I
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH IN ROME--“B”
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” (Acts xxviii. 30-31).
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.[8] 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 recital 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 preexistence?
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[9] 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 dwelleth 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.
II
THE FIRE OF ROME, AND ITS RESULTS AS REGARDS CHRISTIANS--A.D.
64. HENCEFORTH THEY WERE REGARDED AS ENEMIES OF THE STATE
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 or quarters; 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. Poppæa 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 run.
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 multitudo_) 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,[10] 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 Sulpitius Severus and
Lactantius, being quoted in support of this view.
The expressions used by Sulpitius 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”
(_Chron._ ii. 29).
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;[11] 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 stern
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.
III
SILENCE RESPECTING PERSECUTION
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;[12] 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! 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?
“Le candidat au Christianisme, était, par le fait même, candidat au
Martyre,” graphically writes the brilliant and careful French scholar
Duchesne. The Christian verily exposed himself and his dear ones to
measureless penalties. Now what had he to gain by such a dangerous
adventure?
It is true that martyrdom itself possessed a special attraction for
some. The famous chapters of Ignatius’ 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
close 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 modern 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 torn
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 Judæa, 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.”[13]
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.[14] 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.[15]
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[16] 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.[17]
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.