolation he had in her household rendered his heart sensitive, it would appear; he began to love his old mistress like a sister. One day, seeing her bathe in the Tiber, he presented his hand to her to help her out of the river, and said to her, “Howhappy should I be if I had a wife as beautiful and accomplished!” His thought did not go further, and such a reflection was all the more excusable that his wife was bitter, disagreeable, and full of defects. But the severity of Christian morals was so great that the quiet Platonic love of Hermas was remarked in heaven by the jealous watcher of pure souls; and he was to be convicted of it as of a crime. Some time after—in fact, as he was going to his country house, situated at Cuma, ten stadia from the Campanian Way, and while he admired the beauty of God’s works, he slept when travelling. In spirit he traversed rivers, ravines, mountain crevasses, and, returning to the plain, began to pray to the Lord and to confess his sin. Now, while he prayed, the heaven was opened, and he saw the woman he had desired saying to him, “Good day, Hermas.” Having looked at her, “Mistress, what are you doing here?” asked he. And she replied, “I have been brought here to accuse you of your sins before the Lord.” “What! are you my accuser?” “No; but listen to the words I am speaking to you. God, who dwells in heaven, who has created all things that exist out of nothing, and has made them great for the holy Church, is angry with you, because you have sinned in regard to me.” “I have sinned in regard to you!” replied Hermas; “and in what way? Have I ever said an improper word to you? Have I not always treated you as my mistress? Have I not always respected you as my sister? Why do you represent me falsely, oh, woman, for wicked and impure acts?” And then, smiling, she said to him, “For a righteous man like you desire alone is a great sin; but pray to God and he will pardon your sins and those of all your household and those of all the saints.” After she had

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said these words, the heavens were closed, and Hermas was afraid. “If this is to be looked on as sin, how is it possible to be saved?”

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As he was plunged in these reflections, he saw before him a great armchair covered with white cloth. An aged female, richly dressed, having a book in her hand, came and sat down in it. Having saluted Hermas by name, “Why are you sad, Hermas—you who are usually so patient, equable, and always smiling?” “I am,” said Hermas, “under the stroke of reproaches from a very virtuous woman, who has told me that I have sinned regarding her.” “Ah, fie!” said she to me, “that this evil should be on the part of one of God’s servants—a man respectable and well tried, the chaste, simple, and innocent Hermas! Perhaps, indeed, there has some sentiment taken possession of your heart on the subject. But that is not the reason God is angry with you.” The good Hermas breathed hard while the old woman informed him that the true cause of God’s anger was his weakness as the father of a family. He did not restrain his wife and children with sufficient severity; this was the cause of the ruin of his temporal affairs. The old woman then read out of her book some terrible words which Hernias did not remember, and finished by some good words which he recollected. The following year, at the same period, as he went to his country house at Cuma, Hermas saw the same old woman walking and reading a little book. She explained to him the object of the book, which was to exhort all men to repentance, for the times of persecution were drawing very near. A handsome young man appeared. “Who, do you think, is that old woman from whom you have received the book?” “The sibyl perhaps,” answered Hermas, his mind pre-occupied by the neighbourhood of Cuma. “No; she is the Church.” “Why then is she old?” “Because she has been first created, and the world has been made for her.” The old woman enjoined Hermas to send two copies of the book—the one to Clement, the other to the Deaconess Grapte. “Clement,” said she, “will address the book to the cities without, for there is in that his special work. Grapte will send it to the widows and orphans, and you will read it in the city for the elders who preside over the Church. This little book is naturally the work of the pretended Hermas. The heavenly origin of it is thus attested.”

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The third vision is more mysterious. The old woman appeared again to Hermas, after some fasts and prayers. They arranged to meet in the country. Hermas arrived first; to his great astonishment he found himself in front of an ivory bench; on the bench was placed a linen pillow, covered with very fine gauze. He began to pray and confess his sins. The old woman arrived with six young people. She made Hermas sit at her left (the right being reserved for those who have suffered for God the lash, the prison, tortures, the cross, the wild beasts). Hermas then saw the six young men build a square tower, emerging from the bosom of the water. Some thousands of men served them, and brought the stones to them. Among the stones, those drawn from the channel of the water were hewn. Those were the most perfect; they joined so well that the tower appeared a monolith. Among the others, the young men made a selection. Around the tower was a pile of rubbishy materials, either because they had defects, or because they were not cut as they should have been. 134


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“The tower,” said the old woman, “is the Church—that is, I, who have appeared to you, and who shall appear to you again. . . The six young men are the angels created first, to whom the Lord has entrusted the care of developing and governing his creation; those who carry the stones are the inferior angels. The beautiful white stones, which are dressed no finely, are the apostles, bishops, doctors, deacons, living or dead, who have been chaste, and who have lived on a good understanding with the faithful. The stones which are drawn from the channel of the water, represent those who have suffered death for the name of the Lord. Those which have been rejected, and remain near the tower, represent those who have sinned, and who wish to repent. If they did this while the building was going on they might be employed in it; but once the building is completed, they are of no more use. The stones which are broken and rejected are the wicked there is no more place for them. Those which are thrown to a distance from the tower, which roll into the road, and from thence into the wilderness, are the unsteady, who, after they have believed, have quitted the true path. Those which fall near the water and cannot enter it, are the souls who desire baptism, but recoil before the holiness of religion and the necessity of renouncing their lusts. As to the beautiful white but round stones, and which cannot in consequence be used in a square building, these are the rich who have embraced the faith. When persecution comes, their riches and business make them renounce the Lord. They will be useless to the building except when their riches are curtailed, just as to make a round stone enter into a square construction, it would be necessary to cut off a large portion. Judge this by yourself, Hermas; when you were rich you were useless, now that you are ruined, you are useful and fit to live.”

Hermas asks his informant as to the proximity more or less of the consummation of the times. “Fool,” replies the old woman, “do you not see that the tower is yet being built? When it shall be finished, the end will be; now it advances towards completion. Ask no more!” The fourth vision is again on the Campanian Way. The Church, which has appeared up till now throwing aside all the signs of old age, and with all the marks of rejuvenation, now appears in the style of a girl wonderfully arrayed. A frightful monster (perhaps Nero) would have devoured her, but for the help of the angel Thegri, who presides over the fierce beasts. This monster is the herald of a fearful persecution which is at hand. Some tortures shall be passed through which nothing but purity of heart can enable one to escape. The world shall perish in fire and blood.

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There is here only the mise en scene, in some sense preliminary. The essential part of the book commences with the appearance of a venerable personage in shepherd dress, clothed with a white beast’s skin, with a scrip hung on his shoulders, and a crook in his hand. It is the guardian angel of Hermas, clothed as the angel of penitence, who is sent by the venerable angel to be his companion all the rest of his life. This shepherd, who now takes speech till the end of the book, recites a little treatise on Christian morals, embellished with symbols and apologues. Chastity is the favourite virtue of the author. To think of another woman than one’s own wife is a crime. A man ought to take back his wife after her first act of adultery, expiated by repentance, but not after her second. Second marriages are permissible, but it is better not to involve oneself in them. The good conscience of Hermas shows in his taste for gaiety. Gaiety is a virtue, sadness distresses the Holy Spirit, and chases him from a soul, for the spirit is given joyfully to man. The continually sad prayer of a man does not go up to God. Sadness is like the drop of vinegar, which spoils the good wine. God is good, and the commandments impossible without him are easy with him. The devil is powerful, but he has no power over the true believer.

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An affecting asceticism filled up the entire life of the Christian. The cares of business hindered from the service of God: it was necessary to withdraw from these. Fasting is recommended: now fasting consists in withdrawing every morning to one’s retreat; in purifying one’s thoughts from the remembrances of the world; in not eating all day anything but bread and water; in saving what you might have spent, and giving it to the widows and orphans, who will pray for you. Repentance is necessary even to the righteous for their venial sins. Certain severe angels are charged with over-looking them, and with punishing not only their sins but even those of their family. All the misfortunes of life were held to be chastisements inflicted by these angels on “penitenital pastors.” The penitent should afflict himself voluntarily, should humble himself, seek adversities and sorrows, or at least accept those which come upon him, as expiations. It would seem, according to this view, that penitence imposes on God—forces his hand. No, penitence is a gift of God. To those whom God foresees to be going to sin still, he does not accord the favour. In the weighty questions relating to public penitence, Hermas avoids exaggerated severity; he has comparisons which shall irritate Tertullian, and give him, on the part of that fanatic, the name of “the friend of adulterers.” He explains the delay in the appearing of Christ by a decree of the mercy of God which allows sinners the chance of a last and definitive appeal. He who has blasphemed Christ to escape punishment, those who have denounced their brethren, are dead for ever: they resemble dry branches into which the sap can no longer ascend; but yet is their lot irrevocable? In certain cases, mercy is brought into the author’s mind; for the sons of Hermas, who were blasphemers of Christ and traitors to the Church, were admitted to pardon, for their father’s sake. Those who have simply denied Jesus can repent. “As to him who has denied from the heart,” says Hermas, “I do not know if he can live.” It is necessary also to distinguish the past from the future. To those who henceforth would deny Christ, there is no pardon; but those who had this misfortune before may be admitted to penitence. Sinners who have not blasphemed God nor betrayed his servants may return to penitence; but they hasten onwards; death threatens; the tower is about to be finished, and then the stones which have not been employed would be irrevocably rejected. For great crimes, there is but one repentance; for the lesser faults, it is allowable to repent more than once; but he who is constantly falling is a suspected penitent, and penitence will serve him in no wise.

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A perfume of chastity, somewhat unhealthy, is breathed from the vision of the mountain of Arcadia, and the twelve virgins. The fêtes which are given in the dream, one would say, were the imagination of a poor faster. Twelve beautiful girls, fine and strong as caryatides, stand at the gate of the future temple, and pass the stones for the construction with their open arms. “Thy shepherd will not come to-night,” they said “if he does not come thou wilt remain with us.” “No,” said I to them; “if he does not come, I shall return home, and to-morrow I will come back.” “Thou shouldst confide in us,” they replied; “thou canst not leave as!” “Where would you have me remain?” “Thou shalt sleep with us like a brother, and not as a man,” they answered; “for thou art our brother henceforth; we shall remain with you, for we love you very much” I blushed to remain in their company, but, lo! she who seemed to be their leader, began to embrace me; seeing

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which, the others imitated, causing me to make the tour of the building, and to play with me. And, as I was young, I began also to play with them. Some executed choruses, some danced, and others sang. As for me, I walked silently with them round the building, and was joyful with them. As it was late, I wished to return to the house, but they would not allow me, and I remained with them over night, sleeping by the side of the tower. The virgins had stretched out their linen tunics on the ground, and did nothing but pray. I prayed also with them incessantly, and the virgins rejoiced to see me pray thus: and I remained there till next morning at the second hour with the virgins. Then the shepherd arrived, and he addressed himself to them, “You have not done him any harm?” asked he, looking at them. “My lord,” I said to him, “I have only had the pleasure of abiding with them.” “Of what have you eaten? said he. “My lord,” said I to him; “I have lived all the night on the words of the Lord.” “Did they receive you well?” asked he. “Yes, my lord,” said I to him.

Those virgins are the “holy spirits,” the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the spiritual powers of the Son of God, and also the fundamental virtues of the Christian. A man cannot be saved except through these. The guardian angel of Hermas giving good testimony to the purity of his house—the twelve virgins who wish to have extreme propriety around them, and are repelled by the slightest defilement, consent to dwell there. Hermas promises that they shall always have with him a residence suited to their tastes. 224

The author of Hermas is a pure Ebionite. The only good use of a fortune is to redeem slaves—captives. The Christian, as to himself, is essentially a poor man; to practise hospitality towards the power, the servants of God, that washes out even great crimes. “One does not imagine,” says he, “what torment is in the punishment; it is worse than prison; so that we even see people committing suicide to escape it. When such a misfortune occurs, he who, knowing the unfortunate one, does not save him, is guilty of his death.” The antipathy of Hermas to people of the world is extreme. He is not pleased except when in a circle of simple people, not knowing what wickedness is, without differences among themselves, and looking on one another’s affairs, and mingling with each other; rejoicing in each other’s virtues, always ready to share with him who has nothing the result of their labours. God, seeing the simplicity of the holy child-likeness of these good workers, is pleased with their little charities. Childlikeness is that which, to Hermas as to Jesus, takes the first place in God’s sight. The Christianity of the author of Hermas suggests Gnosticism. He never names Jesus in any other way than as Christ. He always calls him the Son of God, and makes him a being before the creatures, a counsellor of the plans on which God made his creation. At the same time as this Divine assessor has created all things, he maintains all things. His name is beyond comparison with every other name. Sometimes, in the style of the Elkasaites, Hermas would conceive Christ as a giant. Oftener still he identifies him with the Holy Spirit, the source of all the gifts. Like the Gnostics, Hermas plays with abstractions. At other times, the Son of God is the law preached throughout all the earth. The dead will receive the seal of the Son of God, baptism, when the apostles and the Christian preachers, after their death, descend into hell and baptise the dead.

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A parable explains this singular Christology, and gives it much analogy with that which, later on, constituted Arianism. A master (God) plants in a certain corner of his property (the world) a 137


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vine (the circle of the Elect). Leaving for a journey, he has entrusted it to a servant (Jesus), who attends to it with wonderful care, roots out the weeds (blots out the sin of believers), and endures extreme pain (an allusion to the sufferings of Jesus). The master filled with joy at his return (on the day of judgment), calls his only Son and his friends (the Holy Spirit and the angels) and communicates to them the idea he has of associating this servant as an adopted son in the privileges of the only Son (the Holy Spirit). All consent to this by acclamation. Jesus is introduced by the resurrection into the divine circle; God sends him a part of the feast, and he, remembering his old fellow-servants, shares with them his heavenly gifts (the charisma). The divine rôle of Jesus is thus conceived as a sort of adoption and co-optation which places him beside a former Son of God. Moreover, Hermas sets forth a theology analogous to that which we have found among the Ebionites. The Holy Spirit pre-existed before all, and has created all. God chose him a body in which he could dwell in all purity, and realises for him a completed humanity: it is the life of Jesus. God takes counsel of his Son and of his angels, so that this flesh which has served the Spirit without reproach should have a place of rest, that this body without stain, in which the Holy Spirit dwells, would appear not to remain without reward.

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All the chimeras of the times came into collision with each other, we can see, without succeeding in coming into agreement in the head of poor Hermas. Some grotesque theories, such as the descent of the apostles into hell, are peculiar to him. He was an Ebionite in his fashion of comprehending the kingdom of God and the position of Jesus. He was a Gnostic in his tendency to multiply beings and to give angels even to one who has never existed. A guardian angel is not enough for him; each man has two angels—the one to care for his well-being, the other to seek his hurt. Indeed, in many points of view, he is a Montanist in advance. He has no trace of episcopacy about him. The elders of the Church are, in his eyes, all equal; he appears to have been of the number of those who made opposition to the growing institution which reversed the equality of the presbyteri. Hermas is an experienced pneumatist; he is an anchorite, an abstainer. He shows himself severe on the clergy. He complains of the general laxity. The name of Christian, according to him, is not enough to save one; a man is saved above all by the spiritual gifts. The Church is a body of saints, and it must be disembarrassed of all impure alliance. Martyrdom completes the Christian. Prophecy is a personal gift, free, and not subjected to the Church; those who receive it, communicate its revelation to the leaders; but they do not require their permission. Eldad and Modad were two prophets without mission, and beyond the authority of superiors. The great objection which the orthodox have to the Shepherd, as to the Montanist revelations, is that it comes too late,—“that the number of the prophets is complete already.” The intention of the pseudo-Hermas has been, in fact, simply and well to introduce a new book into the body of the sacred writings. Perhaps his brother Pius lent himself as his support in this. The attempt of the pseudo-Hermas was very nearly the last of this kind; it did not succeed, for the author was known; the origin of the book was too clear. The writing pleased by what was edifying

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in it; the better minds advised that it should be specially read, but not permitted to be read in the Church, nor as an apostolic writing (it was too modern), nor as a prophetic writing (the number of these scriptures was closed). Rome especially never admitted it; the East was more easy, Alexandria especially. Many Churches held it to be canonical, and did it the honour of having it read from the pulpit. Some eminent men—Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria—gave it a place in their Bible, after the apostolic writings. The more reserved conceded to it an angelic revelation and an ecclesiastical authority of the first order. There had always been some doubts and protestations; some even went as far as scorn. At the beginning of the fourth century, the Shepherd was no longer looked on but as a book for edification, very useful for elementary instruction. Piety and art made considerable borrowings from it. The Roman council of 494, under Gelasus, placed it among the Apocrypha, but did not take it out of the hands of the believers, who found in it a help for their piety. The work has in some parts a charm; but a certain want of taste and talent are to be felt in it. The symbolism so energetic and so just in the old apocalypses, is here feeble, ill-adjusted, and without precise adaptation. The vein of Christian prophecy is altogether weakened. The language, simple, and in some sense flat, is nearly that of modern Greek as to the syntax; the choice of expression, on the contrary, is happy enough. It is the eloquence of a country curé, simple and grumbling, mingled with the cares of a sacristan concerned as to gauzes, cushions, and everything which serves to ornament his church. Hermas, in spite of his temptations and his pecadilloes, is certainly chastity itself, although the way he insists on this point makes us smile a little. To the terrible images of the old apocalypses, to the gloomy visions of John, and the pseudo-Esdras, succeed the gentle imaginations of a little pious romance, at once affecting and simple, and whose childish style is not free from insipidity. The prophetic attempt of pseudo-Hermas was not, moreover, an isolated fact; it belonged to the general state of the Christian conscience. In fifteen years the same causes will produce facts of the same order in the most remote districts of Asia Minor, against which the episcopacy will employ much greater severity.

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CHAPTER XXII. ORTHODOX ASIA—POLYCARPUS.

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ALTHOUGH Asia was already disturbed by the sectarian spirit, it nevertheless continued to be, next to Rome, the province in which Christianity flourished the most. It was the most pious country in the world; the country in which credulity offered to the inventors of new religions the most fertile field. To become a god was a very easy matter; incarnations, the terrestrial alternations of the immortals, were looked upon as ordinary events: every kind of imposture succeeded. People were still full of the recollection of Apollonius of Tyana—the legend regarding him increased day by day. An author, who took the name of Mœragenes, wrote the most marvellous stories about him; then a certain Maximus of Æges composed a book exclusively devoted to the extraordinary things which Apollonius had done at ages in Cilicia. In spite of the railleries of Lucian, “the tragedy,” as he calls it, succeeded astonishingly. Later, about the year 200, Philostratus wrote at the request of the Syrian lady, Julia Domna, that insipid romance which passed for an exquisite hook, and which, according to a very serious Pagan writer, should have been entitled, “Sojourn of a God among Men.” Its success was immense. Because of it, Apollonius came to be considered as the first of sages, a veritable friend of the gods, as a god himself. His image was to be seen in the sanctuaries; temples were even dedicated to him. His miracles, his beautiful speeches, afforded edification for all classes. He was a sort of Christ of Paganism; and undoubtedly the intention of opposing an ideal of beneficent holiness to that of the Christians was not foreign to his apotheosis. In the last days of the struggle between Christianity and Paganism he was compared only to Jesus, and his life, as revealed in his letters, was preferred to the Gospels, the work of grosser minds. A Paphlagonian charlatan, Alexander of Abonoticus, attained through his assurance a success no less prodigious. He was a very handsome man. He had a superb presence, a most melodious voice, hair of enormous length, which it was pretended he had inherited from Perseus, and passed as one who predicted the future with the frantic enthusiasm of the ancient soothsayers. He enclosed a small serpent in a goose’s egg, broke the egg before the multitude, and made believe that it was an incarnation of Esculapius, who had chosen for his abode the city of Abonoticus. The god attained maturity in a few days. The people of Abonoticus were astonished soon to see on a canopy an enormous serpent with a human head, splendidly clothed, opening and closing its mouth and brandishing its sting. It was Alexander himself who was thus decked out, he having coiled round his chest and about his neck a tame serpent, whose tail hung down in front. He had made himself a head of linen, which he had besmeared artistically enough; and by means of horse hair he made the jaws and the sting move. The new god was called Glycon, and people came from every part of the empire to consult it. Abonoticus became the centre of unbridled thaumaturgy. The result was an abundant manufacture of painted images, talismans, idols of silver and of bronze, which had an extraordinary popularity. Alexander was powerful enough to raise in his district a genuine persecution against the Christians

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and the Epicureans who refused to believe in him. He established a cult which, in spite of its wholly charlatanistic and even obscene character, had much vogue, and attracted a multitude of religious people. But the most singular thing of all was that Romans of high standing, such as Severian, legate of Cappadocia, and Rutilianus, a man of consular dignity, one of the first men of his time, were his dupes, and that the impostor succeeded in having the name of Abonoticus changed to Ionopolis. He required also that the coinage of that city should bear henceforth on the one side the effigy of Glycon, on the other his own, with the arms of Perseus and of Esculapius. Actually the coins of Abonoticus, at the time of Antonine and Marcus Aurelius, bore the figure of a serpent with the head of a man with long hair and beard, and on the obverse the word ΓΛΥΚΟΝ. The coins of the same city, with the medal of Lucius Verus, bore the serpent and the name ΙΩΝΟΠΟΛΕΙΤΩΝ. Under Marcus Aurelius we shall see this ridiculous religion assume an incredible importance. It lasted until the second half of the third century.

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Nerullinus, at Troas, succeeded in a fraudulent enterprise of the same kind. His statue uttered oracles, cured maladies; sacrifices were offered to it, and it was crowned with flowers. It was especially the absurd ideas about medicine, the belief in medical dreams, in the oracles of Esculapius, etc., which kept the minds of people in that state of superstition. We are dumfounded at seeing Galian himself addicted to similar follies. More incredible still is the career of that Ælius Aristides, religious sophist, devout Pagan, a sort of bishop or saint, pressing pious materialism and credulity to its utmost limits; yet this did not prevent him from being one of the most admired and most honoured men of his age. The Epicureans alone repudiated these follies unreservedly. There were still some men of intellect, such as Celsus, Lucian, Demonax, who could laugh at it. Soon, however, there shall be no more such, and credulity will reign mistress over a debased world. The name of Atheist was dangerous, for it put him to whom it was attributed without the pale of the law, and exposed him even to the scaffold; yet one was an Atheist because he denied the local superstitions and stood up against charlatans. We can conceive how such devices must have been favourable to the propagation of Christianity. We do not perhaps exaggerate much when we admit that nearly the half of the population had avowed Christianity. In certain cities, such as Hierapolis, Christianity was publicly professed. Some inscriptions, still decipherable, attest beneficent foundations which were to be distributed at Easter and at Pentecost. Co-operative associations of workmen, societies for mutual succour, were there skilfully organised. These manufacturing cities, which contained for a long time colonies of Jews, who perhaps had carried with them thence the industries of the East, were ready to receive every social idea of the age. Works of charity were wonderfully developed. Nursing institutions and establishments for foundlings were there. The labourer, so depised in ancient times, attained, through association, to dignity of existence and to happiness. That interior life, all the more active because it was not disturbed by politics, made of Asia Minor a field closed to all the religious strifes of the times. The directions in which the Church was divided there were singularly visible; for nowhere else was the Church in such a state of fermentation, or showed its internal labour more distinctly. Conservatives and Progressists, Judeo-Christians and

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enemies of Judaism, Millenarians and Spiritualists, were there opposed as two armies, who, after having fought, finished by breaking their ranks and fraternising together. There had lived, or was still living, a whole Christian world which did not know St Paul. Papias, the most narrow-minded of the Fathers of his times; Melito, almost as materialistic as he; the ultra-conservative Polycarpus; the presbyteri who taught Irenæus his unpolished Millenarianism; the chiefs of the Montanist movement, who pretended to have witnessed again the scenes of the first supper at Jerusalem. There too were to be found, or had come thence, the men who had most boldly launched themselves into innovations—the author of the fourth Gospel, Cerdo, Marcion, Praxeas, Noetus, Apollinarius of Hierapolis, the Aloges, who, full of aversion for the Apocalypse, Millenarianism, Montanism, gave the hand to Gnosticism and to philosophy. Spiritual exercises which had disappeared elsewhere, continued to flourish in Asia. They had prophets there—a certain Quadratus, and one Amnia of Philadelphia.

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People gloried especially over the considerable number of martyrs and confessors. Asia Minor witnessed numerous executions, in particular crucifixions. The different Churches made a boast of this, alleging that persecution was the privilege of truth; a matter that is debateable, seeing that all those sects had martyrs; at times, the Marcionites and Montanists had more than the orthodox. No calumny then was spared by the latter in order to depreciate the martyrs of their rivals. These enmities endured to the death. We see the confessors, while expiring for the same Christ, turning their backs on one another, in order to avoid all that might resemble a mark of communion. Two martyrs, born at Eumenia, namely, Caine and Alexander, who were executed at Apamea Kibotos, went the length of taking the most minute precautions in order that it might not be thought that they adhered to the inspirations of Montanus and of his wives. Such conduct shocks us, but we must not forget that, according to the opinions of the times, the last words and the last acts of martyrs possessed a high importance. Martyrs were consulted on questions of orthodoxy; from the depths of their dungeons they reconciled dissentients, and gave certificates of absolution. They were regarded as being charged by the Church with the rôle of pacificators, and with a sort of doctrinal mission. Far from being hurtful to propagandism, these divisions were serviceable to it. The churches were rich and numerous. Nowhere else did the episcopate contain so many capable, moderate, and courageous men. We may cite Thraseas, Bishop of Eumenia; Sagaris, Bishop of Laodicea; Papirius, whose birthplace is not known; Apollinaris of Hierapolis, who was destined to play a considerable part in the capital controversies which were soon to divide the Churches of Asia; Polycrates, the future Bishop of Ephesus, the descendant of a family seven members of which before him had been bishops. Sardis possessed a real treasure, the learned Bishop Melito, who already had prepared himself for the vast labours which, later on, rendered his name celebrated. Like Origen, at a subsequent date, he was anxious that his chastity should be distinctly attested. His erudition resembled much that of Justin and of Tatian. His theology had also a little of the materialistic dulness which was a characteristic of these two doctors; for he thought that God had a body. He 142


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appears to have been reproached by Papias for his apocalyptic ideas. Miltiades, on his part, was a laborious author, a zealous polemic, who struggled against the heathen, the Jews, the Montanists, the ecstatic prophets, and made an apology for Christian philosophy, which he addressed to the Roman authorities. The aged Polycarpus, in particular, enjoyed high authority at Smyrna. He was more than an octogenarian, and it would seem that he was believed to have inherited his longevity from the Apostle John. He was accredited with the gift of prophecy: it was alleged that each word that he uttered would come to pass. He himself lived in the belief that the world was full of visions and of presages. Night and day he prayed, including in his prayers the wants of the entire world. As everybody admitted that he had lived several years with the Apostle John, people believed that they still possessed in him the last witness of the apostolic age. People surrounded him; everybody sought to please him; a mark of his esteem was regarded as a high favour. His person was charming in the extreme. The docile Christians adored him; a band of disciples and of admirers pressed around him, eager to render him every service. But he was not popular in the city. His intolerance, the pride of orthodoxy, which he did not pretend to dissimulate, and which he communicated to his disciples, wounded deeply both the Jews and the heathen; the latter knew but too well that the disdainful old man looked upon them as wretches.

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Polycarpus had all the peculiarities of an old man; he had a certain manner of acting and speaking which made a vivid impression on young auditors. His conversation was fluent, and when he went to sit down on the place which he affected—doubtless one of the terraces of the slopes of Mount Pagus, whence one could see the sparkling gulf, and its beautiful surrounding of mountains, it was known beforehand what he was going to say. “John and others who have seen the Lord;” this was the way in which he always commenced. He would tell about the intimacy he had had with them, what he had heard them say about Jesus, and about his preaching. An echo of Galilee was thus made to resound, at a distance of a hundred and twenty years, upon the shores of another sea. He repeated constantly that those men had been ocular witnesses, and that he had seen them. He made no more difficulty than did the Evangelists in regard to borrowing from the presbyteri the maxims best adapted to the second century, at the epoch in which they were reputed to have lived. To so many other obscure traditions in regard to the origins of Christianity, a new source, more troublesome than the others, was now about to be added. The impression which Polycarpus produced was not less profound. A long time after, his disciples would remind one another of the bench on which he sat, his gait, his habits, his bodily peculiarities, his manner of speaking. Every one of his words were graven on their hearts. Now in the circle which surrounded him there was a young Greek, of about fifteen years of age, who was destined to play one of the leading parts in ecclesiastical history. His name was Irenæus, who afterwards transmitted to us the image—doubtless often false, yet, at the same time, in many respects very vivid—of the last days of the apostolic world, whose setting sun he had, in a sort of way, been

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a witness of. Irenæus was born a Christian, which did not prevent him from frequenting the schools of Asia, where he acquired an extensive knowledge of the poets, and of the profane philosophers, especially of Homer and of Plato. He had for a young friend and co-disciple, if one may so express oneself, near the old man, a certain Florinus, who held a somewhat important posit on at court, and who, subsequently, embraced at Rome the Gnostic ideas of Valentinus. 236

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Polycarpus, in the eyes of every one, was regarded as the perfect type of orthodoxy. His doctrine was the materialistic Millenarianism of the old apostolic school. Far from having broken with Judaism, he conformed to the practices of the moderate Judeo-Christians. He resented the foolish embellishments which the Gnostics had introduced into the Christian teaching, and appears to have ignored the Gospel which in his time already circulated under the name of John. He held to the simple and unctuous manner of the apostolic catechesis, and would not have anything at all added to it. Everything that had the resemblance of a new idea put him beside himself. His hatred of heretics was intense, and some of the anecdotes which he delighted to tell about John were destined to make the violent intolerance which, in his opinion, formed the basis of the apostle’s character, appear in a strong light. When any one dared to give vent in his presence to some doctrine analogous to that of the Gnostics, some theory calculated to introduce a little of rationalism into the Christian theology, he would get up, stop his ears, and take to flight, exclaiming, “Oh, good God, to what times hast thou reserved me, that I should have to put up with such language!” Irenæus was permeated to a large extent with the same spirit, but the sweetness of his character served to correct it in practice. The idea of holding fast to the apostolic teaching became the basis of orthodoxy, in opposition to the presumption of the Gnostics and Montanists, who pretended to have re-discovered the actual doctrine of Jesus, which, in their opinion, had been corrupted by his immediate disciples. Following the example of Paul, Ignatius, and other celebrated pastors, Polycarpus wrote many letters to the neighbouring Churches and to individuals, in order to instruct and exhort them. Only one of these letters has been preserved to us. It is addressed to the faithful at Philippi, as touching some confessors who were destined to martyrdom, who chanced to be with them on their way from Asia to Rome. Like all the apostolic or pseudo-apostolic writings, it is a short treatise addressed to each of the classes of the faithful which composed the Church. Some serious doubts might be raised against the authenticity of this epistle if it were not certain that Irenæus had known it, and held it to be a work of Polycarpus. Without this authority, we should rank this short treatise with the epistles of St Ignatius, in that class of writings of the end of the second century by which it was sought to cover, by the most revered names, the anti-Agnostic doctrines, and those which were favourable to the episcopate. The document, which is somewhat commonplace, possesses nothing that is specially befitting the character of Polycarpus. The imitation of the apostolic writings, particularly the false Epistles to Titus and Timothy, the first of Peter, and the Epistles of John, makes itself fully felt in it. The author makes no distinction between the authentic writings of the apostles and those which have been attributed to them. He evidently knew the Epistle of St Clement by heart. The way in which lie reminds the Philippians that they have an epistle from Paul, is 144


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suspicious. What singular things all those hypotheses are! The Gospel attributed to John is not cited, whilst a phrase of the pseudo-Johannine epistle is brought in. Docility, submission to the bishop, enthusiasm for martyrdom, after the example of Ignatius, horror of heresies, which, like Docetism, overthrew the faith in the reality of Jesus; such were the dominant ideas of the author. If Polycarpus is not the author, we can at least say that if he had been resuscitated a few years after his death, and had seen the compositions which were read as his, he would not have protested, and would have even found that people had correctly enough interpreted his thoughts. Irenæus at Lyons may have been deceived in this matter like every one else. If it was an error, he recognised in this fragment the perfect character of the faith and the teaching of his master. Polycarpus, in those years of extreme old age, was regarded as the President of the Church of Asia. Some grave questions, which at first had barely been stated, began to agitate these Churches. With his ideas of hierarchy and of ecclesiastical unity, Polycarpus naturally thought of turning towards the Bishop of Rome, to whom almost the whole world about that time acknowledged a certain authority in composing the divisions in Churches. The controversial points were numerous; it appears, moreover, that the two heads of the Churches—Polycarpus and Anicetus—had some petty grievances against one another. One of the questions in controversy was in regard to the celebration of Easter. In the early days, all the Christians continued to make Easter their principal feast. They celebrated that feast on the same day as the Jews, the 14th Nisan, no matter on what day of the week that day fell. Persuaded, according to the allegations of all the ancient Gospels, that Jesus, on the eve of his death, had eaten the Passover with his disciples, they regarded such a solemnity rather as a commemoration of the supper than as a memorial of the resurrection. When Christianity became separated more and more from Judaism, such a manner of viewing it was found to be much out of place. First, a new tradition was circulated, according to which Jesus before his death had not eaten the Passover; but died on the same day as the Jewish Passover, thus substituting himself for the Paschal Lamb. Besides this, that purely Jewish feast wounded the Christian conscience, especially in the Churches of St Paul. The great feast of the Christians was the resurrection of Jesus, which occurred, in any case, the Sunday after the Jewish Passover. According to this idea, the feast was celebrated on the Sunday which followed the Friday next after the 14th of Nisan. At Rome this practice prevailed, at least from the pontificates of Xystus and Telesphoros (about 120). In Asia, people were much divided. Conservatives like Polycarpus, Melito, and all the old school, held to the ancient Jewish practice, in conformity with the first Gospels and with the usage of the Apostles John and Philip. It hence happened that people did not pray or fast on the same days. It was not till about twenty years after that this controversy attained in Asia the proportions of a schism. At the epoch in which we now are, it had only just had its birth, and was no doubt one of the least important among the questions about which Polycarpus felt himself obliged to go to Rome to have an interview with Pope Anicetus. Perhaps Irenæus and Florinus accompanied the old man on that journey, which being undertaken during the summer, according to the customs of 145


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navigation of the age, had nothing fatiguing about it. The interview between Polycarpus and Anicetus was very cordial. The discussion upon certain points appears to have been somewhat lively; but they understood one another. The question of Easter had not yet reached maturity. For a long time before this, the Church of Rome had acted upon the principle of exhibiting in this matter great tolerance. Conservatives of the Jewish order, when they came to Rome, practised their rites without anybody finding fault with them, or without causing any one to cease fraternising with them. The Bishops of Rome sent the Eucharist to some of the bishops who followed in this particular another rule. Polycarpus and Anicetus observed between them the same rule. Polycarpus could not persuade Anicetus to renounce a practice which the Bishops of Rome had followed before him. Anicetus, on his part, forebore when Polycarpus said to him that he held by the rule of John and the other apostles with whom he had lived upon a footing of familiarity. The two religious chiefs continued in full communion with one another, and Anicetus even bestowed on Polycarpus an honour almost unexampled. He was willing, in fact, that Polycarpus should, in the assembly of the faithful at Rome, pronounce instead of him, and in his presence, the words of the eucharistic consecration. These ardent men were full of too passionate a sentiment to rest the unity of souls upon the uniformity of rites and exterior observances. Later, Rome will display the greatest pertinacity to make her rites prevail To speak the truth, the point at issue, in this matter of Easter, was not merely a simple difference of calendar. The Roman rite, in choosing for its base the grand Christian festival the anniversaries of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, created the holy week—that is to say, a whole cycle of consecrated days, to the mysterious commemorations during which fasting was continued. In the Asiatic rite, on the contrary, the fast terminated on the evening of the 14th Nisan: Good Friday was no longer a day of sadness. If that usage had prevailed, the scheme of the Christian festivals would have been arrested in its development. The orthodox bishops had still too many common enemies for them to pay attention to pitiful liturgic rivalries. The Gnostic and Marcionite sects inundated Rome, and threatened to put the orthodox Church in a minority. Polycarpus was the declared adversary of such ideas. Like Justin, with whom he was probably in accord, he inveighed fiercely against the sectaries. The rare privilege which he possessed of having seen the immediate disciples of Jesus, gave him an immense authority. He pleaded, as was his custom, the teaching of the apostles, of which he alleged he was the only living auditor, and maintained as a simple rule of faith the tradition which ascended by an unbroken chain to Jesus himself. Nor was he free from rudeness. One day he encountered in a public place a man who, for a thousand reasons, should have commanded his respect—Marcion himself. “Do you not recognise me? “ said the latter to him. “Yes,” responded the passionate old man; “I recognise the first-born of Satan.” Irenæus cannot enough admire this response, which shows how very narrow the Christian mind had already become. Jesus had much more wisely remarked: “He who is not for you is against you.” Is one always quite sure of not being oneself the first-born of Satan? How much more wise it is, instead of anathematising at first him who chooses a different path from oneself, to apply oneself to discover in what points one may be right, what method he employs in

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looking at things, and if there is not in his manner of observing some grain of truth that one ought to assimilate. But that tone of assurance exercises a great efficacy upon semi-cultured men. Many Valentinians and Marcionites saw Polycarpus at Rome, and returned to the orthodox Church. Polycarpus hence left in the capital of the world a venerated name. Irenæus and Florinus in all probability remained at Rome after the departure of their master; these two minds, so different from one another, were destined to pursue paths the most opposite.

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An immense result was accomplished. The rule of' prescription was laid down. The true doctrine will henceforth be that which is generally professed by the apostolic Churches, which it has always been. Quod semper quod ubique. Between Polycarpus and Valentin the matter is quite clear. Polycarpus held to the apostolic tradition; Valentin, whatever he may say himself, has not got it. Individual Churches formed by their union the Catholic Church, the absolute depository of the truth. He who prefers his own ideas to those of this universal authority is a sectary, a heretic.

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CHAPTER XXIII. MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARPUS. POLYCARPUS returned to Symrna, as far as we can make out, in the autumn of 154. A death worthy of him awaited him there. Polycarpus had always professed the doctrine that one ought not to court martyrdom; but many people who were not possessed of his virtue were not so prudent as he. To be in the vicinage of the sombre enthusiasts of Phrygia was dangerous. A Phrygian named Quintus, a Montanist formerly, came to Smyrna and attracted a few enthusiasts, who followed his example of self-denunciation, and provoked penal condemnation. Sensible men blamed them, and said, with good reason, that the Gospel did not demand such a sacrifice. Besides these fanatics, several Smyrniote Christians were also imprisoned. Amongst them were found some Philadelphians, whom either accident had conducted to Smyrna or whom the authorities, after arresting them, had caused to be transferred to Smyrna—a city of very considerable importance, in which were celebrated great games. The number of those so detained was about a dozen. According to the hideous usage of the Romans, it was in the stadium, in default of an amphitheatre, that their execution took place. 243

The tortures endured by these unfortunates were of the most horribly atrocious character. Some were so lacerated by whips that their veins, their arteries, and the whole of their intestines were exposed. Onlookers wept over them, but they could not extort from them either a murmur or a plaint. The idea was hence spread abroad that the martyrs of Christ, during the torture, were separated from the body, and that Christ himself assisted them, and spoke with them. Fire produced on them the effect of a delicious coolness. Exposed to wild beasts, dragged over sand full of jagged shells, they appeared insensible to pain. One only succumbed, and that was rightly the one who had compromised the others. The Phrygian was punished for his boasting. In sight of the wild beasts he began to tremble. The men of the pro-consul who surrounded him urged him to give in; he consented to take the oath and the sacrifice. In that the faithful saw a sign from heaven, and the condemnation of those who of their own accord sought for death. Such conduct, arising from pride, was considered as a sort of defiance of God. It was admitted that the courage to endure martyrdom came from on high, and that God, in order to demonstrate that he was the source of all strength, was pleased sometimes to show the greatest examples of heroism in those who, put to the proof, had been, distrustful of themselves, almost cowards. People admired especially a young man named Germanicus. He gave to his companions in agony an example of superhuman courage. His struggle with the wild beasts was admirable. The pro-consul, Titus Statius Quadratus, a philosophic and moderate man, a friend of Ælius Aristides,

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exhorted him to take pity on his own youth. He thereupon set himself to excite the wild beasts, to call to them, to tease them, in order that they might despatch him more quickly from a perverse world. Such heroism, far from touching the multitude, only irritated it. “Death to Atheists! Let Polycarpus be brought!” was the general cry. Polycarpus, although blaming the foolish act of Quintus, had not at first any desire to flee. Yielding to eager solicitations, he consented, however, to withdraw into a small country house, situated at no great distance from the city, where he passed several days. They came thither to arrest him. He quitted the house precipitately and took refuge in another; but a young slave, when put to the torture, betrayed him. A detachment of mounted police came to take him. It was a Friday evening, the 22d February, at dinner-hour, the old man was at table in an upper room of the villa; he might still have escaped, but he said, “Let God’s will be done!” He quietly came downstairs, spoke with the police, gave them something to eat, and asked only an hour in which to pray unmolested. He made then one of those long prayers to which he was accustomed, in which he included the whole Catholic Church. The night was passed in this manner. The following morning, Saturday, 23d February, he was placed upon an ass, and they departed with him. Before reaching the city, Herod, the Irenach, and his father Nicetas, appeared in a carriage. They had had some relations with the Christians. Alces, sister of Nicetas, appears to have been affiliated with the Church. They, it is said, placed the old man in the carriage between them, and attempted to gain him over. “What harm can it be,” said they, “in order to save one’s life, to say Kyrios Kesar, to make sacrifice, and the rest?” Polycarpus was inflexible. It seems that the two magistrates then flew into a passion, said hard words to him, and ejected him so rudely from the carriage as to peel the skin off his leg.

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He was taken to the stadium, which was situated about midway up Mount Pagus. The people were already assembled there; there was a tumultuous noise. At the moment the old man was brought in, the noise redoubled; the Christians alone heard a voice from heaven saying: “Be strong, be manly, Polycarpus!” The bishop was led to the pro-consul, who employed the ordinary phrases in such circumstances. “From the respect that thou owest to thy age, etc., aware by the fortune of Cæsar, cry as every one does, ‘Death to Atheists’” Polycarpus thereupon cast a severe look upon the multitude which covered the steps, and pointed to them with his hand. “Yes, certainly,” said he, “no more Atheists,” and he raised his eyes to heaven with a deep sigh. “Insult Christ,” said Statius Quadratus.

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“It is now eighty-six years that I have served him, and he has never done me any injury,” said Polycarpus. “I am a Christian. If thou wishest to know what it is to be a Christian,” added he, “grant me a day’s delay, and give me thy attention.” “Persuade, then, the people to that,” responded Quadratus. “With thee it is worth one’s while to discuss,” responded Polycarpus. “We hold it as a principle to render to the powers and to the established authorities, through God, the honours which are their due, provided that these marks of respect do no injury to our faith. As for these people there, I will never deign to condescend to make my apology to them.” The pro-consul threatened him in vain with wild beasts and with fire. It was necessary to announce to the people that Polycarpus held obstinately to his faith. Jews and Pagans cried out for his blood. 246

“Look at him, the doctor of Asia—the father of the Christians,” said the former. “Behold him, the destroyer of our gods, he who teaches not to sacrifice, not to adore,” said the latter. At the same time they demanded of Philippe of Tralles, asiarch and high priest of Asia, to let loose a lion upon Polycarpus. Philippe drew attention of the multitude to the fact that the games with the wild beasts were at an end. “To the fire, then!” So was the shout which went up from all sides. The people dispersed themselves amongst the shops and the baths to search for wood and fagots. The Jews, who were numerous at Smyrna, and always strongly incensed against the Christians, exhibited in this work, as usual, a zeal wholly peculiar to them. While the funeral pile was being made ready, Polycarpus took off his girdle, divested himself of all his garments, and attempted also to take off his shoes. This was not accomplished without some difficulty; for in ordinary times the faithful who surrounded him were in the habit of insisting on relieving him from that trouble, as they were jealous of the privilege of touching him. He was placed in the centre of the apparatus which was used for fixing the victim, and they were about to begin to nail him to it. “Leave me thus,” said he; “He who gives me the fortitude to endure the fire will bestow on me also the strength to remain immovable on the pile, without its being necessary for you to nail me to it.” They did not nail him, they simply bound him. So, with his hands tied behind his back, he had the look of a victim; and the Christians who watched him from afar saw in him a ram chosen from

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amongst the whole flock to be offered up to God as a burnt-offering. During this time he prayed and thanked God for having included him in the number of the martyrs. 247

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The flames then began to rise. The exaltation of the faithful witnesses of this spectacle was at its height. As they were some distance from the pile, they might indulge in the most singular illusions. The fire seemed to them to round itself into a vault above the body of the martyr, and to present the aspect of a ship’s sail filled with the wind. The old man, placed amidst that chapelle ardent, appeared to them not as flesh which burned, but as bread being baked, or as a mass of gold and silver in the furnace. They imagined that they felt a delicious odour like that of incense, or of the most precious perfumes (probably the vine branches, and the light wood of the pile had something to do with this). They even declared afterwards that Polycarpus had not been burned, that the confector was obliged to give him a thrust with a poignard, and that there flowed from the wound so much blood that the fire was extinguished by it. The Christians naturally attached the greatest value to their possessing the body of the martyr. But the authorities hesitated to give it to them, fearing that the martyr would become the object of a new worship. “They might be capable,” said they, laughing, “of abandoning the Crucified One for him.” The Jews mounted guard near to the funeral pile, to watch what they were going to do. The centurion on duty showed himself favourable to the Christians, and allowed them to take these bones, “more precious than the most precious stones, and than the purest gold.” They were calcined. In order to reconcile this fact with the marvellous recital, they pretended that it was the centurion who had burned the body. They put the ashes into a consecrated place, where people resorted every year to celebrate the anniversary of the martyrdom, and to incite one another to walk in the steps of the holy old man. The fortitude of Polycarpus made a deep impression on the Pagans themselves. The authorities, not wishing a renewal of similar scenes, put an end to executions. The name of Polycarpus continued to be celebrated at Smyrna, whilst people soon forgot the eleven or twelve Smyrniotes or Philadelphians who had suffered before him. The Churches of Asia and of Galatia, at the news of the death of their great pastor, asked the Smyrniotes for the details of what had taken place. Those of Philomelium, in Phrigian Parorea, exhibited, in particular, a touching zeal. The Church of Smyrna caused one of the elders to write down the account of the martyrdom, in the form of a circular epistle, which was addressed to the different Churches. The faithful of Philomelium, who were not far off, were charged with transmitting the letter to the brethren at a distance. The copy of the Philomelians, copied by a certain Evarestur, and carried by one named Marcion, served subsequently as the basis of the original edition. As happens frequently in the publication of circular letters, the finales of the different copies were made to dovetail the one into the other. This rare fragment constitutes the most ancient example known of the Acts of Martyrdom. It was the model which people imitated, and which furnished the form and the essential parts of those kinds of compositions. Only the imitations had not the naturalness and simplicity of the original. 151


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It seems that the author of the false Ignatian letters had read the Smyrniote epistle. There is the closest connection between these writings, and a great similarity of thought. After Ignatius, Polycarpus was the person who copied the most of the thoughts of the false letters and it is in the true or supposed epistle of Polycarpus that he seeks his point d’appui. The idea that martyrdom is the supreme favour that one ought to seek after, and to request of Heaven, found in the Smyrniote encyclical its first and perfect expression. But the enthusiasm for martyrdom is there kept within the limits of moderation. The author of this remarkable writing loses no occasion to show that true martyrdom, the martyrdom conformable with the Gospel, is that which one does not seek after, but which one expects. The provocation appeared to him so blameable, that he experiences a certain satisfaction in showing that the Phrygian fanatic yielded to the entreaties of the pro-consul, and became an apostate. Frivolous, light-headed, prone to whimsicalities, Asia turned these tragedies into stories, and made a caricature of martyrdom. About that time there lived a certain Peregrinus, a cynic philosopher of Parium, upon the Hellespont, who called himself Protéus, and in regard to whom people boasted of the facility with which he could assume any character, and undertake any adventure. Among these adventures was that of posing as a bishop and a martyr. Having begun life by committing the most frightful crimes, parricide even, he became a Christian, then a priest, a scribe, a prophet, a thiasarch, and chief of the synagogue. He interpreted the sacred books, as composed by himself; he passed for an oracle, for a supreme authority, in fact, on ecclesiastical rules. He was arrested for that offence, and put in chains. This was the commencement of his apotheosis. From that hour he was adored; people raised heaven and earth to affect his escape, and manifested the greatest anxiety in regard to him. In the mornings, at the prison gate, the widows and orphans gathered to see him. The notables obtained, by means of money, the privilege of passing the night in his society. It was a constant succession of dinners and of sacred feasts; people celebrated the Mysteries in close proximity to him; he was called only “the excellent Peregrinus,” and was looked upon as a new Socrates. All this took place in Syria. These public scandals delighted the Christians; they spared no effort in such a case to render the manifestation a brilliant affair. Envoys arrived from every town in Asia for the purpose of rendering service to the confessor, and of condoling with him. Money flowed in upon him. But it was found that the governor of Syria was a philosopher; he penetrated the secret of our subject, saw that he had but one idea, that of dying in order to render his name celebrated, and he set him free without punishment. Everywhere in his travels Peregrinus revelled in abundance, the Christians surrounded him, and gave him an escort of honour. “These imbeciles,” adds Lucian, “were persuaded that they were absolutely immortal, that they would live eternally, which was the reason that they held death in contempt, and that many amongst them offered themselves up as sacrifices. Their first legislator had persuaded them that they were all brothers, from the moment that, denying the Hellenistic gods, they adored the Crucified One,

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their sophist, and lived according to his laws. They had, then, nothing but disdain for things terrestrial, and they held the latter as belonging to all in common But it were useless to say that they had not a serious reason for believing all this. If, then, some impostor, some crafty man, capable of making use of the situation, came to them, they immediately laid their riches at his feet, while he laughed in his sleeve at the silly fools.” Peregrinus having exhausted his resources, sought, by means of a theatrical death at the Olympian Games, to satisfy the insatiable desire that he had, to wit: to make people speak of him. Pompous and voluntary suicide was, it is well known, the great reproach which the sage philosophers brought against the Christians. 251

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CHAPTER XXIV. CHRISTIANITY AMONGST THE GAULS—THE CHURCH OF LYONS. FOR a short time it was believed that the death of Polycarpus had put an end to persecution, and it would seem that there was in fact an interval of calm. The zeal of the Smyrniotes was but redoubled; and it is about this time that must be placed the departure of a Christian colony, which, setting out probably from Smyrna, carried the Gospel with a bound into distant countries, where the name of Jesus had not yet penetrated. Pothinus, an old man of seventy, probably a Smyrniote and a disciple of Polycarpus, was, it seems, the chief of this new departure.

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For a long time a course of reciprocal communication had been established between the ports of Asia Minor and the shores of the Mediterranean of Gaul. The ancient traces of the Phœnicians were not yet wholly effaced. These populations of Asia and Syria, for whom emigration to the East possessed a great attraction, were fond of ascending the Rhone and the Saone, carrying with them a portable bazaar of divers merchandise, or else stopping on the banks of these great rivers, at spots which held out to them the hope of making a living. Vienne and Lyons, the two principal towns of the country, were mostly the points aimed at by the emigrants, who went into Gaul as merchants, servants, workmen, and even as physicians, whom the peasants amongst the Allobroges and Segusiavii did not possess to the same extent. The laborious and industrial population of the great towns on the banks of the Rhone was in a great part composed of those Orientals, who are more gentle, more intelligent, less superstitious than the indigenous population, and, by reason of their insinuating and amiable manners, capable of exercising upon the former a profound influence. The Roman Empire had broken down the barriers of national sentiment, which prevented different peoples from coming into contact. Certain propaganda which the ancient Gaulish institutions, for example, had laid down from the beginning, had become possible. Rome persecuted, but did not use preventive means, so that, far from being hurtful to the development of an opinion aspiring to be universal, she aided it. These Syrians and Asiatics arrived in the East not knowing any tongue except the Greek. Among themselves they did not cast aside that language; they made use of it in their writings, and in all their personal relations; but they quickly acquired Latin, and even Celtic. Greek, moreover, which continued to be spoken in the region of the lower Rhone, was known to a great extent in Vienne and in Lyons. These Christians of Lyons and Vienne, in setting out from a very limited region, Asia and Phrygia, being almost all compatriots, and having been instructed by the same books and by the same teachings, afford an instance of rare unity. Their intercourse with the Churches of Asia and Phrygia was frequent: in grave circumstances it was to these Churches that they wrote. Like Phrygians generally, they were ardent pietists; but they had not that sectarian tinge which soon

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made the Montanists a danger, almost a plague, in the Church. Pothinus, who was at first recognised as the head of the Church of Lyons, was a respectable old man, and moderate even in his enthusiasm. 253

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Attains of Pergamos, who like him was a very old man, appears to have been, after the former, the pillar of the Church and the principal authority. He was a Roman citizen and a rather important personage: he knew Latin, and was recognised in every city as the principal representative of the little community. A Phrygian named Alexander, practising the medical profession, was loved and known by all. Initiated into the pious secrets of the saints of Phrygia, he possessed some of the graces, that is to say, the supernatural gifts, of the apostolic age, which had been revived in his native land. Like Polycarpus, he had reached the highest state of the internal spiritual communion. It was, as we see, a corner of Phrygia which chance had transported bodily into Gaul. The continual accessions coming from Asia maintained that first hold and conserved there the spirit of mysticism which had been its primitive character. As soon as he was able, Irenæus, wearied out perhaps by his struggles with Florimus and Blastus, quitted Rome for this Church, composed entirely of the countrymen, disciples, and the friends of Polycarpus. Communication between Lyons and Vienne was constant: the two Churches, in reality, were but one, and in both the Greek dominated; but in both likewise there existed between the emigrants of Asia and the indigenous population, who spoke Latin or Celtic, the closest relations. The effect of this familiar preaching in the house and in the workshop was rapid and profound. The women especially felt themselves vehemently carried away by it. The Gaulish nature, naturally sympathetic and religious, promptly embraced the new ideas brought by the strangers. Their religion, at once most idealistic and most materialistic, their belief in perpetual visions, their habit of transforming lively and delicate sensations into supernatural intuitions, suited those races very well which were carried away by religious dreams, and which the insufficient worships of Gaul and Rome could not satisfy. The evangelic ministry was sometimes exercised in the Celtic tongue. It is remarkable that amongst the new converts a great number were Roman citizens. One of the most important conquests was that of a certain Vettius Epagathus, a young noble Lyonese, who, when he had hardly been affiliated to the Church, excelled everybody in piety and in charity, and became one of the most distinguished amongst them. He led so chaste and so austere a life that he was, in spite of his youth, compared to the aged Zacharias, an ascetic who was constantly visited by the Holy Spirit. Devoted to works of mercy, he became the servant of all, and employed his life to the succour of his neighbours with admirable zeal and fervour. It was believed that the Paraclete dwelt in him, and that he acted in all circumstances under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The recollection left by the virtues of Vettius became a popular tradition, which pretended to ascribe to his family the evangelisation of the neighbouring countries. He was in truth the first-fruits of Christ in Gaul. Sanctus, the deacon of Vienne, and especially the maid-servant Blandina, who was much inferior to him in social dignity, equalled him in earnestness. Blandina, above all, worked miracles. She was so slender of body that it was feared she had not the physical

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strength sufficient to confess Christ. She displayed, on the contrary, the day when the struggle came, an unexampled nervous force; she wearied out the torturers for a whole day; and it might be said that at each torment she experienced a recrudescence of faith and of life.

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Such was this Church, which in a bound attained to the highest privileges of the Christian Churches of Asia, and stood out in the centre of a still semi-barbarous country, like a shining beacon. The Christians of Lyons and Vienne, entrusted with the Gospel of John and of the Apocalypse, without having need of the stammering schools through which Christianity had passed, were carried at the very first to the summit of perfection. Nowhere was life more austere, enthusiasm more serious, the desire to create the kingdom of God more intense. Chilasmus, which had its home in Asia Minor, was not less loudly proclaimed in Lyons. Gaul hence entered the Church of Jesus through a triumph hitherto unequalled. Lyons was designated as the religious capital of that country. Fourvieres and Ainai are the two sacred points of our Christian origins. Fourvieres, at the time of the ecclesiastical annals of which we now speak, was still a city wholly Pagan; as for Ainai (Athanacum) it is allowable to suppose that the Christian souvenirs have some reason for attaching themselves to it. This suburb, situated on the islands at the confluence of the rivers, down the river from the Gaulish and Roman city, came to be the lower part of the town, the place where the Orientals disembarked, and where probably they made some sojourn before settling down. But this was undoubtedly the first Christian quarter, and the very ancient church which is to be seen there, is perhaps of all the edifices in France the one which those who love antique souvenirs ought to visit with the most respect. The Lyonese character from this time forth was sketched with all the features which distinguish it—need of the supernatural, fervour of soul, a taste for the irrational, perversity of judgment, ardent imagination, and a profound and sensual mysticism. With this passionate race, high moral instincts do not spring from reason, but from the heart and the bowels. The origin of the Lyonese school in art and literature was already fully traced in that admirable letter upon the frightful drama of 177. It is beautiful, odd touching, sickly. There is mixed up in it a slight aberration of the senses, a something resembling the nervous quivering of the saints of Pepuza. The relations of Epagathus with the Paraclete savoured already of the city of spiritualism, the city in which, towards the end of the last century, Cagliostro had a temple. The anæstheses of Blandina, her familiar conversations with Christ, whilst the bull is tossing her into the air; the hallucination of the martyrs, believing that they saw Jesus in their sister, at the end of the arena bound naked to a stake—the whole of this legend which on the one hand transports you away from stoicism and where on the other one approaches the cataleptic state, and to the experiences of Salpetriere, seems a subject invented for those poets, painters, thinkers, wholly original and idealistic, who imagine themselves to paint only the soul, but in reality only dupes of the body. Epictetus deports himself better; he has shown in the battle of life as much heroism as Attalus and as Sanctus, but there is no legend concerning him. The hegemonikon alone says nothing to humanity. Man is

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a very complex being. One can never charm or arouse the multitude with pure truth: one has never made a great man out of a eunuch, nor a great romance without love.

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We shall soon witness the most dangerous chimeras of Gnosticism Ending at Lyons a prompt reception, and almost by the side of Blandina the victims of the seductions of Marcus flee from the Church, or come there to confess their sin, in habits of mourning. The charm of the Lyonese, living in a sort of tender decency and of voluptuous chastity; her seductive reserve, implying the secret idea that beauty is a holy thing; her strange facility for letting herself be captivated by the appearances of mysticism and of pity, produced under Marcus Aurelius scenes which might lead one to think they had taken place in our own times. Marseilles, Arles, and the immediate environs received alike under Antonius a first Christian preaching; Nîmes, on the contrary, appeared to have resisted as long as possible the cult which came from the East. It was about the same time that Africa witnessed the formation of stable Churches which were soon to constitute one of the most original parties of the new religion. Amongst the first founders of African Christianity, the mystic tinge which in a few years was denominated Montanist was no less strong than amongst the Christians of Lyons. It is probable, nevertheless, that the teaching of the kingdom of God was in this case brought from Rome and not from Asia. The Acts of St Perpetua, and in general the Acts of the Martyrs of Africa—Tertullian, and the other types of African Christianity—have an air of fraternity with Pastor Hermas. Assuredly the first bearers of the good news spoke Greek at Carthage, as they did everywhere else. Greek was almost as widespread in that city as Latin; the Christian community at first made use of both languages; soon, however, the language of Rome predominated. Africa thus gave the first example of a Latin Church. In a few years a brilliant Christian literature was produced in that eccentric idiom which the rude Punic genius had drawn, by the twofold influence of barbarism and rhetoric, from the language of Cicero and of Tacitus. A translation of the works of the Old and New Testaments in that energetic dialect responded to the requirements of the new converts, and was for a long time the Bible of the West.

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CHAPTER XXV. THE STRIFE AT ROME—MARTYRDOM OF ST JUSTIN—FRONTON.

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DISTRESSING scenes, the consequence of a vicious legislation, under the reign of one of the best of sovereigns, were taking place everywhere. Sentences of death and the denial of justice multiplied. The Christians were often in the wrong. Severity, and the ardent love of the good, by which they were animated, carried them sometimes beyond the bounds of moderation, and rendered them odious to those whom they censured. The father, the son, the husband, the wife, the neighbour, irritated by these prying spies, revenged themselves by denouncing them. Atrocious calumnies were the consequence of these accumulated hatreds. It was about this time that rumours, which up till then had no particular force, assumed a definite form, and became a rooted opinion. The mystery attaching to the Christian reunions, the mutual affection which reigned in the Church, gave birth to the most foolish notions. They were supposed to form a secret society, to have secrets known only to the initiated, to be guilty of shameful promiscuity, and of loves contrary to nature. Some spoke of the adoration of a god with the head of an ass, others of the ignoble homage rendered to the priest. One story which received general currency was this: They presented to the person who was being initiated an infant covered over with paste, in order to train his hand by degrees to murder. The novice struck, the blood poured forth, all drank eagerly, they divided the trembling limbs, and cemented thus their alliance through complicity, and bound themselves to absolute silence. Then they became drunk, lights were extinguished, and in the darkness they all gave themselves up to the most hideous embracements. Rome was a city much given to slander: a multitude of newsmongers and gossips were on the watch for bizarre tales. Those silly tales were repeated, passed off as being of public notoriety, were transformed into outrages and into caricatures. The serious part about it was this, that in the legal processes to which those accusations gave rise they put to the question slaves belonging to Christian houses—women, young boys—who, overcome by the tortures, said all that was wished of them, and afforded a judicial basis for many odious inventions. The calumnies, moreover, were reciprocal, the Christians retorting on their adversaries the lies invented against themselves. These sanguinary feasts, these orgies, were practised only by the Pagans. Had not their god set them the example in every kind of vice? In some of the most solemn rites of the Roman worship, in the sacrifices to Jupiter Latiaris, did they not indulge in the shedding of human blood? The accusation was inaccurate, but, for all that, it became one of the bases of apologetic Christianity. The immorality of the gods of ancient Olympus afforded the controversialists an easy triumph. When Jupiter himself was only the pure blue sky, he was immoral like nature herself, and this immorality had no results. But morals had now become the essence of religion; people required of the gods examples of citizen-like integrity; examples like those of which mythology is full yielded only scandalous and irrefutable objections.

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Above all things it was the public discussions between the philosophers and the apologist which embittered the minds of people, and led to the gravest disturbances. In those discussions people insulted one another, and, unhappily, the parties were not equal. The philosophers had a sort of official position and state function; they received emoluments for making profession of a wisdom which they did not always teach by their example. They ran no risks, and they were wrong in making their adversaries feel that by saying a word they could extinguish them. The Christians, on their side, jeered at the philosophers for accepting emoluments. Those were insipid pleasantries, analogous to those which we have seen exhibited in our times against salaried philosophers. “Could they not,” said people to one another, “wear their beards gratis!” People affected to believe that they rolled in gold, treated them as sordid wretches, as parasites; people objected to their doctrine, on the ground that they knew how to do without men of their manner of life—a life which appeared as one of opulence to some people even poorer than themselves were. The ardent Justin was at the head of these noisy altercations, where we see him, towards the end of his life, seconded by a disciple more violent yet than himself, we mean the Assyrian Latianus, a man of a gloomy disposition, and filled with hatred against Hellenism. Born a Pagan, he studied literature extensively, and kept a public school of philosophy, not without obtaining a certain reputation as a teacher. Endowed with a melancholy imagination, Latianus was anxious to possess clear ideas upon things which human destiny interdicted him from acquiring. He had traversed, like his master Justin, the whole circle of existing religions and philosophies, had travelled, wished to be initiated into all the pretended religious secrets, and attended the different schools. Hellenism offended him by its apparent levity of morals. Destitute of all literary sentiment, he was incapable of appreciating their divine beauty. The Scriptures of the Hebrews had alone the privilege of satisfying him. They pleased him by their severe morality, their simple style and assurance, by their monotheistic character, and by the peremptory manner in which they put to one side, by means of the creation dogma, the restless curiosities of physics and metaphysics. His contracted and dull mind had found in them that which it wanted. He became a Christian, and met in St Justin the doctor best fitted to comprehend his passionate philosophy; he attached him closely to him, and was in a manner his second in the contests which he sustained against the sophists and the rhetoricians. Their usual antagonist was a cynic philosopher named Crescentius, a personage, it seems, contemptible enough, who had made a position at Rome by his ascetic appearance and by his long beard. His declamations against the fear of death did not impede him from often menacing Justin and Tatian, and of denouncing them: “Ah, you own, then, that death is an evil!” said they to him in turn, wittily enough. Certainly Crescentius was wrong in abusing thus the protection of the State to his adversaries. But it must be confessed that Justin did not in that case show him all the consideration he deserved. He treated his adversaries as gourmands and impostors; he was right, nevertheless, in reproaching them with the emoluments they accepted. One can be a pensioner without being, for all that, a niggardly and covetous person. A circumstance which occurred about

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that time in Rome, showed how dangerous it is to oppose persecution to fanaticism, even where fanaticism is aggressive and tantalising.

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There was in Rome a very wicked household, in which the husband and the wife seemed to be rivals in infamy. The wife was converted to Christianity by one Ptolemy, abandoned her evils ways, made every effort to convert her husband, and not succeeding in this, thought of a divorce. She was afraid at being accomplice in the impieties of him with whom she lived united by society, sitting at the same table, and sharing the same couch. In spite of the counsels of her family, she sent to him the notifications required by law, and quitted the conjugal abode. The husband protested, entered an action, pleading that his wife was a Christian. The wife obtained several delays. The husband, irritated, directed, as was natural, all his anger against Ptolemy. He succeeded through a centurion, a friend of his, in having Ptolemy arrested, and whom he persuaded to ask simply of Ptolemy whether he were a Christian. Ptolemy confessed that he was, and was put in prison. After a very cruel detention he was taken before Quintus Lollius Urbicus, prefect of Rome. He was questioned afresh, and made fresh avowals. Ptolemy was condemned to death. A Christian, named Lucius, present at the hearing, interpellated Urbicus. “How can you condemn a man who is neither adulterer, thief, nor murderer, who is guilty of no other crime than of avowing himself a Christian? Your judgment is indeed little in accord with the piety of our Emperor, and with the sentiments of the philosopher son of Cæsar” (Marcus Aurelius). Lucius having avowed himself a Christian, Urbicus condemned him likewise to death. “Thank you,” responded Lucius; “I am obliged to you; I am about to exchange wicked masters for a father who is king of heaven.” A third auditor was seized with the same contagious fury for martyrdom. He proclaimed himself a Christian, and was ordered to be executed with the two others, Justin was moved extremely by this sanguinary drama. As long as Lollius Urbicus was perfect of Rome, he could not protest; but as soon as that function passed to another, Justin addressed to the senate a fresh apology. His own position became precarious. He felt the danger of having for an enemy a man like Crescentius, who by a word could put him out of the way. It was with the presentiment of a near death that he committed to writing that eloquent defence against the exceptional situation to which the Christians were reduced. There is something bold in the attitude which an obscure philosopher takes before the powerful body which the provincials never designated otherwise than hiera syncletos, “the holy assembly.” Justin brings back these arrogant people to a sentiment of justice and of truth. The éclat of their pretended dignity may create an illusion in them; but whether they like it or like it not they are the brothers and the fellow-creatures of those whom they prosecute. This persecution is the proof of the truth of Christianity. The best among the Pagans have in like manner been persecuted—Musonius, for example—but what a difference! Whilst Socrates has not had a single disciple who has been put to death for him, Jesus has a multitude of witnesses—artisans, common people, as well as philosophers, men of letters—who have offered up their lives for him.

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It is to be regretted that some of the enlightened men of which the senate was then composed did not study these beautiful pages. Perhaps they were turned from them by other passages less philosophic, in particular by the absurd demonomania which bristled in each page. Justin challenges his readers to prove a notorious fact, which was, that people brought to the Christians the possessed whom the Pagan exorcists were unable to heal. He held that to be a decisive proof of the eternal fires in which demons shall one day be punished along with the men who have adored them. One page which ought to shock wholly those whom Justin wished to convert, is the one in which, after having established that the violent measures of Roman legislation against. Christianity were the work of demons, he announces that God will soon avenge the blood of his servants, in annihilating the power of the genii of evil, and in consuming all the world by fire (an idea that the worst wretches made use of for the purpose of disorder and pillage). If God differs, said he, it is only to wait until the number of the elect be complete. Till then, he will allow demons and wicked men to do all the evil that they wish. That which shows indeed what an amount of simplicity of mind Justin combined with his rare sincerity, is the petition by which he finishes his apology. He requests that there should be given to his writing an official approbation, in order to correct the opinion as to what concerns the Christians. “At least,” says he, “such a publicity would be less objectionable than that which is given every day to foolish farces, obscene writings, ballets, Epicurean books, and other compositions of the same sort, which are represented or are read with entire freedom. We see already how much Christianity shows itself favourable to the most immoderate exercise of authority, when this authority shall have been acquired by it” Justin touches us more, when he regards death with impassability:—

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I fully expect, says be, to see myself denounced some day, and put into the stocks by the people whom I have mentioned, at least by this Crescentius, more worthy of being called the friend of noise and of vain show than the friend of wisdom, who goes about every day affirming of as things of which he knows nothing, accusing us in public of atheism and of impiety, in order to gain the favour of an abused multitude. He must have a very wicked soul to decry us thus, since even the man of ordinary morality makes a point of not passing judgment upon things of which he is ignorant. If he pretends that he is perfectly instructed in our doctrine, it must be that the baseness of his mind has prevented him from comprehending its majesty. If he understood it thoroughly, there is nothing which obliges him to decry it, if it be not the fear of being himself regarded as a Christian. Understand, in fact, that I, having proposed some questions to him on the subject, have clearly perceived, and I have even convinced him that he knows nothing about them. And to demonstrate to the whole world that what I say is the truth, I declare that if you are still ignorant of this dispute I am ready to renew it in your presence. The latter would indeed be a truly royal work. For, if you were to see the questions which I proposed to him and the responses he made to them, you could not doubt his ignorance, nor his little love for the truth.

The forecasts of St Justin were but too well justified. Crescentius denounced him when he ought to have contented himself by refuting him, and the courageous doctor was put to death. Tatian escaped the snares of the Cynic. We cannot enough regret, for the sake of the memory of Antonine (or, if it is wished, of Marcus Aurelius), that the courageous advocate of a cause which was then

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that of liberty of conscience should have suffered martyrdom under his reign. If Justin called his rival “impostor,” or “shark,” as Tatian informs us, he deserved the full penalty which attached to the crime of proffering insults in public. But Crescentius may have been no less offensive, and he escaped punishment. Justin was therefore punished for being a Christian. The law was formal, and the conservators of the Roman common weal hesitated to abrogate it. How many precursors of the future suffered similarly under the reign of the just and pious St Louis!

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The attacks of Crescentius were but an isolated circumstance. In the first century, some of the most enlightened men were wholly ignorant of Christianity; but this is no longer possible. Everybody has an opinion on the subject. The first rhetorician of the times, L. Cornelius Fronton, certainly wrote an invective against the Christians. That discourse is lost; we do not know in what circumstances it was composed, but we can form some idea of it from that which Municius Felix puts into the mouth of his Cæcilius. The work was not like that of Celsus, consecrated to exegetical discussion; it was nothing more than a philosophical treatise. It consisted of several considerations on the man of the world, and on politics. Fronton accepted without examination the most calumnious rumours against the Christians. He believed or affected to believe what was told of their nocturnal mysteries and of their sanguinary repasts. A very honest man, but an official man, he had a horror of a sect of men of no social standing. Satisfied with a sort of vague belief in Providence, which he capriciously associated with a polytheistic devotion, he held to the established religion, not because he alleged it was true, but because it was the ancient religion, and formed part of the prejudices of a true Roman. There is no doubt that in his declamation he only took up a patriotic point of view, so as to preach the respect that was due to national institutions, and that be only stood up in his conservative zeal against the foolish pretension of illiterate people of mean condition aspiring to reform beliefs. Perhaps he wound up ironically in regard to the impotence of that unique God who, too much occupied to be able to govern everything well, abandoned his worshippers to death, and with a few railleries upon the resurrection of the flesh. The discourse of Fronton appealed only to the lettered. Fronton rendered a very bad service to Christianity in inculcating his ideas on the illustrious pupil whom he educated with so much care, and who came to be called Marcus Aurelius.

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CHAPTER XXVI. THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS.

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IF we accept the apologists, such as Aristides, Quadratus, and Justin, who addressed themselves to the Pagans, and the pure traditionists, such as Papias and Hegesippus, who regarded the new revelation as essentially consisting in the words of Jesus, almost all the Christian writers of the age we have just left had the idea of augmenting the list of sacred writings susceptible of being read in the Church. Despairing of succeeding in this through their private authority, they assumed the name of some apostle or of some apostolic personage, and made no scruple in attributing to themselves the inspiration which was indiscriminately enjoyed by the immediate disciples of Jesus. This vein of apocryphal literature was now exhausted. Pseudo-Hermas only half succeeded. We shall see the Reconnaissances of pseudo-Clementine and the pretended Constitutions of the twelve apostles equally stamped with suspicion in respect of canonicity. The numerous Acts of Apostles which were produced everywhere had only a partial success. No Apocalypse appeared again to disturb seriously the masses. The success of public readings had, up to this point, been the criterions of canonicity. A Church admitted such a writing imputed to an apostle or to an apostolic personage to the public reading. The faithful were edified. The rumour was spread in the neighbouring Churches that a very beautiful communication had been made in such a community, on such a day; people wished to see the new writing, and thus, little by little, this writing came to be accepted, provided that it did not contain some stumbling-block. But as time went on people became critical, and successes such as those which the Epistles to Titus and to Timothy, the Second Epistle to Peter, obtained, were no longer renewed. The fertility of evangelical invention was in reality exhausted; the age of great legendary creation was past; people no longer invented anything of importance; the success of psuedo-John was the last. But the liberty of remodelling was sufficiently extensive, at least outside the Churches of St Paul. Although the four texts which became subsequently canonical, had already a certain vogue, they were far from excluding similar texts. The Gospel of the Hebrews retained all its authority. Justin and Tatian probably made use of it. The author of the Epistles of St Ignatius (second half of the second century) cites it as a canonical and accepted text. No text, in fact, destroyed the tradition or suppressed its rivals. Books were rare, and badly preserved. Dionysius of Corinth, at the end of the second century, speaks of the falsifiers of the “Scriptures of the Lord,” which induces the belief that the retouching continued for more than a hundred years after the compilation of our Mathew. Hence the indecisive form in the sayings of Jesus which is to be remarked in the apostolic fathers. The source is always vaguely indicated; great variations are produced in the citations up to the time of St Irenæus. Sometimes the words of Isaiah and Enoch are put forth for the words of Jesus. There is no longer any distinction between the Bible and the Gospel, and some words of Luke are cited with this heading, “God says.” 163


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The Gospels thus were until about the year 160 and even beyond that, private writings designed for small circles. Each of the latter had its own, and for a long time individuals did not scruple to complete and to continue already accepted texts. The compilation had not taken a definite form. The texts were added to, they were abridged; such and such a passage was discussed, and the Gospels in circulation were amalgamated, so as to form a single and more portable work. The oral transmission, on the other hand, continued to play a part. A multitude of sayings were not written down: it would have been necessary to determine the whole tradition. Many of the evangelical elements were yet sporadic. It was thus that the beautiful anecdote of the woman taken in adultery circulated. It was made use of as best it might in the fourth Gospel. The phrase, “Be good money changers,” which is cited as being “in the Gospel,” and as “scripture,” did not find a corner anywhere in it. Certain abridgements which were threatened to be made were much more serious. Every detail which represented Christ as a man, appeared scandalous. The fine verse of Luke, where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, was condemned by the uncultured sectaries who pretended that weeping was a token of weakness. The consoling angel and the bloody sweat on the Mount of Olives provoked objections and analogous mutilations. But orthodoxy, already dominant, prevented these individual conceits from seriously compromising the integrity of the texts already sacred.

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In truth, amidst all this chaos, order was established. In like manner, between opposing doctrines an orthodoxy was designed, just as from amongst a multitude of Gospels four texts tended to become more and more canonical, to the exclusion of others. Mark, pseudo-Matthew, Luke, and pseudo-John, tended towards an official consecration. The Gospels of the Hebrews, which at first equalled them in value, but of which the Nazarenes and the Ebionites made a dangerous use, began to be discarded. The Gospels of Peter and the twelve apostles appeared to have various defects, and were suppressed by the bishops. How was it that people did not go still further, and were not tempted to reduce the four Gospels to one only, either by suppressing three, or in making a unity of the four, after the manner of the Diatesseron of Tatian, or in constructing a sort of Gospel a priori, like Marcion? The honesty of the Church never appears to greater advantage than in this circumstance. With a light heart she placed herself in the most embarrassing situation. It was impossible that some of these contradictions of the Gospels should have escaped observation. Celsus was already keenly alive to them. People preferred for the future to be exposed to the most terrible objections, than that the writings regarded by so many persons as inspired should be condemned. Each of the four great Gospels had its clientèle, if one may thus express oneself. To wrench them out of the hands of those who admired them would have been an impossibility. Besides, it might have resulted in condemning to oblivion a multitude of beautiful details in which we recognise Jesus, although the order of the narration was different. The tetractys gained the day, except in imposing upon ecclesiastical criticism the strangest of tortures—that of making a text accord with four texts discordant.

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In any case, the Catholic Church no longer now accords to any person the right to revise from top to bottom the anterior texts, like as has been done by Luke and pseudo-John. We have passed from the age of living tradition to the age of moribund tradition. The book, which until now had been nothing, became everything for the people, who were already removed from the ocular witnesses by two or three generations. Towards the year 180, the revolution will be complete. The Catholic Church will declare the last of the Gospels rigorously closed. There are four Gospels. Irenæus tells us it is necessary to have four, and it is impossible there can be more than four; for there are four climates, four winds, four corners of the world, calling each for a defender; four revelations, that of Adam, of Noah, of Moses, and of Jesus; four animals in the cherub, and four mystic beasts in the Apocalypse. Each of these monsters who for the prophet of the year 69 were simple animated ornaments of the throne of God, became the emblem of one of the four accepted texts. It was admitted that the Gospel was like the cherub, tetramorphous. To put the four texts in accord, to harmonise the one with the other, was the difficult task which shall henceforth be pursued by those who attempt to form to themselves a conception, be it ever so little reasonable, of the life of Jesus. The most original endeavour to get out of this confusion was certainly that of Tatian, the disciple of Justin. His Diatesseron was the first essay at harmonising the Gospels. The Synoptics, together with the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospels of Peter, were the basis of his labour. The text which resulted from it resembled closely enough the Gospel of the Hebrews; the genealogies, as well as everything which connected Jesus with the race of David, were wanting in it. The success of the book of Tatian was at first very considerable; many of the Churches adopted it as a convenient résumé of evangelical history, but the heresies of the author rendered the orthodoxy suspicious; in the end, the hook was withdrawn from circulation, and the diversity of texts finally gained the day in the Church Catholic.

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It was not thus with the numerous sects which sprang up everywhere. It did not please the latter that evangelical productions had in a manner become crystalised, and that there was no longer any reason for writing new lives of Jesus. The Gnostic sects desired to renew continually the texts, in order to satisfy their ardent fantasy. Almost all the heads of sects had Gospels bearing their names, after the example set by Basilides, or after the manner of Marcion, according to their good pleasure. That of Apelles was drawn, like so many others, from the Gospel of the Hebrews. Markos drew from every source the authentic and the apocryphal. Valentinus, as we have seen, pretended to ascend to the apostles through personal traditions given to him. People quoted a Gospel according to Philip, which was greatly prized by certain sects, and another that they called “The Gospel of Perfection.” The names of the apostles furnished a sufficient guarantee for all these frauds. There was hardly one of the twelve who had not a Gospel imputed to him. No more Gospels were invented, it is true, but people wanted to know the details which had been omitted in the four inspired ones. The infancy of Christ, in particular, excited the liveliest curiosity. People would not admit that he, whose life had been a prodigy, had lived for some years as an obscure Nazarene. 165


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Such was the origin of that which is called “Apocryphal Gospels,” a long series of feeble productions, the commencement of which may be safely placed about the middle of the second century. It would be doing an injury to Christian literature to place those insipid compositions on the same footing with the masterpieces of Mark, Luke, and Matthew. The apocryphal Gospels are the Pouranas of Christianity; they have for their basis the canonical Gospels. The author takes these Gospels as a theme from which he never deviates; he seeks simply to elucidate and perfect by the ordinary processes of the Hebraic legend. Luke already had followed the same course. In his deductions in regard to the infancy of Jesus, and the birth of John the Baptist, he uses processes of amplification; his pious mechanism of mise en scene is the prelude to the apocryphal Gospels. The authors of the latter make the utmost use of the sacred rhetoric, which, however, was employed by Luke with discretion. Their innovations were few, imitated, and exaggerated. They did for the canonical Gospels what the authors of the Post-Homerica have done for Homer, what the comparatively modern authors of Dionysiacso or Argonautics have done for the Greek epopee. They dealt with those parts which the canonists, for good reasons, neglected; they added that which might have happened, that which appeared probable; they developed the situations by means of artificial reconciliations borrowed from the sacred texts. Finally, they sometimes proceeded by monographs, and sought to construct legend out of all the evangelical personages in the scattered details which had reference to them. They thus limited themselves in everything to embroidering on a given canvas. This was so different from the assurance of the old evangelists, who spoke as if inspired from on high, and pushed boldly forward, each in his way, the details of their narratives, without troubling themselves whether they contradicted one another. The fabricators of the apocryphal Gospels were timid. They cited their authorities; they were restricted by the canonists. The faculty for creating the myth was altogether wanting; they could no longer even invent a miracle. As for details, it is impossible to conceive anything more contemptible, more pitiful. It is the tiresome verbiage of an old gossip, the vulgar and familiar style of a literature of wet nurses and nursery maids. Like the degenerate Catholicism of modern times, the authors of the apocryphal Gospels on their part descended to the puerile side of Christianity—the infant Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph. The veritable Jesus, the Jesus of public life, was beyond them, and frightened them. The real cause of this sad debasement was a total change in the manner of comprehending the supernatural. The canonical Gospels maintained themselves with a rare dexterity on the verge of a false situation, which, however, was full of charm. Their Jesus is not God, since his whole life is that of a man. He weeps, and allows himself to be moved by pity: he is filled with deity: his attitude is compatible with art, with imagination, and with moral sense. His thaumaturgy, in particular, is that which is becoming to a divine envoy. In the apocryphal Gospels, on the contrary, Jesus is a supernatural spectre, without bodily corporeity. In him humanity is a lie. In his cradle you would take him for an infant: but wait a little: miracles start up round about him; this infant calls out to you, “I am the Logos.” The thaumaturgy of this new Christ is material, mechanical, immoral; it is

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the juggleries of a magician. Wherever he passes, he acts as a magnetic force. Nature is unhinged, and beside itself by the effect of his vicinage. Each word of his is followed by miraculous effects, “for good as well as for evil.” Doubtless the canonical Gospels were sometimes not free from this defect; the episodes of the swine of the Gergesenes, of the fig-tree that was cursed, could have only inspired in contemporaries a rather barren moral reflection: “The author of such acts must indeed be powerful.” But these cases are rare, whilst in the apocryphal the true notion of Jesus, at once human and divine, is perfectly obliterated. In becoming a pure déva, Jesus lost all which had rendered him amiable and affecting. People were constrained, logically enough, to deny his personal identity, to make of him an intermittent spectre, which showed itself to his disciples now young, now old, now an infant, now an old man, now tall, now short, and sometimes so tall that its head touched the sky.

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The oldest and the least objectionable of these insipid rhapsodies is the narrative of the birth of Mary, of her marriage, of the birth of Jesus, reputed to be written by a certain James, a narrative to which has been given the erroneous title of Protevangel of James. A Gnostic book, the Genna Marias, which appears to have been known to St Justin, may have served as the first foundation of it. No book has had so much importance as the latter as regards the history of the Christian festivals and Christian art. The parents of the Virgin, Anne and Joachim; the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, and the idea that she had been brought up as if in a convent; the marriage of the Virgin; the meeting of the widowers, the circumstance of the miraculous wands, the picture of which, in certain parts, has been sketched so admirably. The whole of this comes from this curious writing. The Greek Church regarded it as semi-inspired, and admitted it in the public readings in the churches, at the feasts of St Joachim, of St Anne, of the Conception, of the Nativity, of the Presentation of the Virgin. Its Hebrew colouring is still sufficiently distinct. Some pictures of the manners of the Jews recall at times the Book of Tobias. There are distinct traces of Ebionite Judeo-Christianity and of Docetism; in it marriage is almost reprobated. Many passages of that singular book are not destitute of grace, nor even of a certain naïveté, The author applies to the birth of Mary, and to all the circumstances of the infancy of Jesus, the methods of narration the germ of which was already to be found in Luke and Matthew. The anecdotes in regard to the infancy of Jesus in Luke and in Matthew are ingenious imitations of what is recounted in the ancient books and in the modern agadas about the birth of Samuel, Samson, Moses, Abraham, and Isaac. In this class of writings there was an habitual introduction giving the history of all the great men, several species of commonplaces, always the same, and topics of pious invention. The infant destined to play an extraordinary part must be born of aged parents for long sterile, “so as to demonstrate that the child was a favour bestowed by God, and not the fruit of an unbridled passion.” It was held that the Divine power shone out to more advantage when human agency was absent. The result of long expectation and of assiduous prayers, the future great man was announced by an angel, at some solemn moment. It was thus in the case of Samson and of Samuel. According to Luke, the birth of John the Baptist occurred under such conditions. It is believed that it was the 167


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same in the case of Mary. Her birth, like that of John and of Jesus, was preceded by an annunciation, accompanied with prayers and with canticles. Anne and Joachim are the exact counterparts of Elizabeth and Zacharias. Some go even beyond that, and embellish the infancy of Anne. This retrospective application of the methods of evangelical legend becomes a fruitful source of fables responding to the requirements, constantly springing up, of Christian piety. People could no longer consider Mary, Joseph, and their ancestors as ordinary personages. The cult of the Virgin, which later on attained so enormous proportions, had already made invasions in every quarter.

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A multitude of details, sometimes puerile yet always conforming to the sentiment of the times, or susceptible of removing the difficulties which the ancient Gospels presented, were disseminated by means of these compositions, at first not avowed, or even condemned, but which finished soon in being right. The case of the nativity was completed; the ox and the ass take definitely their places in it. Joseph is depicted as a widower four score years old, the simple protector of Mary. We could have wished that the latter had remained a virgin after as well as before the birth of Jesus. She was made to be of a royal and sacerdotal race, being descended at once from David and from Levi. People cannot represent to themselves that she died like a simple woman. They already speak of her ascension to heaven. The assumption was created, like so many other festivals, by the cycle of apocryphas. An accent of lively piety distinguishes all the compositions of which we have just been speaking, whilst one cannot read without being disgusted the Gospel of Thomas—an insipid work, which does as little honour as possible to the Christian family, very old though it be, which produced it. It is the point of departure of these flat merveilles in regard to the infancy of Jesus which, by reason of their very dullness had a success so disastrous in the East. In them Jesus figures as an enfant terrible, wicked, rancorous, the dread of his parents and of everybody. He kills his companions, transforms them into he-goats, blinds their parents, confounds his masters, demonstrates to them that they know nothing about the mysteries of the alphabet, and forces them to ask pardon of him. People flee from him as from a pestilence. Joseph in vain beseeches him to remain quiet. This grotesque image of an omnipotent and omniscient gamin is one of the greatest caricatures that was ever invented, and certainly those who wrote it had too little wit for one to credit them with the intention of having meant it as a piece of irony. It was not without a theological design, that, contrary to the perfect system of tact of the old evangelists as regards the thirty years of obscure life, it was desired to be shown that the divine nature in Jesus was never idle, and that he continually performed miracles. Everything which made the life of Jesus a human life was vexatious. “This infant was not a terrestrial being,” says Zachæus of him; he can subdue fire; perhaps he existed before the creation of the world. He is either something great, or a god, or an angel, or one I don't know what. This deplorable Gospel appears to be the work of the Marcosians. The Nessenes and the Manicheans appropriated it to themselves, and spread it over the whole of Asia. The inept Oriental Gospel, known by the name of the Gospel of the Infancy, brought into vogue especially by the Nestorians of Persia, is only, in act, an amplification of the Gospel according to Thomas. It passes in all the 168


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East as the work of Peter, and as the Gospel par excellence. If India knew any Gospel, it was this one. If Krechnaism embraced any Christian element, it is from this source that it came. The Jesus of whom Mahomet heard speak, is that of the puerile Gospels, a fantastic Jesus, a spectre proving his superhuman nature by means of an extravagant thaumaturgy. The passion of Jesus owed likewise its development to a cycle of legends. The pretended Acts of Pilate were the framework which was made use of in which to group this order of ideas, with which were readily associated the better polemics against the Jews. It is only in the fourth century that the episodes, of an almost epic character, which were supposed to have taken place in the descent of Jesus to Hades, were put into writing. Later, these legends in regard to the subterranean life of Jesus were joined to the false Acts of Pilate, and formed the celebrated work called the Gospel of Nicodemus.

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This base Christian literature, borrowed from a wholly popular state of mind, was in general the work of the Judaising and Gnostic sects. The disciples of St Paul had no part in them. It was created, to all appearances, in Syria. The apocryphal of Egyptian origin, The History of Joseph the Carpenter, for example, are more recent. Although of humble origin, and tainted with an ignorance truly sordid, the apocryphal Gospels assumed very early an importance of the first order. They pleased the multitude, offered rich themes for preaching on, enlarged considerably the circle of the evangelic personnel—St Anne, St Joachim, the Veronica, St Longinus—from that somewhat tainted source. The most beautiful Christian festivals—the Assumption, the Presentation of the Virgin—have no basis in the canonical Gospels; but they have in the apocryphas. The rich chasing of the legends which have made Christmas the jewel of the Christian year, is drawn for the most part from the apocryphas. The same literature has created the infant Jesus. The devotion to the Virgin finds there almost all its arguments. The importance of St Joseph proceeds entirely from them. Christian art finally owes to these compositions—very feeble, from a literary point of view, but singularly simple and plastic—some of its finest subjects. Christian iconography, whether Byzantine or Latin, has all its roots there. The Peregrine school would not have had any Sposalizio; the Venetian school no assumption, no presentation; the Byzantine school no descent of Jesus into limbo, without the apocryphas. The crib of Jesus without them would have lacked its most beautiful details. Their recommendation was their very inferiority. The canonical Gospels were too strong a literature for the people. Some vulgar narratives, often base, were nearer the level of the multitude than the Sermon on the Mount, or the discourses of the fourth Gospel. So the success of these fraudulent writings was immense. From the fourth century the most instructed Greek fathers—Epiphanes, Gregory of Nyssa—adopted them without reserve. The Latin Church hesitated, even put forth efforts to take them out of the hands of the faithful, but did not succeed. The Golden Legend draws largely upon it. In the Middle Ages the apocryphal Gospels

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enjoyed an extraordinary popularity; they have even an advantage over the canonical Gospels, which is this: not being a sacred Scripture, they can be translated into the vulgar tongue. Whilst the Bible is in a manner put under lock and key, the apocryphas are in everybody’s hands. The Miniaturists were ardently attached to them; the Rhymers seized upon them; the Mystics represented them dramatically in the porches of the Churches. The first modern author of a life of Jesus—Ludolphe le Chartreux—made them his principal document. Without theological pretension these popular Gospels have succeeded in suppressing, in a certain measure, the canonical Gospels; Protestantism also has declared war against them, and devotes itself to proving that they are the work of the devil.

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CHAPTER XXVII. APOCRYPHAL ACTS AND APOCALYPSES.

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THE literature of the false Acts pursues a line quite different from that of the false Gospels. The Acts of the Apostles, the individual work of Luke, were not produced, like the narrative of the life of Jesus, from the diversities of parallel compilations. Whilst the canonical Gospels served as a basis for the amplifications of the apocryphal Gospels, the apocryphal Acts have little connection with the Acts of Luke. The narratives of the preaching and of the death of Peter and Paul never received a final revision. Pseudo-Clement has used them as a literary pretext rather than a direct subject of narrative. The apostolic history was thus the roof of a romantic tissue which never assumed a definite literary form, and which people never cease revising. A sort of résumé of these fables, tainted with a strong Gnostic and Manichean colour, appeared under the name of a pretended Leucius or Lucius, a disciple of the apostles. The Catholics, who regretted that they could not make use of the book, sought to amend it. The final result of that successive emendation was the compilation made in the fifth or sixth centuries under the name of the false Abdias. Almost all those who compiled this sort of works were heretics; but the orthodox, after subjecting them to corrections, soon adopted them. These heretics were very pious people, and at the same time highly imaginative. After they had been anathematised, their books were found to be edifying, and the Churches did their very best to have them introduced into their religious readings. It is in this way that many of the books, many of the saints, many of the festivals of the orthodox Church are the productions of heretics. The fourth Gospel was in this respect one of the most striking examples. This singular book made its way amazingly. It was read more and more, and, apart from the Churches of Asia, which were too well acquainted with its origin, it was accepted on all hands with admiration, and as being the work of the Apostle John.

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The false Acts of the Apostles have no more originality than the apocryphal Gospels. In this order, similarly, the individual fancy did not succeed much better in making itself felt. This was plainly visible in that which concerned the legend of Paul. A priest of Asia, a greet admirer of the apostle, thought to satisfy his piety by constructing a short charming romance in which Paul converted a beautiful young girl of Iconium, named Hecla, who was drawn to him by an invincible attraction, and made of her a martyr of virginity. The priest did not conceal his game well; he was questioned, nonplussed, and finished by avowing that he had done all this out of love for Paul. The book succeeded none the lees for this, and it was only banished from the Canon with the other apocryphal writings about the fifth or sixth centuries. St Thomas, the apostle preferred by Gnostics, and later, by the Manicheans, inspired in the same way acts in which the horror of certain sects for marriage is set forth with the utmost energy.

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Thomas arrived in India while the nuptials of the daughter of the king were in preparation. He so strongly persuaded the fiancés as to the inexpediency of marriage, the wicked sentiments which result from the fact of having begotten children, the crimes which are the consequence of esprit de famille, and the troubles of housekeeping, that they passed the night seated by the side of one another. On the morrow their relations were astonished at finding them in this position, full of a sweet gaiety, and free from any of the ordinary embarrassments incident to such circumstances. The young couple explain to them that bashfulness has no longer any meaning for them, since the cause of it has disappeared. They have exchanged the transient nuptials for the joys of a never-ending paradise. The strange hallucinations to which these moral errors gave scope, are all vividly depicted throughout the entire book. The first outline of a Christian hell, with its categories of torments, is found traced there. This singular writing, which constituted a part of certain Bibles, recalls the theology of the pseudo-Clementine romance, and that of the Elkasaites. In it the Holy Ghost is, like as with the Nazarenes a feminine principle, ‘the mother misericordiæ.’ Water represents the purifying element of the soul and of the body; the unction of oil is then the seal of baptism, like as with the Gnostics. The sign of the cross already possesses all its supernatural virtues, as well as a sort of magic. 283

The Acts of St Philip have also a theosophic colouring, and a very pronounced Gnosticism. Those of Andrew were one of the parts of the compilation of the pretended Leucius, who merits the most anathemas. The orthodox Church was at first a stranger to these fables; then she adopted them, at least for popular use. Iconography especially found in them, as in the apocryphal Gospels, an ample repository of subjects and of symbols. Almost all the attributes which have been made use of by imaginative writers to distinguish the apostles, comes from the apocryphal Acts. The apocalyptic form served also to express how much there existed in the heterodox Christian sects of insubordination, of unruliness, and of dissatisfaction. An ascension or anabaticon of Paul, which set forth the mysteries that Paul was reputed to have seen in his ecstasy, was in great vogue. An apocalypse of Elias enjoyed considerable popularity. It was amongst the Gnostics in particular that the apocalypses, under the name of apostles and prophets, germinated. The faithful were on their guard, and the moderate Church party, who at once feared the Gnostic excesses and the excesses of the pious, admitted only two apocalypses—that of John and of Peter. Nevertheless, writings of the same kind, attributed to Joseph, Moses, Abraham, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zacharias, and the father of John, were in circulation. Two zealous Christians, preoccupied with the substitution of a new world for an old world, excited by their persecutions, greedy, like all the fabricators of apocalypses, of the evil news which came from the four corners of the earth, took up the mantle of Esdras, and wrote under that revered name a number of new pages, which were joined to those which the pseudo-Esdras of 97 had already accepted. It has also been thought that the

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apocalyptic books attributed to Enoch received in the second century some Christian additions. But this appears to us little probable; those books of Enoch, formerly so esteemed, and which Jesus had probably read with enthusiasm, had fallen, at the time of which we now speak, into universal discredit. The Gnostics, in like manner, could show psalms, pieces of apocryphal prophets, revelations under the name of Adam, Seth, Noria, the imaginary wife of Noah, recitals of the nativity of Mary, full of improprieties, and great and small interrogations of Mary. Their gospel of Eve was a tissue of chimerical equivocations. Their Gospel of Philip presented a dangerous quietism, clothed in a form borrowed from Egyptian rituals. The ascension or anabaticon of Isaiah was made up of the same stuff, in the third century, and was a true source of heresies. The Archonties, the Hieracities, the Messalians, proceeded from that. Like the author of the Acts of Thomas, the author of the Ascension of Isaiah is one of the precursors of Dante, by the complaisance with which he expatiates upon the description of heaven and hell. This singular work, adopted by the sects of the Middle Ages, was the cherished book of the Hogomites of Thrace and of the Cathares of the West.

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Adam had likewise his apocryphal revelations. A testament addressed to Seth, a mystic apocalypse borrowed from Zoroastrian ideas, circulated under his name. It is a clever enough book, which recalls many of the Jeschts, Sadies, and Sirouzé of the Persians, and also at times the books of the Mendaites. Adam therein explains to Seth, from his recollections of Paradise and the signs of the angel Uriel, the mystic liturgies of day and night which all creatures celebrate from hour to hour before the Eternal. The first hour of the night is the hour of the adoration of demons; during that hour they cease to annoy man. The second hour is the hour of the adoration of fish; then comes the adoration of abysses; then the thrice holy of the seraphim: before the Fall men heard at that hour the measured beating of their wings. At the fifth hour of the night the adoration of the waters takes place. Adam at that hour heard the prayer of the great billows. The middle of the night is marked by an accumulation of storms, and by a great religious terror. Then all nature reposes, and the waters sleep. At this hour, if one takes water, and if the priest of God mixes it with holy oil and anoints with this oil the sick who cannot sleep, the latter are cured. At the time the dew falls, the hymn of herbs and grain is sung. At the tenth hour, at the full early dawn, comes the turn of men, the gates of heaven are opened, so as to let enter the prayers of all living beings. They enter, prostrate themselves before the throne, then depart. Everything that one asks at the moment when the seraphim are beating their wings and when the cock crows, one is sure to obtain. Great joy is shed over the world when the sun shines forth from the paradise of God upon creation. Then comes an hour of expectation and of profound silence, until the priests have offered incense to God. At each hour of the day the angels, the birds, every creature, rises up in like manner to adore the Supreme Being. At the seventh hour there is a repetition of the ceremony of entering and retiring. The prayers (Priéres) of all living beings enter, prostrate themselves, and walked out again. At the tenth hour the inspection of the waters takes place. The Holy Spirits descends over the waters and

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springs. Without this, in drinking the water, one would be subject to the malignity of the demons. At this hour again water mixed with oil cures all manner of sickness. This naturalism, which recalls that of the Elkasaites, was attenuated by the Catholic Church, but the principle it contained was not entirely rejected. The exorcisms of water and of the different elements, the division of the day into canonical hours, the employment of holy oils, conserved by the orthodox Church, had their origin in ideas analogous to those which the Adamite Apocalypse has complaisantly developed. The Christian Sibyl women do little more than repeat without comprehending the ancient oracles. Those of the Apocalypse, in particular, she never ceases vatianating, though, and announcing the near destruction of the Roman Empire. The favourite idea at that epoch was that the world, before it came to an end, would be governed by a woman. The sympathy of the old sibyllists for Judaism and Jerusalem is now changed to hatred; but the horror for the Pagan civilisation is no less. The domination of Italy over the world has been the most fatal of all dominations: it will be the last. The end is near. Wickedness springs from the rich and the great, who plunder the poor. Rome is to be burned; wolves and foxes are to live amongst its ruins; it will be seen whether her gods of brass will save her. Hadrian, when the Sibyllists of the year 117 saluted with so much expectation, was an iniquitous and avarcious king, a despoiler of the entire world, wholly occupied with frivolous devices, an enemy of true religion, the sacreligious instituter of an infamous cult, the abettor of the most abominable idolatry, Like the sibyllists of 117, he of whom we have been speaking asserts that Hadrian could have but three successors. Their names (Antonine) recall that of the Most High (Adonai). The first of the three will reign a long time, and this evidently refers to Antoninus Pius. This prince, in reality so admirable, is treated as a miserable king, who out of pure avarice despoiled the world and heaped up at Rome treasures which the terrible exile, the assassin of his mother (Nero, the Antichrist), will abandon to the pillage of the peoples of Asia.

287

Oh! how thou shalt weep then, despoiled of thy brilliant garments and clad in habits of mourning, O proud queen, daughter of old Latinus! Thou shalt fall, no more to rise again. The glory of thy legions, with their proud eagles, will disappear. Where will be thy strength! what people will be allied to thee, of those whom thou hast overcome by thy follies.

Every plague, civil war, invasion, and famine announces the revenge that God prepares on behalf of his elect. It is towards Italy especially that the judge will show himself severe. Italy will be reduced to a pile of black volcanic cinders, mixed with naphtha and asphalte. Hades will be its portion. Then finally equality will exist for all; no longer will there be either slaves or masters, or kings, or chiefs, or advocates, or corrupt judges. Rome will endure the ills she has inflicted on others: those whom she has vanquished will triumph in their turn over her. That will take place in the year in which the figures cast up will correspond to the numerical value of the name of Rome, that is to say, in the year of Rome 948 (195 of J. C.). The author calls this the day which he longs for. He employs epic accents to celebrate Nero, the Antichrist, preparing in the shades or beyond the seas the ruin of the Roman world. The contests

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between the Antichrist and the Messiah will come to pass. Men, far from becoming better, will only grow more wicked. The Antichrist is to be finally vanquished, and shut up in the abyss. The resurrection and the eternal happiness of the just will crown the apocalyptic cycle. Attached to the initials of the verses which express these terrible images, the eye distinguishes the acrostic ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΘΕΟΥ ΥΙΟ ΩΓΗΡ ΣΤΑΥΔΟΣ; the initial letters of the first five words give in their turn ΙΧΘΥΕ “fish,” a designation under which the initiated were early accustomed to recognise Jesus. As people were persuaded that the acrostic was one of the processes which the old sibyls had employed to make known their secret meaning, people were struck with astonishment to see so clear a revelation of Christianity delineated upon the margins of a writing that was thought to have been composed in the sixth generation which followed the deluge. There was an old translation of this singular production in barbarous Latin verse, which gave rise to another fable. It was pretended that Cicero had found his Erythrean fragment so beautiful that he had translated it into Latin verse before the birth of Jesus Christ. Such were the sombre images which, under the best of sovereigns, assailed the sectarian fanatics. We must not blame the Roman police for treating such books at times with severity; they were now puerile, then full of menaces: no modern state would tolerate their like. The visionaries dreamed only of conflagrations. The idea of a deluge of fire, in contradistinction to the deluge of water, and distinct from the final conflagration, was accepted by many amongst them. There was also a talk about a deluge of wind. These chimeras troubled more than one bead, even outside of Christianity. Under Marcus Aurelius an impostor attempted, in making use of the same species of terrors, to provoke disorders which might have led to the pillage of the city. It is not wise to repeat too often Judicare seculum per ignem. People are subject to strange hallucinations. When the tragic scenes which he imagined were slow in coming, he sometimes took upon himself to realise them. At Paris the people formed the Commune because the fifth act of the siege, which had been promised, did not come to pass.

289

The Antichrist continued to be the great preoccupation of the makers of apocalypses. Although it was evident that Nero was dead, his shadow haunted the Christian imagination — people continued to announce his return. Often, however, it was not Nero that people saw behind this fantastic personage; it was Simon Magus. From Sebaste was to issue Belial, who commands the high mountains, the sea, the blazing sun, the brilliant moon, the dead themselves, and who was to perform numerous miracles before men. It is not integrity, but error which will be in him. He will lead astray many mortals, both of the Hebrew faithful and of the elect, and others belonging to the lawless race who have not yet heard tell of God. But whilst the threats of the great God are being put into execution, and whilst the conflagration will roll over the earth in huge floods, fire will also devour Belial and the insolent men who have put their faith in him.

We have been struck, in the Apocalypse, with this mysterious personage of the False Prophet, a thaumaturgic seducer of the faithful and the Pagans, allied to Nero, who follows him to the region of the Parthians, who must reappear and perish with him in the lake of brimstone. We are led to 175


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surmise that this symbolical personage designates Simon Magus. In seeing in the Sibylline Apocalypse “Belial of Sebaste” playing an almost identical part, we are confirmed in that hypothesis. The personal relations of Nero and Simon Magus are perhaps not no fabulous as they appear. In any case, this association of the two worst enemies that nascent Christianity had encountered, was well adapted to the spirit of the times, and to the taste for apocalyptical poetry in general. In the Ascension of Isaiah Belial is Satan, and Satan assumes in some sort the human form of a king, the murderer of his mother, who is to reign over the world, in order to establish the empire of evil. The author of the pseudo-Clemen tine romance believes that Simon will reappear as Antichrist at the end of time. In the third century a still greater trouble was introduced into that order of fantastic ideas. People distinguished two Antichrists, the one for the East, the other for the West—Nero and Belial. Later, Nero finished by becoming, in the eyes of the Christians, the Christ of the Jews. The suppulations of the works of Daniel came to complicate these chimeras. St Hippolytus, in the time of Severus, is wholly engrossed with them. A certain Juda proved by Daniel that the end of the world was to come about the year 10 of Septimus Severus (of J. C. 202-203). Every persecution appeared to be a confirmation of the dismal prophecies which had accumulated. From all these confused data, the Middle Ages drew the grandiose myth which remains, amidst transformed Christianity, as an incomprehensible relic of primitive Messianism.

291

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APPENDIX. I. IT is admitted pretty generally that the Jewish war under Hadrian entailed a siege and a final destruction of Jerusalem. So large a number of texts represent this view, that it at the first glance rash to call the fact in question. Nevertheless, the chief critics who have considered it—Scaliger, Henry de Valois, and P. Pazi—had perceived the difficulties of such an assertion, and rejected it. And to commence with, what is it that Hadrian should have besieged and destroyed? The demolition of Jerusalem under Titus was entire, even exceeding that usual to military operations. In admitting that a population of so many thousands of persons was able to dwell within the ruins which the victor of 70 left behind, it is clear in such a case that this heap of ruins was incapable of supporting a siege. Even while admitting that from the time of Titus to Hadrian some timid attempts of Jewish restoration might have been brought about, in spite of the “Legio Xa. Fratensis” who encamped on the ruins, one is not inclined to suppose that these attempts were of such a nature as to give the place any importance whatever in a military point of view. It is also very true that a great many savants, with whose opinions we coincide, think that the restoration of Jerusalem, under the name of “Ælie Capitolina,” began in the year 122 or thereabouts. It is of no use to the adversaries of our theme to lay great stress on that argument, because they unhesitatingly admit that Ælia Capitolina was not commenced to be built till after the last destruction of Jerusalem by Hadrian. But no matter! If, as we think, Ælia Capitolina had been in existence for about ten years at the time that the revolt of Bar-Coziba broke out, about 133, how can one conceive that the Romans would have had occasion to take it! Ælia would not again have possessed walls capable of sustaining a siege. How, moreover, suppose that the “Legio Xa. Fratensis” had left their positions knowing that it would be obliged to reconquer them. It may be said that the same thing occurred under Nero, when Gessius Florus abandoned Jerusalem, but the situation was totally different. Gessius Florus found himself in the midst of a great city in revolution. The “Legio Xa. Fratensis” was situated in the midst of a population of veterans and squatters, all friendly to the Roman cause. Their retreat would not have explained itself in any fashion, and the siege which would have followed would have been a siege in a manner without purpose. 292

When one examines the texts, very scarce, which relate to the War of Hadrian, it is necessary to make a large distinction. The texts really historical not only do not speak of a capture and a destruction of Jerusalem, but by the style in which they are couched, they exclude such an event. The oratorial and apologetic texts, on the contrary, where the second revolt of the Jews is cited, “non ad narrandum, sed ad probandum,” for the purpose of serving the arguments and the

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declamations of the preacher or of the polemic, imply that all the events that happened under Hadrian were as if they happened under Titus. It is clear that it is the first series of texts that deserves the preference. Criticism has for a long time refused to trust to the precision of documents drawn up in a style whose essence is to be inaccurate. The historical texts reduce themselves unhappily into two in the question which concerns us, but both are excellent. There is, to commence with, the narrative of Dion Caasius, who appeared not to have been here abridged by Xiphilin; there is in the second place, that of Eusebius, who copied Ariston de Pella, a contemporary writer of events, and living close at hand to the seat of the war. These two narratives are in accord with one another. They do not speak a single word of a siege, nor of a destruction of Jerusalem. For an attentive reader of the two tales cannot admit that such a fact would have passed unnoticed. Dion Cassius is very particular; he knows that it was the construction of Ælia Capitolina which occasioned the revolt; he gives well the character of the war, which happened to be a war of little cities, of fortified market towns, of subterranean works—or rural war, if one is permitted thus to express oneself. He insists on facts so secondary as that of the ruin of the pretended tomb of Solomon. How is it possible that he could have neglected to speak of the catastrophe of the principal city? The omission of all notice about Jerusalem is still less understood in the narrative of Eusebius or rather of Ariston de Pella. The great event of the war for Eusebius is the siege of Bether, “the neighbouring town to Jerusalem;” of Jerusalem itself not a word. It is true that the chapter of the “Historie Ecclesiastique” relative to that event has for the title: Ἡ κατὰ Ἀνδριανὸν ὑστάτη Ἰουδαίων πολιορχίας, as the chapter relative to the war of Vespasian; and of Titus has for title (I. III. C.V.) Περὶ τῆς μετὰ τὸν Χριστὸν ὑστάτης Ἰουδαίων πολιορχίας; but the word adapts itself well to the whole of the campaign of Julius Severus, which consisted in sieges of little cities. In section 3 of the chapter relative to the war of Adrian, the word πολιορχία is used to designate the operations of the capture of Bether.

293

In his “Chronique” Eusebius follows the same plan. In his “Demonstration Evangélique,” and in his “Theophaive,” on the contrary, he points to that fact, and when he is no longer borne out by the very words of Ariston de Pella, he allows himself to be led away by the resemblance which has deranged nearly all the Jewish and Christian tradition. He pictures the events of the year 135 on the model of the events of the year 70, and he speaks of Hadrian as having contributed with Titus to the accomplishment of the prophecies on the annihilation of Jerusalem. This double destruction doubly serves him to realise a passage of Zacharias,2 and to furnish a basis for the theory which he advances of a Church of Jerusalem lasting from Titus to Hadrian.3 St Jerome presents the same

2

Zach. xiv. 1 et seq.

3

Euseb. H.E., iv. 5.

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contradiction. In his “Chronique,” mapped out on that of Eusebius, he follows Eusebius as an historian. Then he forgets that solid base, and speaks, as do all the fathers of the orator school, of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem under Hadrian.4 Tertullian5 and St John Chrysostom6 express themselves in the same way. One knows how dangerous it is to introduce into history these vague phrases, well known to preachers and to apologists of all times. Still less is it necessary that we should examine the passages in the Talmud where the same assertion presents itself, mixed up with those historical monstrosities which destroy the value of the mentioned passages. In the Talmud the confusion of the war of Titus and that which took place under Hadrian is constant. The description of Bether is copied from that of Jerusalem—the duration of the siege is the same. Is not this the proof that he had not separate mementoes of a new siege of Jerusalem, for the good reason that there had not been one. When the tale was started of a siege by a sort of argument a priori, it is possible that one a posteriori should be started also to give it in history a basis which it had not. Naturally, for it is on the first siege on which one falls back for that. That confusion has been the trap where the whole popular history of the Jewish mishaps has suffered itself to be taken. How can we prefer such blunders to strong arguments which, drawn from solitary historical evidence, we now have in the question Dion Cassibus or Ariston de Pella? Two grave objections remain for me to solve: only can they smooth away the doubts on the theory which I maintain. The first is derived from a passage of Appius. This historian, enumerating the successive destructions which overthrew the walls of Jerusalem, puts one before the other, and on the same line the destruction of Titus and that of Hadrian. The passage of Appius furnishes in every case a strong inaccuracy—he supposes that Jerusalem was walled under Hadrian. Appius foolishly supposes that the Jews, after Titus, re-erected their town, and fortified it. His ignorance on that point shows that he is not guided by the aforesaid comparison, but by the coarser similarity which has deceived every one. The difficulties of the campaign, the numberless πολιορχίαι of which it is full, show that even a contemporary who had not proof of the facts was able to commit a like error.

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Assuredly more grave is the objection derived from the study of the old coins. It is certain that the Jews during the revolt did not coin nor stamp money. Such an operation seems at the first glance not to have been possible at Jerusalem. The types of these moneys lead to that idea. The “legend” is most often, “For the liberation of Jerusalem;” on some others, the figure of a temple surmounted by a star.

4

In Dan. xiv., Joel i., Habakkuk ii., Jerem. xxxi., Ezekiel v. 24., Zach. viii. 14.

5

Contra, Jud. 13.

6

In Judæos, Homil. v. 2. Opp. 1, pp. 64-5 (Montf.) Cf. Seudas at the word βδελυγμα; Chronique d’Alex, year 119.

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Jewish coin study is full of uncertainties, and it is dangerous to oppose it to history; it is history, on the contrary, which serves to throw a light upon it. Besides, the objection about which we speak has emboldened certain numismatic students of our days to deny absolutely the occupation of Jerusalem by the followers of Bar-Coziba. One will admit that the insurgents were able to coin money at Bether quite as well as at Jerusalem, if one thinks of the miserable plight in which in that supposition Jerusalem was. On the other hand, it seems that the types of coins of the second revolt had been imitated or taken directly from those of the first revolt, and on those of the Asmoneans. There is here an important point which deserves the attention of numismatists; for one could find here a means of solving the difficulties which yet hover over the entire groups of the autonomous coinage of Israel. We wish to speak chiefly of the coins with the “impression” of Simeon Nasi of Israel. We fall into the greatest misrepresentation when we seek to find this Simeon in Bargioras, in Bar-Coziba, in Simeon, son of Gamaliel, etc. None of these persons could coin money. They were revolutionaries, or men of high authority, but not sovereigns. If one or the other had placed his name on the money, he would have marred the republican spirit and jealousy of the rebels, and so, up to a certain point, their religious ideas. A similar matter would be mentioned by Josephus in the first revolt, and the identity of that Simeon would not be so doubtful as this is. It is never asked if the French Revolution had any coins with the effigy of Marat, or of Robespierre. This Simon, I believe, is no other than Simon Maccabeus, the first Jewish sovereign who coined money, and whose coins ought to be much sought after by orthodox persons. As the aim which they established was to overcome the scruples of the religious, such a counterfeit would suffice for the exigencies of the time. It had also the advantage of not putting into circulation only those types acknowledged by all. I think then, that neither in the first nor in the second revolt, that they had money struck in the name of a person then alive. The “Eleaser-Hac-Cohen” of certain coins ought probably to explain this in an analogous manner, which the numismatists will hit upon. I strongly think that the latter revolt had not a proper stamp, and they could best imitate the earlier ones. A material circumstance confirms that hypothesis. On the coins in question, in fact, one never sees

‫—שמעון‬one frequently sees ‫ שמענו‬or ‫שמצ‬. These

two forms are so frequent that one can see a simple fault as to the position of the letters. In the second, in a great many cases, we cannot help thinking that the last two letters have disappeared. It is not impossible that the alteration of the name of Simeon was made expressly to imply a prayer,—“Hear me” or “Hear us.” It is, at all events, contrary to all probability that one sees in the name of Simeon the true name of Bar-Coziba. How is it that this royal name of the false Messiah, written on an abundant coinage, would remain unknown to St Justin, to Aristion de Pella, to the Talmudists, who clearly speak of the money of Bar-Coziba. Still less can on see any president of the Sanhedrim whose authority would have been recognised by Bar-Coziba. 295

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So anyway, one is led to think that the coinage of Bar-Coziba did not consist but in impressions done from a religious motive, and that the types which bear these impressions were of the ancient Jewish types, which I conclude were for the rebellion of the time of Hadrian. By this are raised some enormous difficulties which the Jewish numismatism presents:—Firstly. That these persons unknown to history or these rebels should have coined money like sovereigns. Secondly, The unlikelihood that there is that these miserable insurgents caused issues of money so handsome and so considerable. Thirdly. The employment of the archaic Hebrew character, which was out of use in the second century of our era. Supposing that it had been attempted to bring back the national character, they would not have given them fashioned so grand and handsome. Fourthly, The form of the temple tetrastyle surmounted by a star. This form does not correspond either more or less to that of the temple of Herod. For one knows the scrupulous nicety that the ancient masters took to reproduce the features of the principal temple of the city exactly, by slight but very expressive touches. The temple of the Jewish money, on the contrary, without the triangular pediment, and with its gate of a singular fashion, represents the second temple, that of the time of the Maccabees, which appears to have been tolerably shabby. If we reject that hypothesis, and which must belong to the second revolt, the types which bear the figure of the temple, and the era of “the liberation of Jerusalem,” we say that the deliverance of Jerusalem, and the reconstruction of the temple, were the only object of the revolts. It is not impossible that they portrayed these two events upon their money before they were realised. One takes for a fact that which one aspires to with such efforts. Bether, before all, was a sort of provisionary Jerusalem, a sacred asylum of Israel. The numismatism of the Crusades presents, besides, identically the same phenomena. After the loss of Jerusalem, in fact, the later authority, transported to St Jean de Acre, continued to mint money bearing the effigy of the Holy Sepulchre, with the words “+SEPULCHRI DOMINI,” or “REX IERLM.” The moneys of John of Brienne, who never possessed Jerusalem, present, also the image of the Holy Sepulchre. “This markedly characteristic type,” says M. de Vogüé, “seems to be on the part of deposed kings a protestation against the invasion, and a maintenance of their rights in misfortune and exile.” There are also moneys with the title ‘TVRRIS DAVIT, struck a long time after the taking of Jerusalem by the Mussulman. It must be admitted, however, that much of the Jewish money of the second revolt was struck away from Jerusalem. Every one, in fact, agrees that if the revolted were masters of Jerusalem, they were quickly driven out. One finds coins of the second and third year of the revolt. M. Caxdoni explained by this difference of the situation, the difference of the legends ‫לחרות‬

‫ישראל‬, and ‫לחרות ירושלם‬, the second only answering to the epoch

when the rebels were masters of Jerusalem. Be that as it may, the possibility of a coinage struck at Bether is placed beyond doubt.

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That at one moment of the revolt, and amidst the numberless incidents of a war which occupied two or three years, the revolted occupied Ælia, and were speedily driven out; that the occupation of Jerusalem, in a word, was a brief episode of the aforesaid war, is strictly possible; it is little probable nevertheless. The “Legio Xa. Fratensis” which Titus left to guard the ruin, was there in the second and in the third century, and even to the time of the Lower Empire, as if nothing had happened in the interval. If the insurgents had been for a day masters of the sacred space, they would have clung to it with fury, they would have come running there from all directions; all the fighting men of Judea would above all bend their steps there; the height of the war would have been there; the temple would have been restored; the religion re-established; there would have been fought the last battle; and as in 70 the fanatics would have caused a general slaughter on the ruins of the temple, or, failing them, on its site. Now it is nothing of the sort. The grand siege operation took place at Bether, nigh to Jerusalem; no trace of the scuffle on the site of the temple in the Jewish tradition, not a memento of a fourth temple, nor of a return to the religious ceremonials. It seems certain, then, that under Hadrian Jerusalem did not suffer a serious siege, did not undergo a fresh destruction. How could it be destroyed, I again repeat? On the supposition that Ælia did not begin to exist until 136, after the end of the war, how could one destroy a heap of ruins? On the supposition that there was an Alia, dated either 122 or a little after, one would destroy the beginnings of a new city which the Romans would substitute for the old one. What good would such a destruction effect, seeing that, far from relinquishing the idea of a new Jerusalem as irreverent, the Romans resume that idea from that time with more vigour than ever? What has been carelessly repeated about the plough which the Romans had passed over the soil of the temple and city, has no other foundations than the false Jewish traditions, referred to by the Talmud and St Jerome, wherein Terentius Rufus, who was charged by Titus to demolish Jerusalem, has been confounded by Tinlius Rufus, the imperial legate of the time of Hadrian. Here again the error has arisen from the historical delusion which has transferred to the war of Hadrian, which one knows is a trifle, the circumstances much better known of the war of Titus. It has often been attempted to find in the two bulls which are on the reverse of the medal of the foundation of Ælia Capitolina, a representation of a “Templum Aratum.” These two bulls are simply a colonial emblem, and they represent the earnest hopes which the new “Coloni “ entertained for the agriculture of Judea.

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APPENDIX II. THE epoch when the book of Tobit was composed is very difficult to fix. In our time, the distinguished critics M. M. Hitzig, Volkmar Grætz, have ascribed that writing to the time of Trajan or of Hadrian. M. Grætz connects it with the circumstances which followed the war of Bar-Coziba, and in particular to the interdiction which according to him was made by the Romans as to the interment of the corpses of the massacred Jews. But besides the fact of a similar interdiction is not founded except upon that of passages of the Talmud stripped of serious historical value, the characteristic importance attributed in our book to the good work of interring the dead, explained itself in a manner much more profound, as we are just now going to show. Three great reasons, in our opinion, preclude us from accepting the Book of Tobit as being at a date so early,—forbid us to descend, at least for the composition of the book, beyond the year 70. Firstly, The prophecy of Tobit (xiii. 9 et seq., xiv. 4 et seq.), which ought naturally to be taken as a “prophetia post eventum,” clearly mentions the destruction of Jerusalem by Nabuchodnosor (xiv. 4); the return of Zerubabel; the construction of the second temple, a temple very little to be compared to the first, very unworthy of the divine majesty (xiv. 5). But the dispersion of Israel would have its end, and again the temple would be rebuilt, with all the magnificence described by the prophets, to serve as a centre for the religion of the whole world. For the old prophet there was no destruction of the second temple; that temple would be the advent of the glory of Israel, would not disappear, except to give place to the eternal temple. M. Volkmar, M. Hitzig observe, it is true, that in the Fourth Book of Esdras, in Judith, and in much of the apocryphal book, the destruction of the temple by Nabuchodnosor is identified with the destruction of the temple by Titus, and that the reflections which are placed in the mouth of the fictitious prophet are those which happen after the year 70. But this opinion, besides being of such secondary application, is not here admissible. Evidently the verse 5 xiv. refers to the second temple. The remark that the new temple was very different from the first—for it was anything but majestic—is an allusion to Esd. iii. 12, told in the style of Josephus, Ant. xi. iv. 2. Still more this important passage would lead one to think that at the time when the Book of Tobit was written, Herod had not as yet put forth his hand on the second temple in order that he might rebuild it, an event which took place the 19th year before J.C. The critics whom I now am fighting apply here the system, getting greatly into fashion, which seeks to base upon a passage of the pseudo Epistle of Barnabas, and according to whom there had been under the reign of Hadrian, a commencement of the rebuilding of the temple undertaken by

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consent with the Jews. It is to this reconstruction that may apply the passage of Tobit xiv. 5. But I have shown elsewhere that the interpretation of the false passage of Barnabas is wrong. 298

Were it true, it would be singular that an abortive attempt, which would not be without interruption, should become thus the base of the whole apocalyptic system. Secondly, the verse xiv. 10 furnishes another proof of the composition, relatively old, of the Book of Tobit. “My Son, see what Aman did to Ahkiakar, who had nourished him, how he cast him from the light into darkness, and how he repaid him; but Ahkiakar was saved and Aman received the chastisement that he deserved; Manasse likewise gave him alms, and was saved from the deadly snare which Aman had spread for him; Aman fell into the snare and perished.” This Ahkiakar was a nephew of Tobit’s father, who figures in the book as the steward and maitre d’hotel of Esarhaddow. The part he plays is incidental and peculiar. The fashion in which he is spoken of, seems to show that he was known by some other means. The verse we are quoting does not explain this, unless one admits, parallelly to the Book of Tobit, another book where an infidel, called Aman, who had for foster-father a good Jew named Ahkiakar, that he repaid him with ingratitude and thrust him into prison, but Ahkiakar was saved and Aman was punished. This Aman was evidently, in the Jewish romances, the man who played the part of offering to others snares into which he himself fell, seeing that in the tales to which Tobit made allusion, the same Aman suffered the fate which he intended a certain Manasses to undergo. Impossible, in my opinion, not to see here a parallel of the Haman of the Book of Esther hung from the gallows where he hoped to hang Mordecai, foster-father of Esther. In a book composed in the year 100 or 135 of our time, all this is inconceivable. One must refer it to a time and to a Jewish society where the Book of Esther would exist under an entirely different form than that of our Bibles, and where the part of Mordecai was played by a certain Ahkiakar, also a servant of the king. Now the Book of Esther certainly existed, just as we have it, in the first century of our era, since Josephus knows of its being interpolated. Thirdly, an objection none the less grave against the method of M. Grætz is that, if the Book of Tobit was posterior to the defeat of Bar-Coziba, the Christians would not have adopted it. In the interval between Titus and Hadrian, the religious brotherhood of the Jews and the Christians is sufficient to account for the fact that books newly brought to light in the Jewish community, such as that of Judith, the apocalypse of Esdras, and that of Baruch, would pass without difficulty from the synagogue to the Church. After the intestine broils which accompanied the war of Bar-Coziba, there would be no room for this. The Jewish and Christian faiths are henceforth two enemies;

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nothing passed from one side to the other of the gulf which divide them. Besides, the synagogue really no longer created such books, calm, idyllic, without bigotry, without hate.

299

After 135, Judaism produces the Talmud, a piece of dry and violent casuistry. The religious views are all profane, and of Persian origin, as that of the healing of demoniacs and of the blind by the viscera of fishes. This moderation of the marvellous, in consequence of which the two are cured, without miracle, by the prescriptions whereof those privileged of God have the secret, all this does not belong to the second century after J. C. The condition of the people at the time when our author wrote, was comparatively happy and tranquil, at least in the country where he composed it. The Jews appeared wealthy, they were in domestic service under the nobles, acting as go-betweens in all purchases, and occupying places of confidence, being employed as stewards, major-domos, butlers, as we see in the Books of Esther and of Nehemiah. In place of being troubled by the rain, dreams, and passions which engrossed every Jew at the end of the first century of our era, the conscience of the author is serene in a high degree. He is not exactly a Messianist. He believes in a wonderful future for Jerusalem, but without any miracle from heaven, or Messiah as king. The book then is, in our opinion, anterior to the second century of our era. By the pious sentiment which there reigns, it is far behind the Book of Esther, a book from which all religion sentiment is totally absent. It might be imagined that Egypt was the spot where such a romance could possibly have been composed, if the certainty that the original text was written in Hebrew had not created a difficulty. The Jews of Egypt did not write in that language. I do not think, however, that the book was composed at Jerusalem or in Judea. What the author intends is to cheer up the provincial Jew, who has a horror of schism, and abides in communion with Jerusalem. The Persian ideas which fill the book, the intimate acquaintance which the author possesses of the great cities of the East, although he makes strange mistakes as to the distances, bring one to imagine that he is in Mesopotamia, particularly at Adiabene, where the Jews were in a very flourishing condition in the middle of the fast century of our era. In supposing that the book was thus composed about the year 50 in Upper Syria, one can, it seems to me, satisfy the exigencies of the problem. The state of the usages and of the ideas of the Jews; above all, that which concerns the bread of the Gentiles, recalls the time which preceded the revolt under Nero. The description of the eternal Jerusalem seems based upon the Apocalypse (ch. xxi.), not that one of the authors had copied from the other, but that they drew from a source of mutual imaginations. The demonology, especially the circumstance of the devil bound in the deserts of Upper Egypt, recall the Evangelist Mark. Lastly, The form of the personal memoirs, which the Greek text presents, at least in the opening pages, makes one think of the Book of Nehemiah: that form was no longer in use in the apocryphas posterior to the year 70. The inductions which lead one to assign the date of the composition to an anterior date, inductions which we have not dissembled, are demolished by the considerations which prevent us, on the other side, attributing 185


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to the book a great antiquity. One important fact, indeed, is that one does not find, neither amongst the Jews nor the Christians, any mention of the Book of Tobit before the end of the second century. Now it is necessary to confess that if the Christians of the first and second century possessed the book, they would have found it in perfect harmony with their sentiments. Let it be Clement Romain, for example; certainly if he had had such a writing at hand, he would have quoted it, just as he quotes the Book of Judith. If the book had been anterior to Jesus Christ, one cannot comprehend that it would have remained in such obscurity. On the contrary, if one admits that it was composed in Oschoene in Adialene a few years before the grand catastrophes of Judea, one may suppose that the Jews engaged in the struggle would have had knowledge of it. The book was not yet translated into Greek: the greater part of the Christians could not read it. Lymmachus or Theodosius would have been found in possession of the original, and they would have translated it. In that case, the fortunes of the book amongst the Christians would be commenced. One leading element of the question, which has not been used here by the interpreters, are the analogies which a sagacious criticism has discovered between the Jewish narrative and that collection of tales which have gone round the world, without distinction of language or race. Studied from this point of view, the Book of Tobit seems to us like the Hebrew and godly version of a tale which is related in Armenia, in Russia, amongst the Tartars, and the Higanes, and which is probably of Babylonian origin. A traveller finds in the roadway the corpse of a man which had been refused sepulture because he had not paid his debts. He stopped to bury him. Soon afterwards, a companion, clothed in white, offers to journey with him. This companion gets the traveller out of a bad scrape, procures riches for him, and a charming wife, who wrests him away from the evil spirits. At the moment of parting, the traveller offers him the half of all that which he had gained, thanks to him, save and except his wife, and naturally so. The companion demands his half share of the woman: great perplexity arises! At the moment when he is about to proceed to make that strange division, the companion reveals himself—he is the ghost of the dead man whom the traveller had buried. No doubt that the Book of Tobit is an adaptation according to Jewish ideas of that old narrative, popular throughout the whole of the East. It is this that explains the fantastical importance assigned to the burial of the dead, which constitutes a remarkable feature of our book. Nowhere else in the Jewish literature is the burial of the dead placed on the same footing as that of the observance of the Law. The resemblance to the tales of the East confirms thus our hypothesis concerning the Mesopotamian origin of the book. The Jews of Palestine did not listen to these pagan tales. Those of Oschoene would be more open to the talk of those outside them. We most add that the Book of Esther could not have existed in that country in the form which it was known in Judea: this will explain the strange passage concerning Aman and Ahkiahkar. Our hypothesis then is that Book of Tobit was composed in Hebrew in the north of Syria, towards the year 40 or 50 after J.C.; that it was at first little known by the Jews in Palestine; that it 186


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was translated into Greek towards the year 160 by the Judeo-Christian translators, and that it was immediately adapted by the Christians.

THE END

London: Printed by the Temple Publishing Company.

187


Indexes Index of Scripture References Leviticus 18:5 Numbers 24:17 Judges 13 Psalms 96:10 Isaiah 7:14 Jeremiah 31:1-40 Ezekiel 5:24 Daniel 14 Joel 1:1-20 Habakkuk 2:1-20 Zechariah 8:14 14:1 John 1:1-14 1 Timothy 2:9-15 4:8 5:1 2 Timothy 4:2 Titus 3:10 2 Peter 3:1 Revelation 21:1-27 188

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Tobit 13:9 14:4 14:4 14:5 14:5 14:5 14:10

Index of Greek Words and Phrases • Ἀρχαῖος ἀνήρ • Ἡ κατὰ Ἀνδριανὸν ὑστάτη Ἰουδαίων πολιορχίας • ΓΛΥΚΟΝ • ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΘΕΟΥ ΥΙΟ ΩΓΗΡ ΣΤΑΥΔΟΣ • ΙΧΘΥΕ • ΙΩΝΟΠΟΛΕΙΤΩΝ • Μεθόριον πνεῠμα • Περὶ τῆς μετὰ τὸν Χριστὸν ὑστάτης Ἰουδαίων πολιορχίας • βδελυγμα • νεᾶνις • πανσπερμα • παρθένος • πολιορχία • πολιορχίαι

Index of Hebrew Words and Phrases •

‫ישראל לחרות‬

•

‫לחרות ירושלם‬

•

‫שמעון‬

•

‫שמענו‬

•

‫שמצ‬

Index of Latin Words and Phrases •Animula, vagula, blandula •Corpus juris 189

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•Græculus •Hic cestus artemque repono. •Judicare seculum per ignem •Periodi •Philosophus •Pius •Quod semper quod ubique. •Si vos liberique vestri valetis, bene est; ego quidem et exereitus valemus. •ad nauseam •animalculæ •cœnaculum •cœtus illiciti •canopus •confector •ecclesia •elysium •episcopi •fiscus judaicus •illicita collegia •interregnum •iterum crucifigi •memoriæ •minutiæ •misericordiæ •modus vivendi •non ad narrandum, sed ad probandum •pallium •pari passu •patera •presbyteri •prophetia post eventum

Index of French Words and Phrases •éclat •Historie Ecclesiastique •Priéres •Reconnaissances •chapelle ardent •clientèle •comtes

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•curé •enfant terrible •esprit de famille •fêtes •fiancés •maitre d’hotel •merveilles •mise en scene •naïveté •personnel •point d’appui •protégé •régime •résumé

Index of Pages of the Print Edition i ii iii iv v vi vii viii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300

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The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book VII. Marcus-Aurelius. by

Ernest Renan


About The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book VII. Marcus-Aurelius. by Ernest Renan Title: URL: Author(s): Publisher: Publication History: Rights: Date Created: CCEL Subjects:

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book VII. Marcus-Aurelius. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/renan/marcus.html Renan, Ernest. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library London: Mathieson & Company: 1890 (?) Copyright Christian Classics Ethereal Library 2005-05-20 All; History

The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book VII. Marcus-Aurelius.

Ernest Renan

Table of Contents About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. ii Title Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 1 Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 2 Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 5 Chapter I. Advent of Marcus-Aurelius/. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 8 Chapter II. Progress and Reforms. The Roman Law.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 14 Chapter III. The Reign of the Philosophers.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 18 Chapter IV. Persecutions Against the Christians.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 25 Chapter V. Increasing Grandeur of the Church of Rome—Pseudo-Clementine Writings.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 30 Chapter VI. Tatian—The Two Systems of Apology.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 40 Chapter VII. Decadence of Gnosticism.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 44 Chapter VIII. Oriental Syncretism—The Ophites—Future Apparition of Manichæism.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 49 Chapter IX. The Result of Marcionism—Apelles.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 55 Chapter X. Tatian Heretical—The Encratites.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 59 Chapter XI. The Great Bishops of Greece and Asia—Melito.. . . . . . . . . p. 62 Chapter XII. The Question of Easter.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 69 Chapter XIII. Last Recrudescence of MIllenarianism and Prophetism—The Montanists.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 74 Chapter XIV. Resistance of the Orthodox Church.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 80 Chapter XV. Complete Triump of the Episcopate—Results of Montanism.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 84 Chapter XVI. Marcis-Aurelius Among the Quades—The Book of Thoughts.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 88 Chapter XVII. The Legio Fulminata—Apologies of Apollinaris, Miltiades, and Melito.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 97 Chapter XVIII. The Gnostics and the Montanists at Lyons.. . . . . . . . . . . p. 102 Chapter XIX. The Martyrs of Lyons.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 107 Chapter XX. Reconstitution of the Church of Lyons—Irenæus.. . . . . . . . p. 118 Chapter XXI. Celsus and Lucian.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 121 Chapter XXII. New Apologies—Athenagoras, Theophilus of antioch, Minucius F e l i x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 132 Chapter XXIII. Progress of Organisation.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 141 Chapter XXIV. Schools of Alexandria and Edessa.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 149 iii


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Chapter XXV. Statistics and Geographical Extension of Christianity.. . . . . p. 154 Chapter XXVI. The Interior Martyrdom of Marcus-Aurelius—His Preparation for Death.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 158 Chapter XXVII. Death of Marcus-Aurelius—The End of the Old World.. . . . p. 166 Chapter XXVIII. Christianity at the End of the Second Century—Dogma.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 172 Chapter XXIX. Worship and Discipline.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 177 Chapter XXX. Christian Manners.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 186 Chapter XXXI. Reasons for the Victory of Christianity.. . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 190 Chapter XXXII. Social and Political Revolution Advanced by Christianity.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 198 Chapter XXXIII. The Christian Empire.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 206 Chapter XXXIV. Ulterior Transformation.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 210 Indexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 217 Greek Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 217 Latin Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 217 French Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 219 Index of Pages of the Print Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 220

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THE HISTORY OF THE


BOOK VII. MARCUS—AURELIUS.

BY


London:

MATHIESON & COMPANY 25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. E.C.


Ernest Renan

CONTENTS.

iii

PAGE PREFACE

vi

CHAPTER I. ADVENT OF MARCUS-AURELIUS

1

CHAPTER II. PROGRESS AND REFORMS—THE ROMAN 12 LAW CHAPTER III. THE REIGN OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

19

CHAPTER IV. PERSECUTIONS CHRISTIANS

AGAINST

THE 31

CHAPTER V. INCREASING GRANDEUR OF THE CHURCH 40 OF ROME—PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE WRITINGS CHAPTER VI. TATIAN—THE APOLOGY

TWO

SYSTEMS

OF 58

CHAPTER VII. DECADENCE OF GNOSTICISM

64

CHAPTER VIII. iv

ORIENTAL SYNCRETISM—THE 73 OPHITES—FUTURE APPARITION OF MANICHÆISM CHAPTER IX. THE RESULT OF MARCIONISM—APELLES 82 CHAPTER X. TATIAN HERETICAL—THE ENCRATITES 90 CHAPTER XI. THE GREAT BISHOPS OF GREECE AND 95 ASIA—MELITO 2


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CHAPTER XII. THE QUESTION OF EASTER

108

CHAPTER XIII. LAST RECRUDESCENCE OF 116 MILLENARIANISM AND PROPHETISM—THE MONTANISTS CHAPTER XIV. RESISTANCE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH 126 CHAPTER XV. COMPLETE TRIUMPH OF EPISCOPATE—RESULTS MONTANISM

THE 134 OF

CHAPTER XVI. MARCUS-AURELIUS AMONG THE 140 QUADES—THE BOOK OF THOUGHTS CHAPTER XVII. THE LEGIO FULMINATA—APOLOGIES OF 157 APOLLINARIS, MILTIADES, AND MELITO CHAPTER XVIII. THE GNOSTICS AND THE MONTANISTS 166 AT LYONS CHAPTER XIX. v

THE MARTYRS OF LYONS

174

CHAPTER XX. RECONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH OF 194 LYONS—IRENÆUS CHAPTER XXI. CELSUS AND LUCIAN

199

CHAPTER XXII. NEW APOLOGIES—ATHENAGORAS, 219 THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH, MINUCIUS FELIX CHAPTER XXIII.

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PROGRESS OF ORGANISATION

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236

CHAPTER XXIV. SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA AND EDESSA 250 CHAPTER XXV. STATISTICS AND GEOGRAPHICAL 258 EXTENSION OF CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER XXVI. THE

INTERIOR MARTYRDOM OF 266 MARCUS-AURELIUS—HIS PREPARATION FOR DEATH

CHAPTER XXVII. DEATH OF MARCUS-AURELIUS—THE END 280 OF THE OLD WORLD CHAPTER XXVIII. CHRISTIANITY AT THE END OF THE 290 SECOND CENTURY—DOGMA CHAPTER XXIX. WORSHIP AND DISCIPLINE

299

CHAPTER XXX. 316

CHRISTIAN MANNERS CHAPTER XXXI. vi

REASONS FOR CHRISTIANITY

THE

VICTORY

OF 323

CHAPTER XXXII. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REVOLUTION 337 ADVANCED BY CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER XXXIII. THE CHRISTIAN EMPIRE

352

CHAPTER XXXIV. ULTERIOR TRANSFORMATIONS

359

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PREFACE. THIS volume closes the series of essays which I have dedicated to the History of the Origins of Christianity. It contains the exhibition of the development of the Church during the reign of Marcus-Aurelius, and the parallel picture of the efforts of philosophy to improve civil society. The second century of our era has had the double glory of definitely founding Christianity—that is to say, the grand principle which has wrought the reformation of manners by faith in the supernatural, and of unrolling, thanks to stoical teaching and without any element of the marvellous, the finest attempt of the laic school of virtue which the world has known till now. These two attempts were strangers to each other, and rather contradict than aid each other reciprocally; but the triumph of Christianity is only explicable when we have taken account of what there was of force and of insufficiency in the philosophical attempt. Marcus-Aurelius is on this point the subject of study to which we must constantly refer. He sums up all that there was of good in the ancient world, and he offers criticism this advantage, of presenting himself to it unveiled, thanks to a writing of an uncontested sincerity and authenticity. More than ever do I think that the period of the beginning, if we might so express it, closed at the death of Marcus-Aurelius, in 180. At that data the child had all its organs: it is separated from its mother; it shall henceforth live its own life. The death of Marcus-Aurelius could have been considered as marking the end of ancient civilisation. What good has been done after that, has been done by the Helleno-Roman principle; the Judæo-Syrian principle gains, and, although more than a hundred years shall pass away before its final triumph, we see well already that the future is its own. The third century is the agony of a world, which, in the second century, is still full of life and energy. Far from me be the thought of lowering the ages which follow the epoch with which I have closed my work. These are sad days in history: there are no days barren and without interest. The development of Christianity remains a spectacle highly interesting, while the Christian Churches count such men as St. Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen. The development of Christianity, which was wrought at Rome and in Africa, in the time of St. Cyprian, and of Pope Cornelius, ought to be studied with the most extreme care. The martyrs of the time of Decius and Diocletian do not yield in heroism to those of Rome, Smyrna, and Lyons the first and second centuries. But it is there we have what is called Ecclesiastical History—a history eminently curious and worthy of being written with love and all the refinements of the most attentive science, but essentially distinct, nevertheless, from the history of Christian origins—that is to say, of the analysis of the successive transformations which the germ laid by Jesus in the bosom of humanity has submitted to before becoming a complete and durable Church. Its needs methods quite different to treat the different ages of a grand formation, whether religious or political. The investigation of these origins supposes a philosophical mind—a lively intuition of what is certain, probable, or

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plausible—a profound sentiment of life and metamorphoses, a special art in drawing from rare texts all they possess, all that which, in fact, they include of revelations as to psychological situations far removed from us. In the history of an already complete institution, such as is the Christian Church in the third century, and with greater reasons in the following ages, the qualities of judgment and solid erudition of a Tillemont nearly suffice. That is why the seventeenth century, which has made such great progress in ecclesiastical history, has never taken up the problem of its origin. The seventeenth century had no taste but for that which can be expressed with the appearances of certainty. Such a search, of which the result cannot but be to meet possibilities, flying clouds—such a narration, which is forbidden to tell how a thing has passed, but which is limited to say: “These are one or two of the ways in which it can be imagined that the thing has taken place,” could not be to its taste. In presence of the questions of origin, the seventeenth century either took all with an artless credulity, or suppressed what it felt to be half fabulous. The knowledge of obscure conditions, anterior to the clear reflection, that is to say, rightly of conditions where the human conscience shows itself especially creative and fertile, is the intellectual question of the nineteenth century. I have sought, without any other motive than a very lively curiosity, to make the application of the methods of criticism which have prevailed in our days in those delicate matters in the most important religious appearance which had a place in history. Since my youth I have been preparing this work. The edition of seven volumes to compose, which has taken me twenty years. The general index which will appear at the same time as this volume will permit these being found easily in a work which it did not depend on me to render less complex and less charged with details. I thank the infinite Goodness for the time and necessary ardour to accomplish this difficult purpose. If there should remain to me some years of work, I shall dedicate them to complete from another side the subject which I have made the centre of my reflections. To be strictly logical, I should have begun a History of the Origin of Christianity by a history of the Jewish people. Christianity commences in the eighth century B.C., at the moment when the great prophets, taking up the people of Israel, made of it the people of God, charged to inaugurate in the world the pure religion. Up till then the worship of Israel had not essentially differed from that egotistical, self-interested cult which was that of all the tribes and nations, and which is revealed to us in the inscription of King Mesha, for example. A revolution was accomplished when an imprisoned man, not belonging to the priesthood, said: “Can we believe God will be pleased with the smoke of your victims or with the fat of your bullocks? Leave then these sacrifices, which only disgrace, and do good.” Isaiah is in that sense the first founder of Christianity. Jesus has not really said, in popular and charming language, what 750 years before him had been said in the Hebrew classic. To show how the religion of Israel, which in its origin had not perhaps any superiority over the religion of Ammon or Moab, became a moral religion, and how the religious history of the Jews has been a constant progress towards worship in spirit and in truth, that is what would need to be shown before introducing Jesus upon the scene of the facts. But life is short, and its duration uncertain. I therefore betook myself to the most pressing of them: I threw myself into the midst of the subject, and

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commenced with the Life of Jesus, holding for well-known the former revolutions of the Jewish religion. Now that it has been given me to treat, with all the care I desired, that part on which I laid the greatest value, it shall be my care to go back to the earlier history, and dedicate to it what still remains to me of force and energy. 1

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MARCUS-AURELIUS AND THE

END OF THE ANCIENT WORLD. CHAPTER I. ADVENT OF MARCUS-AURELIUS. ANTONINUS died 7th March, 161, in his palace of Lorium, with the calmness of an accomplished sage. When he felt death approaching, he, like a plain individual, put his family affairs in order, and commanded to be transferred into the chamber of his adopted son, Marcus-Aurelius, the golden statue of Fortune which had hitherto always stood in the apartment of the emperor. To the Tribune in attendance he gave the watchword Æquanimitas; then, turning himself, he appeared to fall asleep. Every order of the State rivalled each other in doing homage to his memory. There were established in his honour priesthoods, games, and societies. His piety, his clemency, and his holiness were the subjects of unusual eulogiums.

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It was remarked that during the whole of his reign he had not caused to be shed a drop of Roman blood, nor a drop of blood of foreigners. In piety, in his religious observance of ceremonies, as well as in the happiness and security he had been able to give to the empire, he was compared to Numa. Antoninus would have had the reputation of being the best of sovereigns if he had not designated for his successor a man equal to himself in goodness and in modesty—one who joined to these shining qualities talent, and a charm which make an image to live in the recollection of mankind. Simple, amiable, full of sweet gaiety, Antoninus was a philosopher without pretending to be so, and almost without knowing it. Marcus-Aurelius was a philosopher whose humanity and sincerity were admirable, but yet reflective. In this respect Antoninus was the greater. His kindness did not lead him to commit mistakes. He was not tormented by the evil instincts which gnawed at the heart of his adopted son. That extraneous evil, that restless study of self, that demon of scrupulousness, that fever of perfection, are the indications of a nature less strong than distinguished. The most beautiful thoughts are those which men do not commit to writing; but let it be added that we should have known nothing of Antoninus if Marcus-Aurelius had not handed down to us that exquisite portrait of his adopted father, in which he seems, by reason of humility, to have applied himself to paint an image superior to what he himself was, Antoninus resembled a Christ who would not have had an Evangel; Marcus-Aurelius a Christ who would have written his own. 8


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It is the glory of sovereignty that two models of irreproachable virtue are to be found in its ranks, and that the most beautiful lessons of patience and disinterestedness could proceed from a condition which we may suppose was unreservedly exposed to all the seductions of pleasure and vanity. The throne sometimes is an aid to virtue; and Marcus-Aurelius certainly would not have been what he was if it had not been that he exercised supreme power. It is the faculties which such an exceptional position alone puts into exercise, alongside of the reality, which make it appear to better advantage. It is disadvantageous to fame when the sovereign, the servant of all, cannot allow his genius to have free scope; but such a situation, when there is brought to bear on it an elevated soul, is very favourable to the development of the individual genius and talent which constitute the moralist. The sovereign really worthy of the name observes humanity from his exalted position in the most complete manner. His point of view resembles that of the philosophical historian—that which results from those sweeping glances cast over our poor species; it is a sweet sentiment mixed with resignation, piety, and hope. The cold severity of an artist cannot belong to a sovereign. The first condition of art is freedom; but the sovereign, subjected as he is to the prejudices of middle-class society, is the least free of men. He has not the right to his own opinions; he has hardly any right to his own tastes. A crowned Goethe even could not avow that royal disdain for bourgeois ideas, that haughty indifference to practical results, which are the essential characteristics of the artist; but one can imagine the mind of a good sovereign like that of a sympathetic Goethe, a Goethe converted to the good, brought to see that there is something greater than art, led to estimate men by the habitual nobleness of his thoughts and by the feeling of his own happiness. Such were these two admirable sovereigns, Antoninus the Pious and Marcus-Aurelius, at the head of the greatest empire that ever existed. History only presents another example of this heredity of wisdom upon the throne, in the persons of the three great Mogul emperors, Baber, Humaïoun, Akbar, the latter of whom shows, when compared with Marcus-Aurelius, some traits of striking resemblance. The salutary principle of adoption had made of the imperial court, in the second century, a true nursery of virtue. The noble and learned Nerva, in establishing that principle, assured the happiness of the human species for nearly three hundred years, and gave to the world the most beautiful century of progress which has been conserved by the memory of man. It is Marcus-Aurelius himself who has sketched for us in the first book of his Thoughts this latter admirable plan, in which we see moving, in a celestial light, the noble and pure features of his father, mother, ancestors and masters. Thanks to him, we can comprehend what the old Roman families, who had witnessed the reign of the bad emperors, guarded still of honesty, dignity, right, the civil spirit, and, if I may say so, republican. People lived there in the admiration of Cato, of Brutus, of Thraseas, and of the great Stoics, whose souls had not been subjugated by tyranny. The reign of Domitian was there abhorred. The sages who opposed him without flinching were honoured as heroes. The advent of the Antonines was only the succession to power of the society whose just colours Tacitus has handed down to us, a society of sages brought into existence by the league of all those who had revolted against the despotism of the first Cæsars. 9


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Neither the oriental pomps of some oriental royalties, founded upon the baseness and the stupidity of men, nor the pedantic pride of the royalties of the middle ages, founded upon an exaggerated sentiment of heredity, and upon the simple faith of the Germanic races in the rights of blood, can give us an idea of this wholly republican sovereignty of Nerva, of Trajan, of Hadrian, of Antoninus, and of Marcus-Aurelius. There was nothing of the hereditary prince or of right divine; none of the military captain; it was a kind of grand civil magistrature, with nothing which resembled a court, nor which stripped the emperor of his individual character. Marcus-Aurelius was neither little nor much of a king in the proper sense of the term; his fortune was immense, but consisted wholly of patrimony; his aversion to the Cæsars (the emperors before Nerva), whom he regarded as a species of Sardanapalus, magnificent, debauched and cruel, appeared at every minute of his life. The civility of his manners was perfection; he gave back to the Senate the whole of its ancient importance; when he was at Rome he never missed a sitting, nor quitted his place until the Consul had pronounced the formula: Nihil vos moramur, Patres conscripti. The sovereignty thus possessed in common by a group of the élite of men, which bound them together or separated them, according to the exigencies of the moment, lost a part of that attraction which renders it so dangerous. One reached the throne without having to canvass for it, but also without owing it to birth or to a kind of abstract right; one attained to it undeceived, wearied of men, prepared by long authority. The empire was a burden, which one accepted when one’s hour came, without one’s dreaming of precipitating that hour. Marcus-Aurelius was designated for it so young that the idea of reigning had hardly any commencement, and did not exercise over his mind a moment’s seduction. At eight years old, when he was already prœsul of the Salic priests, Hadrian remarked this brooding, sweet child, and loved him for his good nature, his docility, and his incapacity to lie. At ten years old, the empire was assured to him. He waited patiently for it for twenty-two years. The evening on which Antoninus felt himself to be dying, and caused to be carried into his chamber the statue of Fortune, had for him neither surprise nor joy. He had for a long time been surfeited by the joys which he had never tasted; he had, by reason of the profoundness of his philosophy, perceived their absolute vanity. His youth had been tranquil and pleasant, divided between the pleasures of the country, exercises in Latin rhetoric in the slightly frivolous manner of his master Fronto, and philosophical meditations. Greek pedagogy had attained its perfection, and, as happens in these sort of things, perfection was approaching decadence. The lettered men and the philosophers were divided in opinion, and were engaged in ardent combat. The rhetoricians dreamed only of affected ornaments of discourse; philosophers favoured almost baldness and negligence of expression. In spite of his friendship for Fronto, and his adjurations against the latter, Marcus-Aurelius was soon an adept in philosophy. Junius Rusticus became his favourite master, and won him wholly over to the severe discipline which he opposed to the ostentation of the rhetoricians. Rusticus continued to be the confidant and the intimate counsellor of his august pupil, who acknowledged having received from him his taste for a simple style, for a demeanour noble and serious, not to mention a still superior benefit, to wit: 10


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“I am indebted to him for my knowledge of he ‘Conversations of Epictetus,’ which he lent me from his own library.” Claudius Severus, the peripatetic, laboured to the same end, and ultimately led young Marcus to philosophy. Marcus had a habit of calling him his brother, and appeared to have had for him a deep attachment. 7

Philosophy was at that time a kind of religious profession, implying mortification and rules almost monastic. From the age of twelve Marcus assumed the philosophic mantle, learned to sleep upon a hard bed and to practise all the austerities of ascetic stoicism. It required his mother on several occasions to induce him to spread a few skins upon his couch. His health was more than once affected by this excessive rigour. But that did not prevent him from presiding at feasts, or from fulfilling his duties as a youthful prince, with that affable air which in him was the result of the greatest disinterestedness. His hours were as strict as those of a religious recluse. In spite of his feeble health, he could, thanks to the sobriety of his régime and to the strictness of his morals, lead a life of labour and fatigue. He had not what is called esprit, and he had very little passion. Esprit rarely succeeds apart from a certain amount of malignity. It is accustomed to do this by turns which are neither wholly good-natured nor troublesome. Marcus understood nothing perfectly—except duty. What he lacked was the kissing of a fairy at his birth, a thing quite philosophical in its way; I mean, the art of unbending to nature and to gaiety, which teaches that abstinence and sustenance are not everything, and that life might as well be summed up in “laughter and mirth.”

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In every art he had for masters the most eminent professors. Claudius Severus instructed him in peripateticism; Apollonius of Chalcis was brought expressly from the East by Antoninus to take charge of his adopted son, who appears to have been a perfect preceptor; Sextus of Cheronea, the nephew of Plutarch, the accomplished stoic; Diognetus, who trained him to love asceticism; Claudius Maximus, always brimful of fine sentences; Alexander of Cotyus, who taught him Greek; Herodus Atticus, who recited to him the ancient harangues of Athens. His exterior was that of his masters themselves; habits simple and modest, beard almost neglected, body attenuated and reduced to a shadow, eyes twitching with hard labour. No study, not even that of painting, was strange to him. With Greek he was familiar; when he reflected on philosophical subjects he thought in that language; but his solid mind discovered the folly of literary exercises, in which Hellenic education was lost; his Greek style, though correct, has something artificial which smells of the midnight oil. Morality was to him the last word of existence, and he brought to bear on it constant application. How did these respectable pedagogues, none of them of any consequence, succeed in forming such a man? This is a question which one asks himself with some surprise. To judge of it by the ordinary analogies, it had all the appearance that an education so overdone would turn out to be the very worst. But to speak the truth, superior to all these masters who had been selected from every corner of the globe, Marcus had a single master whom he revered above them all; and that was Antoninus. The moral value of the man is in proportion to his faculty of admiration. It was 11


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because Marcus-Aurelius had by his side the most beautiful model of a perfect life, and one whom he understood and loved, that he became what he was.

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Beware of “Cæarising” or losing your true colour; that approaches. Preserve thyself simple, good, pure, grave, the enemy of pomp, the friend of justice and religion, benevolent, human, firm in the practice of duties. Make every effort to remain such as philosophy would have thee do; revere the gods, watch the preservation of men. Life is short, the only fruit of earthly life is to maintain one’s soul in a holy frame, to do actions useful to society. Act always like a disciple of Antoninus; recall to thyself his constancy in the accomplishments of the prescriptions of reason, the equanimity of his disposition in all situations, his holiness, his serenity of countenance, his extreme gentleness, his contempt for vain-glory, his determination to penetrate the meaning of things; how he never allowed anything to pass before he had examined and well understood it; how he bore unjust reproaches without recriminating; how he did nothing with precipitation; how he would not listen to detractors; how carefully he studied character and action; neither spiteful nor fastidious, nor suspicious, nor sophistical: content with so little as to house, sleep, garments, food, service; laborious, patient, sober, so much so that he could occupy himself till night in the same business without having to leave for his necessary wants, except at the usual hours. And that friendship always constant, equable, and that goodness in supporting contradiction, and that joy in receiving counsel better than his own: and that piety without superstition! Think of these things, so that the last hour may find thee like him, with a consciousness of good accomplished.

The consequence of this austere philosophy might have produced stiffness and severity. But here it was that the rare goodness of the nature of Marcus-Aurelius shone out in all its brilliancy. His severity was confined only to himself. The fruit of this great tension of mind is inexhaustible benevolence. His whole life was a study of how to render good for evil. After some sad experience of human perversity, he can only contrive in the evening to note down the following: “If thou canst do it, correct them; in the contrary case, remember thou how thou must act towards those who had bestowed kindness on thee. The gods themselves are benevolent to these creatures; they aid them (so great is their bounty!), bestow on them health, riches, and glory; to thee it is permitted to do as the gods.” Another day men were very wicked; for here is what he writes on his tablets: “Such is the order of nature: some men of that sort must, of necessity, act thus. To wish that it be otherwise is to wish that the fig-tree should produce no figs. Remember thou, in a word, this: In a very short time thou and he will die; soon after, your names will be remembered no more.” These reflections on universal forgiveness recur continually. 10

It is on rare occasions that he mixes with that superlative kindness an imperceptible smile. “The best way to revenge oneself on the wicked is not to render them like for like,” or, with a soft emphasis of pride: “It is a royal thing, when one does good, to remember the evil that is in himself.” One day he has to reproach himself: “Thou hast forgotten that this holy relationship re-unites each man with the human species; a relationship not of blood and of birth, but a participation in the same intelligence. Thou hast forgotten that the reasonable soul of each person is a god, a thing derived from the Supreme Being.” In the business of life he must have been exquisite, though, no doubt, a little simple, like the majority of men who are very good. He was sincerely humble, without hypocrisy, make-believe, or studied deceit. One of the maxims of the excellent emperor was that the wicked are unhappy,

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that one is wicked only in spite of himself and through ignorance; he grieves for those who are not like himself; he did not believe in the right of imposing on them.

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He perceived clearly the baseness of men, but he did not avow it. This habit of blinding oneself willingly was the defect of the hearts of the élite. The world not being such as they would wish it, they deceived themselves in order to see it otherwise than it was. Hence he was a little lenient in his judgments. With Marcus-Aurelius, this pliableness produces in us sometimes a cause of irritation. If we were to believe him, his masters, several of whom were mediocre enough, must have been without exception superior men. We should have to admit that everybody about him was virtuous. It is at such a point as this that we are compelled to ask if that brother, upon whom he has made so great an eulogium in his acts of thanks to the gods, was not his brother by adoption, the debauched Lucius Verus. It is certain that the good emperor was capable of gross illusions when the matter in hand was the rendering to others their proper meed of virtue. No person of sense will deny that his was a great soul. But had he a great mind? Yes; since he saw into the infinite depths of duty and of conscience. He lacked decision only in one point. He never dared deny absolutely the supernatural. We certainly can share his dread of atheism; we understand perfectly what he meant when he speaks to us of his horror of a world without God and without Providence. But that which we little comprehend is when he speaks to us seriously of the gods intervening in human affairs through the will of particular persons. The meagreness of his scientific education can alone explain such weakness. To protect himself from vulgar errors, he had neither the nimbleness of Hadrian nor the adroitness of Lucian. But it must be added that those errors were in him of no consequence. The supernatural was not the base of his piety. His religion was limited to some medical superstitions, and to a patriotic condescension for old usages. The initiations of Eleusis did not appear to have occupied a large place in his moral life. His virtue, like that of the present day, rested on reason and upon nature. Saint Louis was a very virtuous man, and, according to the ideas of his time, a very good sovereign, because he was a Christian. Marcus-Aurelius was the most pious of men, not because he was a pagan, but because he was an accomplished man. He was the embodiment of human nature, and not of a fixed religion. Whatever may be the religious and philosophical revolutions of the future, his grandeur will not suffer any reproach, for it rests entirely upon that which can never perish—upon excellence of heart.

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To live with the gods! He who lives with the gods here shows always a mind contented with the lot which has fallen to him, and is obedient to the genius which Jupiter has separated, even as it were a part of himself, to serve as our director and guide. This genius is the intelligence and the reasoning faculty of each one. The world is either but chaos—successive aggregation or segregation—or it is providence, order, and unity. In the first case, why should we desire to remain in such a cloaca? The segregation alone will know how to reach me. In the latter case, I adore, I rest myself, I have confidence in him who governs.

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CHAPTER II. PROGRESS AND REFORMS. THE ROMAN LAW. CONSIDERED as a sovereign, Marcus-Aurelius was the embodiment of the liberal politician. Respect for mankind formed the basis of his conduct. He recognised that in the interest of good itself, we ought not to impose this good on others in an arbitrary manner, the free play of freedom being the first condition of human life. He desired the amelioration of mind and not merely physical obedience to the law; he sought for the public felicity, but such felicity not to be procured through servitude, which is the greatest of errors. His ideal of government was wholly republican. The prince was the first subject under the law. He was only the lessee and tenant of the wealth of the State. He must indulge no useless luxury; be strictly economical; his charity real and inexhaustible; easily accessible and affable of speech; pursuing in everything the public good, and not public applause. 13

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Some historians, more or less imbued with this polity, which was regarded as superior because it assuredly had no connection with any philosophy, have endeavoured to prove that a man so accomplished as Marcus-Aurelius could but be a bad administrator and a mediocre sovereign. It might be, indeed, that Marcus-Aurelius sinned more than once through being too indulgent. However, apart from the evils which it was absolutely impossible to foresee or to prevent, his reign stands out to us as being great and prosperous. The improvement in manners was considerable. Many of the secret aims which instinctively pursued Christianity were legally attained. The general political system had some grave defects; but the wisdom of the good emperor covered all with a temporary palliative. It was a singular thing that this virtuous prince, who never once made the least concession to false popularity, was adored by the people. He was democratic in the best sense of the word. The old Roman aristocracy inspired him with antipathy. He had no regard for birth, nor even for education and manners; he only looked to merit. As he could not find amongst the patricians fit subjects to second his ideas of wise government, he entrusted those functions to men whose only nobility was their honesty. Public assistance, established by Nerva and Trajan, developed by Antoninus, reached, under Marcus-Aurelius, the highest point it had ever attained. The principle that the State has in some sort paternal duties to perform towards its members (a principle which ought to be remembered with gratitude, even when we have got beyond it)—that principle, I say, was proclaimed in the world for the first time in the second century. The education of children in a liberal manner had become, on account of the insufficiency of morals, and in consequence of the defective economical principles upon which society reposed, one of the great pre-occupations of statesmen. Since the time of Trajan it had been endowed by hypothecating sums of money, the revenues from which were managed by the procurators. Marcus Aurelius made the procurators functionaries of the first 14


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rank; he selected them with the greatest care from amongst the consuls and prætors, and increased their powers. His great private fortune rendered it easy for him to place these largesses on a secure basis. He himself created a great number of endowments for the succour of the youth of both sexes. The institute of the Young female Faustinas dated from Antoninus. After the death of the second Faustina, Marcus-Aurelius founded New female Faustinas. An elegant bas-relief represents these young women pressing around the empress, who drops wheat into a fold of their robes. Stoicism, since the reign of Hadrian, had permeated the Roman law with its broad maxims and had made of it a natural law, a philosophical law, so that reason might conceive it as applicable to all men. The perpetual edict of Salvius Julianus was the first complete expression of that new law destined to become the universal law. It was the triumph of the Greek mind over the Latin mind. The strict law yielded to equity; mildness turned the scale on severity; justice seemed inseparable from beneficence. The great jurisconsulates of Antoninus, Salvius Valens, Ulpius Marcellus, Javolenus, Volusius Mœcianus continued the same work. The last was the master of Marcus-Aurelius in the matter of jurisprudence, and, to speak the truth, the work of the two holy emperors ought not to have been separated. From them dates the majority of the sensible and humane laws which modify the rigour of the ancient law and form, from legislation primarily narrow and implacable, a code susceptible of being adopted by all civilised peoples. 15

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The weak individual, in ancient societies, was somewhat dependent. Marcus-Aurelius constituted himself in a fashion the tutor of all those who had not one. The wants of the poor child and the sick child were assured. The tutelary Prætor was created to give guarantees for the orphaned. The civil law and the registration of births were commenced. A multitude of ordinances, completely just, introduced into the whole administration a remarkable spirit of mildness and of humanity. The expenses of the cures were diminished. Thanks to a better system of provisioning, famines in Italy were rendered impossible. In the order of judicature many reforms of an excellent character dated in like manner from the reign of Marcus. The regulation of manners, notably that which had reference to indiscriminate baths, was made more strict. It was to the slaves especially that Antoninus and Marcus-Aurelius showed themselves beneficent. Some of the greatest monstrosities of slavery were corrected. It was henceforward admitted that the master could commit an injustice to a slave. From the time of the new legislation corporal punishments were regulated. To kill a slave became a crime; to treat him with excessive cruelty was a misdemeanour, and drew upon the master the necessity of selling the unfortunate whom he had tortured. The slave, in time, resorted to the tribunals, became a somebody, and a member of the city. He was proprietor of his own substance, had his family, and it was not allowable to sell separately husband, wife, and children. The application of the question to servile persons was limited. The master might not, except in certain cases, sell his slaves to make them fight with wild beasts in the amphitheatres. The servant, sold under the condition ne prostituatur, was preserved from the bordelles. There was what was called favor libertatis; in case of doubt, interpretation the most favourable to liberty was admitted. People placed humanity against the rigour of the law, often even against the letter of the statute. In point of fact, from the time of 15


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Antoninus, the jurisconsulate, imbued with Stoicism, considered slavery as a violation of the rights of nature, and were inclined to restrict it. Enfranchisement was favoured in every way. Marcus-Aurelius went further and recognised within certain limits the right of slaves to the goods of the master. If a person did not present himself to claim the heritage of a testator, slaves were authorised to divide the goods amongst themselves; when one only or several were admitted to the adjudication the result was the same. The enfranchised person was in like manner protected by the most stringent enactments against slavery, which had a thousand different devices for seizing on him again. The son, the wife, the minor were the objects of legislation at once intelligent and humane. The son was obliged to maintain his father, but ceased to be under his control. The most odious excesses, which the ancient Roman law regarded as quite natural to permit to paternal authority, were abolished or restrained. The father had duties towards his children, and could get nothing back for having fulfilled them; the son, on his side, owed to his kindred alimentary succour, in proportion to his fortune.

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The laws, up to this time, of tutelage and trusteeship had been most incomplete; Marcus-Aurelius made them models of administrative foresight. By the ancient law the mother made hardly any part of the family of her husband and of her children. The Tertullian Senatus consultum (in the year 158), and the Orphitian Senatus consultum (178) established to the mother the right of succession, from the mother to the child and from the child to the mother. Sentiment and natural law took precedence. The excellent laws in regard to banks, to the sale of slaves, to informers and slanderers, put an end to a multitude of abuses. The fiscal laws had always been severe, exacting. It was henceforward settled in principle that in doubtful cases it should be the treasury that was wrong. Imposts of a vexatious character were abolished. The length of processes was diminished. The criminal law became less cruel, and the inculpated person was given valuable guarantees; still, it was the personal characteristic of Marcus-Aurelius to diminish, in application, the established penalties. In cases of folly punishment was remitted. The great stoical principle, that culpability resided in the motive, not in the deed, became the soul of laws. Thus was definitely established that great marvel the Roman law, a sort of revelation in its way which ignorance has placed to the honour of the compilers of Justinian, but which in reality was the work of the great emperors of the second century, and admirably interpreted and continued by the eminent jurisconsulates of the third century. The Roman law had a less clamorous triumph than Christianity, but in a sense a more durable one. Wiped out first by barbarism, it was resuscitated about the close of the Middle Ages, was the law of the world of the Renaissance, and became once more in a modified form the law of modern peoples. It was hence that the great Stoical school in the second century attempted to reform the world, after having to appearance miserably failed, and achieved in reality a complete victory. Compiled by the classical jurisconsults of the times of

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Severus, mutilated and altered by Tribonian, the texts survived, and these texts became later the code of the entire world. Now these texts were the work of the eminent legalists who, grouped about Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus-Aurelius, caused the law to enter definitely into its philosophic age. The labour was continued under the Syrian emperors; the frightful political decadence of the third century did not prevent that vast edifice from continuing its slow and splendid growth. It was not that Marcus-Aurelius made a parade of the innovating spirit. On the contrary, he conducted himself in such a manner as to give to the reforms a conservative appearance. He treated man always as a moral being; he never affected, as did often the pretended transcendental politicians, to treat him as a machine or a means to an end. If he could not change the atrocious penal code of the times he mitigated it in its application. A fund was established for the obsequies of the poor citizens; funeral colleges were authorised to receive legacies and to become civil societies, having the right to possess property, slaves, franchises. Seneca had said: “All men, if we go back to the origin of things, have gods for fathers.” On the morrow Ulpian will say: “By the law of nature all men are born free and equal.”

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Marcus-Aurelius wished to suppress the hideous scenes which made the amphitheatres actual places of horror for whoever possessed a moral sense. But he did not succeed; these abominable representations were a part of the life of the people. When Marcus-Aurelius armed the gladiators for the great Germanic war, there was almost a revolution. “He wishes to take away from us our amusements,” cried the multitude, “and to constrain us to philosophy.” The habitués of the amphitheatres were the only persons who did not love him. Compelled to yield to an opinion which was stronger than he, Marcus-Aurelius protested nevertheless in every possible way. He brought some alleviation to evils he was not able to suppress; we hear of rope-dancers having mattresses placed under them, and of people not being allowed to fight unless their arms were covered. The emperor visited the spectacles as seldom as he could help, and only out of complaisance. He affected during the representation to read, to give audiences, to sign despatches, without making himself the object of the raillery of the public. One day a lion that a slave had pricked for the purpose of devouring some men made so much of his master that on every side the public clamoured for his manumission. The emperor, who during this time had turned his head, responded with temper: “This man has done nothing worthy of liberty.” He issued several edicts to prevent precipitate manumissions, called for under the excitement of popular plaudits, which seemed to him a first reward for cruelty.

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CHAPTER III. THE REIGN OF THE PHILOSOPHERS.

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THE problem of the happiness of humanity had never before been known to have been pursued with so much assiduousness and heartiness. The ideal of Plato was realised; the world was governed by the philosophers. All that had been in the form of a beautiful sentiment in the great soul of Seneca had come to be a reality. Though railed at for two hundred years by the brutal Romans, the Greek philosophy, by dint of patience, triumphed. We have seen already under Antoninus philosophers privileged, pensioned, enjoying almost the position of public functionaries; now the emperor is wholly surrounded with them. His old masters have become his ministers, his men of state. He showers honours upon them with profusion, raises statues to them, places their monuments among his household gods, and, on the anniversary of their death, goes to sacrifice at their tombs, which he always keeps decked with flowers. The consulship, which until now had been reserved for the Roman aristocracy, is invaded by the rhetoricians and the philosophers. Herodus Atticus, Fronto, Junius Rusticus, Claudius Severus, Proculus, became in their day consuls or proconsuls. Marcus-Aurelius had in particular for Rusticus the most tender affection. He made him twice consul, and always embraced him before saluting the prefect of the prætorium. The important functions of the prefect of Rome were for some years as if placed immutably in his hands. It was inevitable that this sudden favour, accorded by the emperor to a class of men who combined all that was excellent and contemptible, should lead to many abuses. From all parts of the world the good Marcus-Aurelius had caused to be brought philosophers of renown. Among the proud mendicants, clad in ragged blouses, which that large call had put in movement, there were more than one person of mediocrity, more than one charlatan. That which implied an exterior profession provoked always a comparison between real manners and those which habit engendered. These parvenus were accused of greediness, of avariciousness, of gormandising, of impertinence, and of rancour. People sometimes laughed at the weaknesses which their mantles could shelter. Their badly combed hair, their beards, their nails were the objects of raillery. “His beard is worth to him ten thousand sestercias,” said some people, “it will soon be necessary to salary also goats.” Their vanity gave often occasion to these pleasantries. Peregrinus, sacrificing himself upon Mount Olympus (in 166), showed how far the necessity of the tragic could lead a fool who was infatuated with his rôle and eager to have himself spoken of. Their pretended absolute self-sufficiency called forth stinging rebukes. People repeated the phrase attributed to Demonax, upon Apollonius of Chalcis, departing from Rome with his suite: “Here comes Apollonius and his argonauts.” These Greeks, these Syrians, flocking to the assault of Rome, seemed to be setting out for the conquest of a new fleece of gold. The pensions and the exemptions which they enjoyed meant that they were in charge of the republic; and Marcus-Aurelius 18


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was compelled to justify himself on this point. People complained especially of their maltreatment of certain individuals. The ordinary insolences of the cynics only too far justified those accusations. These miserable snarling dogs possessed neither shame nor respect, and they were very numerous.

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Marcus-Aurelius did not dissimulate the defects of his friends; but his perfect sagacity led him to make a distinction between the doctrine and the weaknesses of those whom he taught. He knew that there were few or none of the philosophers really practical in what they advised. Experience had taught him that the majority of them were greedy, quarrelsome, vain, insolent; that they sought only disputation, that they were possessed solely by a spirit of pride, malignity, and jealousy. But he was too judicious to expect perfection in men. As St. Louis was not disturbed for a moment in his faith by the disorders of the clericals, so Marcus-Aurelius was never disgusted with philosophy— with what were the vices of the philosophers. “I esteem the true philosophers, indulgently exempt from blame the pretended philosophers, without, however, ever being duped by them,” was what he remarked in Antoninus, and the rule he himself observed. He went and listened in their schools to Apollonius and to Sextus of Cheronea, and was not made angry by people laughing at him. Like Antoninus, he had a faculty for supporting the ill-natured remarks of vain and badly educated people, which those honours probably exaggerated and rendered impertinent. Alexander saw him walking in the streets without courtiers, without a guard, clad in the mantle of the philosopher and living like one of them. At Athens he instituted chairs for all the sciences, and endowed them liberally; and he was able to give to the institution called the university of that city an éclat superior even to that which she had received from Hadrian. It was natural that the representatives of what still remained of solidity, endurance, and of strength in the ancient Roman nature should exhibit some impatience at that invasion of the high places in the republic by people without family renown, without military audacity, belonging for the most part to those oriental races which the true Roman contemned. Such was especially the position unfortunately taken by Avedius Cassius, a true soldier and statesman, an enlightened man even, and sympathising fully with Marcus-Aurelius, but one who was persuaded that government existed for another purpose than philosophy. By reason of calling the emperor in jest “a good female philosopher,” he was led into embracing the most fatal of ideas, to wit, revolt. The great reproach that he laid at the door of Marcus-Aurelius was the confiding of the highest positions to men who, whether as regards fortune, antecedents, and even education, could offer no guarantees, Bassæus and Pompeian, for example. The good emperor went, in fact, so far as innocently to desire that Pompeian should marry his daughter Lucilla, the, widow of Lucius Verus, and to pretend that Lucilla loved Pompeian, because he was the most virtuous man in the empire. This unfortunate idea was one of the principal causes which corrupted his internal government; for Faustina supported the resistance of his daughter, and that was one of the causes which threw her into the opposition against her husband.

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If Marcus-Aurelius had not united to his goodness a rare degree of practical sense, his infatuation for a class of persons, who were not always worth that which his profession would have made one suppose, would have led him into errors. Religion has had its absurdities; philosophy has had its also. Those people who crowded the public places, armed with truncheons, parading their long beards, their wallets, and their threadbare cloaks, these shoe-makers, these artisans who abandoned their benches to lead the idle life of begging cynics, exciting amongst people of mind the same antipathy which later on the Capuchin vagabond excited amongst the well-educated bourgeoisie. But, in general, despite the somewhat exaggerated respect which he had à priori for the costumes of the philosophers, Marcus-Aurelius exercised in his discernment of men a very perfect tact. The whole group of sages who had seized power on all sides presented a very venerable aspect; the emperor regarded them less as masters or friends than as brothers, who were associated with him in the government. The philosophers, as Seneca had dreamed, had become a power in the State, a certain constitutional institution, a privy council, whose influence in the affairs of State was of first importance. 24

This curious phenomenon, which has been witnessed but once in history, partook certainly of the character of the emperor; but it partook also of the nature of the empire, and of the Roman conception of the State, a conception wholly rationalistic, into which there entered no theocratic idea. The law was the expression of reason; it was hence natural that men of reason should attain one day or other to power. Like judges in cases of conscience, the philosophers had a rôle which was in a manner legal. For centuries the Greek philosophy had constituted the education of the highest Roman society; almost all the preceptors were Greeks; education was imparted wholly in Greek. Greece could not name a more splendid victory than that which she had thus gained through her pedagogues and professors. Philosophy took more and more the character of a religion; she had her preachers, her missionaries, her directors of consciences, her casuists. The great personages conversed with one another in a familiar philosophy, which was at the same time their intimate friend, their monitor, the guardian of their souls. It was hence a philosophy which had its thorns, and the first conditions of which were a venerable exterior, a fine beard, and a fashion of wearing a cloak with dignity. Rubellius Plautus had near him, it is said, “two doctors of wisdom,” Cœranus and Musonius, the one Greek, the other Etruscan, in order to furnish him with the grounds for being able to await death with courage. Before death, people conversed with some sage, similar to what is called with us a priest, so that the last breath drawn might have a moral religious character. Canus Julius walked to the scaffold accompanied by “his philosopher.” Thraseus died assisted by the cynic Demetrius.

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People hold it to be the first duty of a philosopher to enlighten men, to sustain them and to direct them. In great afflictions we send for a philosopher to give consolation, and often the philosophers, like our priests invoked in extremis, complain that they have only been sent for at the last minute when it is too late. We only purchase remedies when we are very sick; we neglect

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the philosopher in like manner, except when we are very unfortunate. We see a man rich, enjoying good health, and having a wife bien portants, but should he lose his fortune, or his health, should his wife, or his son, or his brother be struck down dead, then it is that the philosopher is sent for; he is called in to administer some consolation, to explain to the rich man in what manner one can support so much misfortune. It was the conscience of the sovereign in particular that the philosophers, like the Jesuits later, sought to gain over to the right. “The sovereign is good and wise for the benefit of others;” in bettering him the philosopher accomplished more than if he had seduced into the paths of wisdom hundreds of isolated individuals. Areus was to Augustus a director, a kind of confessor, to whom the emperor unfolded all his thoughts, even to his most secret movements. When Livy lost his son Drusus it was Areus who condoled with him. Seneca played at intervals a similar part to Nero. The philosopher in the times of Epictetus, though he was still treated with great rudeness by the unpolished personages in Italy, became the comes of the prince, his most intimate friend, he whom he received at all times. It might be said of these species of almoners that they had functions and received regular treatment. Dion Chrysostom wrote for Trajan his discourses on the duties of royalty. Hadrian has been represented to us as being surrounded with Sophists. 26

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The public had, like the princes, its regular lessons in philosophy. There were in important cities an eclectic official teacher, lessons, conferences. All the ancient denominations of the school subsisted. There were yet Platonists, Pythagoreans, Cynics, Epicureans, Peripaticians, drawing equal salaries, on the sole condition of their proving that their teaching was in full accord with that of Plato, Pythagoras, Diogenes, Epicurus, and Aristotle. The scoffers even pretended that certain professors taught at once several philosophies, and were paid for playing divers parts. A sophist presented himself at Athens as being acquainted with all the philosophies: “When Aristotle calls me to the Lyceum,” said he, “I am he; when Plato invites me to the Academy I enter it; if Zeno calls me, I make myself the guest of the Portico; at one word of Pythagoras I am silent.” “Suppose that Pythagoras were to call thee?” responded Demonax. It is too often forgotten that the second century had a veritable Pagan preaching, similar to that of Christianity, and in many respects in accord with the latter. It was not uncommon at the circus, at the theatre, or in the assemblies to see a sophist get up, like a divine messenger, in the name of eternal truth. Dionysius Chrysostom had already furnished the model of these homilies, borrowed from a polytheism greatly mitigated by philosophy, and which recalls the teachings of the Fathers of the Church. The Cynic Theagenus, at Rome, attracted the multitude to the course of lectures he gave in the gymnasium of Trajan. Maximus of Tyre in his Sermons presents to us a theology, at bottom monotheistic, in which the representations set forth are conserved only as the necessary symbols of human weakness, and which could satisfy alone the sages. All cults, according to that sometimes eloquent thinker, are an impotent effort in the direction of a unique ideal. The varieties which they present are insignificant, and ought not to be any impediment to the veritable worshipper.

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Thus there was realised a veritable historical miracle, what might be called the reign of philosophers. This is the moment to study that which such a régime favoured, that which it contemned. It assisted marvellously the social and moral progress; humanity, the softening of manners, increased exceedingly; the idea of a state being governed by wisdom, benevolence, and reason was established for ever. On the other hand, the military force, art, and literature underwent a certain decadence. Philosophy and letters were far from being the same thing. The philosophers regarded with pity the frivolity of lettered persons and their taste for applause. The lettered laughed at the barbarousness of the style of the philosophers, their lack of manners, their beards, and their mantles. Marcus-Aurelius, after hesitating between the two factions, decided boldly for the philosophers. He neglected Latin, ceased to encourage the necessity of writing in that language, preferred the Greek, which was the language of his favourite authors.

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The utter ruin of the Latin literature was then decided. The West decayed rapidly, whilst the East became day by day more brilliant; the dawn of Constantine was already apparent. The plastic arts, so greatly loved by Hadrian, must have appeared to Marcus-Aurelius a sort of semi-vanity. That which remains of his arch is insipid enough; everybody, even the barbarians, are given in it a dignified air; the horses have tender and philanthropic eyes. The Antonine column is a curious work, but is without delicacy in the execution, greatly inferior to the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, erected under the preceding reign. The equestrian statue of the Capitol charms us by the exact image it presents to us of the excellent emperor; but the artist has not the right to give up all boasting on this point. We feel that the total ruin of the art of design, which was accomplished in fifty years, has some profound causes. Christianity and philosophy equally contributed to it. The world began to be too indifferent to form and beauty; it asked no more than what improves the lot of the weak and sweetens the strong. The dominant philosophy was moral in the highest degree, but it was not very scientific; it did not urge research. Such a philosophy had nothing in it incompatible with cults so little dogmatic as were those of that time. Philosophers were often invested with sacerdotal functions in their respective towns. Thus Stoicism, which contributed so powerfully to spiritual improvement, was weak against superstition; it elevated the heart, not the intellect. The number of truly learned was very small. Galienus himself is not a practical spirit; he admits medical dreams and many superstitions of the time. In spite of the laws, the most mischievous magicians succeeded. The East overflowed with its mass of chimeras. In the province every folly found followers. Bæotia had a semi-god, a certain Sostratus, a kind of colossal idiot, leading a savage life, in whom everybody saw Hercules resuscitated. He was considered to be the good genius of the country, and they consulted him from all quarters. A most incredible thing! the stupid religion of Alexander of Abonoticos, which we saw emerging from the depths of the Paphlagonian folly, found some adherents in the higher ranks of Roman

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society and among the friends of Marcus-Aurelius. Severian, legate of Cappadocia, allowed himself to be taken in by it. At Rome the people desired to see the impostor; a consular personage, Publius Mummius Sisenna Rutilianus, became his apostle, and when sixty years old found himself honoured by marrying a girl whom this base rogue pretended to have had by the moon. At Rome Alexander established certain mysteries which lasted three days; the first day they celebrated the birth of Apollo and Æsculapius; the second day the epiphany of Glycon; the third, the birth of Alexander; each one with pompous processions and dances by torchlight. There were enacted in these mysteries scenes of revolting immorality. During the plague of 166 the talismanic formulas of Alexander, engraved on the doors of houses, were believed by the superstitious multitude to be preservatives against it. At the time of the great war of Pannonia (169-171), Alexander still spoke of his serpent, and it was by his orders that two live lions were thrown into the Danube with solemn sacrifices. Marcus-Aurelius personally presided over the ceremony, attired as pontiff, surrounded by personages clothed in long robes. The two lions were beaten to death by blows of the bludgeon on the other bank, and the Romans cut in pieces. These exhibitions did not at all hurt the impostor, who, protected by Rutilianus, was able to escape all that the defenders of the good public feeling attempted to do to arrest his career. He died in his glory; statues of him were, about 178, the object of public worship, especially at Parium, where his tomb decorated the public square. Nicomedia stamped Glycon on its coins; Pergamos also honoured him. Some Latin inscriptions, found in Dacia and in Upper Mysia, prove that Glycon had a large number of devotees, and that Alexander had recognised him as a god. This uncouth theology had even its development. They gave the serpent a female, the Dracena; they connected Glycon with the agathodemon Chnoubis and the mystic Iao. Nicomedia kept the serpent with the human head upon its coins till about 240. In 252 the religion of Glycon still flourished at Ionopolis. The name substituted by the impostor for Abonoticos has been more lasting than a thousand changes better justified. It continues in our day under the Turkish-looking name Ineboli. Peregrinus, after his extraordinary suicide at Olympia, also obtained at Parium statues and a worship. He pronounced oracles, and sick people were cured by his intercession. Thus intellectual progress did not advance at the same pace as social progress. Attachment to the State religion only nourished superstition, and prevented the establishment of good public education. But that was not the emperor’s fault. He did what he could. The object he had in view—the improvement of men—needed centuries. Those centuries Christianity had before it; the empire had not. The universal cause, said the emperor, is a torrent which carries everything along with it. What wretched politicians are those little men who pretend to rule the world by the maxims of philosophy; they are babies whose noses require to be wiped with a pocket-handkerchief. Man, what would you do? Do that which nature demands at the present moment. Go before it if you can and don’t disturb yourself by seeking to know whether anyone occupies himself with what you are doing. Do not hope ever to have a republic like Plato’s; let it he sufficient for you to improve some things,

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and do not regard this as a success of inconsiderable importance. How, in fact, can the inward dispositions of men be changed? And, without this change in their thoughts, what are they but slaves fastened to the yoke, people affecting a hypocritical persuasion? Come then, and tell me about Alexander, Philip, Demetrius of Phaleria. If they have only played the part of tragic actors, no one has condemned me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is simple and modest; do not persuade me therefore with a dead-house full of pretension. (Thoughts, ix. 29.)

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CHAPTER IV. PERSECUTIONS AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS. THE philosophy, which had so thoroughly conquered the mind of Marcus-Aurelius, was hostile to Christianity. Fronton, his tutor, seems to have been full of prejudice against the Christians; and we know that Marcus-Aurelius guarded like a religion the recollections of his youth, and the impression made by his teachers. In general, the Greek pedagogues as a class were opposed to the new culture. Proud in looking at himself as the father of his family, the preceptor considered himself injured by the illiterate catechists who acted as spies clandestinely upon his functions, and put their pupils on their guard against him. These pedants, in the world of the Antonines, enjoyed a perhaps exaggerated favour. Often the denunciations against the Christians came from conscientious teachers, who considered themselves bound to save the young people confided to their care from an indiscreet propaganda, opposed to the opinions of their families. Littérateurs of the style of Ælius Aristides did not show themselves less severe. Jews and Christians are to them impious people, who deny the gods, enemies of society, disturbers of the peace of families, intriguers who seek to intrude everywhere, to draw everything to themselves, tormenting, presumptuous, and malevolent brawlers. Some men like Galienus, of practical mind as well as philosophers or rhetoricians, showed less partiality, and without reserve praised the purity, the austerity, the pleasant manners of the inoffensive sectaries whom calumny had succeeded in transforming into odious malefactors.

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The emperor’s principle was to maintain the ancient Roman maxims in their integrity. It could not therefore be but that the new reign should be little favourable to the Church. Roman tradition is a dogma for Marcus-Aurelius; it incites him to virtue “like a man, like a Roman.” The prejudices of the Stoic doubled themselves with those of patriot, and it has been recorded that the best of men will commit the most awkward faults by excess of earnestness, of sedulousness and conservative mind. Ah! if he had possessed something of the thoughtlessness of Hadrian or the laughter of Lucian. Marcus-Aurelius certainly knew many Christians. He had them among his servants; he conceived little esteem for them. The kind of supernatural which formed the basis of Christianity was repugnant to him, and he had the feelings of all the Romans against the Jews. It does not appear that any edition of the Gospel text came under his eyes; the name of Jesus was, perhaps, unknown to him; that which struck him as a Stoic was the courage of the martyr. But one feature shocked him, that was their air of triumph, their way of acting in the face of death. This bravado against the law appeared hateful; as chief of the state he saw in it a danger. Stoicism, besides, did not teach one to seek death, but to endure it. Had Epictetus not represented the heroism of the “Galileans” as the effect of an obdurate fanaticism? Ælius Aristides expressed himself nearly in the same manner. Those voluntary deaths appeared to the august moralist as little rational as the theatrical suicide of 25


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Peregrinus. We find this note among his memoranda of thoughts: “A disposition of the soul always ready to be separated from the body, whether to be annihilated, to be dispersed, or to continue. When I say ready, I mean that this should be the effect of a proper judgment, not out of pure opposition, as among the Christians; it must be a reflective act, grave, capable of persuading others, without any mingling of tragic display.” He was right, but the true liberal must refuse everything to fanatics, even the pleasure of being martyrs. Marcus-Aurelius changed nothing of the established rules against the Christians. The persecutions were the result of the fundamental principles of the empire brought into combination. Marcus-Aurelius, far from exaggerating the former legislation, mitigated it with all his energy, and one of the glories of his reign is the extension he gave to the rights of colleges. His decree, pronouncing banishment on superstitious agitations, applied even more to political prophecies or to knaves who traded on the public credulity than to established religions. Yet he did not quite go to the root; he did not completely abolish the laws against the collegia illicita, and there resulted from this some application of these in the provinces infinitely to be regretted. The reproach that might be brought against him is the very same that might be addressed to the sovereigns of our day, who do not suppress, by a stroke of the pen, all the restrictive laws concerning freedom of meeting, association, the press. At the distance we are removed from him, we can see that Marcus-Aurelius, in being more thoroughly liberal, was wiser. Perhaps Christianity, left free, would have developed in a less disastrous way the theocratic and absolute principle which was in it. But we cannot reproach a statesman with having promoted a radical revolution by a foresight of the events which should occur many years afterwards. Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus-Aurelius could not understand the principles of general history and political economy which have been realised only in the 19th century, and which our last revolutions have revealed to us.

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In any case as to the application of the laws, the mildness of the emperor was safe from all reproach. We have not, on this point, the right to be harder than Tertullian, who was, in infancy and youth, an eye-witness of this fatal struggle. “Consult your annals,” said he to the Roman magistrates, “and you will find that the princes who have been cruel to us are those whom it was held an honour to have as persecutors. On the contrary, of all princes who have known divine and human law, name one of them who has persecuted the Christians. We might even instance one of them who declared himself their protector, the wise Marcus-Aurelius. If he did not openly revoke the edicts against our brethren, he destroyed the effect of them by the severe penalties he instituted against their accusers.” The torrent of universal admiration carried away the Christians themselves. “Great” and “good”—these were the two words in which a Christian of the 3rd century summed up the character of this mild persecutor. It is necessary to recollect that the Roman empire was ten or twelve times larger than France, and that the responsibility of the emperor for the sentences pronounced in the provinces was very small. It must be especially remembered that Christianity demanded nothing but freedom of worship;

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all the other religions which were tolerated were quite free in the empire; that which gave to Christianity, and formerly to Judaism, a distinct position was their intolerance, their spirit of exclusiveness. The liberty of thought was absolute. From Nero to Constantine, not a thinker, not a scholar was disturbed in his researches.

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The law was the persecutor, but the people were even more so. The evil reports spread by the Jews and kept up by malignant missionaries, a sort of commercial travellers of calumny, estranged the most moderate and sincere minds. The people held by their superstitions, and were irritated against those who attacked them by sarcasm. Even some enlightened people, such as Celsus and Apuleius, believed that the political feebleness of the age arose from the progress of unbelief in the national religion. The position of the Christians was that of a Protestant missionary settled in a very Catholic town in Spain and preaching against the saints, the Virgin, and processions. The saddest episodes of persecution under Marcus-Aurelius arose from the hatred of the people. At every famine, inundation, and epidemic, the cry “The Christians to the lion!” resounded like a gloomy menace. Never had a reign witnessed so many calamities; the people believed the gods were angry, and redoubled their devotion; they called over the expiatory acts. The attitude of the Christians, in the midst of all this, remained obstinately disdainful, or even provocative. Often they received their condemnation with an insult to the judge. Before a temple or an idol they breathed hard, as if to repulse an impure thing, or made the sign of the Cross. It was not rare to see a Christian stop before a statue of Jupiter or Apollo, and say to it as he struck it with his staff: “Ah well, you see, your god does not avenge you!” The temptation was strong in such a case to arrest the sacrilegious one and to crucify him, saying, “And does your god avenge you!” The Epicurean philosophers were not less hostile to these vulgar superstitions, and yet they did not persecute them. Never did one see a philosopher forced to offer sacrifice, to swear by the emperor, or to carry flambeaux. The philosopher could have consented to those vain formalities, and that was enough without more being asked. All the pastors, all the grave men dissuaded the faithful from going to offer themselves as martyrs; but they could not conquer a fanaticism which saw in condemnation the grandest triumph, and in punishment a kind of pleasure. In Asia this thirst for death was infectious, and produced certain phenomena analogous to those which, later on, were developed on a large scale among the “circoncellions” of Africa. One day the proconsul of Asia, Arrius Antoninus, having ordered certain rigorous proceedings against some Christians, beheld all the believers in the town present themselves in a body at the bar of his tribunal claiming the right of their co-religionists chosen for martyrdom; Arrius Antoninus, furious, made them lead a small number to punishment, sending away the others with the words, “Be off then, you wretches! If you wish so much to die you have precipices and cords!” When, in the heart of a great state, a faction has certain interests opposed to those of all the rest, hatred is inevitable. Now the Christians desired, at bottom, that everything should go on in the

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worst way. Far from making common cause with the good citizens, and seeking to exorcise dangers from their native land, the Christians rejoiced in these. The Montanists and the whole of Phrygia went to the extreme of folly in their malignant prophecies against the empire. They could imagine themselves gone back to the times of the grand Apocalypse of 69. These kinds of prophecies formed a crime forbidden by law; Roman society felt instinctively that it was growing weaker; it saw but vaguely the causes of this feebleness; it laid them, not without some reason, on Christianity. It imagined that a return to the old gods would recall fortune. These gods had made the greatness of Rome; they were supposed to be irritated now by the blasphemies of the Christians. Was the way to appease them not to kill the Christians? No doubt these latter did not suspend their mockeries as to the inanity of sacrifices, and of the means they employed to ward off the plague. What would they think in England of a sceptic bursting with laughter in public on a day of feasting and prayer commanded by the Queen? Some atrocious calumnies, some bloody scoffs were the revenge the Pagans took. The most abominable of the calumnies was the accusation of worshipping the priests by shameful embraces. The attitude of the penitent in confession gave rise to this disgraceful report. Some odious caricatures circulated among the public, and were placed on the walls. The absurd fable, according to which the Jews adored an ass, made people imagine that it was the same thing with the Christians. Here it was, the picture of a crucified person with an ass’s head receiving the adoration of a half-witted lad. In other details it was one with a long cloak and long ears, the feet in clogs, and he held a book with a devout air, while this epigram was beneath the representation, DEVS CHRISTIANORVM ONOKOITHC (the only-begotten God of the Christians). An apostate Jew, who had become an attendant in the amphitheatre, painted a great caricature at Carthage in the last years of the second century. A mysterious cock, having an aphallus for a beak, and with the inscription CΩTHP KOCMOΥ (Saviour of the world), had also a relation to the Christian beliefs.

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The liking of the catechists for women and children afforded scope for a thousand jests. Opposed to the dryness of Paganism, the church produced the effect of a conventicle of effeminate persons. The tender feeling of every one towards another, showed in the aspasmos and glorified by martyrdom, created a kind of atmosphere of softness, full of attraction for gentle souls, and of danger for certain others. This movement of good women concerned about the church, the habit of calling each other brother and sister, this respect for the bishop, shown by frequently kneeling before him, had something in it repulsive, and which provoked disagreeable interpretations. The grave preceptor, who saw himself deprived of his pupils by this womanish attraction, conceived for it a profound hatred, and believed that he was serving the State by seeking to revenge himself on it. Children, in fact, allowed themselves to be easily drawn by the words of mystic tenderness which reached them secretly, and sometimes this drew on them severe chastisements from their parents.

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Thus persecution attained a degree of energy which it had not reached till now. The distinction between the simple fact of being a Christian and certain crimes connected with the name was forgotten. To say: “I am a Christian”—that was to sign a declaration whose consequence might be a sentence of death. Terror became the habitual condition of the Christian life. Denunciations came from all sides, especially from slaves, Jews, and Pagans. The police, knowing the days and the place when and where their meetings were held, made sudden incursions into the hall. The questioning of the inculpated persons furnished to the fanatics occasions of witticisms. The Acts of these proceedings were collected by the faithful as triumphal documents; they circulated them; they read them greedily; they made out of them a kind of literature. The appearing before the judges became a pre-occupation for which they prepared with coquetry. The reading of these papers, when the best part always fell to the accused, exalted the imagination, provoked imitators, and inspired a hatred of civil society, and a condition of things where good people could be treated thus. The fearful punishments of the Roman law were applied with all their severity. The Christian as humilior, and even as a wretch, was punished by the cross, beasts, fire, the rod. For death there was sometimes substituted condemnations to the mines, and transportation to Sardinia. Cruel mitigation! The judges, in “putting the question,” were guided by a thoroughly arbitrary disposition, and sometimes a perfect perversion of ideas. There was here a wretched spectacle. No one suffered from it more than the true friend of philosophy. But what could be done? Two contradictory things could not exist at the same time. Marcus-Aurelius was a Roman, when he persecuted he acted as a Roman. For sixty years an emperor, as good-hearted, but less enlightened in mind than Marcus-Aurelius, Alexander Severus, shall carry out without regard to any Roman maxims the true principles of liberalism; he shall grant complete freedom of conscience, and shall withdraw the laws restrictive of the liberty of meeting. We approve of that thoroughly. But Alexander Severus did this because he was a Syrian, and a stranger to the imperial tradition. He failed, besides, completely in his undertaking. All the great restorers of Roman affairs, who shall appear after him, Decius, Aurelian, Diocletian, shall return to the principles established and followed by Trajan, Antoninus, and Marcus-Aurelius. The perfect peace of conscience experienced by these men should not, therefore, surprise us; it was evidently with absolute serenity of heart that Marcus, in particular, dedicates in the Capitol a temple to his favourite goddess “Goodness.”

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CHAPTER V. INCREASING GRANDEUR OF THE CHURCH OF ROME—PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE WRITINGS. ROME became every day more and more the capital of Christianity, and replaced Jerusalem as the religious centre of the human race. Civitas sacrosancta! That extraordinary city was at the culminating point of its grandeur; nothing could allow one to foresee the events which, in the third century, should happen to cause it to degenerate and become nothing more than the capital of the West. Greek was at last as much spoken there as Latin, and the great rupture of the East could not be guessed. Greek was exclusively the language of the Church; the liturgy, the preaching, the propaganda were carried on in Greek.

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Anicet ruled the Church with a high hand. They consulted him throughout all the Christian world. It was fully admitted that the Church of Rome had been founded by Peter; it was believed that this apostle had transmitted to his church the primacy with which Jesus had invested him; there was applied to this church the strong language in which it was believed that Jesus had conferred on Cephas the position of the corner-stone in the edifice he would build up. By unparalleled effort the Church of Rome had succeeded in remaining at the same time the church of Paul. Peter and Paul reconciled—that was the grand act which founded the ecclesiastical supremacy of Rome for the future. A new mythical duality replaced that of Romulus and Remus. We have already seen the question of Easter, the struggles of Gnosticism, those of Justin and Tatian meeting at Rome. All the controversies which rent the Christian conscience followed the same path, up till Constantine dissentients demanded from the Church of Rome an arbitration, if not a judgment. Celebrated doctors considered it a duty to visit, for their instruction, that Church in which, since the disappearance of the first Church of Jerusalem, all recognised the prestige of an ancient origin. Among the Orientals who came to Rome under Anicet, there must be named a converted Jew, called Joseph or Hegesippus, originally no doubt from Palestine. He had received a careful Rabbinical education, knew Hebrew and Syriac, and was versed in the unwritten traditions of the Jews; but he lacked critical taste. Like the majority of converted Jews he made use of the Gospel of the Hebrews. Zeal for the purity of the faith induced him to undertake long voyages and a sort of apostolate. He went from church to church conferring with the bishops, informing himself as to their faith, arranged the succession of pastors by which they were connected with the apostles. The dogmatic agreement which he found among the bishops filled him with joy. All these little churches on the borders of the Eastern Mediterranean showed a complete accord. At Corinth, in particular, Hegesippus was specially comforted by his meeting with the primate bishop and with the faithful, whom he found in the most orthodox path. He thence embarked for Rome, where he put himself in communication with Anicet and carefully remarked the condition of tradition. Anicet had a deacon Eleutherus, who

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later on became in his turn bishop of Rome. Hegesippus, although a Judaiser and even an Ebionite, was delighted with these churches of Paul, and he had the more merit in this because his mind was subtle and specially inclined to observed heresies. “In every succession of bishops, in every town, things are carried out as the law, the prophets, and the Lord ordain.” He settled at Rome like Justin and remained there more than twenty years, much respected by all, in spite of the surprise which his Oriental Christianity and the address of his mind would excite. Like Papias he had, in the midst of the rapid transformations of the church, the effect of “an ancient man,” a sort of survivor of the apostolic age. A material cause contributed greatly to the pre-eminence which all the churches recognised in the Church of Rome. That church was extremely rich; its property, ably administered, served as a fund for help and propagandism to other churches. The confessors condemned to the mines received a subsidy from her. The common treasury of Christianity was in some sort at Rome. The Sunday collection, a constant practice in the Roman church, was already probably established. A marvellous spirit of management animated this little community, where Judea, Greece, and Latium appeared to have mingled, in view of a prodigious future, their very diverse gifts. While the Jewish monotheism furnished the immovable basis of the new formation, while Greece continued by Gnosticism its free speculation, Rome applied itself with an astonishing persistence to the work of organisation and government. All authority, all artifices, were to it good for that end. Policy did not retreat before fraud; but policy had already chosen its seat in the most secret councils of the Church of Rome. It produced about this time a new vein of apocryphal literature, by which Roman piety sought once more to impose itself on the Christian world.

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The name of Clement was the fictitious guarantee which the forgers chose to serve as a cover to their pious designs. The great reputation which the old Roman pastor had left, the right which they recognised in him to give in some sort his recommendatory note to the books which were worthy of circulation, recommended him for this position. Upon the basis of the Cerygmata and Periodi of Peter, an unknown author, a Pagan born and introduced into Christianity by the Esseno-Ebionite door, built up a romance of which Clement was supposed to be at once the author and the hero. This precious document, entitled The Confessions, because of the surprises of the denouement, has reached us in two editions different enough from each other, and of which probably neither the one nor the other is the original. Both appear to be derived from a lost document, which made at the time we speak of its first appearance. The author sets out from the hypothesis that Clement was the immediate successor of Peter in the presidency of the Church of Rome, and received from the prince of the apostles the episcopal ordination. Just as the Cerygmata were dedicated to James, just as the new romance bore as a heading an epistle where Clement recounted to James, “Bishop of bishops and chief of the Holy Church of the Hebrews at Jerusalem,” the violent death of Peter, and narrates how that apostle, the first of them all, the true companion, the true friend of Jesus, constituted by Jesus the only foundation

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of the Church, has established him, Clement, as his successor in the episcopate of Rome, and has recommended him to write compendiously, and to address to James the record of their journeys and their preachings in common. The work does not speak of Peter’s sojourn at Rome nor of the circumstances of his death. These last accounts doubtless formed the basis of a second work which was of service to him who has preserved them to us.

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The Ebionite spirit, hostile to Paul, which formed the basis of the first Cerygmata, is here much effaced. Paul is not named in the whole work. It is surely not without reason that the author affects not to know other apostles than the twelve presided over by Peter and James, and that he attributes to Peter only the honour of having spread Christianity in the Pagan world. In a multitude of places the wrongs of the Judeo-Christians were still to be seen, but all is said in a half word; a disciple of Paul could scarcely read the book without being shocked. Little by little, indeed, this calumnious history of apostolic struggles, invented by a hateful school, but which had some portions made to please all the Christians, lost its sectarian colour, became almost catholic, and was adopted by the greatest number of the faithful. The allusions against St. Paul were obscure enough. Simon the Magician stands charged with everything odious in the story; the allusions his name had served to fail were forgotten; nothing more than a double of Nero in the infernal rôle of Antichrist. The work is composed according to all the rules of ancient romance. Nothing is wanting: travels, love episodes, shipwrecks, twins which resemble each other, people taken by pirates, recognition of people separated for long years. Clement, from a confusion which arises from a very ancient epoch, was considered to belong to the imperial family. Mattidia, his mother, is a perfectly chaste Roman lady, married to the noble Faustus. Pursued with a criminal love by her brother-in-law, wishing at the same time to save her honour and the reputation of her family, she quits Rome, with her husband’s permission, and goes to Athens to educate her sons, Faustinus and Faustinian. At the end of four years, not receiving news of them, Faustus embarks with his third son, Clement, to go in search of his wife and her sons. After a thousand adventures the father, the mother, and the three sons meet. They were not Christians at first, but all deserved to be, and all became so. As Pagans they had had honest morals; and charity has this privilege, that God owes it to Himself to save those who practise it by natural instinct. “If it were not an absolute rule that no one could be saved without baptism the chaste Pagan would be saved.” The infidels who are converted are those who have deserved it by their regulated morals. Clement, in fact, meets the apostles, Peter and Barnabas, makes them his companions, recounts to us their preachings, their contest with Simon, and becomes for all the members of his family the occasion of a conversion, for which they were so well prepared. This romantic framework is only a pretext for making an apology for the Christian religion, and for showing how superior it is to the philosophical and theurgic opinion of the age. St. Peter is no longer the apostle we know by the Acts and the letters of Paul; he is a skilful polemic—a master, who brings all the trickeries of the sophist’s art into the service of the truth. The ascetic life

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he led, his rigorous xerophagy, repelled the Essenes. His wife travels with him as a deaconess. The ideas which were given of the social condition, in the midst of which Jesus and his apostles lived, had already become altogether erroneous. The most simple data of apostolic theology were unknown. It must be said, to the author’s praise, that if his confidence in the credulity of the public is very naïve, he has at least a belief in discussion which does honour to his tolerance. He admits readily that one may be innocently deceived. Among the figures of the romance Simon the Magician alone is altogether sacrificed. His disciples, Apion and Anubion, represent, the first, the effort to draw from mythology something religious; the second, the misguided sincerity which shall one day be rewarded by the knowledge of the truth. Simon and Peter dispute metaphysically, Clement and Apion discuss morally. A touching shade of pity and sympathy with the erring spreads a charm over these pages, which we feel are written by one who has passed through the throes of scepticism, and knows better than any other how we may suffer and acquire merit in seeking the truth. Clement, like Justin of Neapolis, has tried all the philosophies, the lofty problems of the immortality of the soul, future rewards and punishments, Providence, the relations of man with God possess his mind; no school has satisfied him; he is despairingly about to plunge into the grossest superstitions when the voice of Christ comes to him. He finds, in the teaching which has been given as that of Christ, the reply to all his doubts; he is a Christian. The system of refutation of Paganism which shall make the basis of the argumentation of all the Fathers is already found complete in the pseudo-Clement. The primitive meaning of mythology was lost everywhere; the old physical myths became unseemly tales, offered no food for the soul. It was easy to show that the gods of Olympus have given very bad examples, and that the man who imitates them would be a villain. Apion vainly seeks to escape by symbolic explanations. Clement establishes without difficulty the absolute powerlessness of polytheism to produce a serious morality. Clement has unconquerable demands of soul; honest, pious, candid, he wishes a religion which shall satisfy his lively sensibility. One moment the two adversaries recall the souvenirs of youth, of which they now make arms to fight. Apion had once been the guest of Clement’s father. Seeing the latter sad and sick one day from the anguish which seeking the truth gave him, Apion, who had medical pretensions, asked him what was wrong. “The disease of the young. I have a disease of the soul!” replied Clement. Apion thought he was a prey to love, made him the most unseemly proposals, and composed for him a piece of erotic literature, which Clement brings into the debate with more malice than reason. The philosophy of the book is Deism, considered as the fruit of a revelation, not of reason. The author speaks of God, of His nature, attributes, and Providence, of evil, regarded as a proof and as a source of merit for man, in the style of Glycon and Epictetus. A lucid and correct mind, opposed to the Montanist aberrations, and to the quasi-polytheism of the Gnostics, the author of the pseudo-Clementine romance is a strict monotheist, or, as might be said, a monarchist. God is the being whose essence is of Himself alone. The Son is by nature inferior to Him. These ideas, very analogous to those of the pseudo-Hermias, were long the basis of the Roman theology. Far from 33


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being revolutionary thoughts, they were at Rome the conservative ideas. It was at bottom the theology of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, or rather of Philo and the Essenes, developed in the Gnostic sense. The world is the theatre and the struggle of good and evil. The good gains always a little upon the evil, and at last will overcome it. The partial triumphs of good are wrought by means of the appearance of successive prophets, Adam, Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Noah, Moses; or rather a single prophet, Adam, immortal and impeccable, the typical man par excellence, the perfect image of God, the Christ, ever living, ever changing in form and name, pervading the world unceasingly and fulfilling history, preaching eternally the same law in the name of the same Holy Spirit.

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The true law of Moses had nearly realised the ideal of the absolute religion. But Moses wrote nothing, and his institutions were altered by his successors. The sacrifices were a victory of Paganism over the pure law. A crowd of errors have slipped into the Old Testament. David, with his harp and his bloody wars, is a prophet quite inferior. The other prophets were still less perfect, Adam-Christs. The Greek philosophy, on its side, is a tissue of chimeras—a true logomachy. The prophetic spirit, which is nothing else than the Holy Spirit manifested, the primitive man, Adam, such as God made him, has appeared now in a last Christ, in Jesus, who is Moses himself; so much so that between them there is no contest or rivalry. To believe in the one is to believe in the other—it is to believe in God. The Christian, by being a Christian, does not cease to be a Jew (Clement gave himself always this latter name; he and all his family “were Jews”). The Jew who knows Moses and does not know Jesus shall not be condemned if he practises well what he knows, and does not hate what he is ignorant of. The Christian of Pagan origin, who knows Jesus and does not know Moses, shall not be condemned if he observes the law of Jesus, and does not hate the law which has been revealed to him. Revelation, besides, is only the ray by which some truths, hidden in all men’s hearts, become visible to each of them; to know this is not to apprehend—it is to comprehend. The relation of Jesus to God has been that of all the other prophets. He has been the instrument of the Spirit, that is all. The ideal Adam, who is found more or less obscured in every man coming into this world, is, according to the prophet, master of the world, in the condition of clear knowledge and full possession. “Our Lord,” says Peter, “has never said that there should be another God than He who created everything, and did not proclaim Himself God: He has only, with good reason, declared the man blessed who has proclaimed Him Son of the God who has created all.” “But does it not appear,” said Simon, “as if He, who comes from God, is God?” “How can that be?” said Peter. “The essence of the Father has not been begotten, the essence of the Son is begotten; therefore he who has been begotten cannot compare himself to him who has begotten himself. He who is not in everything identical with another being cannot have the same names in common with him.” The author never speaks of the death of Jesus, and seems to attach no theological importance to that death.

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Jesus is then a prophet, the last of the prophets, he whom Moses had announced as coming after him. His religion is only a clearer edition of that of Moses, a choice between traditions, of which some are good and others bad. His religion is perfect; it suits Jews and Greeks, educated and barbarous men alike; it satisfies alike the heart and the mind. It is continued in due course by the twelve apostles, of whom Peter is chief, and by those who hold their powers from them. The appeal to dreams, private visions, is presumptuous.

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An odd mingling of Ebionism and philosophical liberalism, of strict catholicism and heresy, of exalted love for Jesus and of fear lest his part should be exaggerated, of profane instruction and of chimerical philosophy, of rationalism and faith—the book could not long satisfy orthodoxy; but it suited an age of syncretism, in which the points of the Christian faith were badly defined. It needed the prodigies of sagacity of modern criticism to recognise the satire of Paul behind the mask of Simon Magus. The book is, in short, a book of conciliation. It is the work of a moderate Ebionite, of an eclectic mind, opposed at once to the unjust judgments of the Gnostics, and of Marcion against Judaism, and to the effeminate prophesying of the disciples of Montanus. Circumcision is not commanded; yet the circumcised have a rank superior to the uncircumcised. Jesus is equal to Moses; Moses is as good as Jesus. Perfection is to see that both of them constitute only one, that the new law is the old, and the old the new. Those who have the one can do without the other. Let each one abide by his own, and let him not hate others. It was, it will be seen, the absolute denial of the doctrine of Paul. Jesus is to our theologian a restorer rather than an innovator. In the very work of this restoration, Jesus is only the interpreter of a tradition of sages, who, in the midst of the general corruption, had never lost the true meaning of the law of Moses, which is itself nothing but the religion of Adam, the primitive religion of humanity. According to the pseudo-Clement, Jesus is Adam himself. According to St. Paul, Jesus is a second Adam, altogether opposed to the first. The idea of the fall of Adam, the basis of the theology of St. Paul, nearly disappears here. On one side especially the author shows himself more reasonable than Paul. The latter never ceases to protest that man owes to no personal merit his election and Christian calling. The Ebionite, more liberal, believes that the honest Pagan makes a way for his conversion by his virtues. He is far from thinking that all acts of unbelievers are sins. The merits of Jesus have not, in his eyes, the transcendent part they possess in the system of Paul. Jesus places man in a relation to God, but he does not substitute himself for God.

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The Roman pseudo-Clementine separates himself clearly from the truly authentic writings of the first Christian inspiration by his prolixity, his rhetoric, his abstract philosophy, borrowed for the most part from the Greek schools. There is no longer here a Semitic book, shadowless, like the purely Judeo-Greek writings. A great admirer of Judaism, the author possesses a Græco-Italian mind, a political mind, preoccupied above all with the social needs, with the morale of the people. His culture is quite Hellenic; in Hellenism he only repels one thing—the religion. The author shows himself in every point quite superior to St. Justin. A considerable fraction of the Church adopted

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the work, and gave it a place beside the most reverenced books of the apostolic age, upon the borders of the New Testament. The gross errors which we read here as to the divinity of Jesus Christ, and as to the sacred books, are opposed to the rest of the work. But people continued to read it; the orthodox replied to exert thing by saying that Clement had written his book without a blemish, but that some heretics had altered it. Some extracts were made in which the offensive passages were omitted, and to which they readily attributed inspiration. We have seen, and we shall see, many other examples of romances invented by the heretics, forcing thus the gates of the orthodox Church, and causing themselves to be accepted by her, because they were edifying and capable of furnishing a nourishment to piety.

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The fact is that this Ebionite literature, in spite of its rather childish freshness, had the Christian unction in the highest degree. The tone was that of a moving preaching; its character was essentially ecclesiastical and pastoral. The pseudo-Clement is a partisan of the hierarchy quite as enthusiastic as the pseudo-Ignatius. The community recapitulates itself in its chief; the clergy is the indispensable mediator between God and His flock. The bishop’s meaning must be taken at once; one must not wait till he says “Such a man is my enemy” to shun that man. To be a friend of anyone whom the bishop does not love, to speak to one whom he shuns—that is to place oneself out of the church, to pass into the ranks of its worst enemies. The office of a bishop is so difficult! Everybody ought to labour to make it easy for him; the deacons are the eyes of the bishop, they ought to survey everything, to know everything for him. A sort of espionage is recommended; what maybe called the clerical spirit has never been expressed in stronger language. Abstinence and Essenian practices were placed very high. Purity of manners was the principal preoccupation of these worthy sectaries. The adulterer in their eyes is worse than the homicide. “The chaste woman is the most beautiful object in the world—the most perfect reminiscence of God’s primitive creation. The pious woman, who only finds her pleasure with the saints, is the ornament, the perfume, the example of the Church; she helps the pure to be pure; she delights God Himself. God loves her, is pleased with her, watches over her; she is His child, the bride of the Son of God, clothed as she is with holy light.” Those mystic images do not constitute the author a partisan of virginity. He is too much a Jew for that. He wishes the priest to marry the young people in good time, causing even the old to marry. The Christian woman loves her husband, covers him with caresses, makes much of him, serves him, seeks to please him, obeys him in all which is not a disobedience to God! To be loved by another than her husband is for her a living misery. Ah! how foolish is the man who seeks to separate his wife from the fear of God! The grand source of chastity is the Church. It is there that woman learns her duties, and hears of this judgment of God which punishes a moment of pleasure by an eternal punishment. The husband ought to compel his wife to go to hear such sermons, if he cannot succeed by persuasion.

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“But what is better,” adds the author, addressing himself to the husband, “is that you come yourself, leading her by the hand, that you also may be chaste, and capable of understanding the happiness of honourable marriage. To become a father, to love your children, to be loved by them, all this is at your disposal, if you desire it. He who wishes to have a chaste wife loves chastely, pays her conjugal duties, eats with her, lives with her, goes with her to the sanctifying preaching, does not grieve her or scold her without reason, seeks to please, procures for her all the pleasures he can, and makes up for those he cannot give her by caresses. Those caresses, besides, the chaste wife does not need in order that she should fulfil her duties. She looks on her husband as her master. Is he poor, she bears with his poverty; she is hungry with him, if he is hungry; if he emigrates, she emigrates; she consoles him when he is sad; when she has even a dowry larger than what her husband possesses, she takes the inferior attitude of one who has nothing. The husband, on his side, if he has a poor wife, ought to consider her wisdom as an ample dowry. The prudent woman is temperate in eating and drinking; . . . . she never remains alone with young men, she even avoids old men; she shuns boisterous laughter . . . . she delights in grave conversations, she avoids those which have not the marks of decorum.” The good Mattidia, Clement’s mother, is an actual example of the practice of these pious maxims. A Pagan, she sacrifices everything to chastity; chastity preserves her from the greatest perils, and is as good to her as the knowledge of the true religion.

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Christian preaching developed itself, became blended with culture. The sermon was the essential part of the sacred meeting. The Church became the mother of all edification and consolation. The rules as to ecclesiastical discipline were already multiplied. To give them authority they referred them to the apostles, and as Clement was thought the best guarantee where apostolic traditions were concerned, since he had been in intimate relations with Peter and Barnabas, it was still under the name of that revered pastor that we see dawning a whole apocryphal literature of Constitutions reputed to be founded by the College of the Twelve. The nucleus of this apocryphal compilation, the first basis of a collection of ecclesiastical canons, was preserved, very nearly without admixture, among the Syrians. Among the Greek, the collection, increased by time, sensibly altered, and became barely recognisable. It was quoted as forming part of the Sacred Scriptures, although certain reservations always rendered its authenticity doubtful. In course of time, liberty was granted to give this collection of pretended apostolic writings the form which was considered best to strike the faithful and to impress them; the name of Clement was always inscribed at the head of these various editions, which present besides marks of the strictest relationship with the romance of The Confessions. All the pseudo-Clementine literature of the second century presents thus the character of a complete unity. What characterises it in the highest degree is the spirit of practical organisation. Already in the supposed epistle of Clement to James, which serves as a preface to The Confessions, Peter, before dying, holds a long discourse on the episcopate, its duties, its difficulties, its excellence, on the

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priests, the deacons, the catechists, which is like a new edition of the epistles to Titus and Timothy. The Apostolic Constitutions were a kind of codification, growing gradually larger, of these pastoral precepts. What Rome founded was not dogma; few churches were more barren in speculation, less pure as to the question of doctrine. Ebionism, Montanism, Artemonism, held the majority there, one after the other. What Rome made is discipline, is Catholicism. At Rome probably the expression “Catholic Church” was written for the first time. Bishop, priest, layman, all these words took a fixed meaning in that Hierarchical Church. The church was a ship where each dignitary has his function concerning the safety of the passengers. Morality was severe and the cloister was already known. The mere liking for riches is condemned. The ornamentation of women is nothing but an invitation to sin. Woman is responsible for the sins of thought which she causes to be committed. Certainly, if she repels advances the evil is lessened; but is it nothing to be the cause of perdition to others? To live modestly occupied by her duties, to go her own way without mixing herself up with the gossiping of the street, to rear her children well, to administer frequent corrections to them, to forbid them dining in company with persons of their own age, to have them married in good time, not to read Pagan books (the Bible is sufficient and contains everything), not to take baths oftener than necessary and with great precautions, such were the rules for laymen. The bishops, the priests, the deacons, the widows, had more complicated duties. Besides holiness, they were to bring wisdom and sagacity into these functions. They were true magistrates—very superior to profane magistrates. Christians brought all their cases before the tribunal of the bishop, the dicaster of this last became in fact a civil jurisdiction which had its rules and its laws. The household of the bishop was already considerable; it came to be supported at the common expense of the faithful. The ideas of the ancient law as to the tithe and the offerings due to the priests were little by little restored. A strong theocracy was becoming established. The Church, in fact, absorbed everything; civil society was disparaged and despised. To the emperor belonged the census and the official salutations, that was all. The Christian constituted thus could only live with Christians. He was recommended to attract the heathen by the charm of amiable manners, in the hope that they might be converted. But beyond this hope the relations with the unbelievers were surrounded with such precautions, and implied so much disgust, that those became very rare. A mixed society of Pagans and Christians would be impossible. It was forbidden to take part in the rejoicings of the heathen, to eat or to amuse oneself with them, to be present at their spectacles, at their games, or at any of their grand profane re-unions. Even the public markets were interdicted, save in what concerned the purchase of necessary articles. On the contrary, Christians ought to eat together as much as possible, and live together, and form a little coterie of saints. In the third century that spirit of recluseness shall produce its own results. Roman society will die of exhaustion, a concealed cause will keep itself in life. When a considerable portion of a state makes a combination apart, and ceases to work for the common good, that state is almost ready to die.

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Mutual assistance was the principal duty in that society of the poor, administered by its bishops, its deacons, and its widows. The position of the rich man in the midst of small citizens and small honourable merchants, judging their affairs among themselves, scrupulous as to weights and measures, was difficult and embarrassing. The Christian life was not made for him. A brother dies, leaving orphans, boys and girls, and another brother adopts them, and marries the daughter to his son if their ages be suitable. This appeared quite simple. The rich people took with difficulty to a system so fraternal: then they were threatened with the forfeiture of their possessions, which they could not use well, and people applied to them the dictum: “What the saints have not eaten the Assyrians eat.” The money of the poor was held as a sacred thing; those who were in easy circumstances paid a subsidy as large as they could; these were called “the contributions of the Lord.” Delicacy was pushed to such an extent that everybody’s money was not received in the Church’s treasury. They rejected the offerings of tavern-keepers and of people who practised shameful trades; especially those of the excommunicated, who sought by their generosity to return to favour. “These people there would give,” it was said, “and if we refuse their alms what shall we do to assist our widows, or to nourish the poor of the people?” “Better to die of hunger,” was the Ebionite fanatic’s reply, “than be under an obligation to the enemies of God for gifts which are an affront in the eyes of His friends. Acceptable offerings are those which the workman takes from the fruit of his toil. When the priest is obliged to receive the money of the wicked, let him use it for the purchase of wood and coal, so that the widow and the orphan may not be condemned to live upon polluted money. The presents of the wicked are thus food for the fire, not nourishment for believers.” It is thus seen what a tight chain wound about the Christian life. Such an abyss separated, in the mind of those worthy sectaries, good and evil, that the conception of a liberal society, where each one acts according to his taste, under the regulation of civil laws, without giving an account to any or exercising a surveillance over others, appeared to them the height of impiety.

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CHAPTER VI. TATIAN—THE TWO SYSTEMS OF APOLOGY. TATIAN, after Justin’s death, remained some years at Rome. He continued there his master’s school, professing for him always the loftiest admiration, but each day deviating more and more from his mind. He had some distinguished pupils, among others the Asiatic Rodon, a fertile writer who became later on one of the supports of orthodoxy against Marcion and Apelles. It was probably in the first year of the reign of Marcus-Aurelius that Tatian composed this document, hard and incorrect in style, sometimes lively and piquant, which passes rightly for one of the most original monuments of the Christian apologetics of the 2nd century.

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The work is entitled “Against the Greeks.” The hatred of Greece was indeed Tatian’s dominant sentiment. A true Syrian, he was jealous of and hated the arts and literature which had conquered the admiration of the human race. The Pagan gods seemed to him the personification of immorality. The world of Greek statues he saw at Rome gave him no rest. Going over the personages in whose honour they had been erected, he found that nearly all, male and female, had been people of evil life. The horrors of the amphitheatre revolted him with better reason; but he confounded with the Roman cruelties the national games and the theatre of the Greeks. Euripides, Menander, appeared to him as masters of debauch, and (a desire which was too much listened to!) he wished their works to be destroyed. Justin had taken as the basis of his apology a very wide sentiment. He had dreamed of a reconciliation of the Christian dogmas and Greek philosophy. That was assuredly a grand illusion. It did not require much effort to see that the Greek philosophy, essentially rational, and the new faith, proceeding from the supernatural, were enemies of each other, and that only one could remain on the ground. The apologetic method of St. Justin is narrow and perilous for the faith. Tatian felt that, and it is upon the very ruins of Greek philosophy that he seeks to raise the edifice of Christianity. Like his master, Tatian possessed a wide Greek erudition; like him he had no critical qualities, and mixed up, in the most arbitrary fashion, the authentic and the apocryphal, what he knew and what he did not know. Tatian’s is a mind sombre, heavy, violent, full of wrath against the civilisation and against the Greek philosophy, to which he much prefers that of the East, what he calls the barbarian philosophy. An erudition of base alloy, like that which Josephus had shown in his work against Apion, came here to his help. Moses is, according to him, much more ancient than Homer. The Greeks have invented nothing of themselves; they have taken everything from other nations, notably the Orientals. They only excelled in the art of writing; for the foundation of their ideas they are as ignorant as other nations. The Grammarians are the cause of the whole evil; those are they

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who by their lies have embellished error and created that usurped reputation which is the principal obstacle to the triumph of the truth. The Assyrians, Phœnicians, Egyptians —those are the true authorities! Far from ameliorating men, Greek philosophy has not known how to preserve its votaries from the greatest crimes. Diogenes was intemperate, Plato a gourmand, Aristotle servile. The philosophers have all the vices among them; they are the blind disputing with the deaf. The laws of the Greeks were worth no more than their philosophy; they differ from each other; whereas the good law ought to be common to all men. Among the Christians, on the contrary, there is no disagreement. Rich, poor, men and women have the same opinions. By a bitter irony of fate, Tatian was to die a heretic, and to prove that Christianity was not more sheltered than philosophy was from schisms and party divisions. Justin and Tatian, although lifelong friends, represented already in the most characteristic manner the two opposing attitudes which Christian apologists shall take in regard to philosophy. The one class; at bottom Greeks, while reproaching Pagan society with the looseness of its manners, shall admit its arts, its general culture, its philosophy. The other class, Syrians or Africans, shall not see in Hellenism but a mass of wickedness and absurdities; they shall much prefer the “barbarian” to Greek wisdom; insult and sarcasm shall be their habitual arms.

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The moderate school of Justin seemed at first to gain. Some writings quite analogous to those of the philosophy of Naplouse, especially the Logos paræneticos, the Logos addressed to the Greeks, and the treatise On Monarchy, characterised by numerous Pagan Sibylline and pseudo-Chaldean quotations, began to group themselves around his principal works. They were yet fresh. The unknown author of the Logos paræneticos, the tolerant Athenagoras, the clever Minucius Felix, Clement of Alexandria, and, up to a certain point, Theophilus of Antioch, sought for all their dogmas some rational foundation. Even the most mysterious dogmas, the strangest to Greek philosophy, like the resurrection of the body, have, for these wide theologians, Greek antecedents. Christianity has, according to them, its roots in man’s heart; it completes what the natural lights have begun; far from raising itself upon the ruins of reason, Christianity is only its complete development; it is the true philosophy. Everything leads us to believe that the lost apology of Melito was conceived in this spirit. The more or less Gnostic school of Alexandria, by adhering to this same sort of view, shall give it, in the third century, immense celebrity. It shall proclaim, like Justin, that the Greek philosophy is the preparation for Christianity, the ladder which leads to Christ. Platonism especially, by its idealistic tendency, is, for these phil-Hellenic Christians, the object of marked favour. Clement of Alexandria speaks of the Stoics with nothing but admiration. According to him each school of philosophy has laid hold of a particle of the truth. He goes so far as to say that, in order to know God, the Jews had had the prophets, the Greeks had had philosophy, and some inspired beings, such as the Sibyl and Hystaspes, so much so that a third Testament had created spiritual knowledge, and reduced the other two revelations to the condition of obsolete forms.

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But Christian feeling shall display a lively antipathy to those concessions of an apology sacrificing the severity of dogmas to a desire to please those whom it wishes to gain. The author of the Epistle to Diognetus nearly approaches Tatian in the extreme harshness with which he judges Greek philosophy. The Sarcasm of Hermias is pitiless. The author of Philosophumena looks upon ancient philosophy as the source of all heresies. This method of apology, the only really Christian one, to speak the truth, shall be taken up by Tertullian with unparalleled talent. The rough African shall oppose to the enervating weaknesses of the Hellenic apologists the disdain of Credo quia absurdum. He is in this only the interpreter of St. Paul’s idea. “They are extinguishing Christ,” the great apostle would have said in view of this soft complaisance. If the philosophers could, by the natural progress of their ideas, save the world, why has Christ come? Why has he been crucified? Socrates, you say, knew Christ to some extent. It is then likewise partly by the merits of Socrates that you are justified! The mania for demonological explanations is, with Tatian, pushed to the height of absurdity. Among the apologists his is the most barren of the philosophic mind. But his vigorous attack upon Paganism did much to condone this. The discourse against the Greeks was much praised even by men who, like Clement of Alexandria, were far from having any hatred against Greece; the charlatan-like scholarship which the author had put into his work created a school. Ælius Aristides seems to allude to this when, taking exactly the opposite of our author’s idea, he represents the Jews as a sad race who have created nothing, strangers to belles-lettres and philosophy, only knowing how to disparage the Hellenic glories, arrogating to themselves the name of “philosophers” only by a complete reversal of the sense of the word. The heavy paradoxes of Tatian against the ancient civilisation were nevertheless to triumph. That civilisation had in fact done great injury; it neglected the intellectual education of the people. The people, deprived of elementary instruction, were a prey to all the surprises of ignorance, and believed every one of the chimeras of which they were told with assurance and conviction.

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As to what concerns Tatian, good sense had, at least, its revenge. This Lamennais of the second century followed, in many respects, the line of the Lamennais of our time. The exaggeration of mind and a kind of savageness which shock us in his discourse cast him out of the orthodox church. These extreme apologists became almost always an embarrassment to the cause they had defended. Already, in the discourse against the Greeks, Tatian is moderately orthodox. Like Apelles he believes that God, absolute in Himself, produces the Word, who created matter and produces the world. Like Justin, he declares the soul to be an aggregation of elements; that of its essence it is mortal and in darkness; that it is only by its union with the Holy Spirit that it becomes luminous and immortal. Then his fanatical character threw him into the excess of a hypercriticism on nature. By the kind of errors he showed and by his style, at once spiritual and rough, Tatian was to be the prototype of Tertullian. He wrote with the fulness and enthusiasm of a sincere mind, not quite clear. More excitable than Justin, if less regulated by discipline, he cannot, like himself, reconcile his 42


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liberty with the exigencies of all. So long as his master lived he frequented the church, and the church upheld him. After Justin’s martyrdom, he lived in an isolated manner, without connection with the faithful, like a sort of independent Christian, making a people quite separate. The desire to have a school led him astray, according to Jerome. That which undid him, we believe, was rather the desire to be alone.

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CHAPTER VII. DECADENCE OF GNOSTICISM. CHRISTIANITY, at the point we have arrived at, had, if we may thus express it, reached the complete bloom of its youth. Life with it abounded, overflowed; no contradiction arrested it; it had representatives for all tendencies, advocates for all causes. The nucleus of the Catholic Church and orthodoxy was already so strong that all sorts of fancies could be found beside her without injuring her. Apparently, the sects denounced the Church of Jesus; but these sects remained isolated without consistency, and disappeared, for the most part, after having satisfied for a moment the needs of the little group which had created them. It is not that their action was barren; the almost individual secret instructions were at the moment of their highest popularity. Heresies almost always triumphed by their very condemnation. Gnosticism especially was chased out of the church and it was everywhere; the Orthodox Church, by striking at it with its anathema, impregnated itself with it. Among the Judeo-Christians, Ebionites and Essenes, it flowed along over the banks.

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When a religion begins to count a large number of partisans, it loses for a time certain of the advantages which have contributed to found it; for man is better pleased and finds more comfort in the little gathering than in the numerous church, where he is not known. As the public power did not direct its energy in the service of the Orthodox Church, the religious situation was that which England and America present at this day. The chapels, if one may say so, were multiplied in all directions. The chiefs of the sects struggled to obtain influence over the faithful, as in our times this is done by the Methodist preachers, the innumerable Dissenters of free countries. The faithful were a sort of curacy driven off by greedy sectaries, more like hungry dogs than pastors. The women especially were the coveted prey; when they were widows and in possession of property, they never were but surrounded by young and clever directors, who strove by mildness and complaisance to monopolise the cure of souls, at once fruitful and sweet. The Gnostic doctors had, in this hunt for souls, great advantages. Affecting a higher intellectual culture and less rigid manners, they found a sure clientèle among the richer classes, who desired to be distinguished and to escape the common discipline prescribed for the poor. Contact with the Pagans, and the perpetual contraventions of police rules which a member of the church was led to commit, contraventions which exposed him constantly to martyrdom, became tremendous difficulties for a Christian occupying a certain social position. Far from pressing towards martyrdom, the Gnostics furnished means to escape it. Basilides and Heracleon protested against the immoderate honours rendered to the martyrs; the Valentinians went further: in the time of hot persecution they advised that the faith should be denied, alleging that God did not demand from His adorers the sacrifice of life, and that it was better to confess Him less before men than before the Æons.

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They did not exercise less seduction among rich women, in whom their independence inspired the desire for a personal position. The Orthodox Church followed the severe rule laid down by St. Paul, which forbade all participation by the woman in the exercises of the church. In these little sects, on the contrary, women baptized, officiated, presided at the liturgy, and prophesied. As opposed as possibly could be in manners and mind, the Gnostics and the Montanists had this in common, that, by the side of their doctors, a female prophetess was found; Helen beside Simon, Philumena beside Apelles, Priscilla and Maximilla beside Montanus, and quite a galaxy of women around Markos and Marcion. Fable and calumny took possession of a circumstance which lent itself to misapprehension. Many of these dependents could only have been allegories without reality, or inventions of the orthodox. But certainly the modest position which the Catholic Church always imposed on women, and which became the cause of their ennoblement, was not quite observed in these petty sects, subjected to a less rigorous rule, and little accustomed, in spite of their apparent holiness, to practise true piety, which is self-denial. The three great systems of Christian philosophy which had appeared under Hadrian, that of Valentinus, that of Basilides, that of Saturninus, were developed without being much improved. The chiefs of these systems still lived or had successors. Valentinus, although thrice driven from the church, was much sought after. He left Rome to return to the East; but his sect continued to flourish in the capital. He died about the year 160 in the island of Cyprus. His disciples were all over the world. There was a difference between the doctrine of the East and that of Italy. The chiefs of the former were Ptolemy and Heracleon; Secundus and Theodotus at first, then Axiomicus and Bardesanus, directed the Oriental branch. The Valentinian school was much the most serious and Christian of all those which bore the general name of Gnostics. Heracleon and Ptolemy were learned exegetes in the Epistles of Paul, and the Gospel called that of John. Heracleon, in particular, was a real Christian doctor, by whom Clement of Alexandria and Origen profited a great deal. Clement has preserved to us from him one beautiful and elevated page on martyrdom. The writings of Theodotus were also habitually in Clement’s hand, and some extracts appear to us to have come from them into the great mass of notes’ made by the laborious Stromatist. In many points of view, the Valentinians might pass for enlightened and moderate Christians, but there was at the bottom of their moderation a principle of pride. The Church was not, in their eyes, a depository of anything but a minimum of truth, barely sufficient for ordinary men. The basis of things was known to them alone. Under the pretext that they made part of the psychical world and could not fail to be saved, they gave themselves unheard-of liberties, ate of everything without distinction, went to Pagan festivals, and even to the cruellest spectacles, fled from persecution, and even spoke against martyrdom. They were people of the world, free in manners and conversation, treating as prudery and bigotry the extreme reserve of the Catholics, who feared a light word, even an imprudent thought. The direction of women, in such circumstances, presented many dangers. Some of these Valentinian pastors were plainly seducers; others affected modesty; “but soon,” says Irenæus, “the sister became enceinte by the brother.” They arrogated superior intelligence to 45


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themselves, and left to the simple faithful the faith, “which is very different.” Their exegesis was learned but barely safe. When they were pressed with texts of Scripture, they said the Scripture had been corrupted. When apostolic tradition was contrary to them, they no longer hesitated to reject it. They had, it appeared, a gospel which they called “The Gospel of the Truth.” They really ignored the Gospel of Christ. They substituted for salvation by faith or by works a salvation by gnosis, that is to say, by the knowledge of a pretended truth. If such a tendency had prevailed, Christianity would have ceased to be a moral fact, to become a cosmogony and a metaphysic without influence on the general progress of humanity. It was not, moreover, with impunity that they flashed abstruse formulas in the people’s eyes, keeping back to themselves the meaning. One single Valentinian book remains to us, “The Believer’s Wisdom”; and it shows us to what a height of extravagance certain speculations had arrived—beautiful enough in the mind of their authors when they fell upon puerile minds. Jesus, after his resurrection, was reported to have passed eleven years on the earth to teach his disciples the highest truths. He told them the history of Piste Sophia; how she, enticed by her imprudent desire to seize the light she had seen at a distance, fell into the material chaos; how she was for a long time persecuted by the other Æons, who refused her rank to her; how at length she accomplished a series of proofs of repentance, until at last one sent from heaven, Jesus, descended for her from the luminous region. Sophia is saved by having believed in this Saviour before she had seen him. All this is expressed in a prolix style, with the wearisome process of amplification and hyperbole of the apocryphal gospels. Mary, Peter, Magdalene, Martha, John Parthenos, and the different Gospel personages play an almost ludicrous part. But the people, who found dryness in the restrained enough circle of the Jewish and Judeo-Christian Scriptures, took pleasure in these dreams, and many owed to such readings the opportunity of knowing Christ. The mysterious forms of the sect rested before everything on oral instruction, and its successive degrees of imitation fascinated the imagination and made them hold firmly to the revelations which they had obtained in consequence of so many trials. After Marcion, Valentinus was the heretic whose colleges were most frequented. Bardesanus, at Edessa, succeeded, by inspiring himself with it, in creating a large school of Christian instruction, such as had never been seen. We shall speak later on of this singular phenomenon. Saturninus always had numerous disciples. Basilides had his successor, his son Isidore. There wrought, besides, in this world of sects, certain fusions and separations, which were often the outcome of the vanity of the leaders. Far from lending themselves to the exigencies of practical life, the Gnostic system became every day more crude, complicated, and chimerical. Every one wished to be the founder of a school, to have a church, with its profits; in this some one, clouded with doctors, the least Christian of men, sought to surpass the others, and added some oddity to the oddities of their predecessors. The school of Carpocrates presented an incredible mixture of aberrations and of fine criticism. They spoke, as of a miracle of learning and eloquence, of the son of Carpocrates, named Epiphanes,

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a sort of infant prodigy, who died at sixteen years of age, after having astonished those who knew him by his knowledge of Greek literature, and especially by the knowledge he had of Plato’s philosophy. It appears that they had raised to him a temple and altars at Samos, in the island of Cephalonia; an academy was erected in his name; they celebrated his birthday like the apotheosis of a god by sacrifices, feasts, and hymns. His book “On Justice” was much boasted of; what has been preserved to us is a sophistical and rugged discussion which recalls Prudhon and the socialists of our days. God, said Epiphanes, is just and good, for nature is equality. The light is alike for all, the sky the same to all; the sun makes no distinction between poor and rich, nor male nor female, nor bond nor free. No one can take from another his share of the sun to double his own; it is the sun which nourishes all. Nature, in other words, presents to everyone an equal happiness. It is human laws which, by violating the divine, have introduced evil; the distinction between “mine” and “thine,” inequality, antagonism. Applying these principles to marriage, Epiphanes denied its justice or necessity. The desires which we all hold from nature are our rights, and no institution should put any limits to it. Epiphanes, to tell the truth, is less a Christian than a Utopian. The idea of absolute justice bewitches him. As opposed to the lower world, he dreams of a perfect, true world of God, a world founded on the doctrine of the sages, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, where equality, and consequently community of goods, should reign. His mistake was to believe that such a world could have a place in reality. Led away by the Republic of Plato, which he took quite seriously, he indulged in the saddest sophisms, and although he doubtless failed to rebut the gross calumnies which they related concerning those festivals where, the lights being extinguished, the guests delivered themselves up to a hateful promiscuousness, it is difficult not to admit that he produced strange follies in that direction. A certain Marcellinus, who came to Rome under Anicet, adored the portraits of Jesus Christ, Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, offering them worship. Prodicus and his disciples, named also Adamites, pretended to renew the joys of the earthly Paradise by some practices far removed from the primitive innocence. Their church called itself Paradise; they heated it, and attended it naked. Notwithstanding this they called themselves continent, and made the pretension of living in a perfect virginity. In name of a sort of divine and natural law all these sects, Prodicians, Eutychites, and Adamites, denied the force of the established laws, which they qualified by arbitrary rules and pretended laws. The numerous conversions of Pagans which had taken place created these kinds of scandals. They entered the church, drawn by a certain odour of moral purity; but they did not become saints for all that. A painter of some talent, named Hermogenes, thus became a Christian, but without renouncing the freedom of his pencil or his taste for women, or his recollections of Greek philosophy, which became amalgamated, good and evil alike, with Christian dogma. He admitted a primary matter, serving as a substratum to all God’s works, and the cause of the defects inherent in creation. They imputed several oddities, and Tertullian, with like rigorists, treated him with an extreme brutality. 47


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The heresies of which we are speaking were all Hellenic. It was the Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato, which was the origin of it. Markos, whose disciples were called Markosians, left, on the other hand, the school of Basilides; the formulas upon the tetrade which he pretended were revealed to him by a heavenly woman, who was none other than Sige herself, would have been inoffensive had they not been joined to magic, thaumaturgical prestiges, philtres and arts capable of seducing women. He invented special sacraments, rites, anointings, and specially a sort of mass for his own use, which might have been imposing enough, had he not mixed with them sleight of hand passes analogous to the miracles of St. Januarius. He pretended by virtue of a certain formula to really change the water into blood in the chalice. By means of a powder, he gave the water a reddish colour. He caused the consecration to be made by a woman over a little chalice; then he turned the water of the smaller chalice into a large one which he held, pronouncing over it these words: “May the infinite and ineffable grace which is above all things fill thy internal being, and increase in thee its knowledge; shedding the grain of mustard seed upon good soil.” The liquid was then increased, no doubt the result of some chemical reaction, and overflowed in a great stream. The poor woman was stupefied, and everyone was struck with wonder. The church of Markos was not only a nest of impostors; it passed also for a school of debauched and secret infamies. Perhaps this character was exaggerated, because in the Markosian cult the women acted as priests, and offered the Eucharist. Many Christian ladies they said allowed themselves to be bewitched; they put themselves under the direction of the sophist, and only came out bathed in tears. Markos flattered their vanity, holding towards them a language of equivocal mysticism, trampling over their timidity, teaching them to prophesy, and imposing on them. Then, when they were fatigued and ruined, they returned to the church, confessed their faults, and vowed themselves to penitence; weeping and groaning over the misfortune which had happened to them. The epidemic of Markos desolated principally the churches of Asia. The kind of connection which existed between Asia and Lyons brought this dangerous man to the banks of the Rhone. We shall see him make many dupes there; some frightful scandals celebrate his arrival in that church of saints. Colarbasus, according to certain accounts, came very near Markos, but we do not know if we have here the name of a real person. It is explained by Col arba Qol arba, a Semitic expression for the Markosian tetrade. The secret of those bizarre enigmas will probably always escape us.

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CHAPTER VIII. ORIENTAL SYNCRETISM—THE OPHITES—FUTURE APPARITION OF MANICHÆISM. WE should exceed our limits if we followed the history of those chimeras of the 3rd century. In the Greek and Latin world Gnosticism had been a fashion, it disappeared just as such with equal rapidity. Matters proceeded differently in the East. Gnosticism commenced a second life, much more brilliant and comprehensive than the first, through the eclecticism of Bardisanus, much more durable by Manichaeism. Already, since the 2nd century, the opponents of Alexandria were veritable dualists, attributing the origin of good and evil to two different gods. Manichæism shall go further; three hundred and fifty years before Mahommet, the genius of Persia realises already that which the genius of Arabia shall realise more powerfully, a religion which aspires to become universal, and to replace the work of Jesus, represented as imperfect or corrupted by his disciples. 74

The intense confusion of ideas which reigned in the East led to a general syncretism of the strangest of these. Some little mystical sects from Egypt, Syria, Phrygia, Babylonia, profiting by apparent resemblances, pretended to be joined to the body of the Church, and sometimes were received. All the religions of antiquity appeared to have revived again to anticipate Jesus and to adopt him as one of their pupils. The cosmogonies of Assyria, Phœnicia, and Egypt, the doctrines of the mysteries of Adonis, Osiris, and Isis, of the great goddess of Phrygia, made an invasion into the Church, and continued what might be called the Oriental branch—scarcely Christian—of Gnosticism, inasmuch as Jehovah, the God of the Jews, was identified with Assyro-Phœnician Ialdebaoth, “the Son of Chaos.” At other times the old Assyrian ΙΑΩ, which offers with Jehovah some strange traces of family connection, was brought into fashion, and approached with its quasi-homonymism in such a way that it was difficult to distinguish between the shadow and the reality. The Ophialatros sects, so numerous in antiquity, lent themselves peculiarly to these senseless associations. Under the name of Nahassians, or Ophites, certain Pagan serpent-worshippers grouped themselves, whom it suited for a certain time to take the name of Christians. It is from Assyria that there comes the form of this bizarre Church; but Egypt, Phrygia, Phœnicia, and the Orphic mysteries have their share in it. Like Alexander of Abonoticos, preacher of his serpent-god Glycon, the Ophites had certain tamed serpents (agatho-demons) which they kept in cages. At the moment of celebrating the mysteries they opened the door to the little god and called upon him. The serpent came out, mounted on the table where the loaves were, and coiled himself round them. The Eucharist appeared then to the sectaries a perfect sacrifice. They broke the bread, distributed it, worshipped the agatho-demon, and offered through him, they said, a hymn of praise to the Heavenly Father. They

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sometimes identified their little animals with the Christ or with the serpent which taught men the knowledge of good and evil. The theories of the Ophites upon the Adamas, considered as an Æon, and upon the cosmic egg, recall the cosmogonies of Philo of Byblos, and the symbols common to all the mysteries of the East. Their rites were more analogous to the mysteries of the Great Goddess of Phrygia than to the pure assemblies of the believers in Jesus. What was most singular about it was that they had their Christian literature, their gospels, and their apocryphal traditions, connecting them with James. They used principally the gospel of the Egyptians, and that of Thomas. Their Christology was that of all the Gnostics. Jesus Christ was according to their view composed of two persons, Jesus and Christ—Jesus the son of Mary, the most righteous, wisest, and purest of men, who was crucified; Christ, the heavenly Æon, who came to unite himself to Jesus, quitted him before the passion, sent from Heaven a virtue which made Jesus to rise, with a spiritual body, in which he lived eighteen months, giving to a small number of chosen disciples a higher instruction.

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Upon these hidden borders of Christianity the most varied dogmas blended themselves together. The tolerance of the Gnostics and proselytism opened so wide the gates of the Church that everything passed through them. Some religions which had nothing in common with Christianity, and some Babylonian cults, perhaps some branches of Buddhism, were classed and numbered by the heresiologies among Christian sects. Such were the Baptists or Sabians, afterwards known under the name of Mendaîtes, the Perates, the adherents of a cosmogony half Phœnician, half Assyrian; a perfect balderdash, more worthy of Byblos, of Maboug, or Babylon, than the Church of Christ; and especially the Sethians, a sect in reality Assyrian, and which flourished also in Egypt. It was connected by some punsters with the patriarch Seth, the supposed father of a vast literature, and sometimes identified with Jesus Christ himself. The Sethians arbitrarily combined Orphism, Neo-Phœnicianism, and the ancient Semitic cosmogonies, and found the whole of this in the Bible. They said that the genealogies of Genesis included sublime views, which vulgar minds had looked upon as simple family records. A certain Justin about this same time, in a work entitled Baruch, transformed Judaism into a mythology, and left scarcely any position to Jesus. Some exuberant imaginations, nourished by innumerable cosmogonies, and strangely placed in the severe régime of the Hebrew and gospel literature, could not accommodate themselves to so much simplicity. They inflated, if I may venture to say so, the historical records, legendary, or evhemeristic of the Bible in order to connect them with the genius of the Greek and Oriental fables to which they were accustomed. It will thus be seen that the whole mythological world of Greece and the East was introduced surreptitiously into the religion of Jesus. Intelligent men of the Greco-Oriental world felt indeed that one and the same spirit animated all the religious creations of humanity. They commenced by comprehending Buddhism. Although it was then far from the time when the life of Buddha had become the life of a holy Christian, they spoke of him with nothing but respect. 50


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The Babylonian Manichæism, which represented in the third century a continuation of Gnosticism, is strongly impregnated with Buddhism. But the attempt to introduce all this pantheistic mythology into the framework of a Semitic religion was condemned in advance. Philo, the Jew, the epistles to the Colossians and the Ephesians, the pseudo-Johannine writings, had been under this conviction as long as it was possible. The Gnostics marked the true sense of every word by pretending that they were Christians. The essence of the work of Jesus was the improvement of the soul. Now these empty speculations embraced everything in the world except good sense and good morals. Even by holding as calumnies what has been said of their promiscuous intercourse and licentious habits, one cannot doubt that the sects of which we speak had had in common an evil tendency to moral indifference, and a dangerous quietism, a world of generosity, which led them to proclaim the uselessness of martyrdom. Their obstinate Docetism, their system of attributing the two Testaments to two different gods, their opposition to marriage, their denial of the resurrection and the final judgment, closed to them the gates of a church. There the rule of the leaders was always a kind of moderation and opposition to excess. Ecclesiastical discipline, represented by the episcopate, was the rock against which those disorderly attempts all came to be broken. We should be afraid by speaking longer of such sects to have the appearance of taking too seriously what they did not take so themselves. What were they but Phibionites, Barbelonites, or Borborians, the stratiotics or soldiers, the Levitics or Codists? The fathers of the Church are unanimous in throwing upon all these heresies a ridicule which they doubtless deserved, and a hatred which perhaps they did not. There was in the whole of them more of charlatanism than wickedness.

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With their Hebrew words often taken in an opposite sense, their magic formulas, and later on their amulets and their Abracadabras, the Gnostics of the lower type merited only to be despised. But this contempt ought not to be poured out upon those great men who sought in that powerful narcotic the repose or the stupefication of their thoughts. Valentinus was in his own way a genius; Carpocrates and his son, Epiphanes, were brilliant writers, spoiled by utopia and paradox; but sometimes astonishingly profound. Gnosticism had a considerable part in the work of the Christian propaganda. Often it was the transition by which people passed from Paganism to Christianity. The proselytes thus gained became nearly always orthodox; they never returned to Paganism. It is especially Egypt which preserves from these strange rites an ineffaceable impression. Egypt had not had any Judeo-Christianity. A remarkable fact is the difference between the Coptic literature and the other Christian literature of the East, while the greater number of Judeo-Christians are found in Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, Armenian; Coptic only shows a Gnostic background without anything further. Egypt also passes without the intermediary of the Pagan illumination to the Christian light. Alexandria was almost entirely converted by the Gnostics. Clement of Alexandria was what one 51


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would call a moderate Gnostic. He quotes with respect Heracleon as a doctor, claiming authority from many points of view. He uses in good sense the word Gnostic, and regards it as synonymous with Christian. He is far in any case from entertaining against the new ideas the hatred of Irenæus, of Tertullian, or the author of the Philosophumena. We may say that Clement of Alexandria and Origen introduced into Christian science that which the too bold attempt of Heracleon and Basilides had of acceptability. 79

Mixed intimately with all the intellectual movement, the gnosis had a decisive influence upon the turn which speculative philosophy took in the third century in that city, then become the centre of the human intellect. The consequence of these disputes without end was the constitution of a sort of Christian academy, a true school of sacred letters and exegesis, which Pantænus, Clement, and Origen soon made famous. Alexandria became every day more and more the capital of Christian theology. The effect of the gnosis upon the Pagan school of Alexandria was not less. Ammonius Saccas, born of Christian parents, and Plotinus, his disciple, were both impregnated with it. The most open minds, such as Numenius of Apamea, entered by this path into the knowledge of Jewish and Christian doctrines, up till then so rare in the heart of the Pagan world. The Alexandrian philosophy of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries is full of what may be called the Gnostic spirit, and it linked to the Arabian philosophy a germ of mysticism which that should develop still more. Judaism on its side shall yield to similar influences. The Cabbala is nothing else than the Gnosticism of the Jews. The sephiroth are the perfections of Valentinus. Monotheism, to create itself a mythology, has only one process, and that is to give life to the attributes which it is accustomed to range around the throne of the Eternal.

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The world, wearied of an effete polytheism, demanded in the East, and especially in Judæa, some divine names less used than those of the current mythology. These Oriental names had more weight than the Greek names, and a singular reason was given for their theurgic superiority; it is that the Divinity having been invoked by the Orientals at a more ancient period than by the Greeks, the names of the Oriental theology answered better than the Greek names to the nature of the gods, and pleased them more. The names of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Solomon passed in Egypt for talismans of the first potency. Amulets answering to this unruly syncretism covered the whole world. The words ΙΑω, ΑΔωΝΑΙ, CΛΒΑωΘ, εΛωΑΙ and the Hebraic formulas in Greek characters were mixed up with some Egyptian symbols and with the sacramental ΛΒΡΑCΑΞ, equivalent to the number 365. All this is much more Judeo-Pagan than Christian, and Gnosticism in Christianity representing the aversion to Jehovah pushed even to blasphemy; it is entirely inexact to connect with Gnosticism these monuments of absurdity. They were the effect of the general turn which the superstition of the time had taken, and we believe that at the period we have arrived at, Christians of all sects remained indifferent to these little talismans. It is from the conversion en masse of the

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Pagans, in the fourth and fifth centuries, that the amulets were introduced into the Church, and that some words and symbols decidedly Christian are begun to be met with there.

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Orthodoxy was, therefore, ungrateful not to recognise the services which these undisciplined sects had rendered her. In dogma they provoked nothing but reaction, but their position was more considerable in Christian literature and liturgical institutions. They borrowed nearly always a good deal from those whom they anathematised. The first Christianity, quite Jewish still, was very simple, it was the Gnostics who made a religion of it. The sacraments were to a large extent their creation; their anointings, especially at the deathbeds of the sick, produced a deep impression. The holy chrism confirmation (at first an integral part of baptism), the attribution of a supernatural power to the sign of the Cross, and many other elements of Christian mysticism came from them. A young and active party, the Gnostics wrote much and launched boldly into apocrypha. Their books, assailed with discredit at first, finished by entering into the orthodox family. The Church soon accepted what it had at first inveighed against. A multitude of superstitions, festivals, and symbols of Gnostic origin thus became the superstitions, festivals, and symbols of Catholicism. Mary the mother of Jesus, in particular, with whom the Orthodox Church had little concerned itself, owed to these innovators the first development of her almost divine position. The apocryphal gospels are fully half at least the work of Gnostics. Now the apocryphal gospels have been the source of a great number of festivals, and have furnished the most cherished subjects for Christian art. The first Christian image, the first portraits of Christ, were Gnostic. The strictly orthodox Church would have remained iconoclastic if heresy had not penetrated it, or rather had not demanded from her, for the necessities of the times, more than one concession to Pagan weaknesses. Moving from time to time from genius to folly, Gnosticism defies all absolute judgments on it. Hegel and Swedenborg, Schelling and Cagliostro, elbow each other there. The apparent frivolity of some of its theologians should not repel us. Every law which is not the pure expression of positive science must submit to the caprices of fashion. So Hegel’s formula, which in his time had been the most lofty view in the world, causes us to smile now. Such a phraseology in which to sum up the universe one day shall appear clumsy or weak. To all who make shipwreck in the sea of the infinite, indulgence must be given. Good sense, which appears at first sight irreconcilable with the chimeras of the Gnostics, was not so wanting in them as we might imagine. They did not fight against civil society; they did not seek for martyrdom; and they held excess of zeal in aversion. They had high wisdom, tolerance, and sometimes (can it be believed?) even discreet scepticism. Like all religious forms, Gnosticism softened, consoled, and excited the mind. Here are the terms in which a Valentinian epitaph, found on the Latin Way, tries to sound the abyss of death:— “Desirous to see the light of the Father, companion of my blood, of my bed, O my wise one, perfumed in the sacred bath, with the incorruptible and pure myrrh of the Christ, thou hast hastened to go and contemplate the divine faces of the Æons, the great angel of the grand council, the true Son, hurried as thou wast from sleeping in the nuptial couch, into the bosom of the Æons.

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“This death is not the lot of ordinary human beings. She is dead, and she sees and really may see the light incorruptible. To the eyes of the living she is living; those who believe her dead are really dead. Earth, what shall be said of thy wonders in presence of this new kind of manes! What shall be said of thy fear!”

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CHAPTER IX. THE RESULT OE MARCIONISM—APELLES.

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EXCELLENT for producing consolation and individual edification, Gnosticism was very weak as a church. There could not be drawn from it either Presbytery or Episcopacy; ideas so ill-ordered produced only dogmatism. Marcion alone succeeded in raising a compact edifice upon this fleeting basis. He had a Marcionite church strongly organised. Certainly the church was stained by some grave faults which brought it under the ban of the Church of Christ. It is not without reason that all the founders of Episcopacy shew by one common sentiment aversion to Marcion. Metaphysics did not regulate those minds enough to prevent them from cherishing a pure theological hatred. But time is a good judge. Marcionism continued. It was, like Arianism, one of the grand fractions of Christianity, and not, like so many other sects, a bizarre and passing meteor. Marcion, while remaining quite faithful to certain principles which to him constituted the essence of Christianity, changed more than once in his theology.

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He does not appear to have imposed on his disciples any very distinct creed. After his death the internal dissensions of his sect were extreme. Potitus and Basilicus remained faithful to dualism; Synerôs held three natures, without it being known rightly how he expressed it; Apelles inclined decidedly to monachism. He had at first been personally a disciple of Marcion; but he was gifted with too independent a spirit to remain a scholar; he broke with his master, and quitted his church. These ruptures, outside the Catholic Church, were accidents occurring every day. The enemies of Apelles tried to cause it to be believed that he had been expelled, and that the cause of his excommunication was a freedom of morals which contrasted with the severity of his master. There was much said about a virgin, Philumena, whose seductions had influenced all his wanderings, and who had played to him the rôle of a Priscilla or Maximilla. Nothing is more doubtful. Rhodon, his orthodox adversary, who knew him, represents him as an old man venerable by the ascetic rule of his life. Rhodon speaks of Philumena, and represents her as a virgin “possessed,” whose inspirations Apelles really looked on as divine. Such accidents of credulity befel the most austere doctors, especially Tertullian. The symbolic language of the Gnostic doctrines led to grave misunderstandings, and often gave place to grave mistakes on the part of the orthodox, interested in calumniating such dangerous enemies. It was not with impunity that Simon the Magician played on the allegory of Helena-Ennoia, Marcion was perhaps the victim of a mistake of the same order. Apelles’ somewhat variable philosophic imagination might also cause it to be said that, pursuing an inconstant love, he quitted the truth to run after perilous adventures. We may be allowed to suppose that he gave as a framework to his teaching the revelations of a symbolic personage whom he called Philumena (the beloved

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Truth). It is certain, at least, that the words attributed by Rhodon to our doctor are those of an honest man, of a sincere friend of the truth. After having quitted Marcion’s school, Apelles went to Alexandria, and attempted a sort of eclecticism among the confused ideas that passed before him, and then returned to Rome. He did not cease to retouch during his whole life his master’s theology, and it appears that he finished by becoming weary of metaphysical theories which, according to our ideas, drew him from the true philosophy.

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The two grand errors of Marcion, as of the greater portion of the first Gnostics, were dualism and docetism. By the first, he gave in advance a hand to Manichaeism, by the second to Islam. The Marcionite doctors and Gnostics of the latter part of the second century generally attempted to extenuate these two errors. The last Basilidians arrived by this at a pure Pantheism. The author of the pseudo-Clementine romance, in spite of his bizarre theology, is a Deist. Hermogenes awkwardly flounders about among insoluble questions raised by the doctrine of the Incarnation. Apelles, whose ideas sometimes much resemble those of the pretended Clement, seeks to escape from the subtleties of the gnosis by maintaining with energy the principles of what may be called the theology of good sense. The absolute unity of God is the fundamental dogma of Apelles. God is perfect goodness; the world does not sufficiently reflect this goodness, and the world cannot be His work. The true world created by God is a higher world, peopled by angels. The chief of these angels is the Glorious Angel, a sort of demiurge or created Logos, creator in his turn of the visible world; that is but defective imitation of the higher world. Apelles shunned thus the dualism of Marcion and placed himself in an intermediary situation between Catholicism and the gnosis. He corrected really the system of Marcion, and gave to this system a certain consequence; but he fell into many other difficulties. Human souls, according to Apelles, made part of the higher creation from which they had fallen by concupiscence. To bring them back to Him, God has sent His Christ into the lower creation. Christ has come thus to improve the defective and tyrannical work of the demiurge. Apelles re-entered here in the classical doctrine of Marcionism and Gnosticism, according to which the essential work of the Christ has been to destroy the worship of the demiurge, that is to say, Judaism. The Old Testament and the New appear to him two enemies. The God of the Jews, like the God of the Catholics (in the eyes of Apelles, these last were Judaisers), is a perverse God, author of sin and of the flesh. Jewish history is the history of evil; the prophets themselves are inspired with the evil spirit. The God of good had not revealed Himself before Jesus. Apelles admitted that Jesus had a heavenly elementary body, beyond the ordinary physical laws, although endowed with a complete reality. With different renewals, Apelles appeared to have felt that this doctrine of the radical opposition of the two Testaments had something too absolute about it, and, as his was not a stubborn mind, he came little by little from that to ideas which St. Paul would perhaps not have repelled. At certain times, the Old Testament appeared to him rather incoherent and contradictory than decidedly bad;

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so that the work of Christ would have been to make the discernment of good and evil, conformably to this word so often quoted by the Gnostics: “Be ye good trapezites.” So, as Marcion had written his Antithesis to show the incompatibility of the two Testaments, Apelles wrote his Syllogisms, a vast compilation of weak passages from the Pentateuch, destined especially to show the variableness of the ancient legislator and his small amount of philosophy. Apelles exhibited there a very subtle criticism, reminding us occasionally of that of the unbelievers of the eighteenth century. The difficulties which the first chapters of Genesis present, when mythical explanations were excluded, were heightened with much sagacity. His book was considered as a refutation of the Bible and repelled as blasphemous.

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Possessed of a mind too just for the sectarian world in which he was engaged, Apelles was condemned always to change. To the end of his life he was tormented about the Scriptures. Even his fundamental idea of the divine unity wavered before him, and he arrived, without doubting, at perfect wisdom, that is to say, at a disgust for systems and at good sense. Rhodon, his adversary, has given us a conversation which he had with him at Rome about 180. “The old Apelles,” he says, “conferring with us, we showed him that he was deceived in many things, so that he was led to say that it was not necessary to examine matters of religion so much, that each one might remain in his own belief, and that those were saved who trusted in the Crucified, provided they were found good men. He confessed that the most obscure point to him was that which concerned God. He admitted, like us, but a sole principle. . . . ‘Where is the proof of all that,’ I asked of him, ‘and how is it that you are at liberty to assert that there is but a sole principle?’ He confessed to me then that the prophecies could teach us nothing true, since they contradicted and reversed themselves; that this assertion, ‘There is but one principle,’ was rather with him the result of instinct than of a positive knowledge. Having asked him, upon his oath, to tell the truth, he swore to me that he spoke sincerely; that he did not know how there was but one God unbegotten, but that he believed it. As to me, I reproached him with laughter for giving himself the title of ‘master,’ without being able to adduce any proof in favour of his doctrine.” Poor Rhodon! It was the heretic Apelles who, on that day, gave him a lesson in good taste, tact, and true Christianity. The pupil of Marcion was really cured, since to a clumsy gnosis he preferred Faith, the secret instinct of the truth, the love of the good, trust in the Crucified.

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What gave a certain force to ideas like those of Apelles is that they were only, in many points of view, a return to St. Paul. It was not doubtful that St. Paul, had he risen again at the point in Christianity at which we have arrived, would have found that Catholicism made too many concessions to the Old Testament. He would have protested and maintained that they were returning to Judaism, which was called the new wine in old bottles, and that they suppressed the difference between the Gospel and the Law. The teaching of Apelles did not go outside Rome, and barely lasted till after his death. Tertullian, nevertheless, felt himself obliged to refute it. A certain Lucan or Lucian made, like Apelles, a 57


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distinct sect in the Marcionite church. It seems that he admitted, like Synerôs, three principles, one good, the second bad, and the third just. The strictly just principle was represented by the demiurge or creator. In his hatred against this last, Lucian forbade marriage. By his blasphemies against the creation he appeared to others to approach Cerdo. Severus appears to have been a later Gnostic more than a Marcionite. Prepon, the Assyrian, denied the birth of Christ, and maintained that in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Jesus descended from heaven in the figure of a completely formed man. Marcionism, like Gnosticism, was in the second generation. These two sects had not after this time any celebrated doctor. All the grand fancies hatched under Hadrian vanished like dreams. The shipwrecked from these little adventurous churches hung on greedily to the borders of the Catholic Church, and re-entered it. The Church writers had the advantage over them that those who do not search and do not doubt have over the crowd. Irenaeus, Philip of Gortyne, Modestus, Melito, Rhodon, Theophilus of Antioch, Bardesanes, Tertullian, set themselves as a task to unmask what they called the infernal tricks of Marcion, and they did not restrain their language from any violence.

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Although struck with death, the church of Marcion remained indeed a long time a distinct community beside the Catholic Church. During several centuries there were in all the provinces of the East some Christian communities who were honoured by bearing the name of Marcion, and wrote this name on the front of their “synagogues.” These churches show successions of bishops quite comparable to that in which the Catholic Church glories. They had martyrs, virgins, everything that constituted sainthood. The faithful led an austere life, braved death, wore the monastic sackcloth, imposed on themselves strict fasts, and abstained from everything which had had life in it. “There are some hornets who imitate the swarms of bees,” the orthodox said. “These wolves clothe themselves with the skin of the sheep they kill,” said others. Like the Montanists, the Marcionites fabricated false apostolic writings and false psalms. It is needless to say that this heretical literature has entirely perished. In the fourth and fifth centuries the sect, lively still, was fought against with energy, as with an actual flail, by John Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Epiphanes, Theodoret, the Armenian Eznig, the Syrian Boud, the Periodoute. But the exaggerations ruined it. A general horror of the works of the Creator carried the Marcionites to the most absurd abstinences. They were in many points of view pure encratites; they forbade wine even in the mysteries. It was said to them that to be consistent they should allow themselves to die of hunger. They looked on baptism as a means of justification, and permitted women to officiate in the churches. Badly protected against superstition, they fell into magic and astrology. They became confounded gradually with the Manichæans.

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CHAPTER X. TATIAN HERETICAL—THE ENCRATITES. WHAT shows that the order of ideas which filled the minds of Marcion, Apelles, and Lucan came from the theological situation by a kind of necessity is that we see the faithful from all parts turning from the same side without their antecedents being possibly foreseen. Such was in special the fate which was reserved for the disciple of the tolerant Justin, for the apologist who had twenty times risked his life for his faith—Tatian. At a date which cannot be precisely fixed, Tatian, who at bottom was always an Assyrian at heart, and who much preferred the East to Rome, returned to Adiabene, where the number of Jews and Christians was considerable. There his doctrine altered more and more. Cut off from all the churches he remained in his own country what he was already in Italy—a sort of solitary Christian, not belonging to any one sect, although approaching the Montanists in asceticism, and some Marcionites by his doctrine and exegesis. His ardour for work was prodigious; his burning brain would not allow him to rest; the Bible, which he read without ceasing, inspired him with the most contradictory ideas; he wrote on this subject books without end.

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After having been, in his apology, the fanatical admirer of the Hebrews against the Greeks, he fell into the opposite extreme. The exaggeration of the ideas of St. Paul, which had led Marcion to inveigh against the Jewish Bible, led Tatian to sacrifice entirely the Old Testament to the New. Like Apelles and the greatest number of the Gnostics, Tatian admitted a Creator God subordinate to the Supreme God. In the act of creation, by pronouncing the words “Let light be!” the Creator, according to him, proceeded, not by command, but by way of prayer. The Law was the work of the Creator God, only the Gospel was the work of the Supreme God. An exaggerated demand for moral perfection caused Tatian, after having repelled the Hellenic antiquity as impure, to repel likewise the Biblical antiquity. Hence an exegesis and a criticism little different from that of the Marcionites. His Problems, like the Antitheses of Marcion and the Syllogisms of Apelles, had doubtless for their object to prove the inconsequences of the ancient law and the superiority of the new. He presented there, with very lucid good sense, the objections which could be made against the Bible, by placing himself on the ground of reason. The rationalistic exegesis of modern times finds its ancestors in the school of Apelles and Tatian. Notwithstanding its injustice to the Law and the Prophets, this school was certainly, in exegesis, more sensible than the orthodox doctors with their entirely arbitrary allegorical and typical explanations. The idea which governed Tatian’s mind in the composition of his celebrated Diatessaron could not be worthy in the opinion of the orthodox. The discordance of the gospels shocked him. Desirous above all to meet the objections of reason, he sought at the same time to do what would be most for edification. Everything in the life of Jesus which according to him brought the God too near 59


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the man was mercilessly sacrificed. However convenient was this attempt at the fusion of the gospels, it was denounced, and the copies of the Diatessaron were violently destroyed. The principal adversary of Tatian in this last period of his life was his old pupil Rhodon. Taking up one by one the Problems of Tatian, this presumptuous exegete set himself to reply to all the objections his master had raised. He also wrote a commentary on the work of six days. No doubt if we had the work which Rhodon composed upon so many delicate questions, we should see that it was less wise than that of Apelles or Tatian; those prudently confessed that they did not know how to solve them. The faith of Tatian varied like his exegesis. Gnosticism, half conquered in the West, flourished in the East still. Combining together Valentinus, Saturninus, and Marcion (the disciple of St. Justin), forgetful of his master, fell into the dreams which he had probably refuted at Rome. He became a heresiarch. Full of horror on the matter, Tatian could not bear the idea that Christ should have had the least contact with it. The sexual relations of man and woman are sinful. In the Diatessaron, Jesus had no earthly genealogy. Like some apocryphal gospel, Tatian would have said: “In the reign of Tiberius, the Word of God was born at Nazareth.” He went so far logically as to maintain that the flesh of Christ was only an apparition. The use of flesh and wine classed a man in his eyes among the impure. In the celebration of the mysteries, he wished to be served with nothing but water. He passed thus as the head of those numerous sects of encratites or abstinents, forbidding marriage, wine and flesh, who arose in all places, and pretended to draw this from the rigorous sequence of Christian principles. From Mesopotamia these ideas spread to Antioch, Cilicia of Pisidia, through all Asia Minor, to Rome and all France. Asia Minor, especially Galatia, remained the centre. The same tendencies appeared in many places at the same time. Had not Paganism, on its side, the maceration of the cynics? A collection of false ideas, much spread, led men to believe that, evil arising from concupiscence, the return to virtue implied the renunciation of the most lawful desires.

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The distinction between precepts and counsels remained still undecided. The Church was looked on as an assembly of saints waiting in prayer and in ecstasy the new heaven and new earth; nothing would be too perfect for it. The institutions of the religious life shall solve one day all these difficulties. The convent shall realise the perfect Christian life, a gift which the world has not to bestow. Tatian was not a heretic, except that he wished to put upon all as an obligation what St. Paul had presented as best. Tatian presents, we may see, some likeness to Apelles. Like him, he changed much, and never ceased modifying his rule of faith; like him, he attacked the Jewish Bible resolutely and made himself the free exegete of it. He nearly approached some Protestants of the sixteenth century, particularly Calvin. He was in any case one of the most deeply Christian men of his century, and, if he fell, it was like Tertullian by excess of severity. We could rank among his disciples that Julius Cassian, who wrote many books of Exegetica, maintaining, by arguments analogous to those of

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the Discourse against the Greeks, that the philosophy of the Hebrews was much more ancient than that of the Greeks, pushed Docetism to such excess that he was looked on as the head of that heresy, and associated with it a horror of works of the flesh, which led him to a sort of nihilism destructive of humanity. This advent of the kingdom of God appeared to him like the suppression of the sexes and modesty. A certain Severus followed a still freer fancy, repelling the Acts of the Apostles, insulting Paul, and taking up the old myth of Gnosticism. From shipwreck to shipwreck, he went over nearly all the chimeras of the archonites, continuators of the follies of Markos. From his name the Encratites were called Severians. 94

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All the aberrations of the mendicant orders of the middle ages existed at this time. There had been, from the first centuries, saccophores or sack-carrying brothers; apostles, pretending to reproduce the life of the Apostles; angelics, cathares or pure ones, apotactites or renouncers, who refused communion and salvation to all those who were married and possessed any property. Not being guarded by authority, these sects fell into the apocryphal literature. The Gospel of the Egyptians, the Acts of St. Andrew, of St. John, and St. Thomas were their favourite books. The orthodox pretended that their chastity was only apparent, since they drew women into their sect by every means, and were continually with them. They formed a sort of community in which the two sexes lived together, the women serving the men and following them in their travels by the title of companions. This kind of life was far from softening them, for they furnished in the struggles of martyrdom some athletes who put the executioners to shame. The ardour for the faith was such that it was against the excess of sanctity that it was necessary to take measures; it was the abuse of zeal which needed to be guarded against. Some words which implied nothing but what was praiseworthy, such as “abstinent,” “apostolic,” became the marks of heresy. Christianity had created such an ideal of indifference that it recoiled before its own work, and said to the faithful: “Do not take me so very seriously, or you will destroy me!” They were afraid of the fire they had lit. The love of the two sexes had been so terribly abused by the most irreproachable teachers that the Christians, who wished to go to the end of their principles, came to hold it as sinful, and to banish it utterly. By force of frugality they blamed the creation of God, and left useless nearly all His gifts. Persecution produced, and up to a certain point excused, these unhealthy aspirations. Let us think of the hardness of the times, of that preparation for martyrdom which filled up the life of the Christian, and made out of it a kind of fascination analogous to that of gladiators. Boasting the efficacy of fasting and asceticism Tertullian says: “Behold how they endure prison, hunger, thirst, privations, and distresses; see how the martyr knows how to come forth from the concealment into which he has entered, not to meet there unknown pains; not finding there anything but the macerations of every day—certain of conquering in the fight, because he has killed the flesh, and because in him the torments have no point to seize. His dried epidermis will be like a cuirass to him, the iron nails will slip there as over a thick horn. Such shall be he who, by fasting, has often seen death near him, and has been emptied of his blood—a heavy and inconvenient burden from which the impatient soul longs to escape.” 61


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CHAPTER XI. THE GREAT BISHOPS OF GREECE AND ASIA—MELITO.

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ALONGSIDE of moral excesses, the result of a badly regulated feeling, and of an exuberant production of legends, children of the Oriental fancy, there fortunately was the Episcopate. It was especially in the purely Greek portions of the Church that this fine institution flourished. Opposed to all aberrations, classic in a way and moderate in its tendencies, more busied about the humble path of simple believers than the transcendant pretensions of ascetics and speculators, the Episcopate became more and more the Church itself, and saved the work of Jesus from the inevitable shipwreck it would have suffered in the hands of Gnostics, Montanists, and even of Judaisers. What doubled the power of the Episcopate was that this sort of federal oligarchy had a centre; that centre was Rome. Anicet had seen, during the ten or twelve years of his presidency, nearly every movement of Christianity concentrate itself around him. His successor, Soter (probably a converted Jew, who translated his name Jesus into Greek), saw this movement increase still more. The vast correspondence which had for so long been established between Rome and the Churches assumed a larger scope than ever. A central tribunal of controversies had gradually become established. Greece and Asia continued to be, with Rome, the theatre of the principal incidents of Christian growth. Corinth possessed in its Dionysius one of the most respected men of the age. The charity of this bishop was not confined even to the Church. From all directions he was consulted, and his letters carried nearly as much authority as sacred writings. These were called “Catholic,” because they were written not to individuals, but to churches in a body. Seven of these epistles were collected, and venerated as at least equal to the letters of the Roman Clement. They were addressed to the believers of Lacedemon, Athens, Nicomedia, Cnosse, Gortyne, and other churches of Crete, Amastris, and other churches of the West. Soter, according to the custom of the Church of Rome, having sent to the Church at Corinth some alms, accompanied by a letter full of pious instructions, Dionysius thanked him for this kindness. “It is to-day the Sabbath,” he wrote, “and we have seen your letter, and we preserve it to read again, when we desire to listen to salutary advices, as we do with those letters which Clement has already written. By your exhortation you have drawn tighter the bond between the two ‘plantations,’ the one by the hand of Peter, the other by that of Paul—I mean the Church of Rome and that of Corinth. These two apostles, indeed, came into our Corinth, and taught us in common, then sailed together towards Italy, to teach there in concert and to suffer martyrdom about the same time.” The Church of Corinth yielded to the tendency of all the churches; it wished, like the Church of Rome, to have as its founders the two apostles whose union was held as the basis of Christianity. It pretended that Peter and Paul, after having passed to Corinth at the most brilliant point in their

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apostolic life, went together to Italy. The little agreement which prevailed concerning the history of the apostles made such suppositions as these possible, although contrary to all likelihood and all truth.

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The writings of Dionysius passed as masterpieces of literary talent and zeal. He fought energetically with Marcion. In a letter to a pious sister named Chrysophora, he traced with a masterly hand the duties of the life consecrated to God. He was no less opposed to the grosser exaggerations of Montanism. In his letter to the Amastrians, he instructed them at length on marriage and virginity, and commanded them to receive joyfully all those who would repent, whether they had fallen into heresy or had committed any other sin. Palma, bishop of Amastris, fully accepted the right which Dionysius assumed to instruct the faithful. Dionysius did not find resistance to this to his taste in the case of his admonition to the bishop of Cnosse, Pinytus, an enthusiastic rigorist. Dionysius had begged him to consider the weakness of certain persons, and not to impose on the faithful generally the too heavy burden of chastity. Pinytus, who possessed eloquence, and passed for one of the lights of the Church, replied by declaring his great esteem and respect for Dionysius; but, in his turn, he counselled him to give his people more solid nourishment and stronger instruction, lest, always feeding them with the milk of toleration, they should insensibly grow old without having ever left in mind the weakness of childhood. Pinytus’s letter was much admired, and considered a model of episcopal ardour. It was confessed that the vigour of zeal, when it expresses itself with charity, has rights equal to those of prudence and sweetness. Dionysius was much opposed to the speculations of the sects. A friend to peace and unity, he repelled everything which tended to division. Heresies had in him a determined adversary. His authority was such that the heretics, “the apostles of the devil,” as he calls them, falsified his letters, and “sowed them with tares,” adding or cutting out what they pleased. “What should surprise one,” said Dionysius, “if certain people have the audacity to falsify the Scriptures of the Lord, since they have dared to lay hands on the writings which have not the same sacred character?”

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The Church of Athens, always characterised by a sort of frivolous lightness, was far from having a basis as assured as that of Corinth. Things took place there which did not happen elsewhere. The bishop Publius had bravely suffered martyrdom; then there had been a nearly general apostasy, a sort of abandonment of religion. A certain Quadratus, different doubtless from the apologist, reconstituted the Church, and there was something like an awakening of the faith. Dionysius wrote to this inconstant Church, not without some bitterness, trying to lead it back to the purity of belief and the severity of evangelical life. The Church of Athens, like that of Corinth, had its legend. It was connected with that Dionysius called the Areopagite, who is spoken of in the Acts, and it had made him the first bishop of Athens, so much had the episcopate become already the form without which one could not conceive of the existence of a Christian community. Crete, we have seen, had churches very flourishing, pious, benevolent, and generous. The Gnostic heresies, and especially Marcionism, beset them without impairing them. Philip, bishop 63


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of Gortyne, wrote a fine work against Marcion, and was one of the most respected bishops of the time of Marcus-Aurelius. Proconsular Asia continued to be the first province in Christian movement. The great struggle, the great persecutions, the great martyrs were there. Nearly all the bishops of the considerable towns were saintly men, eloquent, fairly sensible, having received a good Hellenic education, and, if one may say so, of very skilful religious politics. The bishops were multiplied; but many important families had a sort of claim on the episcopate in the small towns. Polycrates of Ephesus, who, during thirty years, shall defend so energetically against the bishop of Rome the traditions of the churches of Asia, was the eighth bishop of his family. The bishops of the large cities had a primacy over the others; they were the presidents of the provincial assemblies of bishops. The archbishop began to appear, although the word, if one had dared to use it, would have been repelled with horror. 100

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Melito, bishop of Sardis, had, in the midst of those eminent pastors, a sort of uncontested superiority. It was unanimously agreed that he had the gift of prophecy, and it was believed that he was guided in everything by the light of the Holy Spirit. His writings followed each other year by year, in the midst of the universal admiration. His criticism was that of the time; at least, he was careful that his faith should be reasonable and consistent with itself. In many points of view he recalls Origen, but he had not to instruct him the facilities which were presented to the latter by the schools of Alexandria, Cesarea, and Tyre. The considerable anxiety which the Christians of St. Paul possessed to study the Old Testament, and the weakness of Judaism in the regions of Asia at a distance from Ephesus, made it difficult to procure in that country distinct ideas as to the Biblical books. Their number and order were not exactly known. Melito, impelled by his own curiosity and, as it appeared, at the instance of a certain Onesimus, made a journey into Palestine to inform himself as to the true state of the canon. He brought back a catalogue of books received universally; it was purely and simply the Jewish canon, composed of twenty-five books, to the exclusion of Esther. The apocrypha, such as the book of Enoch, the apocalypse of Esdras, Judith, Tobit, &c., which were not received by the Jews, were equally excluded from the list of Melito. Without being a Hebraiser, Melito became the careful commentator of these sacred writings. At the entreaty of Onesimus, he reunited in six books the passages of the Pentateuch and the Prophets which related to Jesus Christ, and the other articles of the Christian faith. He worked upon the Greek versions, which he compared with the greatest possible diligence. The exegesis of the Orientals was familiar to him; he discussed it point by point. Like the author of what is called the Epistle of Barnabas, he seems to have had a marked tendency towards allegorical and mystical explanations, and it is not impossible that his lost work, entitled The Key, was already one of these repertories of figurative explanations, by which it was sought to remove the anthropomorphising from the biblical text, and to substitute for meanings too simple meanings more lofty. 64


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Among the scriptures of the New Testament, Melito only seems to have commented on the Apocalypse. He liked its sombre pictures; for we see that he himself announces that the final conflagration is at hand, that after the deluge of wind and the deluge of water shall come the deluge of fire which shall consume the earth, idols, and idolaters; the righteous only shall be saved, as they were formerly in the Ark. These strange beliefs did not prevent Melito from being, in his way, a cultured man. Familiar with the study of philosophy, he sought, in a series of works which unfortunately have been nearly all lost to us, to explain by rational psychology the mysteries of Christian dogma. He wrote besides some treatises where the preoccupation of Montanism seems to rule his thought, without its being possible to say whether he was its adversary or partly favourable to it. Such were the book on the Rule of life and the prophets, on the Church, on the Day of the Sabbath, on the Obedience which the senses owe to the Faith, on the Soul and the Body, or on Understanding, on Baptism, on the Creation and the Birth of Christ, on Hospitality, on Prophecy, on the Devil and the Apocalypse of John, on the Incarnate God, on the Incarnation of Christ, against Marcion. We can believe that there also was a book of prophecies which he composed. 102

Melito passed indeed for a prophet; but it is not certain that his prophecies formed a separate work. Admitting the prolongation of the gift of prophecy up to his time, he could not repulse à priori the Montanists of Phrygia. His life, besides, resembled theirs in a sort of asceticism. Only he did not recognise the revelations of the saints of Pepuza, otherwise certainly orthodoxy would have cast him from her arms. One of these treatises, that which he entitled On the Truth, seems to have come down to us. The scoffs of monotheism against idolatry are full of bitterness, and hatred of idols has never been expressed with more force. Truth, according to the author, reveals itself to man, and, if he cannot see it, it is his fault. To deceive himself with the multitude is no excuse; error is multiplied only more fatally. God is an unchangeable, uncreated being; to confound Him with such or such an element is a crime, “especially now that the revelation of the truth has been spread through all the world.” The Sibyl had already said, “Idols are only the images of dead kings, who cause themselves to be worshipped.” People considered a discovered fragment of Philo of Byblos, exposing to us the old Phœnician Evemerism of Sanchoniathon, that curious page where Melito, taking up handfuls of the most singular and bizarre fables of Greek and Syrian mythology, seeks to prove to us that the gods are personages quite real, who have been deified because of the service they have rendered to certain countries, or the terror they have inspired. The worship of the Cæsars seemed to him the continuation of this practice.

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“Do we not see still in our days,” says he, “the images of the Cæsars and their family more respected than those of the ancient gods, and those gods themselves paying homage to Cæsar as to a god greater than themselves? and truly, if death were the punishment for despisers of the gods, they would say that it was because they deprived the Treasury of a revenue. It is the same in those countries where the worshippers in certain temples pay a fixed sum to the Treasury. The great

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misfortune of the world is that those who adore inanimate gods, and of that number is the greatest number of the wise, whether by love of lucre or love of vainglory, or by the taste for power, not only adore them, but, besides, constrain simple minds to adore them also. “Such a prince might perhaps say, ‘I am not free to do good. Being head, I am obliged to conform myself to the will of the majority.’ He who speaks so is to be laughed at. Why should the sovereign not have the initiative in everything that is good? Why should he not compel the people who are under him to act rightly, to know God according to the truth? and why should he not present in himself an example of all good actions? Who more properly? It is an absurd thing that a prince should conduct himself wrongly, and nevertheless be a judge, condemning those who commit evil deeds. As for myself, I think that a State can never be so well governed as when the sovereign, knowing and fearing the true God, judges everything as a man who knows he shall be in his turn judged before God, and when his subjects, on their side fearing God, should be careful not to give offence to their sovereign, as he is to them. Thus, thanks to the knowledge and the fear of God, all evil could be suppressed by the State.

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“If the sovereign, in fact, does not act unjustly towards his subjects, or they towards him, it is clear that the whole country will live in peace, and the greatest good will result; for necessarily the name of God will be praised among them all. The first duty of the sovereign, and that which is most pleasing to God, is therefore to free from error the people who are under him. All evils indeed proceed from error, and the grand error is not to know God, and to adore in His stead that which is not God.” We see how Melito is far removed from the dangerous principles which ruled at the end of the fourth century, and made the Christian empire. The sovereign erected into a protector of the truth, employing all means to make truth triumph, that is the ideal which was dreamt of. We shall find the same ideas in the apology addressed to Marcus-Aurelius. The dogmatic intolerance, the idea that it is culpable and displeasing to God to be ignorant of certain dogmas, is frankly avowed. Melito admits of no excuse for idolatry. And those who say that the honour rendered to idols in connection with the persons they represent, and those who content themselves with saying “It is the worship of our fathers,” are equally to blame. “Ah, what! are those to whom our fathers have left poverty forbidden to become rich? Are those whose parents have not instructed them condemned to remain ignorant of what their fathers did not know? Are the sons of the blind not to see, and the sons of the lame not to walk? . . . . Before imitating thy father, see if he has been in a good path. If he has been in a bad one, take the good, so that thy children may follow thee in their turn. Weep over thy father, who is following the path of evil, perhaps thy sorrow may save him yet. As to thy children, say to them: ‘There is but one

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God, father of all, who had no beginning, who has not been created, and who makes all things subsist by His own will.’” 105

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We shall soon see the part which Melito took in the controversy as to Easter, and the kind of way which so many distinguished minds took to present some apologetic writings to Marcus-Aurelius. His tomb is shown at Sardis as one of the just and the most certain to rise at the call of heaven. His name remained much respected among the Catholics, who considered him one of the first authorities of his age. His eloquence especially was boasted of, and the remains of him we have are, indeed, quite brilliant. A theology like his, where Jesus is at once God and man, was a protest against Marcion, and ought at the same time to please the adversaries of Artemon and Theodotus “the currier.” He knew the Gospel called St. John’s, and identified Christos with the Logos, putting him in the second rank behind the one God, before and above all. His treatise where Christ is presented as a created being might surprise; but no doubt it was little read, and this offensive title was changed in good time. In the fourth century, when orthodoxy had become more suspicious, these writings, so much admired two hundred years before, were no longer copied. Many passages doubtless appeared little conformed to the creed of Nicea. Melito’s fortune was that of Papias, and of so many other doctors of the second century, true founders, the first fathers in reality, and who had no other fault than not having divined beforehand what one day would be revealed by the councils. Claudius Apollinaris, or Apollinarus, maintained the fame of the Church of Hierapolis, and, like Melito, joined literary culture and philosophy with sanctity. His style passed as excellent, and his doctrine for the purest. By his distance from Judeo-Christianity and his taste for the Gospel of John, he belonged to the party of movement rather than to that of tradition. As this was the movement which triumphed, his adversaries were behind from that time. We see him, nearly at the same period as Melito, presenting an apology to Marcus-Aurelius. He wrote five books addressed to the Pagans, two against the Jews, two on the Truth, and one on Piety, without mentioning many other works which did not obtain a great publicity, but were much esteemed by all who read them. Apollinaris fought energetically with Montanism, and was perhaps the bishop who contributed most to save the Church from the dangers into which those preachers had made her run. Towards the excesses of the Encratites also he was very severe. An astonishing mixture of good sense and literature, of fanaticism and moderation, characterised those extraordinary men, true ancestors of the lettered bishop, clever politicians, always having the appearance of hearing nothing but the inspiration of heaven, opposed to the violent while quite violent themselves. Thanks to the mendacious softness of a liberal language, these anticipative Dupanloups proved that the most refined worldly calculations do not exclude the most odd illuminism, and that with perfect honesty they could unite in their person all the appearance of reasonable men and all the rapture of enthusiasts. Miltiades, like Apollinaris, the great adversary of the Montanists, was also a fertile writer. He composed two books against the Pagans, two books against the Jews, not forgetting an apology

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addressed to the Roman authorities. Musanus fought with the Encratites, the disciples of Tatian. Modestus set himself especially to unveil the tricks and errors of Marcion. Polycrates, who, later on, was to preside in a manner over the Church of Asia, already shone by his writings. A crowd of books were produced on all sides. Never perhaps has Christianity written more than during the second century in Asia. Literary culture was widely spread in this province; the art of writing was very common, and Christianity profited by this. The literature of the fathers of the Church began. The following centuries never surpassed these first essays of Christian eloquence; but from the orthodox point of view, the books of these fathers of the second century presented rather a stumbling block. The reading of them became suspected; they were copied less and less, and thus nearly all these fine writings disappeared, to give place to the classical writers, after the council of Nicea, writers more correct as to doctrine, but, in general, less original than those of the second century. A certain Papirius, whose episcopal seat is unknown, was extremely esteemed. Thraseas, bishop of Eumenia, in the region of the high Meander, had the most envied glory, that of martyrdom. He probably suffered at Smyrna, since it is there that his tomb is honoured. Sagaris, bishop of Laodicea, on the Lycus, had the same honour under the pro-consulate of L. Sergius Paullus about the year 165. Laodicea preserved most preciously his remains. His name remained so much the more fixed in the remembrance of the churches, as his death was the occasion of an important episode connecting itself with one of the gravest questions of the period.

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CHAPTER XII. THE QUESTION OF EASTER. CHANCE decreed that the execution of Sagaris coincided nearly with the festival of Easter. Now the fixing of that festival gave place to difficulties without end. Deprived of its pastor, the Church of Laodicea fell into unsolvable controversies. These controversies belonged to the very essence of the development of Christianity and could not be avoided. By force of a reciprocal charity, a veil had been thrown over the deep difference between the two Christianities—on one side, the Christianity which appeared like a sequence of Judaism; on the other side, the Christianity which appeared like the destruction of Judaism. But the reality was less flexible than the spirit. The day of Easter was among the Christian churches a cause of much discord. They could not fast, they could not pray the same day. The one class was still in tears while the other was singing songs of triumph. Even the churches which no question of principles separated were embarrassed. The Passover cycle was so badly fixed that some neighbouring churches, like those of Alexandria and Palestine, wrote that in the spring they celebrated the feast the same day and in full sympathy. What could be more shocking indeed than to see such a Church plunged in grief, attenuated by fasting, while just such another was already floating in the joys of the Resurrection? The fasts which preceded Easter, and which gave Lent its origin, were also practised with the greatest diversities.

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It was Asia which was most agitated by these controversies. We have already seen the question treated of, ten or twelve years back, between Polycarp and Anicet. Nearly all the Christian churches, having the Church of Rome at their head, had misplaced the Passover, observing that festival on the Sunday which came before the fourteenth Nisan, and identifying it with the festival of the Resurrection. Asia had not followed the movement; on this point, if one may so speak, it had remained behind. The majority of the bishops of Asia, faithful to the tradition of the old Gospels, and appealing especially to Matthew, would have it that Jesus, before dying, had eaten the Passover with His disciples on the fourteenth of Nisan; they celebrated this festival on the same day as the Jews, on whichever day of the week it fell. They advanced in favour of their opinion the Gospel, the authority of their predecessors, the prescriptions of the law, the canon of the faith and especially the authority of the apostles John and Philip, who had lived among them, without looking for a single contradiction from John. It is more than probable indeed that the apostle John celebrated Easter all his life on the fourteenth Nisan; but in the Gospel which is attributed to him, he appears to point to quite another doctrine, treats disdainfully the ancient Jewish Passover festival, and makes Jesus die the same day as that on which they ate the lamb, as if to indicate thus the substitution of a new Paschal lamb for the old.

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Polycarpus, we have seen, followed the tradition of John and Philip. It was so with Thraseas, Sagaris, Papirius, and Melito. The Montanists were also doubtless of the same opinion. But the opinion of the Universal Church became each day more imperious and embarrassing for these determined persons. Apollinaris of Hierapolis was, as it would appear, converted to the Roman practice. He repelled the Easter of the fourteenth Nisan as a remnant of Judaism, and advanced to maintain his opinion the Gospel of John. Melito, seeing the embarrassment of the faithful of Laodicea, deprived of their pastor, wrote for them his work on Easter, in which he maintains the tradition of the fourteenth Nisan. Apollinaris preserves a moderation which was not always imitated. The universal opinion of Asia remained faithful to the Judaising tradition; the controversy of Laodicea and the manifestation of Apollinaris had not any immediate consequences. The remote parts of Syria, and with greater reason the Judeo-Christians and Ebionites, remained equally faithful to the Jewish observance. As to the rest of the Christian world, carried away by the example of the Church of Rome, it adopted the anti-Jewish usage. Even the churches of Gaul of Asiatic origin, which at first had doubtless celebrated Easter on the fourteenth Nisan, conformed themselves speedily to the universal calendar, which was the truly Christian calendar. The remembrance of the Resurrection replaced all at once that of the exodus from Egypt, as the exodus from Egypt had replaced the purely naturalistic meaning of the ancient Semitic paskh, the Spring festival. About the year 196 the question came up more freshly than ever. The churches of Asia persisted in their old usage. Rome, always ardent for unity, wished to compel them. On the invitation of the Pope Victor, assemblies of bishops were held; a vast correspondence was exchanged. Eusebius had in his hands the synodal epistle of the council of Palestine, presided over by Theophilus of Cesarea and Narcissus of Jerusalem, the letter of the Synod of Rome, countersigned by Victor, the letters of the bishops of the West, over whom Palma presided as being the oldest, the letter from the churches of France, of which Irenæus was bishop, and finally those of the churches of Osrhoêne, without speaking of individual letters from many bishops, notably from Bachylles of Corinth. They were found unanimous for the translation of Easter to Sunday. But the bishops of Asia, strong in the tradition of the two apostles and of so many illustrious men, would not yield. Old Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, wrote in their name a letter bitter enough to Victor and to the Church of Rome. “It is we who are faithful to tradition, without adding anything to it, without giving up anything. It is in Asia that these great foundation men repose, who will arise on the day of the Lord’s appearing, in that day when He shall come from heaven with glory to raise all the saints: Philip, he who was one of the twelve apostles, who is buried at Hierapolis, also his two daughters who grow old in virginity, not to speak of another daughter who observed during her life the rule of the Holy Spirit, and who reposes at Ephesus; then John, he whose head reclined on the bosom of the Lord, who was pontiff carrying thepetalon, and martyr, and doctor, who also is interred at Ephesus; then Polycarpus, he who was bishop and martyr at Smyrna; then Thraseas, at once bishop and martyr of Eumenia, who is buried at Smyrna. Why speak of Sagaris, bishop and martyr, who is buried at Laodicea, of the blessed Papirius, and of Melito, the holy eunuch, who observed in everything the 70


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rule of the Holy Spirit, and rests at Sardis, waiting the heavenly call which shall make him rise among the dead? All these men celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day, according to the Gospel, without innovation of any kind, following the rule of the faith. And I also, I have done so likewise, I, Polycrates, the least of you all, agreeably to the tradition of my relatives, of whom some have been my teachers (for there have been seven bishops in my family: I am the eighth); and all my revered relatives observed the day when the people began to purge out the leaven. I then, my brethren, who reckon sixty-five years in the Lord, who have conversed with the brethren from the whole world, who have read from one end to the other the Holy Scripture, I shall not lose my head, whatever they may do to terrify me. Greater people than I have said: ‘It is better to obey God rather than man.’ I could quote the bishops here present, whom, upon your demand, I have convoked; if I wrote their names the list would be long. All having come to see me, poor wretch as I am, have given their adhesion to my letter, knowing well that it is not for nothing that I carry white hairs, and being assured that all I do I do in the Lord Jesus.” What proves that the Papacy was already born, and well born, is the incredible design which the somewhat bitter terms of this letter inspired in Victor. He pretended to excommunicate, to separate from the Church universal, the most illustrious, because it would not yield its traditions before the Roman discipline. He published a decree in virtue of which the churches of Asia were placed under the ban of Christian communion. But the other bishops were opposed to this violent measure, and recalled Victor to charity. Irenæus of Lyons, in particular, who, by necessity of the society in which he found himself placed, had accepted for himself and for the Gallic churches the Western custom, could not endure the thought that the mother churches of Asia, to which he felt himself bound by the bowels of his love, should be separated from the body of the Church universal. He energetically dissuaded Victor from excommunicating churches which held by the tradition of their fathers, and recalled the examples of his most tolerant predecessors.

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“Yes, the ancients who presided before Soter in the Church which thou now leadest, we speak of Pius, Hyginus, Telesophorus, Xystus, did not observe the Jewish Passover, and did not permit any around them to observe it; but, while not observing it, they did not preserve the less peace with the members of churches who did observe it, when those came to them; although this observance, in the midst of people who did not observe it, rendered the contrast more striking. Never was any one repelled for this reason; on the contrary, the elders who have preceded thee, who, I repeat, did not observe, sent the Eucharist to the ancients of the Church who observed it. And when the blessed Polycarp came to Rome under Anicet, both of them gave each other first the kiss of peace; they had between them some small matters of difficulty: as to this point they did not make it the subject of a discussion. For neither did Anicet seek to persuade Polycarpus to abandon a practice which he had always kept and which he held from his association with John, the disciple of the Lord, and with the other apostles, nor did Polycarp try to persuade Anicet, he saying that he would keep the customs of the ancients who had gone before him. In this state of things they communicated with each other, and in the Church Anicet yielded to Polycarp the eucharistic consecration, to do him 71


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honour, and they separated from each other in perfect peace; and it was evident that the observants, as well as the nonobservants, each on their own side, were in accord with the Church universal.”

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This act of rare good sense, which opened so gloriously the annals of the Gallican Church, kept the schism of the East and West from taking place from the second century. Irenæus wrote on all hands to the bishops, and the question remained open in the churches of Asia. Naturally, Rome continued its propaganda against the Easter of the 14th Nisan. A Roman priest, Blastus, who sought to establish the Asiatic custom at Rome, was excommunicated. Irenæus disputed with him; the usage was not forbidden by apocryphal documents. The Roman practice gained day by day. The question was not determined except by the Council of Nicæa. From thenceforth it was considered heretical to follow the tradition of John, Philip, Polycarp, and Melito. It happened as it had happened so many times. The defenders of the ancient tradition found themselves by their fidelity put outside the Church, and were no more than heretics, the quartodecimans. The Jewish calendar presented some difficulties, and in the countries where there were no Jews they would have been embarrassed to determine the 14th Nisan. They declared that the Sunday of the Resurrection should be the Sunday which corresponds to or succeeds the first full moon after the spring equinox. The Friday preceding became naturally the memorial day of the Passion; the Thursday that of the institution of the Supper. Holy Week thus was established according to the tradition of the ancient gospels, not after the Gospel called St. John’s. Pentecost, become the festival of the Holy Spirit, fell on the seventh Sunday after Easter, and the cycle of the movable feasts of the Christian year was held to be fixed uniformly for all the Churches until the Gregorian reform.

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The practice which caused this debate had more importance than the debate itself. In connection with this difference, indeed, the Church was led to a clearer idea of its organisation. And first, it was plain that the laity were nothing. Only the bishops intervened in the question, circulating an opinion. The bishops were gathered together in provincial synods, presided over by the bishop of the capital of the province (the archbishop of the future), sometimes by the oldest. The synodal assembly met by a letter which was sent to the other churches. It was, therefore, like a rudiment of federal organisation, an attempt to resolve questions by means of provincial assemblies, presided over by the bishops and corresponding to them. It was attempted later, in parts of this great ecclesiastical struggle, to find precedents for the question of presiding at synods and the hierarchy of the churches. Among all the churches, that of Rome appeared to have a special right to the initiative. This initiative was exercised especially in view of bringing the churches into unity, even at the risk of the gravest schisms. The bishop of Rome claimed for himself the exorbitant right of driving from the Church every fraction which maintained its own traditions. From the year 196 this exaggerated desire for unity necessarily led to the schisms which took place later on. But a great bishop, animated by the true spirit of Jesus, prevailed on the pope at this time. Irenaeus protested, undertook a mission of peace, and succeeded in correcting the harm which Romish ambition had

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done. The infallibility of the bishop of Rome was still far from being believed in; for Eusebius declares that he read the letters in which the bishops forcibly blamed Victor’s conduct.

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CHAPTER XIII. LAST RECRUDESCENCE OF MILLENARIANISM AND PROPHETISM—THE MONTANISTS. THE great day, in spite of the affirmations of Jesus and of prophets inspired by him, refused to come. The Christ was slow in showing himself; the ardent piety of the first days, which had for its mainspring the belief in this approaching appearance, had grown cold among many. It was on such a world as this, in the very bosom of that Roman society, so corrupted but so preoccupied by reform and progress, that people dreamed of founding the Kingdom of God. Christian morals, from the moment they aspired to be those of a complete society, began to relax themselves in many points from their primitive severity. Men did not become more Christian, as in the first ages, under the force of a strong personal impression; many were born Christians. The contrast became each day less decided between the Church and the surrounding world. It was inevitable that some rigorists should be found who would sink into the mire of the most dangerous worldliness, and that there should arise a party of pietists to fight with the general coldness, to continue the supernatural gifts of the Apostolic Church, and to prepare humanity, by a redoubling of austerities, with proofs of the last days. Already we have seen the pious author of the Hermas weeping over the decay of his time, and calling by his vows for a reform which should make the Church a convent of holy men and women.

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There was, in fact, something rather inconsistent in the kind of quietude in which the orthodox Church slumbered, in that tranquil morality to which the work of Jesus was more and more reduced. People neglected the very precise predictions of the founder as to the end of the present world and on the Messianic reign which should follow. The speedy appearance in the clouds was nearly forgotten. The desire for martyrdom, the taste for celibacy, results of such a belief, grew weak. People accepted relations with an impure world, condemned soon to end; they temporised with persecution and sought to escape from it by the price of money. It was inevitable that the ideas which formed the basis of budding Christianity should reappear from time to time, in the midst of this general depression, in the shape of what was severe and terrifying. Fanaticism, which softened good orthodox judgment, made some kinds of eruption, like a slumbering volcano. The most remarkable of these very natural returns to the apostolic spirit was that which was produced in Phrygia, under Marcus-Aurelius. It was something quite analogous to what we have seen in our time in England and America among the Irvingites and the Latter Day Saints. Some simple and enthusiastic minds believe themselves called to renew the prodigies of individual inspiration, beyond those already heavy chains of the Church and the episcopate. A doctrine for a long time spread through Asia Minor, that of a Paraclete who should come to complete the work of Jesus, or, to speak more correctly, to take up the teaching of Jesus, to establish it in truth, to 74


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purge out the alterations which the apostles and bishops had introduced into it; such a doctrine, I say, opened the door to all innovations. The Church of the saints was conceived of as always progressive and as destined to run through successive degrees of perfection. Prophetism passed for the most natural thing in the world. The Sibyllists, the prophets of every kind, ran through the streets, and in spite of their gross artifices found credence and acceptance. 118

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Some little towns of the poorest districts of Phrygia, Brûlée, Tymium, and Pepuza, whose site even is unknown, were the theatre of this late enthusiasm. Phrygia was one of the countries of antiquity the most carried away by religious dreams. The Phrygians were generally looked on as silly and simple. Christianity had among them, from its origin, a mystic and ascetic character. Already in the Epistle to the Colossians Paul fights with errors, where the precursory signs of Gnosticism and the excesses of a badly understood asceticism seemed to be mixed up. Nearly everywhere else Christianity was a religion of the large cities; here, as in Syria or beyond the Jordan, it was a religion of clowns and countrymen. A certain Montanus, of the town of Ardaban, in Mysia, on the confines of Phrygia, contrived to give to these pious follies a contagious character which they did not possess till then. Doubtless imitation of the Jewish prophets, and of those who had produced the new law at the beginning of the apostolic age, was the principal element of this re-birth of prophetism. There was mixed with it also perhaps an orgiastic or corybantic element, peculiar to the country, and entirely outside the regulated habits of ecclesiastical prophecy, already subjected to a tradition. All this credulous world was of the Phrygian race, and spoke Phrygian. In the most orthodox parts of Christendom, besides, the miraculous passed for quite a simple thing. Revelation was not closed; it was the life of the Church. The spiritual gifts, the apostolic charismas, were continued in many communities; they were cited in proof of the truth. They quoted Agabas, Judas, Silas, the daughters of Philip, Ammias of Philadelphia, and Quadratus, as having been favoured by the prophetic spirit. They declared from the first that the prophetic charisma would remain in the Church by an uninterrupted succession until the coming of Christ. The belief in a Paraclete, conceivedly as a source of permanent inspiration for the faithful, kept up these ideas. Who cannot see how full of dangers such a belief was? Thus the spirit of wisdom which directed the Church tended more and more to subordinate the exercise of its supernatural gifts to the authority of the presbyterate. The bishops were credited with the discernment of spirits, the right to approve some and to exorcise others. This time it was a prophetism quite popular which arose without the permission of the clergy, and sought to govern the Church outside of the hierarchy. The question of ecclesiastical authority and of individual inspiration, which fills up all the history of the Church, especially since the sixteenth century, took up its position from that time with distinctness. Between the believer and God is there or is there not an intermediary? Montanus said no, without hesitation. “Man, said the Paraclete, in an oracle of Montanus, is the lyre, and I fly like the bow; man sleeps, and I awake.”

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Montanus justified no doubt by some superiority this pretension of being the elect of the Spirit. We willingly credit his adversaries when they tell us that he was a believer of recent date; we even admit that the desire of the primacy was no stranger to his singularities. As to the debauches and the shameful end they say he had, they were the ordinary calumnies which were never wanting under the pen of orthodox writers when the blackening of dissentients was concerned. The admiration which he excited in Phrygia was extraordinary. Some of his disciples pretended to have learned more from his books than from the law, the prophets, and the reunited evangelists. It was believed that he had received the fulness of the Paraclete; sometimes they took him for the Paraclete himself, that is to say, for this Messiah, in some things superior to Jesus, whom the churches of Asia Minor believed to have been promised by Jesus himself. They went so far as to say, “The Paraclete has revealed the greatest things by Montanus, as Christ by the Gospel.” The law and the prophets were considered as the infancy of religion; the Gospel was its youth; the coming of the Paraclete was considered to be the sign of its maturity. Montanus, like all the prophets of the new alliance, was full of curses against the age and against the Roman empire. Even the seer of 69 was surpassed. Neither hatred of the world nor the desire of seeing Pagan society destroyed had yet been expressed with such a distinct fury. The only theme of the Phrygian prophets was the approaching judgment of God, the punishment of persecutors, the destruction of the profane world, the reign of the thousand years and its joys. Martyrdom was praised as the highest perfection; to die in one’s bed seemed unworthy of a Christian. The Encratites, condemning sexual connection, recognised in it importance from the natural point of view; Montanus did not even take the trouble to forbid an act become absolutely insignificant, from the moment that its humanness came to an end.

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The gate was thus opened to the debauch, at the same time as it closed to the pleasantest duties. By the side of Montanus appeared two women, the one called sometimes Prisca, sometimes Priscilla, sometimes Quintilla, and the other Maximilla. These two women, who, from what appeared, had all quitted the state of marriage to embrace the prophetic career, entered into their position with an extreme boldness and a complete misunderstanding of the hierarchy. In spite of the wise prohibitions of Paul against women taking part in the prophetic and ecstatic exercises of the Church, Priscilla and Maximilla did not draw back before the brilliancy of a public ministry. It seems that individual inspiration had had, this time as usual, licence and boldness. Priscilla had some features which made her like St. Catharine of Sienna and Maria Alacoque. One day, at Pepuza, she slept and saw Christ come towards her, clothed in a shining robe and having the appearance of a woman. Christ was asleep by her side, and, in this mysterious embracing, inoculated her with all wisdom. He revealed to her especially the sacredness of the town of Pepuza. This privileged spot was the site where the heavenly Jerusalem, in descending from heaven, would be placed. Maximilla preached in the same way, announcing fearful wars, catastrophes, and persecutions. She survived Priscilla, and died maintaining that after her there would be no other prophesy till the end of time.

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It was not only prophecy, it was all the functions of the clergy, which this bizarre Christianity claimed to belong to women. The Presbyterate, the Episcopate, the charge of the Church in all degrees devolved on them. To justify this pretension they instanced Miriam, the sister of Moses, the four daughters of Philip, and even Eve, for whom they pleaded extenuating circumstances, and of whom they made a saint. What was strange in the worship of the sect was the ceremony of the weepers or virgin lampadophores, who recalled in many points of view the Protestant “revivals” of America. Seven virgins, bearing torches and clothed in white, entered the church, uttering penitential groans, pouring forth torrents of tears and deploring by expressive gestures the wretchedness of human life. Then began the scenes of illuminism. In the midst of the people the virgins were seized with enthusiasm, preached, prophesied, and fell into ecstasies. The audience sobbed and went forth penetrated by compunction. The influence these women exercised over the crowds, and even over a portion of the clergy, was extraordinary. They went so far as to prefer the prophetesses of Pepuza to the apostles, and even to Christ. The most moderate saw in them those prophets foretold by Jesus as coming to finish his work. All Asia Minor was troubled. From neighbouring countries people came to see these ecstatic phenomena, and to give an opinion on the new prophetism. The feeling was so much the greater that no one rejected à priori the possibility of prophecy. The only question was whether it was real. The most distant churches, those of Lyons and Vienne, wrote to Asia to be informed on the subject. Many bishops, especially Ælius Publius Julius of Debeltus, and Sotas of Anchiale in Thrace, came forward as witnesses. All Christendom was set in motion by these miracles, which appeared to bring back the Christianity of a hundred and thirty years before, in the days of its first appearance.

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The greater number of the bishops, Apollinaris of Hierapolis, Zoticus of Comane, Julian of Apamia, Miltiades the famous ecclesiastical writer, a certain Aurelius of Cyrene, described as “martyr” by his life, and the two bishops of Thrace, refused to look seriously upon the enlightened of Pepuza. Nearly all of them declared individual prophesying to be subversive of the Church, and treated Priscilla as “possessed.” Some orthodox bishops, in particular Sotas of Anchiale and Zoticus of Comane, wished even to exorcise her; but the Phrygians would not allow it. Some notables, moreover, such as Themison, Theodotus, Alcibiades, and Proclus, yielded to the general enthusiasm and betook themselves to prophesying in their turn. Theodotus, especially, was the chief of the sect after Montanus and his principal zealot. As to the simple people they were all enchanted. The dark oracles of the prophetesses were carried away and commented on. A real Church formed itself around them. All the gifts of the apostolic age, especially the gift of tongues and the ecstasies, renewed themselves. They allowed themselves to go too easily into this dangerous reasoning: “Why should that which had a place not have place still? The present generation is not more disinherited than the others. The Paraclete, representing Christ, is he not an external source of revelation?” Innumerable little books spread these chimeras to a distance. Good people who read these found them finer than the Bible. The new exercises appeared to them superior to the charismas of the 77


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Apostles, and many dared to say that something greater than Jesus had appeared. All Phrygia became nearly mad; ordinary ecclesiastical life was as if suspended.

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A life of lofty asceticism was the consequence of this burning faith in the approaching advent of God to the earth. The prayers of the saints at Phrygia were unceasing. They wore from affectation a sad air, and they were very bigoted. Their habit of holding the index finger against the nose while in prayer, to give themselves a contrite appearance, obtained for them the nickname of “nose-pegs” (in Phrygian tascodrugites). Fasts, austerities, rigorous xerophagy, abstinence from wine, absolute reprobation of marriage, such was the morale which logically imposed itself on these pious people in retreat in the hope of the last day. Even for the Supper they only used, like certain Ebionites, bread and water, cheese and salt. Austere disciplines are always contagious in crowds incapable of high spirituality; for they bring certain salvation at a good price, and they are easy for simple people (who have only good intentions) to practise. On all sides these habits spread about; they penetrated even into Gaul with the Asiatics, who numbered so many adherents in the valley of the Rhone. One of the Lyons martyrs in 177 showed himself attached to them even in prison, and it required either good Gallic sense or, as one may believe, a direct revelation from God, to make him renounce them. What was most troublesome, indeed, in the excesses of zeal of these ardent ascetics was that they showed themselves intractable against all those who did not share their affectations. They spoke only of the general falling away. Like the flagellants of the middle ages, they found in their exterior practices a principle of foolish pride and rebellion against the clergy. They dared to say that, since Jesus, at least since the Apostles, the Church had lost its time, and that it only required a little time to sanctify humanity and to prepare it for the Messianic reign. The Church of the whole world, according to them, was no better than Pagan society. It sought to form within the general church a spiritual church, a nucleus of saints, of which Pepuza should be the centre. These elect ones showed themselves supercilious towards the simple believers. Themison declared that the Catholic Church had lost all its glory, and obeyed Satan. A church of saints, that was their ideal, very little different from that of the pseudo-Hermas. He who is not a saint does not belong to the Church. The Church, they said, is the totality of saints, not the number of bishops.

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Nothing was further, it may be seen, from the idea of Catholicity, whose tendency was prevalent and whose essence consisted in opening the doors to all. The Catholics took the Church as it was, with its imperfections; one could not, according to them, be a sinner without ceasing to be a Christian. As to the Montanists, these two terms were irreconcilable. The Church should be as chaste as a virgin; the sinner is excluded from it by his very sin, and loses from that time all hope of re-entering it. The absolution of the Church is of no value. Holy things ought to be administered by the saints. The bishops have no privilege in what concerns spiritual gifts. Only the prophets, organs of the Spirit, can assure that God forgives.

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Thanks to the extraordinary manifestations of an external and barely discreet pietism, Pepuza and Tynium became indeed a kind of holy towns. They were called Jerusalem, and the sectaries wished them to be the centre of the world. People came there from all directions, and many maintained that, conformably to the prediction of Priscilla, the ideal Sion was already created. Was not ecstasy the provisional realisation of the kingdom of God, begun by Jesus? Women quitted their husbands, as if at the end of human affairs. Every day they believed they should see the clouds open and the New Jerusalem appear in the blue heavens.

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The orthodox, and especially the clergy, sought naturally to prove that the attraction which drew these Puritans to eternal things did not detach them altogether from the world. The sect had a central treasury for their propaganda. Collectors went out in all directions to seek offerings. The preachers received a salary; the prophetesses, in return for interviews they gave or audiences they vouchsafed, received money, dresses, and handsome presents. We can see what a handle this would give against the pretended saints. They had their confession and their martyrs, and this was what annoyed the orthodox most; for these would have desired that martyrdom should be considered the criterion of the true Church. Thus they spread slanders to lessen the merits of those sectarian martyrs. Themison having been arrested escaped, this being followed up by the payment of money. One Alexander was also imprisoned, and the orthodox had no peace till he was represented as a thief who perfectly deserved his lot, and had a judicial sentence against him in the archives of the province of Asia.

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CHAPTER XIV. RESISTANCE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH.

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THE struggle lasted more than half a century; but the victory was never doubtful. The Phrygians, as they were called, had but one fault; it was grave; it was to do what the apostles did; and that when, for a hundred years back, the freedom of the charismas had been nothing but an inconvenience. The Church was already too strongly constituted for the undisciplined character of the Phrygians to do her real harm. While admiring the saints who produced this grand school of asceticism, the immense majority of the faithful refused to leave their pastors to follow wandering masters. Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla died without leaving any successors. What assured the triumph of the orthodox Church was the talent of its polemics. Apollinaris of Hierapolis led all who were not blinded by fanaticism. Miltiades developed the theory that “a prophet ought not to speak in ecstasy of a book which was held to be one of the bases of Christian theology.” Serapion of Antioch collected, about 195, the evidences which condemned the innovators. Clement of Alexandria betook himself to refute them. The most complete among the works which kept up the controversy was that of a certain Apollonius, unknown elsewhere, who wrote forty years after the appearance of Montanus (that is to say between 200 and 400). It is by extracts from this that Eusebius has preserved to us what we know of the origins of the sect. Another bishop, whose name has not been preserved to us, composed a kind of history of this singular movement, fifteen years after the death of Maximilla, under the Severuses. To the same literature probably belongs the writing of which the fragment known under the name of the Canon of Muratori makes a part, directed at the same time, it would appear, against the Gnostic dreams. The Montanists, indeed, could not look for less than to have admitted to the body of the New Testament the prophecies of Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla. The conference which took place about 210 between Proclus, become the chief of the sect, and the Roman priest Caïus, turned on this point. Generally, the Church of Rome, up to Zephyrin, held very strongly against these innovations.

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Animosity was great on both sides; they excommunicated each other reciprocally. When the confessors of the two parties were drawn together by martyrdom, they separated from each other, and would have nothing in common. The orthodox redoubled calumnies and sophistries to prove that the Montanist martyrs (and no church had more) were all miscreants or impostors, and especially to establish that the authors of this sect had perished miserably, by suicide, as madmen, out of their minds, having become the dupes or the prey of the devil. The infatuation of certain towns in Asia Minor for these pious follies knew no bounds. The Church of Ancyra, at a special moment, was quite drawn with its elders towards the dangerous

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novelties. It needed the close reasoning of the nameless bishop and of Zoticus of Otre to open their eyes, and even their conversion was not lasting. Ancyra, in the fourth century, continued to be the scene of the same aberrations. The Church of Thyatira was attacked in a still deeper manner. Phrygianism had established its stronghold there, and for a long time this old church was considered lost to Christendom. The councils of Iconium and of Synnade, about 231, realised the evil without being able to cure it. The extreme credulity of these honest populations of the centre of Asia Minor, Phrygians, Galatians, &c., had been the cause of their prompt conversion to Christianity, and now this credulity placed them at the mercy of all illusions. Phrygian became nearly synonymous with heretic. About 235, a new prophetess rose from the fields of Cappadocia, going with naked feet among the mountains, announcing the end of the world, administering the sacraments and desiring to draw her disciples to Jerusalem. Under Decius, the Montanists furnished a considerable contingent to martyrdom.

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We shall see the perplexity of conscience which the sectaries of Phrygia will cause to the confessors of Lyons, in the very height of their struggle. Divided between admiration for so much holiness and the astonishment which these oddities caused to their right minds, our heroic and sensible compatriots tried in vain to stifle the discussion. For a moment even the Church of Rome was surprised. Bishop Zephyrin had already almost recognised the prophecies of Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla, when an ardent Asian, a confessor of the faith, Epigones, called Praxeas, who knew the sectaries better than the elders at Rome, unveiled the weaknesses of the pretended prophets, and showed the pope that he could not approve of these dreams without giving the lie to his predecessors who had condemned them. The debate complicated the question of penitence and reconciliation. The bishops claimed the right to absolve, and used it with a freedom which offended the Puritans. The illuminated pretended that they alone could replace the soul into favour with God, and they showed themselves as very severe. Every mortal sin (homicide, idolatry, blasphemy, adultery, fornication) shut, according to them, the avenue to repentance. If these extraordinary principles had remained confined in the remote provinces of Catacecaumena, the evil would have been a small matter. Unfortunately, the little sect of Phrygia served as the nucleus to a considerable party, who presented some real dangers, since it was capable of drawing away from the orthodox Church its most illustrious apologist, Tertullian.

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This party, which dreamed of an immaculate Church, and only obtained a strict conventicle, succeeded, in spite of its very exaggerations, in recruiting from the Church all the austere and excessive. It had so much of the logic of Christianity. We have already seen the same thing happen in the case of the Encratites and Tatian. With its unnatural abstinences, its disesteem of marriage, its condemnation of second marriage, Montanism was nothing else than a consequent millenarianism, and millenarianism was Christianity itself. “Who would mix up,” said Tertullian, “cares of nurselings with the last judgment? It will be beautiful to see flowing bosoms, the nauseas of an accouched

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woman, and squalling brats mingled with the appearance of the Judge and the sounds of the trumpet. Oh! good, wise women—the executioners of the Antichrist!” The enthusiasts related how, during forty years, they had seen every morning, hanging in the sky in Judea, a city which vanished when one drew near it. They invoked, to prove the reality of this vision, the evidence of the Pagans, and each one imagined the delights he should enjoy in this heavenly dwelling as compensation for the sacrifices he had made here below.

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Africa especially, by its ardour and harshness, fell into this snare. Montanists, Novatianists, Donatists, innumerable are the different names under which was produced the spirit of undiscipline, the unhealthy ardour of the martyr, hatred to the Episcopate, millenarian dreams, which always were classic ground to the Berber races. These rigorists who revolted against being called a sect, but who in every church gave themselves out as the elect, as Christian souls worthy of that name, these Puritans, implacable towards those who wished to repent, became the worst scourge of Christianity. Tertullian treats the general church as a cave of adulterers and prostitutes. The bishops, not having either the gift of prophecy nor of miracles, would, in the eyes of the enthusiasts, be lower than pneumatics. It is by them, and not by the official hierarchy, that the transmission of the sacramental graces, the movement of the Church and progress are accomplished. The true Christian, only living in prospect of the last judgment and of martyrdom, passes his life in contemplation. Not only should he not flee from persecution, but he is commanded to seek it. He must prepare without ceasing for martyrdom as for a necessary complement of the Christian life. The natural end of the Christian is to die in torture. An unbridled credulousness, a faith to the uttermost in the spiritualistic charismas, made of Montanism one of the most extraordinary types of fanaticism which the history of humanity records. What it has of weight about it is that this frightful dream seduced the imagination of the only man of grand literary talent whom the Church had counted in its bosom for three centuries. An incorrect writer, but with a strong energy, an ardent sophist, wielding by turns irony, blame, the lowest triviality, the plaything of an ardent conviction even in his most manifest contradictions, Tertullian found means to give some chefs d’œuvres to the half-dead Latin tongue, by applying to this wild idea an eloquence which had hitherto remained unknown to the ascetic bigots of Phrygia. The victory of the Episcopate was, in these circumstances, the victory of leniency and humanity. With rare good sense the general church looked on the exaggerated abstinences as a sort of partial anathema cast on the creation and as an injury to the work of God. The question of the admission of women to ecclesiastical functions and to the administration of the sacraments, a question that certain precedents of the apostolic history left undecided, were determined for ever. The bold pretence of the sectaries of Phrygia to insert some new prophecies into the biblical canon led the Church to declare, more distinctly than she had ever done before, the New Bible closed for ever. Finally the rash seeking for martyrdom became a sort of offence, and alongside the legend which

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exalted the true martyr there was the legend intended to show that he was culpable who anticipated penalties, and infringed without being compelled the laws of his country. 132

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The flock of believers, necessarily of average virtue, followed the pastors. Mediocrity founded authority. Catholicity began. For it the future! The principle of a kind of Christian yoguism is suppressed for a time. There was here the first victory of the Episcopate, and perhaps the most important; for it was obtained over a sincere piety. The ecstasies, the prophecy, the speaking with tongues had texts and history for them. But they had become a danger; the Episcopate put them in good order; it suppressed all these manifestations of individual faith. How far are we from the time so much admired by the author of the Acts? Already in the bosom of Christianity existed this party of moderate good sense, who have always gained in the struggles of Church history. The hierarchical authority, at its origin, was strong enough to quell the enthusiasm of the undisciplined, to put the laity into guardianship, and to cause this principle to triumph, that the bishops alone are concerned in theology and are the sole judges of revelations. It was, indeed, the death of Christianity, by the destruction of the Episcopate, which these good fools of Phrygia devised. If individual inspiration, the doctrine of individual revelation and of its change as to permanence had been carried, Christianity would have perished in little conventicles of epileptics! Those puerile macerations which could not be suitable for the wide world would have arrested the propaganda. All the faithful, having the same right to the priesthood, to spiritual gifts, and power to administer the sacraments, would have fallen into a complete anarchy. The charisma would have abolished the sacrament; the sacrament gained the day, and the foundation-stone of Catholicism was irrevocably established. In fact, the triumph of the ecclesiastical hierarchy was complete. Under Callixtus (217-222) moderate maxims prevailed in the Church of Rome, to the great scandal of the rigorists, who revenged themselves by atrocious calumnies. The council of Iconium closed the debate for the Church without bringing back the wanderers. The sect died, but very slowly; it continued up to the fourth century in the condition of Christian democracy, especially in Asia Minor, under the names of Phrygians, Phrygasts, Cataphryges, Pepuzians, Tascodrugites, Quintellians, Priscillians, and Artotyrites. They called themselves the pure ones or spiritualists. For some centuries Phrygia and Galatia were devoured by certain pietistic and Gnostic heresies, dreaming of clouds and angels and Æons. Pepuza was destroyed; we do not know in what circumstances or at what date, but the district remained sacred. This desert became a place of pilgrimage. The initiated gathered from all Asia Minor and celebrated there secret worship, as to which popular rumour had fine scope for exercise. They affirmed positively that it was there the celestial vision was to be revealed. They remained there for days and nights in a mystic waiting, and at the end of that time they saw Christ personally coming to respond to the ardour which consumed them.

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CHAPTER XV. COMPLETE TRIUMPH OF THE EPISCOPATE—RESULTS ON MONTANISM.

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THUS, thanks to the Episcopate, reputed representative of the tradition of the twelve apostles, the Church wrought out, without weakening herself, the most difficult of transformations. She passed from the conventual state, if I may say so, to the laic condition—from the condition of a little chapel of visionaries to the state of the Church opened to all, and, consequently, exposed to imperfections. What seemed destined never to be anything but a dream of fanatics had become a durable religion. To become a Christian, whatever Hermas and the Montanists said, one doesn’t need to be a saint. Obedience to ecclesiastical authority is now what makes the Christian, much more than spiritual gifts. These spiritual gifts shall be even suspected henceforth, and shall frequently expose the most favoured by grace to become heretics. Schism is the ecclesiastical crime par excellence. For dogma, again, the Christian Church possessed already a centre of orthodoxy which called heresy everything that leaves the received type; it had also an average morality which could be that of all the world, and not draw people forcibly, as that of the abstinents did, to the end of the world. In repulsing the Gnostics the Church had repulsed the refinements of dogma; in rejecting the Montanists it rejected the refinements of holiness. The excesses of those who dreamed of a spiritual church, a transcendant perfection, struck against common sense and the established Church. The masses, already considerable, who entered the Church and constituted the majority, brought down the moral temperature to the lowest possible level. In politics the question was in the same position. The exaggerations of the Montanists, their furious declamations against the Roman Empire, their hatred against Pagan society, could not be the act of everyone. The empire of Marcus-Aurelius was very different from that of Nero. With him there had been no reconciliation to hope for; with the former, one might expect it. The Church and Marcus-Aurelius pursued, in many points of view, the same end. It is clear that the bishops would have abandoned to the secular arm all the saints of Phrygia, if such a sacrifice had been the price of the alliance which would have put into their hands the spiritual direction of the world. Charismas, indeed, and other supernatural exercises, excellent for maintaining the fervour of little congregations of the illuminated, became impracticable in the large churches. Extreme severity as to the rules of penitence was an absurdity and a meaningless thing, if one aspired to nothing else than a conventicle of so-called pure ones. A people is never made up of the spotless, and the simple believer needed to be admitted to repentance more than once. It was therefore admitted that one might be a member of the Church without being either a hero or an ascetic; it was sufficient for this that one was submissive to his bishop. The saints implored; the struggle between individual holiness and that of the hierarchy is not finished yet, but the middle view shall gain; it will be possible to sin without ceasing to be a Christian. The hierarchy shall prefer even the sinner who

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employs the ordinary means of reconciliation to the proud ascetic who justifies himself, or who believes that he has no need of justification.

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It never will be given to either of these two principles to annihilate the other. Alongside the Church of all there will be the Church of the saints; alongside of the age there will be the convent; alongside the simple believer there will be the “religious.” The kingdom of God, such as Jesus has preached it, being impossible in the world as it is, and the world being determined not to change, what must be done then, if not to found little kingdoms of God, a kind of islets in an irremediably perverse ocean, where the application of the Gospel is made to the letter, and where that distinction between precepts and some counsels which serve, in the worldly Church, as a valve to escape from impossibilities? The religious life is one in some sort logically necessary in Christianity. A grand organism finds it the means of developing all that exists in its bosom in germ. The ideal of perfection which lies at the base of the Galilean preaching of Jesus, and which some true disciples always will determinedly maintain, cannot exist in the world; it is needful, therefore, to create, that this idea may be realisable, some enclosed worlds, monasteries, where poverty, self-denial and reciprocal correction, obedience and chastity should be rigorously practised. The Gospel is really rather the Enchiridion of a convent than a code of morality; it is the essential rule of all monastic order; the perfect Christian is a monk; the monk is consequently a Christian; the convent is the place where the Gospel, always Utopian elsewhere, becomes a reality. The code which claims to teach the imitation of Jesus Christ is a book for the cloister. Satisfied to know that the morality preached by Jesus is practised somewhere, the laity will console itself with its mundane connections, and will easily become used to believe that such lofty maxims are not made for it. Buddhism has resolved the question in another way. Every one is a monk there a part of his life. Christianity is content if it has some part in the places where true Christianity is practised; the Buddhist is content provided that at one point of his life he has been a perfect Buddhist. Montanism was an exaggeration; it could not but perish. But, like all exaggerations, it left deep traces. The Roman Christian was in part its work. Its two great enthusiasms, chastity and martyrdom, remained the two fundamental elements of Christian literature. It was Montanism which invented this strange association of ideas, created the martyr Virgin, and, introducing the female charm into the most gloomy accounts of sufferings, inaugurated that bizarre literature from which Christian imagination to the beginning of the fourth century could not release itself. The Montanist Acts of St. Perpetua and the martyrs of Africa, breathing forth their faith in charismas, full of an extreme rigorism and a burning ardour, impregnated with a strong savour of slave love, mixing the finished images of a skilful æsthetic with the most fanatical dreams, opened the series of these works of austere voluptuousness. The search for martyrdom became a fever impossible to govern. The circumcellious, running through the country in mad bands seeking death, forcing people to martyr them, making this access of gloomy hysteria become an epidemic.

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Chastity in marriage remained one of the bases in the interest of Roman Christians. Now there was there another Montanist idea. Like the false Hermas, the Montanists stirred unceasingly the dangerous ember which they might well have allowed to sleep with its concealed fires, but that it was imprudent to extinguish it violently. The precautions they took in this matter evidence a certain preoccupation, more lascivious at bottom than the liberty of the man of the world; in any case these precautions are such as aggravate the evil, or at least betray it, bringing it to life. An excessive tenderness in regard to temptation we must gather from this exaggerated apprehension of beauty, from those interdicts against the toilette of women and especially on dressing their hair, which are found in every page of the Montanist writings. The woman who, by the most innocent turn given to her hair, seeks to please and conveys the conviction that she is pretty, becomes, in the speech of these bitter sectaries, as culpable as she who excites to lewdness. The demon of the hair will be charged with her punishment. Aversion to marriage came from motives which must be sought for there. The pretended chastity of the Encratites was often only an unconscious deception. A romance which was certainly of Montanist origin, since we find in it arguments to prove that women have the right to instruct and to administer the sacraments, turns entirely on this rather dangerous ambiguity. We speak of Thécla. However rough and provoking is the romance of the saints Nerea and Achilea, nothing could be more voluptuously chaste; marriage has never been treated with a more naïve immodesty. Let one read in Gregory of Tours the delicious legend of the “Two Lovers of Auvergne,” in the Acts of John the piquant story of “Drusiana,” in the Acts of Thomas the tale of “The Betrothed Spouses of India,” in St. Ambrose the story of the Virgin of Antioch with the adulterer; and then one can understand how the ages which nourished such recitals can, without merit, be described as having renounced profane love. One of the mysteries most profoundly held by the founders of Christianity is that chastity is a pleasure, and that modesty is one of the forms of love. The people who are afraid of women are generally those who love them most. How often may it be said with justice to the ascetic: Fallit te incautum pietas tua. In certain portions of the Christian community there was seen appearing, at different times, the idea that women ought never to be seen, that the life which befits them is a life of seclusion, according to the habit which has prevailed in the Mussulman East. It is easy to see to what a degree, if such a thought had prevailed, the character of the Church would have been changed. What, in fact, distinguishes the church from the mosque and even from the synagogue is, that the woman enters freely there and on the same footing as the man, although separated or even veiled. It appears as if their Christianity would have been, as Islamism was later on, a religion for men, from which the woman is almost altogether excluded. The Catholic Church took care not to commit this fault. Women had the functions of the diaconate in the Church, and were engaged in it with man in subordinate but frequent affairs. Baptism, the eucharistic communion, and works of charity took them apart from the customs of the East. Here again the Catholic Church formed the medium among the exaggerations of the different sects with a rare sense of tact.

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Thus is explained that singular mixture of timid modesty and soft abandon which characterise moral sentiment in the primitive churches. Away with the vile suspicions of vulgar debauches, incapable of understanding such innocence! Everything was pure in these holy freedoms; but it was necessary also to be pure to be able to enjoy it. Legend shows us the Pagans jealous of the privilege which the priest has of perceiving one moment in baptismal nudity her who, by the holy immersion, becomes his spiritual sister. What should be said of the “holy kiss” which was the ambrosia of these chaste generations, of that kiss which, like the consolamentum of the Cathares, was a sacrament of strength and love, and whose remembrance, mingled with the most solemn impressions of the Eucharistic act, was sufficient for days to fill the soul with a kind of perfume? Why was the Church so beloved, that to re-enter it when they had left it men went anticipating death? Because it was a school of infinite joys. Jesus was really in the midst of his own. More than a hundred years after his death, he was still the master of learned pleasures, the initiator into transcendant secrets.

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CHAPTER XVI. MARCUS-AURELIUS AMONG THE QUADES—THE BOOK OF THOUGHTS. TOO little concerned about what passed in the rest of the world, the government of Marcus-Aurelius seemed to exist only for home progress. The only great organised empire which touched the Roman frontier, that of the Parthians, yielded before the legions. Lucius Verus and Aridius Cassius conquered some provinces which Trajan had only shortly occupied: Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Adiabene. The real danger was beyond the Rhine and the Danube. There lived in a threatening obscurity some energetic people, for the most part Germans in race, whom the Romans scarcely knew save by the handsome and faithful body-guard (the Swiss of that age), which certain emperors loved to keep, or by the superb gladiators who, unveiling all at once in the amphitheatre the beauty of their naked forms, called forth the intense admiration of the audience. 141

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To conquer step by step this impenetrable world, to make the limits of civilisation extend league after league: to establish itself strongly in Bohemia, in the central quadrilateral of Europe, where there might still be a considerable nucleus of Celtic Boïans; from thence to advance like the backwoodsman of America to destroy tree after tree of the Hercynian forest, to substitute colonies for these tribes without association with the soil, to fix and civilise those peoples full of a future, to cause the empire to be benefited by their rare qualities, their solidity, their corporeal force, their energy; to extend the true frontiers of the empire, on one side to the Oder or the Vistula, on the other to the Pruth or the Dneister, and to give thus to the Latin portion of the empire a decided preponderance, which should prevent the schism of the Greek or Oriental portion; instead of building that fatal Constantinople, to place the second capital at Bâle or Constance, and to secure thus for the great good of the empire to the Celto-German peoples, the political beginning which they might conquer later on upon the ruins of the empire—this would have been the programme of the enlightened Romans, if they had been better informed as to the state of Europe and Asia, geography and comparative ethnography. The badly-arranged expedition of Varus (year 10 of J. C.) and the eternal breach it left in the number of the legions were like a fan which turned Roman thought from the great Germany. Tacitus alone saw the importance of this region as the equilibrium of the world. But the state of division in which the Germanic tribes were, lulled to sleep the disquietude which sagacious minds ought to have felt. Indeed, while those people, more concerned with local independence than centralisation, did not form a military aggregation, they gave little cause for fear. But their confederations were very great. Men knew what result that had which was formed in the third century on the right bank of the Rhone under the name of France. About the year 166, a powerful league was formed in Bohemia, Moravia and the north of the present Hungary. The names of a multitude of nations, which were later on to fill the world, were heard for the first time. The great advance of the barbarians 88


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commenced; the Germans, up till now unassailable, attacked. The banks of the Danube were burst in the region of Austria and Hungary, towards Presbourg, Comorn and Gran. All the German and Slav peoples, from France to the Danube, Marcomans, Quades, Narisques, Hermunduri, Suevi, Sarmatians, Victovales, Roxolans, Bastarnes, Costoboques, Alaris, Pencins, Vandals and Jazyges, assembled with one accord to force the frontier and inundate the empire. Pressure came from the farthest point. Reinforced by some septentrional barbarians, probably the Goths, the whole Slav and Germanic mass appeared in motion; these barbarians, with their wives and children, wished to be received into the empire, seeking for some land and money, offering in return their arms for any kind of military service. It was a veritable human cataclysm. The line of the Danube was broken. The Vandals and Marcomans established themselves in Pannonia; Dacia was trampled over by twenty peoples; the Costoboques advanced as far as Greece; Rhetia and Norica were overrun; the Marcomans crossed the Julian Alps, took up their position before Aquiba, pillaging everything up to Pavia. Before this fearful shock the Roman army yielded; the number of captives taken by the barbarians was enormous; the alarm was great in Italy; it was declared that, since the tithe of the Carthaginian wars, Rome had never had to meet such a furious attack. 143

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It is a well-authenticated truth that the philosophical progress of the laws does not correspond always to a progress in the power of the State. War is a brutal thing; it has brutal desires; often it thus happens that moral and social improvements bring with them military weakness. The army is a remnant of barbarism, which the man of progress preserves as a necessary evil; and it is rarely that one does with success what is done as a last shift. Antoninus had already a strong dislike to the use of arms; under his reign the manners of the field were much softened. One cannot deny that the Roman army had not lost, under Marcus-Aurelius, a part of its discipline and vigour. Recruiting had become difficult; the replacing and enrolment of the barbarians had entirely changed the character of the legion; doubtless Christianity had already drained the best of the State’s strength. When one thinks that by the side of this decrepitude there were acting bands of men without country, engaged in the working of the ground, not caring but to kill, seeking nothing but war, should this be even against their own relatives, it was clear that a great substitution of races would ensue. Civilised humanity had not as yet so subdued evil as to be able to abandon itself to the dream of progress through peace and morality. Marcus-Aurelius, before this colossal assault of the whole barbarian world, was truly admirable. He did not like war, and never engaged in it but against his desire; but when he did it, he did it thoroughly; he made a great captain through duty. A terrific pestilence was joined to the war. Thus tried, Roman society appealed to all its traditions and rites; and there was, as is common in the time of such a scourge, a reaction in favour of the national religion. Marcus-Aurelius lent himself to this. We see the good emperor presiding himself in his quality as grand pontiff at the sacrifices, taking the blade of a javelin in the temple of Mars, plunging it into the blood, and throwing it towards the direction of heaven in which the enemy was. Everybody was armed, slaves, gladiators,

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bandits, diogmites (police agents); some German troops were levied against the Germans; money was coined out of precious objects in the imperial property, to save the establishment of new taxes. The life of Marcus-Aurelius was henceforth almost entirely passed in the region of the Danube at Carnoute, near Vienna, or at Vienna itself upon the banks of the Gran in Hungary, sometimes at Sirmium. His ennui was tremendous; but he knew how to conquer it. Those tasteless campaigns against the Quades and the Marcomans were very well conducted; the disgust he felt for them did not prevent him from putting into them the most conscientious application. The army loved him, and did its duty thoroughly. Moderate even towards his enemies, he preferred a plan of campaign long but sure to dashing blows; he delivered Pannonia completely, repulsed all the barbarians on the left bank of the Danube, made even great points beyond that river, and prudently practised the tactics, which have been abused at a later day, of opposing barbarians to barbarians.

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Paternal and philosophic towards these hordes of half-savages, he was determined, out of respect to himself, to preserve towards them considerations which they could not understand, in the same way as a gentleman who, by force of his own personal dignity, behaves towards Red-skins as to well-educated people. He preached artlessly to them of reason and justice, and he finished by inspiring them with respect. Perhaps, but for the revolt of Aridius Cassius, he would have succeeded in making a province of Marcomania (Bohemia), another of Sarmatia (Galicia), and so have saved the future. He admitted the German soldiers to his legions on a large scale; he gave lands in Dacia, Pannonia, and Media, in Roman Germany, to those who wished to work, but maintained very firmly the military boundary, established a rigorous police on the Danube, and did not allow the prestige of the empire to suffer a single time from the concessions which policy and humanity drew from him. It was in the course of one of these expeditions that, encamped on the banks of the Gran, in the midst of the monotonous plains of Hungary, he wrote the finest pages of the exquisite work which has revealed his whole soul. What cost Marcus-Aurelius most in these distant wars was his being deprived of the ordinary society of learned men and philosophers. Nearly all had drawn back before the fatigues, and remained at Rome. Occupied the whole day in military exercises, he passed the evenings in his tent alone with himself. There he disembarrassed himself of all the constraint which his duties imposed on him; he made his examination of his conscience, and thought of the nobleness of the struggle he so valiantly maintained. Sceptical as to war, even while he made it, and diving into the contemplation of universal vanity, he doubts the lawfulness of his own victories: “The spider is proud when it seizes a fly,” he wrote; “another is proud when he takes a leveret; a third when he takes a pilchard; another when he takes a wild boar; and another still when he takes some Sarmatians. Looked at from real principles they are brigands.” The Conversations of Epictetes, by Arrien, was the favourite book of the emperor; he read these with delight, and, without intending it, he was led to imitate them. Such was the origin of these detached thoughts, forming twelve books, which were collected after his death under the title of On the subject of Himself.

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It is probable that for a good while Marcus kept a journal special to his mental condition. He wrote there in Greek the maxims to which he betook himself for strength, reminiscences of his favourite authors, passages from the moralists who struck him most, the principles which during the day had sustained him, sometimes reproaches which his scrupulous conscience thought should be addressed to himself. “We seek for solitary retreats, rustic cottages, the sea shore, mountains; like others, thou lovest to dream of all this. What childishness,

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