READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH IN ROMEI
THE JEWISH COLONY IN ROME
AT the beginning of the first century of the Christian
era the Jewish colony in Rome had attained large dimensions. As early as B.C.
162 we hear of agreements— we can scarcely call them treaties—concluded between
the Jews under the Maccabean dynasty and the Republic. After the capture of
Jerusalem by Pompey, B.C. 63, a number more of Jewish exiles swelled the number
of the chosen people who had settled in the capital. Cicero when pleading
for Flaccus, who was their enemy, publicly alludes to their numbers and
influence. Their ranks were still further recruited in B.C. 51, when a
lieutenant of Crassus brought some thousands of Jewish prisoners to Rome.
During the civil wars, Julius Caesar showed marked favour to
the chosen people. After his murder they were prominent among those who mourned
him.
Augustus continued the policy of Julius Caesar, and
showed them much favour; their influence in
Roman society during the earlier years of the Empire seems to have been
considerable. They are mentioned by the great poets who flourished in the
Augustan age. The Jewish Sabbath is especially alluded to by Roman writers as
positively becoming a fashionable observance in the capital.
A few distinguished families, who really possessed
little of the Hebrew character and nationality beyond the name, such as
the Herods, adopted the manners and ways of life
of the Roman patrician families; but as a rule the Jews in foreign lands
preferred the obscurity to which the reputation of poverty condemned them. Some
of them were doubtless possessors of wealth, but they carefully concealed it;
the majority, however, were poor, and they even gloried in their poverty; they
haunted the lowest and poorest quarters of the great city. Restlessly
industrious, they made their livelihood, many of them, out of the most
worthless objects of merchandise; but they obtained in the famous capital a
curious celebrity. There was something peculiar in this strange people at once
attractive and repellent. The French writer Allard, in the exhaustive and
striking volumes in which he tells the story of the persecutions in his own
novel and brilliant way, epigrammatically writes of the Jew in the golden age
of Augustus as “one who was known to pray and to pore over his holy national
literature in Rome which never prayed and which possessed no religious books”.
They lived their solitary life alone in the midst of
the crowded city—by themselves in life, by themselves, too, in death; for they
possessed their own cemeteries in the suburbs,—catacombs we now term
them,—strange God’s acres where they buried, for they never burned, their dead,
carefully avoiding the practice of cremation, a practice then generally in
vogue in pagan Rome. Upon these Jewish cemeteries the Christians, as they
increased in numbers, largely modelled those vast cities of the dead of which we
shall speak presently.
They watched over and tenderly succoured their own poor and needy, the widow and the
orphan; on the whole living pure self-denying Eves, chiefly disfigured by the
restless spirit, which ever dwelt in the Jewish race, of greed and avarice.
They were happy, however, in their own way, living on the sacred memories of a
glorious past, believing with an intense belief that they were still, as in the
glorious days of David and Solomon, the people beloved of God—and that ever
beneath them, in spite of their many confessed backslidings, were the Everlasting
Arms; trusting, with a faith which never paled or faltered, that the day would
surely come when out of their own people a mighty Deliverer would arise, who
would restore them to their loved sacred city and country; would invest His
own, His chosen nation, with a glory and power grander, greater than the world
had ever seen.
There is no doubt but that the Jew of Rome in Rome’s
golden days, in spite of his seeming poverty and degradation, possessed a
peculiar moral power in the great empire, unknown among pagan nations.
In the reign of Nero, when the disciples of Jesus in
Rome first emerged from the clouds and mists which envelop the earliest days of
Roman Christianity, the number of Jews in the capital is variously computed as
amounting to from 30,000 to 50,000 persons.
The Jewish colony in Rome was a thoroughly
representative body of Jews. They were gathered from many centres of population, Palestine and Jerusalem itself
contributing a considerable contingent. They evidently were distinguished for
the various qualities, good and bad, which generally characterized this
strange, wonderful people. They were restless, at times turbulent, proud and
disdainful, avaricious and grasping; but at the same time they were tender and
compassionate in a very high degree to the sad-eyed unfortunate ones among
their own people,—most reverent, as we have remarked, in the matter of disposing
of their dead,—on the whole giving an example of a morality far higher than
that which, as a rule, prevailed among the citizens of the mighty capital in
the midst of whom they dwelt.
The nobler qualities which emphatically distinguished
the race were no doubt fostered by the intense religious spirit which lived and
breathed in every Jewish household. The fear of the eternal God, who they
believed with an intense and changeless faith loved them, was ever before the
eyes alike of the humblest, poorest little trader, as of the wealthiest
merchant in their company.
II
INTO this mass of Jewish strangers dwelling in the
great city came the news of the wonderful work of Jesus Christ. As among the
Jews at Jerusalem, so too in Rome, the story of the Cross attracted
many—repelled many. The glorious news of salvation, of redemption, sank quietly
into many a sick and weary heart; these hearts were kindled into a passionate
love for Him who had redeemed them—into a love such as had never before been
kindled in any human heart. While, on the other hand, with many, the thought that
the treasured privileges of the chosen people were henceforward to be shared on
equal terms by the despised Gentile world, excited a bitter and uncompromising
opposition—an opposition which oftentimes shaded into an intense hate.
The question as to who first preached
the gospel of Jesus Christ to this great Jewish colony will probably never be
answered. There is a high probability that the “story of the Cross” was told
very soon after the Resurrection by some of those pilgrims to the Holy City who
had been eyewitnesses of the miracle of the first Pentecost.
There is, however, a question connected with the
beginnings of Christianity in Rome which is of the deepest interest to the
student of ecclesiastical history, a question upon which much that has happened
since largely hangs.
Was S. Peter in any way connected with the laying of
the foundation of the great Christian community in Rome; can he really be
considered as one of the founders of that most important Church? An immemorial
tradition persists in so connecting him; upon what grounds is this most ancient
tradition based?
Scholars of all religious schools of thought now
generally allow that S. Peter visited Rome and spent some time in the capital
city; wrote his great First Epistle from it, in which Epistle he called “Rome”
by the not unusual mystic name of “Babylon”, and eventually suffered martyrdom
there on a spot hard by the mighty basilica called by his name.
The only point at issue is, did he—as the favourite tradition asserts—pay his first visit to
Rome quite early in the Christian story, circa A.D. 42, remaining there for some
seven or eight years preaching and teaching, laying the foundations of the
great Church which rapidly sprang up in the capital?
Then when the decree of the Emperor Claudius banished
the Jews, A.D. 49-50,
the tradition asserts that the apostle returned to the East, was present at the
Apostolic Council held at Jerusalem A.D. 50,
only returning to Rome circa A.D. 63.
Somewhere about A.D. 64
the First Epistle of Peter was probably written from Rome. His martyrdom there
is best dated about A.D. 67.
III
THE Roman Church in the year of grace 61 was evidently
already a powerful and influential congregation: everything points to this
conclusion: its traditions, we might even say its history, and, above all, the
notices contained in S. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans written not later
than A.D. 58.
Virtually alone among the Churches of the first thirty
years of Christianity does S. Paul give to this congregation unstinting,
unqualified praise—very different to his words addressed to the Church in
Corinth in both of his Epistles to that notable Christian centre, or to the Galatian congregation in his letter to
the Church of that province; or even to the Thessalonians, the Church which he
loved well, where reproach and grave warnings are mingled with and colour his loving words.
But to the Church of Rome, in which in its many early
years of struggle and combat he bore no part whatever, his praise is quite
unmingled with rebuke or warning. As regards this congregation (Rom. I. 8),
Paul thanks God for them all that their faith is spoken of throughout the whole
world. In the concluding chapter of the Epistle, some twenty-five specially
distinguished members of the Roman congregation are saluted by name, though it
by no means follows that S. Paul was personally acquainted with all of those
who were named by him.
About three years after writing his famous letter to
the Romans,—just referred to,—Paul came as a prisoner to the capital city. But
although a prisoner awaiting a public trial, the imperial government gave him
free liberty to receive in his own hired house members of the Christian Church,
and indeed any who chose to come and listen to his teaching; and this liberty
of free access to him was continued all through the two years of his waiting
for the public trial. The words of the “Acts of the Apostles”, a writing
universally received as authentic, are singularly definite here : “And Paul
dwelt two whole years in his own hired house (in Rome), and received all that
came unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which
concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him”.
It was during these two years of the imprisonment that
the great teacher justified his subsequent title, accorded him by so many of
the early Christian writers, of joint founder with S. Peter of the Roman
Church. The foundations of the Church of the metropolis we believe certainly to
have been laid by another leading member of the apostolic band, S. Peter. But
S. Paul’s share in strengthening and in building up this Church, the most
important congregation in the first days of Christianity, was without doubt
very great.
At a very early period, certainly after the fall of
Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, Rome became the acknowledged centre and the metropolis of Christendom. The great
world-capital was the meeting-place of the followers of the Name from all
lands. Thither, too, naturally flocked the teachers of the principal heresies
in doctrinal truth which very soon sprang up among Christian converts. Under
these conditions something more, in such a centre as
Rome, was imperatively needed than the simple direct Gospel teaching, however
fervid: something additional to the recited of the wondrous Gospel story as
told by S. Peter and repeated possibly verbatim by his disciple S. Mark. A
deeper and fuller instruction was surely required in such a centre as Rome quickly became. Men would ask, Who and
what was the Divine Founder of the religion,—what was His relation to the
Father, what to the angel-world? What was known of His pre-existence? These and
such-like questions would speedily press for a reply in such a
cosmopolitan centre as imperial Rome.
Inspired teaching bearing on such points as these required to be welded into
the original foundation stories of the leading Church which Rome speedily
became, and this was supplied by the great master S. Paul, to whom the Holy Ghost
had vouchsafed what may be justly termed a double portion of the Spirit. The
Christology of Paul, to use a later theological term, was, in view of all that
was about to come to pass in the immediate future, a most necessary part of the
equipment of the Church of God in Rome.
The keynote of the famous master’s teaching during
those two years of his Roman imprisonment may be doubtless found in the letters
written by him at that time. Three of these, the “Ephesian,” “Colossian,” and
“Philippian” Epistles, were emphatically massive expositions of
doctrine—especially that addressed to the Colossians. From these we can gather
what was the principal subject-matter of the Pauline teaching at Rome. His
thoughts were largely taken up with the great doctrinal questions bearing on
the person of the Founder of Christianity.
We will quote one or two passages from the great
doctrinal Epistle to the Colossians as examples of the Pauline teaching at this
juncture of his life when he was engaged in building up the Roman Church, and
furnishing it with an arsenal of weapons which would soon be needed in their life
and death contest with the dangerous heresies which so soon made their
appearance in the city which was at once the metropolis of the Church and the
Empire.
“The Father, ... who hath translated us into the
kingdom of His dear Son, ... who is the image of the invisible God, the
first-born of every creature: for by Him were all things created, that are in
heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones,
or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and
for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He is
the head of the body, the Church: who is the beginning, the first-born from the
dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence. For it pleased the
Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the
blood of His Cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him (I
say), whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Col. I. 12-20).
And once more : “Beware lest any man spoil you through
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, ... and not after
Christ. For in Him dwdleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all
principality and power”.
Preaching on such texts, which contain those
tremendous truths which just at this time he embodied in his Colossian letter,
did S. Paul lay the foundation of the “Christology” of the Church of Rome. With
justice, then, was he ranked by the early Christian writers as one of the
founders of the Roman Church, for he was without doubt the principal teacher of
the famous congregation in the all-important doctrinal truths bearing on the
person and office of Jesus Christ.
S. Peter, whose yet earlier work at Rome, we believe,
stretching over some eight or nine years, we have already dwelt on, was
evidently absent from the capital when S. Paul in A.D. 58 wrote his famous Letter to the Romans; nor had
he returned in A.D. 61, when Paul was brought to the metropolis as a prisoner;
but that he returned to Rome somewhere about A.D. 63-4 is fairly certain.
IV
FOR a little more than thirty years, dating back to
the Resurrection morning, with the exception of the occasion of that temporary
and partial banishment of the Jews and Christians from Rome in the days of the
Emperor Claudius, had the Christian propaganda gone on apparently unnoticed,
certainly unheeded by the imperial government.
The banishment decree of Claudius, the outcome of a
local disturbance in the Jewish quarter of the capital, was after a brief
interval apparently rescinded, or at least ignored by the ruling powers; but in
the middle of the year 64, only a few months after S. Paul’s long-delayed trial
and acquittal and subsequent departure from Rome, a startling event happened
which brought the Christians into a sad notoriety, and put an end to the
attitude of contemptuous indifference with which they had been generally regarded
by the magistrates both in the provinces and in the capital.
A terrible and unlooked for calamity reduced Rome to a
state of mourning and desolation. The 19th July, A.D. 64,— the date of the commencement of the desolating
fire,—was long remembered. It broke out in the shops which clustered round the
great Circus; a strong summer wind fanned the flames, which soon became
uncontrollable. The narrow streets of the old quarter and the somewhat
crumbling buildings fed the fire, which raged for some nine days, destroying
many of the ancient historic buildings. Thousands of the poorer inhabitants
were rendered homeless and penniless. At that period Rome was divided into fourteen
regions; of these three were entirely consumed seven more were
rendered uninhabitable by the fierce fire; only four were left really unharmed
by the desolating calamity.
The passions of the mob, ever quickly aroused, were
directed in the first instance against the Emperor Nero, who was
accused—probably quite wrongfully—of being the incendiary : there is indeed a
long, a mournful chronicle of evil deeds registered against the memory of this
evil Emperor; but that he was the guilty author of this special outrage is in
the highest degree unlikely. His wild life, his cruelties, his ungovernable
passions, his insanity,—for no reader of history can doubt that in his case the
sickness which so often affects an uncontrolled despot had with Nero resulted
in insanity,—indeed, all his works and days, gave colour to
the monstrous and absurd charges which a fickle and angry mob brought against
the once strangely popular tyrant.
All kinds of wild stories connected with the fire were
circulated ; he had no doubt many remorseless enemies. Men said, Nero sitting
high on one of the towers of Rome, watched with fiendish joy and exultation the
progress of the devouring flames, and as Rome burned before his eyes, played
upon his lyre and sung a hymn of his own composition, for he imagined himself a
poet, in which he compared the burning of his Rome with the ruin of Troy.
Another legend was current, averring that the slaves
of the Emperor’s household had been seen fanning the flames in their desolating
course ; another rumour was spread abroad
which whispered that the mad and wicked Emperor desired to see Old Rome, with
its narrow and crowded streets, destroyed, that he might be able to rebuild it
on a new and stately scale, and thus, regardless of the immemorial traditions
of the ancient city, to render his name immortal through this notable and
magnificent work.
At all events these improbable stories more or less
gained credence in many quarters, and the Emperor found himself execrated by
thousands of thoughtless men and women who had suffered the loss of their all
in the fire, and who were glad to vent their fury on one whom they once admired
and even loved, though their admiration and love had been often mingled with
that fierce envy with which the people too frequently view the great and rich
and powerful.
Prompted by his evil advisers, among whom the
infamous Tigellinus was the most
conspicuous, the Emperor in the first instance accused the Jews of being the
incendiaries: curiously enough the quarter of the city where they mostly
congregated had been spared in the late conflagration. It was no difficult task
to persuade the fickle people that the strange race of foreigners, who hated
Rome and Rome's gods, had avenged themselves and the wrongs they had suffered
at the hands of the Roman nation, by firing the capital city.
Up to this time—in the eyes of most of the Romans—the
Jew and the Christian were one people; they considered that if any difference
at all existed, it was simply that the Christian was a dissenting Jew. Now
apparently, after the burning of Rome, for the first time was any distinction
made. It happened on this wise: the Jews had powerful friends in the court of
the despotic Emperor. Poppaea the Empress, if not a Jewess, was at least a
devoted proselyte of the chosen race. There is no doubt but that her influence,
backed up no doubt by others about her person at the court, diverted the suspicions
which had been awakened, from the Jews to the Christians. These, it was pointed
out, were no real Jews, but were their deadly enemies; they were a hateful and
hated sect quite improperly confounded with the chosen people. The Christians
were now formally accused of being the real authors of the late calamity, and
the accusation seems to have been generally popular among the masses of the
Roman population. Our authorities for this popular hatred—we may style them
contemporary—are Tacitus and Suetonius and the Christian Clement of Rome. The
testimony of Pliny the Younger, who governed Bithynia under the Emperor Trajan,
will be discussed later.
Under the orders of Nero—who turned to his own
purposes the popular dislike to the new sect of Jewish fanatics, as they
generally were supposed to be—the Christians were sought for. It turned out
that there was a vast multitude of them in the city, “ingens multitudo”, says Tacitus; and Clement of Rome, the
Christian bishop and writer, circa A.D. 96, also speaks of their great numbers. Many of the
accused were condemned on the false charge of incendiarism, to which was added
an accusation far harder to disprove—general hostility to society, and hatred
of the world (odio generis humani).
A crowd of Christians of both sexes was condemned to
the wild beasts. It was arranged that they should provide a hideous
amusement for the people who witnessed the games just then
about to be celebrated in the imperial gardens on the Vatican Hill—on the very
spot where the glorious basilica of S. Peter now stands.
Nero, anxious to restore his waning popularity with
the crowd, and to divert the strange suspicion which had fixed upon him as the
incendiary of the great fire, was determined that the games should surpass any
former exhibition of the like kind in the number of victims provided, and in
the refined cruelty of the awful punishment to which the sufferers were
condemned. He had in good truth an array of victims for his ghastly exhibition
such as had never been seen before. A like exhibition indeed was never repeated;
the hideousness of it positively shocking the Roman populace, cruel though they
were, and passionately devoted to scenic representations which included death
and torture, crime and shame. Numbers of these first Christian martyrs were
simply exposed to the beasts; others clothed in skins were hunted down by
fierce wild dogs; others were forced to play a part in infamous dramas, which
ever closed with the death of the victims in pain and agony.
But the closing scene was the most shocking. As the
night fell on the great show, as a novel delight for the populace, the Roman
people being especially charmed with brilliant and striking illuminations, the
outer ring of the vast arena was encircled with crosses on which a certain
number of Christians were bound, impaled, or nailed. The condemned were clothed
in tunics steeped in pitch and in other inflammable matter, and then, horrible
to relate, the crucified and impaled were set on fire, and in the lurid light
of these ghastly living torches the famous chariot races, in which the wicked
Emperor took a part, were ran.
But this was never repeated; as we
have just stated, the sight of the living flambeaux, the protracted agony of
the victims, was too dreadful even for that debased and hardened Roman crowd of
heedless cruel spectators; the illuminations of Nero’s show were never
forgotten; they remained an awful memory, but only a memory, even in Rome.
There is good reason to suppose that one of the
lookers on at the games of that long day and sombre evening
in the gardens of the Vatican Hill was Seneca, the famous Stoic philosopher,
once the tutor and afterwards for a time the minister of Nero. Seneca had
retired from public life, and in two of his letters written during his
retirement to his sick and suffering friend Lucilius, encouraging him to
bear his distressing malady with brave patience, reminds him of the tortures
which were now and again inflicted on the condemned; in vivid language
picturing the fire, the chains, the worrying of wild beasts, the prison
horrors, the cross, the tunic steeped in pitch, the rack, the red-hot irons
placed on the quivering flesh. What, he asks his friend, are your sufferings
compared with sufferings caused by these tortures ? And yet, he adds, his eyes
had seen these things endured; from the sufferer no groan was heard—no cry for
mercy—nay, in the midst of all he had seen the bravely patient victims smile.
Surely here the great Stoic was referring to what he
had witnessed in Nero’s dread games of the Vatican gardens; no other scene
would furnish such a memory at once weird and pathetic. The strange ineffable
smile of the Christian in pain and agony dying for his God, had gone home to
the heart of the great scholar statesman. Like many another Roman citizen of
his day and time, Seneca had often seen men die, but he had never before looked
on any one dying after this fashion.
From the days of that ever memorable summer of the
year 64 until Constantine and Licinius signed the edict which in the
name of the Emperors gave peace and stillness to the harassed Church, A.D. 313, roughly speaking a long
period of two centuries and a half, the sword of persecution was never
sheathed. For practically from the year 64, the date of the famous games in the
Vatican gardens, there was a continuous persecution of those that confessed the
name of Christ. The ordinary number of the ten persecutions is after all an
arbitrary computation. The whole principle and constitution of Christianity on
examination were condemned by the Roman government as irreconcilably hostile to
the established order; and mere membership of the sect, if persisted in, was
regarded as treasonable, and the confessors of Christianity became liable to
the punishment of death. And this remained the unvarying, the changeless policy
of the Government of the State, though not always put in force, until the
memorable edict of Constantine, A.D. 313.
After the terrible scenes in the games of the Vatican
gardens, the persecution of the Christians still continued. The charges of
incendiarism were dropped, no one believing that there was any truth in these
allegations; but in Rome and in the provinces the Christian sect from this time
forward was generally regarded as hostile to the Empire.
The accusation of being the authors of the great fire
had revealed many things in connexion with
the sect; the arrests, the judicial inquiries, had thrown a flood of new light
upon the tenets of the new religion, had disclosed its large and evidently
rapidly increasing numbers. Most probably for many years were they still
confused with the Jews, but it was seen that the new sect was something more
than a mere body of Jewish dissenters.
It was universally acknowledged that the Christians
were innocent of any connexion with the
great fire; but something else was discovered; they were a very numerous
company (ingens multitude) intensely
in earnest, opposed to the State religion, preferring in numberless instances
torture, confiscation, death, rather than submit to the State regulations in
the matter of religion.
For some time before the fire they had been generally
disliked, possibly hated by very many of the Roman citizens, by men of
different ranks, for various reasons; by traders who lost much by their
avoidance of all idolatrous feasts; by pagan families who resented the
proselytism which was constantly taking place in their homes, thus causing a
breach in the family circle; by priests and those specially connected with the
network of rites and ceremonies, sacrifices and offerings belonging to the
temples of the old gods. But, after all, this widespread popular dislike to the
sect was not the chief cause of the steady persecution which set in after the
wild and intemperate scenes which followed the great fire.
For the first time the imperial government saw with
whom they had to do. It was the settled policy of Rome steadily to repress and
to stamp out all organizations, all self-governing communities, or clubs, as
highly dangerous to the spirit of imperial policy ; and as the result of the
trials and inquiries which followed the fire of Rome, it found in the Christian
community a living embodiment of this tendency which hitherto Rome had
succeeded in crushing—found that in their midst, in the capital and in the provinces,
an extra-imperial unity was fast growing up—an Empire within the Empire.
In other words, the whole of the principles and the
constitution of Christianity were considered as hostile to the established
order, and if persisted in were to be deemed treasonable ; thus after the
discoveries made in the course of the judicial proceedings which were
instituted after the great fire, the Christians, even after their innocence on
the incendiary charge was generally acknowledged, were viewed by the imperial
authorities as a politically dangerous society, being an organized and united
body having its ramifications all over the Empire; but after the hideous and
revolting cruelties to which so many of them had been subjected in the famous
Vatican games, the original charge made against them came universally to be
considered as an infamous device of the Emperor Nero to divert public attention
from himself, to whom, although probably falsely, the guilt of causing the fire
was popularly attributed.
Still there is no doubt that although the
alleged connexion of the Christian sect
with the crime of incendiarism seems to have been quickly forgotten, from the
year 64 onward “the persecution was continued as a permanent police measure,
under the form of a general prosecution of Christians as a sect dangerous to
the public safety.”
This, after a lengthened discussion of the whole
question, is Professor Ramsay's conclusion, who considers it doubtful if any
“edict”, in the strict sense of the word, was promulgated by the Emperor Nero;
and this he deduces from the famous correspondence which took place between
Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, and the Emperor Trajan, some fifty years after
the events just related in the days of Nero.
The words of Pliny when he asked for more definite
directions from Trajan in the matter of Christian prosecutions, apparently
indicate that he considered the Christian question not as one coming under some
definite law, but as a matter of practical administration.
The more general opinion, however, held by modern
Church historians is that an edict against the Christians was promulgated by
Nero, and that Domitian specially acted upon the edict in the course of the
severe measures taken against the sect in the later years of his reign; the
words of Melito of Sardis (second century), of Tertullian (beginning
of third century), of the Christian historians writing in the fourth century
and early years of the fifth century Sulpicius Severus and Lactantius,
being quoted in support of this view.
The expressions used by Sulpicius Severus
here are certainly very definite in the matter of the imperial edict. This
historian founds his account of the persecution under Nero on “Tacitus,” and
then comments as follows : “This was the beginning of severe measures against
the Christians. Afterwards the religion was forbidden by formal laws, and the
profession of Christianity was made illegal by published edicts.
It is not, however, of great importance if the
profession of Christianity was formally interdicted, or if a persecution was a
matter of practical administration, the profession of the faith being
considered dangerous to law and order, and deserving of death—as Ramsay
supposes. The other conclusion is of far greater moment. It is briefly this:
The first step taken by the imperial government in
persecution dates certainly from the reign of Nero, immediately after the
scenes in the Vatican games, when a Christian was condemned after evidence had
been given that he or she had committed some act of hostility to society—no
difficult task to prove. Subsequent to Nero’s reign, a further development in
the persecutions had taken place (probably in the time of Vespasian), in which
all Christians were assumed to have been guilty of such hostility to society,
and might be condemned off-hand on confession of the Name. This was the state
of things when Pliny wrote to Trajan for more detailed instructions. The great
number of professing Christians alarming that upright and merciful official, he
asked the Emperor was he to send them all to death?
The leading feature of the instruction of the Emperor
Trajan in reply to Pliny’s question, as we shall presently see, was, although
Christians were to be condemned if they confessed the Name, they were not to be
sought out. This instruction held good until the closing years of the Empire,
when a sterner policy was pursued; while it is indisputable that under Antoninus Pius
and Marcus Aurelius, a yet more hostile practice was adopted towards the
Christians.
One great point is clear—that from the days of Nero
the Christians were never safe; they lived as their writings plainly show, even
under the rule of those Emperors who were, comparatively speaking, well
disposed to them, with the vision of martyrdom ever before their eyes; they
lived, not a few of them, positively training themselves to endure the great
trial as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. During the first and second centuries,
comparatively speaking, only a few names of these martyrs and confessors have
come down to us : we possess but a few really well authenticated recitals (Acts
and Passions), but these names and stories do not read like exceptional cases;
irresistibly the grave truth forces itself upon us, that there were many heroes
and heroines whose names have not been preserved—whose stories have not been
recorded.
The sword of persecution ever hung over the heads of
the members of the Christian flocks—ready to fall at any moment. The stem
instructions, modified though they were by the kindly policy of some of the
rulers of the State, were never abrogated, never forgotten; they were
susceptible, it is true, of a gentler interpretation than the harsh terms in
which they were couched at first seemed to warrant, but these interpretations
constantly varied according to the policy of the provincial magistrate and the
tone for the moment of the reigning Emperor; but we must never think of the
spirit of persecution really slumbering even for one short year.
V
IT has been asked, How comes it that for much of the
first and second centuries there is a remarkable silence respecting these
persecutions which we are persuaded harassed the Christian congregations in the
provinces as in the great metropolis ? The answer here is not difficult to
find.
The pagan writers of these centuries held the
Christian sect in deep contempt; they would never think the punishments dealt
out to a number of law-breakers and wild fanatics worthy of chronicling; the
mere loss of life in that age, so accustomed to wholesale destruction of human
beings, would not strike them as a notable incident in any year.
While as regards Christian records, the practice of
celebrating the anniversary days of even famous martyrs and confessors only
began in Rome far on in the third century.
But, as we shall see, although we possess no Christian
records definitely telling us of any special persecution between the times of
Nero and the later years of Domitian, the pages of the undoubtedly genuine
Christian writings of very early date, from which we shall presently quote,
were unmistakably all written under the shadow of a restless relentless
hostility on the part of the Roman government towards the Christian sect. The
followers of Jesus we see ever lived under the shadow of persecution.
Never safe for a single day was the life of one who
believed in the Name; his life and the life of his dear ones were never for an
instant secure: he and his family were at the mercy of every enemy, open and
secret. Confiscation, degradation from rank and position, banishment,
imprisonment, torture, death, were ever threatening him. A hard, stern combat,
indeed, was the daily life of every Christian disciple. Many came out as
victors from the terrible trial; this we learn from such writings as the Shepherd of
Hermas, but some, alas I we learn from that same vivid and truthful picture
of Hermas, flinched and played the traitor when the hour of decision
between Christ and the pagan gods struck, as it often, very often, did in the
so-called quiet days of the Flavian Emperors.
But it is only from the general character and spirit
of the early Christian writers that we gather this; it is only from the
allusions scattered up and down these striking and pathetic pages, which after
all had other and nobler work before them than to record the many sufferings
and martyrdoms of the brethren, that we learn what was the character of the
hard life the followers of Jesus had to lead. So far from exaggerating, these
writers give a very imperfect account of the sufferings of that period.
But in spite of this dark shadow of danger under which
the Christian always lived, a cloud which for two hundred and fifty years never
really lifted; in spite of popular dislike and of public condemnation,—the
numbers of the persecuted sect multiplied with startling rapidity in all lands,
among all the various peoples massed together under the rule of the Empire, and
called by the name of Romans. Their great number attracted the attention of
pagan writers such as Tacitus, writing of the martyrdoms of A.D. 64; of Pliny, speaking of
what he witnessed in A.D. 112;
of Christian writers like Tertullian, giving a picture of the sect at the end
of the second century.
In the middle years of this second century, only a
little more than a hundred years after the Resurrection morning, when the Antonines were reigning, we know that there were large
congregations in Spain and Gaul, in Germany, in North Africa, in Egypt and in
Syria, besides the great and powerful Church in Rome.
All that we learn of the busy, earnest, strenuous life
of these early Christian communities, of their noble charities, of their active
propaganda, of their grave and successful contentions with the heretical
teachers who successively arose in their midst, makes it hard to believe that
they were ever living, as it were, under the very shadow of persecution which
might burst upon them at any moment; and yet well-nigh all the writings of
these early days are coloured with these
anticipations of torture, confiscation, imprisonment, and death,—a death of
pain and agony. The Apocalypse refers to these things again and again—Clement
of Rome in his grave and measured Epistle—Hermas and Ignatius, Justin and
Tertullian, and somewhat later Cyprian writing in the middle of the third
century— allude to these things as part of the everyday Christian life. They
give us, it is true, few details, little history of the events which were
constantly happening; but as we read, we feel that the thought of martyrdom was
constantly present with them.
Now what was the attraction to this Christianity, the
profession of which was so fraught with danger — so surrounded with deadly
peril ?
It is true that martyrdom itself possessed a special
attraction for some. The famous chapters of Ignatius's Letter to the
Roman Church, written circa A.D. 109-10, very vividly picture this strange charm.
The constancy of the confessor, the calm serenity with which he endured
tortures, the smiling confidence with which he welcomed a death often of pain
and suffering—his eyes fixed upon something invisible to mortal eyes which he
saw immediately before him,—all this was new in the world of Rome ; it was at
once striking and admirable. Such a sight, and it was a frequent one, was
indeed inspiring—“Why should not I,” thought many a believer in
Jesus, share in this glorious future ? Why should not I form one of this noble
band of elect and blessed souls? ”
Then again another attraction to Christianity was ever
present in the dose union which existed among the members of the community.
In this great Brotherhood, without any attempt to
level down the wealthier Christians, without any movement towards establishing
a general community of goods, the warmest feelings of friendship and love were
cultivated between all classes and degrees. The Christian teachers pointed out
with great force that in the eyes of the divine Master no difference existed
between the slave and the free-born, between the patrician and the little
trader; with Him there was perfect equality. Sex and age, rank and fortune,
poverty and riches, country and race, with Him were of no account. All men and
women who struggled after the life He loved, were His dear servants. The result
of all this was shown in the generous and self-denying love of the wealthier
members of the flock towards their poor and needy brothers and sisters.
This is conspicuously shown in the wonderful story of
the vast cemeteries of the suburbs of Rome, where at a very early date the rich
afforded the hospitality of the tomb to their poor friends.
Most of the so-called “catacombs’’ began in the
gardens of the rich and noble, where the little family God's acre was speedily
opened to the proletariat and the slave, who after death were tenderly and
lovingly cared for, and laid to sleep with all reverence alongside the members
of the patrician house to whom the cemetery belonged, and which in numberless
instances was enlarged to receive these poor and humble guests.
But, after all, great and different though these
various attractive influences were,—and which no doubt in countless cases
brought unnumbered men and women of all ranks and orders into the ranks of
Christianity,—there was something more which united all these various
nationalities, these different grades, with an indissoluble bond of union ;
something more which enabled them to live on year after year in the shadow of
persecution—in daily danger of losing all that men most prize and hold dear;
something more which gave them that serene courage at the last, which inspired
the great army of ’bravely patient martyrs to witness a good confession for the
Name’s sake. It was that burning, that living faith in the great sacrifice of
their loving Master—the faith which in the end vanquished even pagan Rome—the
faith which comes from no books or arguments, no preaching and no persuasion—
from no learning however profound and sacred — from no human arsenal, however
furnished with truth and righteousness.
It was that strong and deathless faith which is the
gift of God alone, and which in a double portion was the gift of the Holy Ghost
to the sorely tried Church in the heroic age of Christianity.
After the death of Nero, during the very brief reigns
of Galba Otho and Vitellius, probably the persecution of Christians, owing to
the disturbed state of Rome and the Empire, languished. When, however, the
Flavian House in the person of Vespasian was firmly placed in power, the policy
of the government of Nero, which held that the Christians were a sect the
tendency of whose beliefs and practice was hostile to the very foundations and
established principles of the Roman government, was strictly adhered to, and
possibly even developed.
The followers of the sect were deemed outlaws, and the
name of a Christian was treated as a crime.
There is a famous passage in Sulpicius Severus
(fourth century) which most modem scholars consider to have been an extract
from a lost book of Tacitus. It is an account of a Council of War held after
the storming of Jerusalem, A.D. 70. In this Council, Titus the son and heir of
Vespasian— the hero of the great campaign which closed with the fall of
Jerusalem—is reported to have expressed the opinion that the Temple ought to be
destroyed in order that the religion of the Jews and of the Christians might be
more completely rooted up; for these religions, though opposed to each other,
had yet the same origin. The Christians had sprung from the Jews, and when the
root was tom up the stem issuing from the root would easily be destroyed. There
is no doubt but that this report of Titus’ speech at the Council of War is an
historical document of the utmost importance. It tells us exactly what was the
feeling of the imperial Flavian House towards the Christians—they represented
an evil which it was well to extirpate.
It is possible that in a mutilated passage of
Suetonius a reference occurs to Vespasian’s actions at this period (in the year
following A.D. 70) in
respect to the Christians. The passage runs as follows : “Never in the death of
any one did Vespasian (take pleasure, and in the case of) merited punishments
he even wept and groaned.” This is clearly a reference to some class of
individuals whose punishment Vespasian felt bound to accept, while he regretted
it. "It is inconceivable that Vespasian, a Roman soldier of long
experience in the bloody wars of Britain and Judaea, wept and groaned at every
merited execution.... We think of the punishments which by the principle of
Nero attached to the Christians... the principle in question continued
permanently, and Suetonius alluded to it on account of the detail, interesting
to a biographer, that Vespasian wept while he confirmed its operation.” But
a yet more precise statement, that persecution was actively continued under
Vespasian, is to be found in the Latin Father, Hilary of Poitiers, who ranks
Vespasian between Nero and Decius as a persecutor of the Faith? Some critics
have supposed this notice an error. Lightfoot, however, thinks it more probable
that it was based upon some facts of history known to Hilary, but since blotted
out by time from the records of history.
Towards the end of Domitian’s reign, circa A.D. 95, the persecution became
more bitter. Indeed, so severely were the Christians hunted out and prosecuted
that the period had become memorable in history. Domitian is constantly
mentioned as the second great persecutor, Nero being the first. The reason
doubtless for this general tradition is that in A.D. 95, persons of the highest rank, some even
belonging to the imperial family, were among the condemned; notably Flavius
Clemens the Consul, and the two princesses bearing the name of Domitilla—all
these being very near relatives of the Emperor.
The violent outbreak of persecution, fierce and
terrible as it seems to have been in the last year and a half of Domitian's
reign, does not appear to have been owing to any special movement among the
Christian subjects of the Empire which aroused attention and suggested
distrust, but was solely owing to the Emperor’s private policy and personal
feelings. There is nothing to show that any edict against the sect was
promulgated in this reign. Since the time of Nero the persecution of Christians
was a standing matter, as was that of persons who were habitual law-breakers,
robbers, and such like. Probably under the princes of the Flavian dynasty, as
we have said, this policy of the government was somewhat developed throughout
the Empire, and now and again, owing to local circumstances and the disposition
of the chief magistrate, was more or less severe. It is said that some
governors boasted that they had brought back from their province their lictors’
axes unstained with blood; but others were actuated with very different
feelings.
In the case of the so-called Domitian persecution, the
ill-will of the autocratic Emperor naturally intensified it. Various motives
seem to have influenced the sovereign Lord of the Empire here.
Domitian was a sombre and
suspicious tyrant, and no doubt his cruel action in the case of his relatives,
the consul Flavius and the princesses of his House, was prompted by jealousy of
those who stood nearest his throne, and the fact that they were found to belong
to the proscribed sect gave him a pretext of which he was glad to avail
himself. But his bloody vengeance was by no means only wreaked upon his own
relatives. We learn from the pagan writer Dion Cassius (in the epitome of his
work by the monk Xiphilin) and also from
Suetonius, that he put to death various persons of high position, notably Acilius Glabrio who
had been consul in A.D. 91.
This Acilius Glabrio was also a
Christian. The researches and discoveries of De Rossi and Marruchi in the older portion of the vast Catacomb of
S. Priscilla have conclusively proved this.
There was another reason, however, for Domitian’s
special hatred of the Christian sect. The Emperor was a vigilant censor, and an
austere guardian of the ancient Roman traditions. In this respect he has with
some justice been cited as pursuing the same policy as did his great
predecessor Augustus, and, like him, he looked on the imperial cultus as
part of the State religion. Domitian felt that these ancient traditions which
formed a part of Roman life were compromised by the teaching and practices of
the Christian sect. No doubt this was one of the principal reasons which
influenced him in his active persecution of the followers of Jesus.
But although he struck at some of the noblest and most
highly placed in the Empire, especially, as it seems, those suspected of being
members of the hated sect, he appears to have vented his fury also upon many
who belonged to the lower classes of the citizens. Juvenal in a striking
passage evidently alludes to his pursuit of these comparatively unknown and
obscure ones, and traces the unpopularity which eventually led to his
assassination to this persecution of the poor nameless citizen?
Domitian was assassinated A.D. 96, and was succeeded by the good and gentle
Emperor Nerva. The active and bitter persecution which Domitian carried on in
the latter years of his reign, as far as we know, ceased, and once more the
Christian sect was left in comparative quiet, that is to say, they were still
in the position of outlaws, the sword of persecution ever hanging over their
heads. The law which forbade their very existence was there, if any one was
disposed to call it into action. The passion of the populace, the bigotry of a
magistrate, or the malice of some responsible personage, might at any moment
awake the slumbering law into activity. These various malicious influences,
ever ready, were constantly setting the law in motion. This we certainly gather
from Pliny’s reference to the “ Cognitiones ”
or inquiries into accusations set on foot against Christians in his famous
letter to the Emperor Trajan.
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