History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne Volume I Part 9

It has been supported not merely as a right, but also as a duty. It has been advocated in a whole literature of theology, by the cla.s.ses that are especially devout, and by the most opposing sects, and it has invariably declined in conjunction with a large portion of theological dogmas.

I have elsewhere examined in great detail the history of persecutions by Christians, and have endeavoured to show that, while exceptional causes have undoubtedly occasionally occurred, they were, in the overwhelming majority of cases, simply the natural, legitimate, and inevitable consequence of a certain portion of the received theology. That portion is the doctrine that correct theological opinions are essential to salvation, and that theological error necessarily involves guilt. To these two opinions may be distinctly traced almost all the sufferings that Christian persecutors have caused, almost all the obstructions they have thrown in the path of human progress; and those sufferings have been so grievous that it may be reasonably questioned whether superst.i.tion has not often proved a greater curse than vice, and that obstruction was so pertinacious, that the contraction of theological influence has been at once the best measure, and the essential condition of intellectual advance. The notion that he might himself be possibly mistaken in his opinions, which alone could cause a man who was thoroughly imbued with these principles to shrink from persecuting, was excluded by the theological virtue of faith, which, whatever else it might involve, implied at least an absolute unbroken certainty, and led the devotee to regard all doubt, and therefore all action based upon doubt, as sin.

To this general cause of Christian persecution I have shown that two subsidiary influences may be joined. A large portion of theological ethics was derived from writings in which religious ma.s.sacres, on the whole the most ruthless and sanguinary upon record, were said to have been directly enjoined by the Deity, in which the duty of suppressing idolatry by force was given a greater prominence than any article of the moral code, and in which the spirit of intolerance has found its most eloquent and most pa.s.sionate expressions.(746) Besides this, the destiny theologians represented as awaiting the misbeliever was so ghastly and so appalling as to render it almost childish to lay any stress upon the earthly suffering that might be inflicted in the extirpation of error.

That these are the true causes of the great bulk of Christian persecution, I believe to be one of the most certain as well as one of the most important facts in history. For the detailed proof I can only refer to what I have elsewhere written; but I may here notice that that proof combines every conceivable kind of evidence that in such a question can be demanded. It can be shown that these principles would naturally lead men to persecute. It can be shown that from the time of Constantine to the time when the rationalistic spirit wrested the bloodstained sword from the priestly hand, persecution was uniformly defended upon them-defended in long, learned, and elaborate treatises, by the best and greatest men the Church had produced, by sects that differed on almost all other points, by mult.i.tudes who proved in every conceivable manner the purity of their zeal. It can be shown, too, that toleration began with the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental doctrines, expanded in exact proportion to the growing lat.i.tudinarianism, and triumphed only when indifference to dogma had become a prevailing sentiment among legislators.

It was only when the battle had been won-when the anti-dogmatic party, acting in opposition to the Church, had rendered persecution impossible-that the great body of theologians revised their arguments, and discovered that to punish men for their opinions was wholly at variance with their faith. With the merits of this pleasing though somewhat tardy conversion I am not now concerned; but few persons, I think, can follow the history of Christian persecution without a feeling of extreme astonishment that some modern writers, not content with maintaining that the doctrine of exclusive salvation _ought_ not to have produced persecution, have ventured, in defiance of the unanimous testimony of the theologians of so many centuries, to dispute the plain historical fact that it _did_ produce it. They argue that the Pagans, who did not believe in exclusive salvation, persecuted, and that therefore that doctrine cannot be the cause of persecution. The answer is that no sane man ever maintained that all the persecutions on record were from the same source.

We can prove by the clearest evidence that Christian persecutions sprang chiefly from the causes I have alleged. The causes of Pagan persecutions, though different, are equally manifest, and I shall proceed shortly to indicate them.

They were partly political and partly religious. The Governments in most of the ancient States, in the earlier stages of their existence, undertook the complete education of the people; professed to control and regulate all the details of their social life, even to the dresses they wore, or the dishes that were served upon their tables; and, in a word, to mould their whole lives and characters into a uniform type. Hence, all organisations and corporations not connected with the State, and especially all that emanated from foreign countries, were looked upon with distrust or antipathy. But this antipathy was greatly strengthened by a religious consideration. No belief was more deeply rooted in the ancient mind than that good or bad fortune sprang from the intervention of spiritual beings, and that to neglect the sacred rites was to bring down calamity upon the city. In the diminutive Greek States, where the function of the Government was immensely enlarged, a strong intolerance existed, which extended for some time not merely to practices, but to writings and discourses. The well-known persecutions of Anaxagoras, Theodorus, Diagoras, Stilpo, and Socrates; the laws of Plato, which were as opposed to religious as to domestic freedom; and the existence in Athens of an inquisitorial tribunal,(747) sufficiently attested it. But long before the final ruin of Greece, speculative liberty had been fully attained. The Epicurean and the Sceptical schools developed unmolested, and even in the days of Socrates, Aristophanes was able to ridicule the G.o.ds upon the stage.

In the earlier days of Rome religion was looked upon as a function of the State; its chief object was to make the G.o.ds auspicious to the national policy,(748) and its princ.i.p.al ceremonies were performed at the direct command of the Senate. The national theory on religious matters was that the best religion is always that of a man's own country. At the same time, the widest tolerance was granted to the religions of conquered nations.

The temples of every G.o.d were respected by the Roman army. Before besieging a city, the Romans were accustomed to supplicate the presiding deities of that city. With the single exception of the Druids, whose human sacrifices it was thought a matter of humanity to suppress,(749) and whose fierce rebellions it was thought necessary to crush, the teachers of all national religions continued unmolested by the conqueror.

This policy, however, applied specially to religious rites practised in the countries in which they were indigenous. The liberty to be granted to the vast confluence of strangers attracted to Italy during the Empire was another question. In the old Republican days, when the censors regulated with the most despotic authority the minutest affairs of life, and when the national religion was interwoven with every detail of political and even domestic transactions, but little liberty could be expected. When Carneades endeavoured to inculcate his universal scepticism upon the Romans, by arguing alternately for and against the same proposition, Cato immediately urged the Senate to expel him from the city, lest the people should be corrupted by his teaching.(750) For a similar reason all rhetoricians had been banished from the Republic.(751) The most remarkable, however, and at the same time the extreme expression of Roman intolerance that has descended to us, is the advice which Maecenas is represented as having given to Octavius Caesar, before his accession to the throne. "Always," he said, "and everywhere, wors.h.i.+p the G.o.ds according to the rites of your country, and compel others to the same wors.h.i.+p. Pursue with your hatred and with punishments those who introduce foreign religions, not only for the sake of the G.o.ds-the despisers of whom can a.s.suredly never do anything great-but also because they who introduce new divinities entice many to use foreign laws. Hence arise conspiracies, societies, and a.s.semblies, things very unsuited to an h.o.m.ogeneous empire.

Tolerate no despiser of the G.o.ds, and no religious juggler. Divination is necessary, and therefore let the aruspices and augurs by all means be sustained, and let those who will, consult them; but the magicians must be utterly prohibited, who, though they sometimes tell the truth, more frequently, by false promises, urge men on to conspiracies."(752)

This striking pa.s.sage exhibits very clearly the extent to which in some minds the intolerant spirit was carried in antiquity, and also the blending motives that produced it. We should be, however, widely mistaken if we regarded it as a picture of the actual religious policy of the Empire. In order to realise this, it will be necessary to notice separately liberty of speculation and liberty of wors.h.i.+p.

When Asinius Pollio founded the first public library in Rome, he placed it in the Temple of Liberty. The lesson which was thus taught to the literary cla.s.ses was never forgotten. It is probable that in no other period of the history of the world was speculative freedom so perfect as in the Roman Empire. The fearless scrutiny of all notions of popular belief, displayed in the writings of Cicero, Seneca, Lucretius, or Lucian, did not excite an effort of repression. Philosophers were, indeed, persecuted by Domitian and Vespasian for their ardent opposition to the despotism of the throne,(753) but on their own subjects they were wholly untrammelled. The Greek writers consoled themselves for the extinction of the independence of their country by the reflection that in the sphere of intellect the meddling policy of the Greek States was replaced by an absolute and a majestic freedom.(754) The fierceness of the opposition of sects faded beneath its influence. Of all the speculative conflicts of antiquity, that which most nearly approached the virulence of later theological controversies was probably that between the Stoics and the Epicureans; but it is well worthy of notice that some of the most emphatic testimonies to the moral goodness of Epicurus have come from the writings of his opponents.

But the policy of the Roman rulers towards religious rites was very different from, and would at first sight appear to be in direct opposition to, their policy towards opinions. An old law, which Cicero mentions, expressly forbade the introduction of new religions,(755) and in the Republican days and the earliest days of the Empire there are many instances of its being enforced. Thus, in A.U.C. 326, a severe drought having led men to seek help from new G.o.ds, the Senate charged the aediles to allow none but Roman deities to be wors.h.i.+pped.(756) Lutatius, soon after the first Punic war, was forbidden by the Senate to consult foreign G.o.ds, "because," said the historian, "it was deemed right the Republic should be administered according to the national auspices, and not according to those of other lands."(757) During the second Punic war, a severe edict of the Senate enjoined the suppression of certain recent innovations.(758) About A.U.C. 615 the praetor Hispalus exiled those who had introduced the wors.h.i.+p of the Sabasian Jupiter.(759) The rites of Bacchus, being accompanied by gross and scandalous obscenity, were suppressed, the consul, in a remarkable speech, calling upon the people to revive the religious policy of their ancestors.(760) The wors.h.i.+p of Isis and Serapis only gained its footing after a long struggle, and no small amount of persecution. The gross immorality it sometimes favoured, its wild and abject superst.i.tion, so thoroughly alien to the whole character of Roman life and tradition, and also the organisation of its priesthood, rendered it peculiarly obnoxious to the Government. When the first edict of suppression was issued, the people hesitated to destroy a temple which seemed so venerable in their eyes, and the consul aemilius Paulus dispelled their fears by seizing an axe and striking the first blow himself.(761) During the latter days of the Republic, edicts had commanded the destruction of the Egyptian temples. Octavius, however, in his younger days, favoured the new wors.h.i.+p, but, soon after, it was again suppressed.(762) Under Tiberius it had once more crept in; but the priests of Isis having enabled a patrician named Mundus to disguise himself as the G.o.d Anubis, and win the favours of a devout wors.h.i.+pper, the temple, by order of the emperor, was destroyed, the images were thrown into the Tiber, the priests were crucified, and the seducer was banished.(763) Under the same emperor four thousand persons were exiled to Sardinia, as affected with Jewish and Egyptian superst.i.tions. They were commissioned to repress robbers; but it was at the same time added, with a characteristic scorn, that if they died through the unhealthiness of the climate, it would be but a "small loss."(764)

These measures represent together a considerable amount of religious repression, but they were produced exclusively by notions of policy or discipline. They grew out of that intense national spirit which sacrificed every other interest to the State, and resisted every form of innovation, whether secular or religious, that could impair the unity of the national type, and dissolve the discipline which the predominance of the military spirit and the stern government of the Republic had formed. They were also, in some cases, the result of moral scandals. When, however, it became evident that the internal condition of the Republic was unsuited for the Empire, the rulers frankly acquiesced in the change, and from the time of Tiberius, with the single exception of the Christians, perfect liberty of wors.h.i.+p seems to have been granted to the professors of all religions in Rome.(765) The old law upon the subject was not revoked, but it was not generally enforced. Sometimes the new creeds were expressly authorised. Sometimes they were tacitly permitted. With a single exception, all the religions of the world raised their heads unmolested in the "Holy City."(766)

The liberty, however, of professing and practising a foreign wors.h.i.+p did not dispense the Roman from the obligation of performing also the sacrifices or other religious rites of his own land. It was here that whatever religious fanaticism mingled with Pagan persecutions was displayed. Eusebius tells us that religion was divided by the Romans into three parts-the mythology, or legends that had descended from the poets; the interpretations or theories by which the philosophers endeavoured to rationalise, filter, or explain away these legends; and the ritual or official religious observances. In the first two spheres perfect liberty was accorded, but the ritual was placed under the control of the Government, and was made a matter of compulsion.(767) In order to realise the strength of the feeling that supported it, we must remember that the mult.i.tude firmly believed that the prosperity and adversity of the Empire depended chiefly upon the zeal or indifference that was shown in conciliating the national divinities, and also that the philosophers, as I have noticed in the last chapter, for the most part not only practised, but warmly defended, the official observances. The love of truth in many forms was exhibited among the Pagan philosophers to a degree which has never been surpa.s.sed; but there was one form in which it was absolutely unknown. The belief that it is wrong for a man in religious matters to act a lie, to sanction by his presence and by his example what he regards as baseless superst.i.tions, had no place in the ethics of antiquity. The religious flexibility which polytheism had originally generated, the strong political feeling that pervaded all cla.s.ses, and also the manifest impossibility of making philosophy the creed of the ignorant, had rendered nearly universal among philosophers a state of feeling which is often exhibited, but rarely openly professed, among ourselves.(768) The religious opinions of men had but little influence on their religious practices, and the sceptic considered it not merely lawful, but a duty, to attend the observances of his country. No one did more to scatter the ancient superst.i.tions than Cicero, who was himself an augur, and who strongly a.s.serted the duty of complying with the national rites.(769) Seneca, having recounted in the most derisive terms the absurdities of the popular wors.h.i.+p, concludes his enumeration by declaring that "the sage will observe all these things, not as pleasing to the Divinities, but as commanded by the law," and that he should remember "that his wors.h.i.+p is due to custom, not to belief."(770) Epictetus, whose austere creed rises to the purest monotheism, teaches as a fundamental religious maxim that every man in his devotions should "conform to the customs of his country."(771) The Jews and Christians, who alone refused to do so, were the representatives of a moral principle that was unknown to the Pagan world.

It should be remembered, too, that the Oriental custom of deifying emperors having been introduced into Rome, to burn incense before their statues had become a kind of test of loyalty. This adoration does not, it is true, appear to have implied any particular article of belief, and it was probably regarded by most men as we regard the application of the term "Sacred Majesty" to a sovereign, and the custom of kneeling in his presence; but it was esteemed inconsistent with Christianity, and the conscientious refusal of the Christians to comply with it aroused a feeling resembling that which was long produced in Christendom by the refusal of Quakers to comply with the usages of courts.

The obligation to perform the sacred rites of an idolatrous wors.h.i.+p, if rigidly enforced, would have amounted, in the case of the Jews and the Christians, to a complete proscription. It does not, however, appear that the Jews were ever persecuted on this ground. They formed a large and influential colony in Rome. They retained undiminished, in the midst of the Pagan population, their exclusive habits, refusing not merely all religious communion, but most social intercourse with the idolaters, occupying a separate quarter of the city, and sedulously practising their distinctive rites. Tiberius, as we have seen, appears to have involved them in his proscription of Egyptian superst.i.tions; but they were usually perfectly unmolested, or were molested only when their riotous conduct had attracted the attention of the rulers. The Government was so far from compelling them to perform acts contrary to their religion, that Augustus expressly changed the day of the distribution of corn, in order that they might not be reduced to the alternative of forfeiting their share, or of breaking the Sabbath.(772)

It appears, then, that the old Republican intolerance had in the Empire been so modified as almost to have disappeared. The liberty of speculation and discussion was entirely unchecked. The liberty of practising foreign religious rites, though ostensibly limited by the law against unauthorised religions, was after Tiberius equally secure. The liberty of abstaining from the official national rites, though more precarious, was fully conceded to the Jews, whose jealousy of idolatry was in no degree inferior to that of the Christians. It remains, then, to examine what were the causes of the very exceptional fanaticism and animosity that were directed against the latter.

The first cause of the persecution of the Christians was the religious notion to which I have already referred. The belief that our world is governed by isolated acts of Divine intervention, and that, in consequence, every great calamity, whether physical, or military, or political, may be regarded as a punishment or a warning, was the basis of the whole religious system of antiquity.(773) In the days of the Republic every famine, pestilence, or drought was followed by a searching investigation of the sacred rites, to ascertain what irregularity or neglect had caused the Divine anger, and two instances are recorded in which vestal virgins were put to death because their unchast.i.ty was believed to have provoked a national calamity.(774) It might appear at first sight that the fanaticism which this belief would naturally produce would have been directed against the Jews as strongly as against the Christians; but a moment's reflection is sufficient to explain the difference. The Jewish religion was essentially conservative and unexpansive. Although, in the pa.s.sion for Oriental religions, many of the Romans had begun to practise its ceremonies, there was no spirit of proselytism in the sect; and it is probable that almost all who followed this religion, to the exclusion of others, were of Hebrew nationality. The Christians, on the other hand, were ardent missionaries; they were, for the most part, Romans who had thrown off the allegiance of their old G.o.ds, and their activity was so great that from a very early period the temples were in some districts almost deserted.(775) Besides this, the Jews simply abstained from and despised the religions around them. The Christians denounced them as the wors.h.i.+p of daemons, and lost no opportunity of insulting them. It is not, therefore, surprising that the populace should have been firmly convinced that every great catastrophe that occurred was due to the presence of the enemies of the G.o.ds. "If the Tiber ascends to the walls," says Tertullian, "or if the Nile does not overflow the fields, if the heaven refuses its rain, if the earth quakes, if famine and pestilence desolate the land, immediately the cry is raised, 'The Christians to the lions!' "(776) "There is no rain-the Christians are the cause," had become a popular proverb in Rome.(777) Earthquakes, which, on account of their peculiarly appalling, and, to ignorant men, mysterious nature, have played a very large part in the history of superst.i.tion, were frequent and terrible in the Asiatic provinces, and in three or four instances the persecution of the Christians may be distinctly traced to the fanaticism they produced.

There is no part of ecclesiastical history more curious than the effects of this belief in alternately a.s.sisting or impeding the progress of different Churches. In the first three centuries of Christian history, it was the cause of fearful sufferings to the faith; but even then the Christians usually accepted the theory of their adversaries, though they differed concerning its application. Tertullian and Cyprian strongly maintained, sometimes that the calamities were due to the anger of the Almighty against idolatry, sometimes that they were intended to avenge the persecution of the truth. A collection was early made of men who, having been hostile to the Christian faith, had died by some horrible death, and their deaths were p.r.o.nounced to be Divine punishments.(778) The victory which established the power of the first Christian emperor, and the sudden death of Arius, were afterwards accepted as decisive proofs of the truth of Christianity, and of the falsehood of Arianism.(779) But soon the manifest signs of the dissolution of the Empire revived the zeal of the Pagans, who began to reproach themselves for their ingrat.i.tude to their old G.o.ds, and who recognised in the calamities of their country the vengeance of an insulted Heaven. When the altar of Victory was removed contemptuously from the Senate, when the sacred college of the vestals was suppressed, when, above all, the armies of Alaric encircled the Imperial city, angry murmurs arose which disturbed the Christians in their triumph.

The standing-point of the theologians was then somewhat altered. St.

Ambrose dissected with the most unsparing rationalism the theory that ascribed the national decline to the suppression of the vestals, traced it to all its consequences, and exposed all its absurdities. Orosius wrote his history to prove that great misfortunes had befallen the Empire before its conversion. Salvian wrote his treatise on Providence to prove that the barbarian invasions were a Divine judgment on the immorality of the Christians. St. Augustine concentrated all his genius on a great work, written under the impression of the invasion of Alaric, and intended to prove that "the city of G.o.d" was not on earth, and that the downfall of the Empire need therefore cause no disquietude to the Christians. St.

Gregory the Great continually represented the calamities of Italy as warnings foreboding the destruction of the world. When Rome sank finally before the barbarian hosts, it would seem as though the doctrine that temporal success was the proof of Divine favour must be finally abandoned.

But the Christian clergy disengaged their cause from that of the ruined Empire, proclaimed its downfall to be a fulfilment of prophecy and a Divine judgment, confronted the barbarian conquerors in all the majesty of their sacred office, and overawed them in the very moment of their victory. In the conversion of the uncivilised tribes, the doctrine of special intervention occupied a commanding place. The Burgundians, when defeated by the Huns, resolved, as a last resource, to place themselves under the protection of the Roman G.o.d whom they vaguely believed to be the most powerful, and the whole nation in consequence embraced Christianity.(780) In a critical moment of a great battle, Clovis invoked the a.s.sistance of the G.o.d of his wife. The battle was won, and he, with many thousands of Franks, was converted to the faith.(781) In England, the conversion of Northumbria was partly, and the conversion of Mercia was mainly, due to the belief that the Divine interposition had secured the victory of a Christian king.(782) A Bulgarian prince was driven into the Church by the terror of a pestilence, and he speedily effected the conversion of his subjects.(783) The destruction of so many shrines, and the defeat of so many Christian armies, by the followers of Mohammed; the disastrous and ignominious overthrow of the Crusaders, who went forth protected by all the blessings of the Church, were unable to impair the belief. All through the middle ages, and for some centuries after the middle ages had pa.s.sed, every startling catastrophe was regarded as a punishment, or a warning, or a sign of the approaching termination of the world. Churches and monasteries were built. Religious societies were founded. Penances were performed. Jews were ma.s.sacred, and a long catalogue might be given of the theories by which men attempted to connect every vicissitude of fortune, and every convulsion of nature, with the wranglings of theologians. Thus, to give but a few examples: St. Ambrose confidently a.s.serted that the death of Maximus was a consequence of the crime he had committed in compelling the Christians to rebuild a Jewish synagogue they had destroyed.(784) One of the laws in the Justinian code, directed against the Jews, Samaritans, and Pagans, expressly attributes to them the sterility of the soil, which in an earlier age the Pagans had so often attributed to the Christians.(785) A volcanic eruption that broke out at the commencement of the iconoclastic persecution was adduced as a clear proof that the Divine anger was aroused, according to one party, by the hostility of the emperor to the sacred images; according to the other party, by his sinful hesitation in extirpating idolatry.(786) Bodin, in a later age, considered that the early death of the sovereign who commanded the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew was due to what he deemed the master crime of that sovereign's reign. He had spared the life of a famous sorcerer.(787) In the struggles that followed the Reformation, physical calamities were continually ascribed in one age to the toleration, in another to the endowment, of either heresy or Popery.(788) Sometimes, however, they were traced to the theatre, and sometimes to the writings of freethinkers. But gradually, and almost insensibly, these notions faded away. The old language is often heard, but it is no longer realised and operative, and the doctrine which played so large a part in the history of the world has ceased to exercise any appreciable influence upon the actions of mankind.

In addition to this religious motive, which acted chiefly upon the vulgar, there was a political motive which rendered Christianity obnoxious to the educated. The Church const.i.tuted a vast, highly organised, and in many respects secret society, and as such was not only distinctly illegal, but was also in the very highest degree calculated to excite the apprehensions of the Government. There was no principle in the Imperial policy more stubbornly upheld than the suppression of all corporations that might be made the nuclei of revolt. The extent to which this policy was carried is strikingly evinced by a letter from Trajan to Pliny, in which the emperor forbade the formation even of a guild of firemen, on the ground that they would const.i.tute an a.s.sociation and hold meetings.(789) In such a state of feeling, the existence of a vast a.s.sociation, governed by countless functionaries, shrouding its meetings and some of its doctrines in impenetrable obscurity, evoking a degree of attachment and devotion greater than could be elicited by the State, ramifying through the whole extent of the empire, and restlessly extending its influence, would naturally arouse the strongest apprehension. That it did so is clearly recognised by the Christian apologists, who, however, justly retorted upon the objectors the impossibility of showing a single instance in which, in an age of continual conspiracies, the numerous and persecuted Christians had proved disloyal. Whatever we may think of their doctrine of pa.s.sive obedience, it is impossible not to admire the constancy with which they clung to it, when all their interests were the other way. But yet the Pagans were not altogether wrong in regarding the new a.s.sociation as fatal to the greatness of the Empire. It consisted of men who regarded the Roman Empire as a manifestation of Antichrist, and who looked forward with pa.s.sionate longing to its destruction. It subst.i.tuted a new enthusiasm for that patriotism which was the very life-blood of the national existence.

Many of the Christians deemed it wrong to fight for their country. All of them aspired to a type of character, and were actuated by hopes and motives, wholly inconsistent with that proud martial ardour by which the triumphs of Rome had been won, and by which alone her impending ruin could be averted.

The aims and principles of this a.s.sociation were very imperfectly understood. The greatest and best of the Pagans spoke of it as a hateful superst.i.tion, and the phrase they most frequently reiterated, when speaking of its members, was "enemies" or "haters of the human race." Such a charge, directed persistently against men whose main principle was the supreme excellence of love, and whose charity unquestionably rose far above that of any other cla.s.s, was probably due in the first place to the unsocial habits of the converts, who deemed it necessary to abstain from all the forms of public amus.e.m.e.nt, to refuse to illuminate their houses, or hang garlands from their portals in honour of the national triumphs, and who somewhat ostentatiously exhibited themselves as separate and alien from their countrymen. It may also have arisen from a knowledge of the popular Christian doctrine about the future destiny of Pagans. When the Roman learnt what fate the Christian a.s.signed to the heroes and sages of his nation, and to the immense ma.s.s of his living fellow-countrymen, when he was told that the destruction of the once glorious Empire to which he belonged was one of the most fervent aspirations of the Church, his feelings were very likely to clothe themselves in such language as I have cited.

But, in addition to the general charges, specific accusations(790) of the grossest kind were directed against Christian morals. At a time when the moral standard was very low, they were charged with deeds so atrocious as to scandalise the most corrupt. They were represented as habitually, in their secret a.s.semblies, celebrating the most licentious orgies, feeding on human flesh, and then, the lights having been extinguished, indulging in promiscuous, and especially in incestuous, intercourse. The persistence with which these accusations were made is shown by the great prominence they occupy, both in the writings of the apologists and in the narrations of the persecutions. That these charges were absolutely false will now be questioned by no one. The Fathers were long able to challenge their adversaries to produce a single instance in which any other crime than his faith was proved against a martyr, and they urged with a just and n.o.ble pride that whatever doubt there might be of the truth of the Christian doctrines, or of the Divine origin of the Christian miracles, there was at least no doubt that Christianity had transformed the characters of mult.i.tudes, vivified the cold heart by a new enthusiasm, redeemed, regenerated, and emanc.i.p.ated the most depraved of mankind. n.o.ble lives, crowned by heroic deaths, were the best arguments of the infant Church.(791) Their enemies themselves not unfrequently acknowledged it.

The love shown by the early Christians to their suffering brethren has never been more emphatically attested than by Lucian,(792) or the beautiful simplicity of their wors.h.i.+p than by Pliny,(793) or their ardent charity than by Julian.(794) There was, it is true, another side to the picture; but even when the moral standard of Christians was greatly lowered, it was lowered only to that of the community about them.

These calumnies were greatly encouraged by the ecclesiastical rule, which withheld from the unbaptised all knowledge of some of the more mysterious doctrines of the Church, and veiled, at least, one of its ceremonies in great obscurity. Vague rumours about the nature of that sacramental feast, to which none but the baptised Christian was suffered to penetrate, and which no ecclesiastic was permitted to explain either to the catechumens or to the world, were probably the origin of the charge of cannibalism; while the Agapae or love feasts, the ceremony of the kiss of love, and the peculiar and, to the Pagans, perhaps unintelligible, language in which the Christians proclaimed themselves one body and fellow-members in Christ, may have suggested the other charges. The eager credulity with which equally baseless accusations against the Jews were for centuries believed, ill.u.s.trates the readiness with which they were accepted, and the extremely imperfect system of police which rendered the verification of secret crimes very difficult, had no doubt greatly enlarged the sphere of calumny. But, in addition to these considerations, the orthodox were in some respects exceedingly unfortunate. In the eyes of the Pagans they were regarded as a sect of Jews; and the Jews, on account of their continual riots, their inextinguishable hatred of the Gentile world,(795) and the atrocities that frequently accompanied their rebellions, had early excited the anger and the contempt of the Pagans. On the other hand, the Jew, who deemed the abandonment of the law the most heinous of crimes, and whose patriotism only shone with a fiercer flame amid the calamities of his nation, regarded the Christian with an implacable hostility. Scorned or hated by those around him, his temple levelled with the dust, and the last vestige of his independence destroyed, he clung with a desperate tenacity to the hopes and privileges of his ancient creed. In his eyes the Christians were at once apostates and traitors. He could not forget that in the last dark hour of his country's agony, when the armies of the Gentile encompa.s.sed Jerusalem, and when the hosts of the faithful flocked to its defence, the Christian Jews had abandoned the fortunes of their race, and refused to bear any part in the heroism and the sufferings of the closing scene. They had proclaimed that the promised Messiah, who was to restore the faded glories of Israel, had already come; that the privileges which were so long the monopoly of a single people had pa.s.sed to the Gentile world; that the race which was once supremely blest was for all future time to be accursed among mankind. It is not, therefore, surprising that there should have arisen between the two creeds an animosity which Paganism could never rival. While the Christians viewed with too much exultation the calamities that fell upon the prostrate people,(796) whose cup of bitterness they were destined through long centuries to fill to the brim, the Jews laboured with unwearied hatred to foment by calumnies the pa.s.sions of the Pagan mult.i.tude.(797) On the other hand, the Catholic Christians showed themselves extremely willing to draw down the sword of the persecutor upon the heretical sects. When the Pagans accused the Christians of indulging in orgies of gross licentiousness, the first apologist, while repudiating the charge, was careful to add, of the heretics, "Whether or not these people commit those shameful and fabulous acts, the putting out the lights, indulging in promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh, I know not."(798) In a few years the language of doubt and insinuation was exchanged for that of direct a.s.sertion; and, if we may believe St. Irenaeus and St. Clement of Alexandria, the followers of Carpocrates, the Marcionites, and some other Gnostic sects, habitually indulged, in their secret meetings, in acts of impurity and licentiousness as hideous and as monstrous as can be conceived, and their conduct was one of the causes of the persecution of the orthodox.(799) Even the most extravagant charges of the Pagan populace were reiterated by the Fathers in their accusations of the Gnostics. St. Epiphanius, in the fourth century, a.s.sures us that some of their sects were accustomed to kill, to dress with spices, and to eat the children born of their promiscuous intercourse.(800) The heretics, in their turn, gladly accused the Catholics;(801) while the Roman judge, in whose eyes Judaism, orthodox Christianity, and heresy were but slightly differing modifications of one despicable superst.i.tion, doubtless found in this interchange of accusations a corroboration of his prejudices.

Another cause of the peculiar animosity felt against the Christians was the constant interference with domestic life, arising from the great number of female conversions. The Christian teacher was early noted for his unrivalled skill in playing on the chords of a woman's heart.(802) The graphic t.i.tle of "Earpicker of ladies,"(803) which was given to a seductive pontiff of a somewhat later period, might have been applied to many in the days of the persecution; and to the Roman, who regarded the supreme authority of the head of the family, in all religious matters, as the very foundation of domestic morality, no character could appear more infamous or more revolting. "A wife," said Plutarch, expressing the deepest conviction of the Pagan world, "should have no friends but those of her husband; and, as the G.o.ds are the first of friends, she should know no G.o.ds but those whom her husband adores. Let her shut the door, then, against idle religions and foreign superst.i.tions. No G.o.d can take pleasure in sacrifices offered by a wife without the knowledge of her husband."(804) But these principles, upon which the whole social system of Paganism had rested, were now disregarded. Wives in mult.i.tudes deserted their homes to frequent the nocturnal meetings(805) of a sect which was looked upon with the deepest suspicion, and was placed under the ban of the law. Again and again, the husband, as he laid his head on the pillow by his wife, had the bitterness of thinking that all her sympathies were withdrawn from him; that her affections belonged to an alien priesthood and to a foreign creed; that, though she might discharge her duties with a gentle and uncomplaining fidelity, he had for ever lost the power of touching her heart-he was to her only as an outcast, as a brand prepared for the burning. Even to a Christian mind there is a deep pathos in the picture which St. Augustine has drawn of the broken-hearted husband imploring the a.s.sistance of the G.o.ds, and receiving from the oracle the bitter answer: "You may more easily write in enduring characters on the wave, or fly with feathers through the air, than purge the mind of a woman when once tainted by the superst.i.tion."(806)

I have already noticed the prominence which the practice of exorcism had acquired in the early Church, the contempt with which it was regarded by the more philosophic Pagans, and the law which had been directed against its professors. It is not, however, probable that this practice, though it lowered the Christians in the eyes of the educated as much as it elevated them in the eyes of the populace, had any appreciable influence in provoking persecution. In the crowd of superst.i.tions that were invading the Roman Empire, exorcism had a prominent place; all such practices were popular with the ma.s.ses; the only form of magic which under the Empire was seriously persecuted was political astrology or divination with a view to discovering the successors to the throne, and of this the Christians were never accused.(807) There was, however, another form of what was deemed superst.i.tion connected with the Church, which was regarded by Pagan philosophers with a much deeper feeling of aversion. To agitate the minds of men with religious terrorism, to fill the unknown world with hideous images of suffering, to govern the reason by alarming the imagination, was in the eyes of the Pagan world one of the most heinous of crimes.(808) These fears were to the ancients the very definition of superst.i.tion, and their destruction was a main object both of the Epicurean and of the Stoic. To men holding such sentiments, it is easy to perceive how obnoxious must have appeared religious teachers who maintained that an eternity of torture was reserved for the entire human race then existing in the world, beyond the range of their own community, and who made the a.s.sertion of this doctrine one of their main instruments of success.(809) Enquiry, among the early theologians, was much less valued than belief,(810) and reason was less appealed to than fear. In philosophy the most comprehensive, but in theology the most intolerant, system is naturally the strongest. To weak women, to the young, the ignorant, and the timid, to all, in a word, who were doubtful of their own judgment, the doctrine of exclusive salvation must have come with an appalling power; and, as no other religion professed it, it supplied the Church with an invaluable vantage-ground, and doubtless drove mult.i.tudes into its pale.

To this doctrine we may also, in a great degree, ascribe the agony of terror that was so often displayed by the apostate, whose flesh shrank from the present torture, but who was convinced that the weakness he could not overcome would be expiated by an eternity of torment.(811) To the indignation excited by such teaching was probably due a law of Marcus Aurelius, which decreed that "if any one shall do anything whereby the weak minds of any may be terrified by superst.i.tious fear, the offender shall be exiled into an island."(812)

There can, indeed, be little doubt that a chief cause of the hostility felt against the Christian Church was the intolerant aspect it at that time displayed. The Romans were prepared to tolerate almost any form of religion that would tolerate others. The Jews, though quite as obstinate as the Christians in refusing to sacrifice to the emperor, were rarely molested, except in the periods immediately following their insurrections, because Judaism, however exclusive and unsocial, was still an unaggressive national faith. But the Christian teachers taught that all religions, except their own and that of the Jews, were constructed by devils, and that all who dissented from their Church must be lost. It was impossible that men strung to the very highest pitch of religious excitement, and imagining they saw in every ceremony and oracle the direct working of a present daemon, could restrain their zeal, or respect in any degree the feelings of others. Proselytising with an untiring energy, pouring a fierce stream of invective and ridicule upon the G.o.ds on whose favour the mult.i.tude believed all national prosperity to depend, not unfrequently insulting the wors.h.i.+ppers, and defacing the idols,(813) they soon stung the Pagan devotees to madness, and convinced them that every calamity that fell upon the empire was the righteous vengeance of the G.o.ds. Nor was the sceptical politician more likely to regard with favour a religion whose development was plainly incompatible with the whole religious policy of the Empire. The new Church, as it was then organised, must have appeared to him essentially, fundamentally, necessarily intolerant. To permit it to triumph was to permit the extinction of religious liberty in an empire which comprised all the leading nations of the world, and tolerated all their creeds. It was indeed true that in the days of their distress the apologists proclaimed, in high and eloquent language, the iniquity of persecution, and the priceless value of a free wors.h.i.+p; but it needed no great sagacity to perceive that the language of the dominant Church would be very different. The Pagan philosopher could not foresee the ghastly histories of the Inquisition, of the Albigenses, or of St. Bartholomew; but he could scarcely doubt that the Christians, when in the ascendant, would never tolerate rites which they believed to be consecrated to devils, or restrain, in the season of their power, a religious animosity which they scarcely bridled when they were weak. It needed no prophetic inspiration to antic.i.p.ate the time, that so speedily arrived, when, amid the wailings of the wors.h.i.+ppers, the idols and the temples were shattered, and when all who practised the religious ceremonies of their forefathers were subject to the penalty of death.

There has probably never existed upon earth a community whose members were bound to one another by a deeper or a purer affection than the Christians, in the days of the persecution. There has probably never existed a community which exhibited in its dealings with crime a gentler or more judicious kindness, which combined more happily an unflinching opposition to sin with a boundless charity to the sinner, and which was in consequence more successful in reclaiming and transforming the most vicious of mankind. There has, however, also never existed a community which displayed more clearly the intolerance that would necessarily follow its triumph. Very early tradition has related three anecdotes of the apostle John which ill.u.s.trate faithfully this triple aspect of the Church.

It is said that when the a.s.semblies of the Christians thronged around him to hear some exhortation from his lips, the only words he would utter were, "My little children, love one another;" for in this, he said, is comprised the entire law. It is said that a young man he had once confided to the charge of a bishop, having fallen into the ways of vice, and become the captain of a band of robbers, the apostle, on hearing of it, bitterly reproached the negligence of the pastor, and, though in extreme old age, betook himself to the mountains till he had been captured by the robbers, when, falling with tears on the neck of the chief, he restored him to the path of virtue. It is said that the same apostle, once seeing the heretic Cerinthus in an establishment of baths into which he had entered, immediately rushed forth, fearing lest the roof should fall because a heretic was beneath it.(814) All that fierce hatred which during the Arian and Donatist controversies convulsed the Empire, and which in later times has deluged the world with blood, may be traced in the Church long before the conversion of Constantine. Already, in the second century, it was the rule that the orthodox Christian should hold no conversation, should interchange none of the most ordinary courtesies of life, with the excommunicated or the heretic.(815) Common sufferings were impotent to a.s.suage the animosity, and the purest and fondest relations of life were polluted by the new intolerance. The Decian persecution had scarcely closed, when St. Cyprian wrote his treatise to maintain that it is no more possible to be saved beyond the limits of the Church, than it was during the deluge beyond the limits of the ark; that martyrdom itself has no power to efface the guilt of schism; and that the heretic, who for his master's cause expired in tortures upon the earth, pa.s.sed at once, by that master's decree, into an eternity of torment in h.e.l.l!(816) Even in the arena the Catholic martyrs withdrew from the Montanists, lest they should be mingled with the heretics in death.(817) At a later period St.

Augustine relates that, when he was a Manichean, his mother for a time refused even to eat at the same table with her erring child.(818) When St.

Ambrose not only defended the act of a Christian bishop, who had burnt down a synagogue of the Jews, but denounced as a deadly crime the decree of the Government which ordered it to be rebuilt;(819) when the same saint, in advocating the plunder of the vestal virgins, maintained the doctrine that it is criminal for a Christian State to grant any endowment to the ministers of any religion but his own,(820) which it has needed all the efforts of modern liberalism to efface from legislation, he was but following in the traces of those earlier Christians, who would not even wear a laurel crown,(821) or join in the most innocent civic festival, lest they should appear in some indirect way to be acquiescing in the Pagan wors.h.i.+p. While the apologists were maintaining against the Pagan persecutors the duty of tolerance, the Sibylline books, which were the popular literature of the Christians, were filled with pa.s.sionate antic.i.p.ations of the violent destruction of the Pagan temples.(822) And no sooner had Christianity mounted the throne than the policy they foreshadowed became ascendant. The indifference or worldly sagacity of some of the rulers, and the imposing number of the Pagans, delayed, no doubt, the final consummation; but, from the time of Constantine, restrictive laws were put in force, the influence of the ecclesiastics was ceaselessly exerted in their favour, and no sagacious man could fail to antic.i.p.ate the speedy and absolute proscription of the Pagan wors.h.i.+p. It is related of the philosopher Antoninus, the son of the Pagan prophetess Sospitra, that, standing one day with his disciples before that n.o.ble temple of Serapis, at Alexandria, which was one of the wonders of ancient art, and which was destined soon after to perish by the rude hands of the Christian monks, the prophetic spirit of his mother fell upon him. Like another prophet before another shrine, he appalled his hearers by the prediction of the approaching ruin. The time would come, he said, when the glorious edifice before them would be overthrown, the carved images would be defaced, the temples of the G.o.ds would be turned into the sepulchres of the dead, and a great darkness would fall upon mankind!(823)

And, besides the liberty of wors.h.i.+p, the liberty of thought and of expression, which was the supreme attainment of Roman civilisation, was in peril. The new religion, unlike that which was disappearing, claimed to dictate the opinions as well as the actions of men, and its teachers stigmatised as an atrocious crime the free expression of every opinion on religious matters diverging from their own. Of all the forms of liberty, it was this which lasted the longest, and was the most dearly prized. Even after Constantine, the Pagans Libanius, Themistius, Symmachus, and Sall.u.s.t enforced their views with a freedom that contrasts remarkably with the restraints imposed upon their wors.h.i.+p, and the beautiful friends.h.i.+ps of St. Basil and Libanius, of Synesius and Hypatia, are among the most touching episodes of their time. But though the traditions of Pagan freedom, and the true catholicism of Justin Martyr and Origen, lingered long, it was inevitable that error, being deemed criminal, should be made penal. The dogmatism of Athanasius and Augustine, the increasing power of the clergy, and the fanaticism of the monks, hastened the end. The suppression of all religions but one by Theodosius, the murder of Hypatia at Alexandria by the monks of Cyril, and the closing by Justinian of the schools of Athens, are the three events which mark the decisive overthrow of intellectual freedom. A thousand years had rolled away before that freedom was in part restored.

The considerations I have briefly enumerated should not in the smallest degree detract from the admiration due to the surpa.s.sing courage, to the pure, touching, and sacred virtues of the Christian martyrs; but they in some degree palliate the conduct of the persecutors, among whom must be included one emperor, who was probably, on the whole, the best and most humane sovereign who has ever sat upon a throne, and at least two others, who were considerably above the average of virtue. When, combined with the indifference to human suffering, the thirst for blood, which the spectacles of the amphitheatre had engendered, they a.s.suredly make the persecutions abundantly explicable. They show that if it can be proved that Christian persecutions sprang from the doctrine of exclusive salvation, the fact that the Roman Pagans, who did not hold that doctrine, also persecuted, need not cause the slightest perplexity. That the persecutions of Christianity by the Roman emperors, severe as they undoubtedly were, were not of such a continuous nature as wholly to counteract the vast moral, social, and intellectual agencies that were favourable to its spread, a few dates will show.

We have seen that when the Egyptian rites were introduced into Rome, they were met by prompt and energetic measures of repression; that these measures were again and again repeated, but that at last, when they proved ineffectual, the governors desisted from their opposition, and the new wors.h.i.+p a.s.sumed a recognised place. The history of Christianity, in its relation to the Government, is the reverse of this. Its first introduction into Rome appears to have been altogether unopposed. Tertullian a.s.serts that Tiberius, on the ground of a report from Pontius Pilate, desired to enrol Christ among the Roman G.o.ds, but that the Senate rejected the proposal; but this a.s.sertion, which is altogether unsupported by trustworthy evidence, and is, intrinsically, extremely improbable, is now generally recognised as false.(824) An isolated pa.s.sage of Suetonius states that in the time of Claudius "the Jews, being continually rioting, at the instigation of a certain Chrestus,"(825) were expelled from the city; but no Christian writer speaks of his co-religionists being disturbed in this reign, while all, with a perfect unanimity, and with great emphasis, describe Nero as the first persecutor. His persecution began at the close of A.D. 64.(826) It was directed against Christians, not ostensibly on the ground of their religion, but because they were falsely accused of having set fire to Rome, and it is very doubtful whether it extended beyond the city.(827) It had also this peculiarity, that, being directed against the Christians not as Christians, but as incendiaries, it was impossible to escape from it by apostasy. Within the walls of Rome it raged with great fury. The Christians, who had been for many years(828) proselytising without restraint in the great confluence of nations, and amid the disintegration of old beliefs, had become a formidable body. They were, we learn from Tacitus, profoundly unpopular; but the hideous tortures to which Nero subjected them, and the conviction that, whatever other crimes they might have committed, they were not guilty of setting fire to the city, awoke general pity. Some of them, clad in skins of wild beasts, were torn by dogs. Others, arrayed in s.h.i.+rts of pitch, were burnt alive in Nero's garden.(829) Others were affixed to crosses. Great mult.i.tudes perished. The deep impression the persecution made on the Christian mind is shown in the whole literature of the Sibyls, which arose soon after, in which Nero is usually the central figure, and by the belief, that lingered for centuries, that the tyrant was yet alive, and would return once more as the immediate precursor of Antichrist, to inflict the last great persecution upon the Church.(830)

Nero died A.D. 68. From that time, for at least twenty-seven years, the Church enjoyed absolute repose. There is no credible evidence whatever of the smallest interference with its freedom till the last year of the reign of Domitian; and a striking ill.u.s.tration of the fearlessness with which it exhibited itself to the world has been lately furnished in the discovery, near Rome, of a large and handsome porch leading to a Christian catacomb, built above ground between the reigns of Nero and Domitian, in the immediate neighbourhood of one of the princ.i.p.al highways.(831) The long reign of Domitian, though it may have been surpa.s.sed in ferocity, was never surpa.s.sed in the Roman annals in the skilfulness and the persistence of its tyranny. The Stoics and literary cla.s.ses, who upheld the traditions of political freedom, and who had already suffered much at the hands of Vespasian, were persecuted with relentless animosity. Metius Modestus, Arulenus Rusticus, Senecio, Helvidius, Dion Chrysostom, the younger Priscus, Junius Mauricus, Artemidorus, Euphrates, Epictetus, Arria, Fannia, and Gratilla were either killed or banished.(832) No measures, however, appear to have been taken against the Christians till A.D. 95, when a short and apparently not very severe persecution, concerning which our information is both scanty and conflicting, was directed against them.

Of the special cause that produced it we are left in much doubt. Eusebius mentions, on the not very trustworthy authority of Hegesippus, that the emperor, having heard of the existence of the grandchildren of Judas, the brother of Christ, ordered them to be brought before him, as being of the family of David, and therefore possible pretenders to the throne; but on finding that they were simple peasants, and that the promised kingdom of which they spoke was a spiritual one, he dismissed them in peace, and arrested the persecution he had begun.(833) A Pagan historian states that, the finances of the Empire being exhausted by lavish expenditure in public games, Domitian, in order to replenish his exchequer, resorted to a severe and special taxation of the Jews; that some of these, in order to evade the impost, concealed their wors.h.i.+p, while others, who are supposed to have been Christians, are described as following the Jewish rites without being professed Jews.(834) Perhaps, however, the simplest explanation is the truest, and the persecution may be ascribed to the antipathy which a despot like Domitian must necessarily have felt to an inst.i.tution which, though it did not, like Stoicism, resist his policy, at least exercised a vast influence altogether removed from his control. St. John, who was then a very old man, is said to have been at this time exiled to Patmos.

Flavius Clemens, a consul, and a relative of the emperor, was put to death. His wife, or, according to another account, his niece Domitilla, was banished, according to one account, to the island of Pontia, according to another, to the island of Pandataria, and many others were compelled to accompany her into exile.(835) Numbers, we are told, "accused of conversion to impiety or Jewish rites," were condemned. Some were killed, and others deprived of their offices.(836) Of the cessation of the persecution there are two different versions. Tertullian(837) and Eusebius(838) say that the tyrant speedily revoked his edict, and restored those who had been banished; but according to Lactantius these measures were not taken till after the death of Domitian,(839) and this latter statement is corroborated by the a.s.sertion of Dion Ca.s.sius, that Nerva, upon his accession, "absolved those who were accused of impiety, and recalled the exiles."(840)

When we consider the very short time during which this persecution lasted, and the very slight notice that was taken of it, we may fairly, I think, conclude that it was not of a nature to check in any appreciable degree a strong religious movement like that of Christianity. The a.s.sa.s.sination of Domitian introduces us to the golden age of the Roman Empire. In the eyes of the Pagan historian, the period from the accession of Nerva, in A.D.

96, to the death of Marcus Aurelius, in A.D. 180, is memorable as a period of uniform good government, of rapidly advancing humanity, of great legislative reforms, and of a peace which was very rarely seriously broken. To the Christian historian it is still more remarkable, as one of the most critical periods in the history of his faith. The Church entered into it considerable indeed, as a sect, but not large enough to be reckoned an important power in the Empire. It emerged from it so increased in its numbers, and so extended in its ramifications, that it might fairly defy the most formidable a.s.saults. It remains, therefore, to be seen whether the opposition against which, during these eighty-four years, it had so successfully struggled was of such a kind and intensity that the triumph must be regarded as a miracle.

Nearly at the close of this period, during the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, St. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, wrote a letter of expostulation to the emperor, in which he explicitly a.s.serts that in Asia the persecution of the pious was an event which "had never before occurred," and was the result of "new and strange decrees;" that the ancestors of the emperor were accustomed to honour the Christian faith "like other religions;" and that "Nero and Domitian alone" had been hostile to it.(841) Rather more than twenty years later, Tertullian a.s.serted, in language equally distinct and emphatic, that the two persecutors of the Christians were Nero and Domitian, and that it would be impossible to name a single good sovereign who had molested them. Marcus Aurelius himself, Tertullian refuses to number among the persecutors, and, even relying upon a letter which was falsely imputed to him, enrols him among the protectors of the Church.(842) About a century later, Lactantius, reviewing the history of the persecutions, declared that the good sovereigns who followed Domitian abstained from persecuting, and pa.s.ses at once from the persecution of Domitian to that of Decius. Having noticed the measures of the former emperor, he proceeds: "The acts of the tyrant being revoked, the Church was not only restored to its former state, but shone forth with a greater splendour and luxuriance; and a period following in which many good sovereigns wielded the Imperial sceptre, it suffered no a.s.saults from its enemies, but stretched out its hands to the east and to the west; ... but at last the long peace was broken. After many years, that hateful monster Decius arose, who troubled the Church."(843)

We have here three separate pa.s.sages, from which we may conclusively infer that the normal and habitual condition of the Christians during the eighty-four years we are considering, and, if we accept the last two pa.s.sages, during a much longer period, was a condition of peace, but that peace was not absolutely unbroken. The Christian Church, which was at first regarded simply as a branch of Judaism, had begun to be recognised as a separate body, and the Roman law professedly tolerated only those religions which were expressly authorised. It is indeed true that with the extension of the Empire, and especially of the city, the theory, or at least the practice, of religious legislation had been