THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY
=The Christ.=--He whom the Jews were expecting as their liberator and
king, the Messiah, appeared in Galilee, a small province of the North,
hardly regarded as Jewish, and in a humble family of carpenters. He
was called Jesus, but his Greek disciples called him the Christ (the
anointed), that is to say, the king consecrated by the holy oil. He
was also called the Master, the Lord, and the Saviour. The religion
that he came to found is that we now possess. We all know his life: it
is the model of every Christian. We know his instructions by heart;
they form our moral law. It is sufficient, then, to indicate what new
doctrines he disseminated in the world.
=Charity.=--Before all, Christ commended love. "Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy mind and thy neighbor
as thyself.... On these two commandments hang all the law and the
prophets." The first duty is to love others and to benefit them. When
God will judge men, he will set on his right hand those who have fed
the hungry, given drink to those who were thirsty, and have clad those
that were naked. To those who would follow him the Christ said at the
beginning: "Go, ... sell all that ye have and give to the poor."
For the ancients the good man was the noble, the rich, the brave.
Since the time of Christ the word has changed its sense: the good man
is he who loves others. Doing good is loving others and seeking to be
of service to them. Charity (the Latin name of love) from that time
has been the cardinal virtue. Charitable becomes synonymous with
beneficent. To the old doctrine of vengeance the Christ formally
opposes his doctrine of charity. "Ye have heard that it was said, An
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you ...
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also.... Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy
neighbor and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you love your enemies,
do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute you,
... that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on
the just and the unjust." He himself on the cross prayed for his
executioners, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
=Equality.=--The Christ loved all men; he died not for one people
only, but for all humanity. He never made a difference between men;
all are equal before God. The ancient religions, even the Jewish, were
religions of peoples who kept them with jealous care, as a treasure,
without wishing to communicate them to other peoples. Christ said to
his disciples, "Go, and teach all nations." And the apostle Paul thus
formulated the doctrine of Christian equality: "There is neither Greek
nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, bond nor free."
Two centuries later Tertullian, a Christian writer, said, "The world
is a republic, the common land of the human race."
=Poverty and Humility.=--The ancients thought that riches ennobled a
man and they regarded pride as a worthy sentiment. "Blessed are the
poor," said Christ, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." He that
would not renounce all that he had could not be his disciple. He
himself went from city to city, possessing nothing, and when his
disciples were preoccupied with the future, he said, "Be not anxious
for what ye shall eat, nor for what ye shall put on. Behold the birds
of the heaven, they sow not neither do they reap, yet your heavenly
Father feedeth them."
The Christian was to disdain riches, and more yet, worldly honors. One
day when his disciples were disputing who should have the highest rank
in heaven, he said, "He that is greatest among you shall be your
servant." "Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that
humbleth himself shall be exalted." Till our day the successor of
Saint Peter calls himself "Servant of the servants of God." Christ
drew to himself by preference the poor, the sick, women, children,--in
a word, the weak and the helpless. He took all his disciples from
among the populace and bade them be "meek and lowly of heart."
=The Kingdom of God.=--Christ said that he had come to the earth to
found the kingdom of God. His enemies believed that he wished to be a
king, and when he was crucified, they placed this inscription on his
cross, "Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews." This was a gross
mistake. Christ himself had declared, "My kingdom is not of this
world." He did not come to overturn governments nor to reform
society. To him who asked if he should pay the Roman tax, he replied,
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things
that are God's." And so the Christian accepted what he found
established and himself worked to perfect it, not to remodel society.
To make himself pleasing to God and worthy of his kingdom it was not
necessary to offer him sacrifices or to observe minute formulas as the
pagans did: "True worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and
truth." Their moral law is contained in this word of Christ: "Be ye
therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
THE FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHURCH
=Disciples and Apostles.=--The twelve disciples who associated with
Christ received from him the mission to preach his doctrine to all
peoples. From that time they were called Apostles. The majority of
them lived in Jerusalem and preached in Judaea; the first Christians
were still Jews. It was Saul, a new convert, who carried Christianity
to the other peoples of the Orient. Paul (for he took this name) spent
his life visiting the Greek cities of Asia, Greece, and Macedonia,
inviting to the new religion not only the Jews, but also and
especially the Gentiles: "You were once without Christ," said he to
them, "strangers to the covenant and to the promises; but you have
been brought nigh by the blood of Christ, for it is he who of two
peoples hath made both one." From this time it was no longer necessary
to be a Jew if one would become a Christian. The other nations,
disregarded by the law of Moses, are brought near by the law of
Christ. This fusion was the work of St. Paul, also called the Apostle
to the Gentiles.
The religion of Christ spread very slowly, as he himself had
announced: "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard-seed ...
which is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the
greatest among herbs ... and the birds of the air lodge under its
branches."
=The Church.=--In every city where Christians were found they
assembled to pray together, to sing the praises of God, and to
celebrate the mystery of the Lord's Supper. Their meeting was called
Ecclesia (assembly). Usually the Christians of the same assembly
regarded themselves as brothers; they contributed of their property to
support the widows, the poor, and the sick. The most eminent directed
the community and celebrated the religious ceremonies. These were the
Priests (their name signifies "elders"). Others were charged with the
administration of the goods of the community, and were called Deacons
(servants). Besides these officers, there was in each city a supreme
head--the Bishop (overseer).
Later the functions of the church became so exacting that the body of
Christians was divided into two classes of people: the clergy, who
were the officials of the community; the rest, the faithful, who were
termed the laity.
Each city had its independent church; thus they spoke of the church of
Antioch, of Corinth, of Rome; and yet they all formed but one church,
the church of Christ, in which all were united in one faith. The
universal or Catholic faith was regarded as the only correct body of
belief; all conflicting opinions (the heresies) were condemned as
errors.
=The Sacred Books.=--The sacred scripture of the Jews, the Old
Testament, remained sacred for the Christians, but they had other
sacred books which the church had brought into one structure (the New
Testament). The four Gospels recount the life of Christ and the "good
news" of salvation which he brought. The Acts of the Apostles
describes how the gospel was disseminated in the world. The Epistles
are the letters addressed by the apostles to the Christians of the
first century. The Apocalypse (Revelation) is the revelation made
through St. John to the seven churches of Asia. Many other
pseudo-sacred books were current among the Christians, but the church
has rejected all of these, and has termed them apocryphal.
=The Persecutions.=--The Christian religion was persecuted from its
birth. Its first enemies were the Jews, who forced the Roman governor
of Judaea to crucify Christ; who stoned St. Stephen, the first martyr,
and so set themselves against St. Paul that they almost compassed his
death.
Then came the persecution by the Pagans. The Romans tolerated all the
religions of the East because the devotees of Osiris, of Mithra, and
of the Good Goddess recognized at the same time the Roman gods. But
the Christians, worshippers of the living God, scorned the petty
divinities of antiquity. More serious still in the eyes of the Romans,
they refused to adore the emperor as a god and to burn incense on the
altar of the goddess Roma. Several emperors promulgated edicts
against the Christians, bidding the governors arrest them and put them
to death. A letter of Pliny the Younger, then governor in Asia, to the
emperor Trajan, shows the procedure against them. "Up to this time,
regarding the people who have been denounced as Christians, I have
always operated as follows: I asked them if they were Christians; if
they confessed it, I put the question to them a second time, and then
a third time, threatening them with the penalty of death. When they
persisted, I had them put to death, convinced that, whatever their
fault that they avowed, their disobedience and their resolute
obstinacy merited punishment. Many who have been denounced in
anonymous writings have denied that they were Christians, have
repeated a prayer that I pronounced before them, have offered wine and
incense to your statue, which I had set forth for this purpose
together with the statues of the gods, and have even reviled the name
of Christ. All these are things which it is not possible to compel any
true Christians to do. Others have confessed that they were
Christians, but they affirm that their crime and their error consisted
only in assembling on certain days before sunrise to adore Christ as
God, to sing together in his honor, and to bind themselves by oath to
commit no crime, to perpetrate no theft, murder, adultery, nor to
violate their word. I have believed it necessary in order to secure
the truth to put to the torture two female slaves whom they called
deaconesses; but I have discovered only an absurd and exaggerated
superstition."
The Roman government was a persecutor,[165] but the populace were
severer yet. They could not endure these people who worshipped another
god than theirs and contemned their deities. Whenever famine or
epidemic occurred, the well-known cry was heard, "To the lions with
the Christians!" The people forced the magistrates to hunt and
persecute the Christians.
=The Martyrs.=--For the two centuries and a half that the Christians
were persecuted, throughout the empire there were thousands of
victims, of every age, sex, and condition. Roman citizens, like St.
Paul, were beheaded; the others were crucified, burned, most often
sent to the beasts in the amphitheatre. If they were allowed to escape
with their lives, they were set at forced labor in the mines.
Sometimes torture was aggravated by every sort of invention. In the
great execution at Lyons, in 177, the Christians, after being tortured
and confined in narrow prison quarters, were brought to the arena. The
beasts mutilated without killing them. They were then seated in iron
chairs heated red by fire. Blandina, a young slave, who survived all
these torments was bound with cords and exposed to the fury of a bull.
The Christians joyfully suffered these persecutions which gave them
entrance to heaven. The occasion presented an opportunity for
rendering public testimony to Christ. And so they did not call
themselves victims, but martyrs (witnesses); their torture was a
testimony. They compared it to the combat of the Olympian games; like
the victor in the athletic contests, they spoke of the palm or the
crown. Even now the festal day of a martyr is the day of his death.
Frequently a Christian who was present at the persecution would draft
a written account of the martyrdom--he related the arrest, the
examination, the tortures, and the death. These brief accounts, filled
with edifying details, were called The Acts of the Martyrs. They were
circulated in the remotest communities; from one end of the empire to
the other they published the glory of the martyrs and excited a desire
to imitate them. Thousands of the faithful, seized by a thirst for
martyrdom, pressed forward to incriminate themselves and to demand
condemnation. One day a governor of Asia had decreed persecutions
against some Christians: all the Christians of the city presented
themselves in his tribunal and demanded to be persecuted. The
governor, exasperated, had some of them executed and sent away the
others. "Begone, you wretches! If you are so bent on death, you have
precipices and ropes." Some of the faithful, to be surer of torture,
entered the temples and threw down the idols of the gods. It was
several times necessary for even the church to prohibit the
solicitation of martyrdom.
=The Catacombs.=--The ancient custom of burning the dead was repugnant
to the Christians. Like the Jews, they interred their dead wrapped
with a shroud in a sarcophagus. Cemeteries[166] were therefore
required. At Rome where land was very high in price the Christians
went below ground, and in the brittle tufa on which Rome was built may
be seen long galleries and subterranean chambers. There, in niches
excavated along the passages, they laid the bodies of their dead. As
each generation excavated new galleries, there was formed at length a
subterranean city, called the Catacombs ("to the tombs"). There were
similar catacombs in several cities--Naples, Milan, Alexandria, but
the most celebrated were those in Rome. These have been investigated
in our day and thousands of Christian tombs and inscriptions
recovered. The discovery of this subterranean world gave birth to a
new department of historical science--Christian Epigraphy and
Archaeology.
The sepulchral halls of the catacombs do not resemble those of the
Egyptians or those of the Etruscans; they are bare and severe. The
Christians knew that a corpse had no bodily wants and so they did not
adorn the tombs. The most important halls are decorated with very
simple ornaments and paintings which almost always represent the same
scenes. The most common subjects are the faithful in prayer, and the
Good Shepherd, symbolical of Christ. Some of these halls were like
chapels. In them were interred the bodies of the holy martyrs and the
faithful who wished to lie near them; every year Christians came here
to celebrate the mysteries. During the persecutions of the third
century the Christians of Rome often took refuge in these subterranean
chapels to hold their services of worship, or to escape from pursuit.
The Christians could feel safe in this bewildering labyrinth of
galleries whose entrance was usually marked by a pagan tomb.
THE MONKS OF THE THIRD CENTURY
=The Solitaries.=--It was an idea current among Christians, especially
in the East, that one could not become a perfect Christian by
remaining in the midst of other men. Christ himself had said, "If any
man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and
children, and brethren, and sisters ... he cannot be my disciple." The
faithful man or woman who thus withdrew from the world to work out his
salvation the more surely, was termed an Anchorite (the man who is set
apart), or a Monk (solitary). This custom began in the East in the
middle of the third century. The first anchorites established
themselves in the deserts and the ruins of the district of Thebes in
Upper Egypt, which remained the holy land of the solitaries.
Paul (235-340), the oldest of the monks, lived to his ninetieth year
in a grotto near a spring and a palm-tree which furnished him with
food and clothing. The model of the monks was St Anthony.[167] At the
age of twenty he heard read one day the text of the gospel, "If thou
wilt be perfect, sell all thy goods and give to the poor." He was fine
looking, noble, and rich, having received an inheritance from his
parents. He sold all his property, distributed it in alms and buried
himself in the desert of Egypt. He first betook himself to an empty
tomb, then to the ruins of a fortress; he was clad in a hair-shirt,
had for food only the bread that was brought to him every six months,
fasted, starved himself, prayed day and night. Often sunrise found
him still in prayer. "O sun," cried he, "why hast thou risen and
prevented my contemplating the true light?" He felt himself surrounded
by demons, who, under every form, sought to distract him from his
religious thoughts. When he became old and revered by all Egypt, he
returned to Alexandria for a day to preach against the Arian heretics,
but soon repaired to the desert again. They besought him to remain: he
replied, "The fishes die on land, the monks waste away in the city; we
return to our mountains like the fish to the water."
Women also became solitaries. Alexandra, one of these, shut herself in
an empty tomb and lived there for ten years without leaving it to see
anybody.
=Asceticism.=--These men who had withdrawn to the desert to escape the
world thought that everything that came from the world turned the soul
from God and placed it in the peril of losing salvation. The Christian
ought to belong entirely to God; he should forget everything behind
him. "Do you not know," said St. Nilus later, "that it is a trap of
Satan to be too much attached to one's family?" The monk Poemen had
withdrawn to the desert with his brothers, and their mother came to
visit them. As they refused to appear, she waited a little until they
were going to the church; but on seeing her, they fled and would not
consent to speak to her unless they were concealed. She asked to see
them, but they consoled her by saying, "You will see us in the other
world."
But the world is not the only danger for the monk. Every man carried
about with himself an enemy from whom he could not deliver himself as
he had delivered himself from the world--that is, his own body. The
body prevented the soul from rising to God and drew it to worldly
pleasures that came from the devil. And so the solitaries applied
themselves to overcoming the body by refusing to it everything that it
loved. They subsisted only on bread and water; many ate but twice a
week, some went to the mountains to cut herbs which they ate raw. They
dwelt in grottoes, ruins, and tombs, lying on the earth or on a mat of
rushes. The most zealous of them added other tortures to mortify, or
kill, the body. St. Pachomius for fifteen years slept only in an erect
position, leaning against a wall. Macarius remained six months in a
morass, the prey of mosquitoes "whose stings would have penetrated the
hide of a wild boar." The most noted of these monks was St. Simeon,
surnamed Stylites (the man of the column). For forty years he lived in
the desert of Arabia on the summit of a column, exposed to the sun and
the rain, compelling himself to stay in one position for a whole day;
the faithful flocked from afar to behold him; he gave them audience
from the top of his column, bidding creditors free their debtors, and
masters liberate their slaves; he even sent reproaches to ministers
and counsellors of the emperor. This form of life was called
Asceticism (exercise).
=The Cenobites.=--The solitaries who lived in the same desert drew
together and adopted a common life for the practice of their
austerities. About St. Anthony were already assembled many anchorites
who gave him their obedience. St. Pachomius (272-348) in this way
assembled 3,000. Their establishment was at Tabenna, near the first
cataract of the Nile. He founded many other similar communities,
either of men or women. In 256 a traveller said he had seen in a
single city of Egypt 10,000 monks and 20,000 vowed to a religious
life. There were more of them in Syria, in Palestine, in all the
Orient. The monks thus united in communities became Cenobites (people
who live in common). They chose a chief, the abbot (the word signifies
in Syriac "father"), and they implicitly obeyed him. Cassian relates
that in one community in Egypt he had seen the abbot before the whole
refectory give a cenobite a violent blow on the head to try his
obedience.
The primitive monks renounced all property and family relations; the
cenobites surrendered also their will. On entering the community they
engaged to possess nothing, not to marry, and to obey. "The monks,"
says St. Basil, "live a spiritual life like the angels." The first
union among the cenobites was the construction of houses in close
proximity. Later each community built a monastery, a great edifice,
where each monk had his cell. A Christian compares these cells "to a
hive of bees where each has in his hands the wax of work, in his mouth
the honey of psalms and prayers." These great houses needed a written
constitution; this was the Monastic Rule. St. Pachomius was the first
to prepare one. St. Basil wrote another that was adopted by almost all
the monasteries of the Orient.
FOOTNOTES:
[165] The church counted ten persecutions, the first under Nero, the
last under Diocletian.
[166] The word is Greek and signifies place of repose.
[167] See his biography in the "Lives of the Fathers of the Desert," by
Rufinus.