when Christianity seemed to return for a moment to his cradle and bid to
him an eternal adieu. The principal disciples, Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel,
the sons of Zebedee, met again on the shores of the lake, and henceforth
lived together; they had taken up again their former calling of
fishermen, at Bethsaida or at Capernaum. The Galilean women were no
doubt with them. They had insisted more than the others on that return,
which was to them a heartfelt love. This was their last act in the
establishment of Christianity. From that moment they disappear. Faithful
to their love, their wish was to quit no more the country in which they
had tasted their greatest delight. More than five hundred persons were
already devoted to the memory of Jesus. In default of the lost master
they obeyed the disciples, the most authoritative--Peter--in particular.
The activity of these ardent souls had already turned in another
direction. What they believed to have heard from the lips of the dear
risen One was the order to go forth and preach, and to convert the
world. But where should they commence? Naturally, at Jerusalem. The
return to Jerusalem was then resolved upon by those who at that time had
the direction of the sect. As these journeys were ordinarily made by
caravan at the time of the feasts, we now suppose, with all manner of
likelihood, that the return in question took place at the Feast of
Tabernacles at the close of the year 33, or the Paschal Feast of the
year 34. Galilee was thus abandoned by Christianity, and abandoned
forever. The little Church which remained there continued, no doubt, to
exist; but we hear it no more spoken of. It was probably broken up, like
all the rest, by the frightful disaster which then overtook the country
during the war of Vespasian; the wreck of the dispersed community sought
refuge beyond Jordan. After the war it was not Christianity which was
brought back into Galilee; it was Judaism.
Galilee thus counted but an hour in the history of Christianity; but it
was the sacred hour, _par excellence_; it gave to the new religion that
which has made it endure--its poetry, its penetrating charms. "The
Gospel," after the manner of the synoptics, was a Galilean work. But
"the Gospel" thus extended has been the principal cause of the success
of Christianity, and continues to be the surest guarantee of its future.
It is probable that a fraction of the little school which surrounded
Jesus in his last days remained at Jerusalem.
It is about this period that we can place the vision of James, mentioned
by St. Paul. James was the brother, or at least a relation, of Jesus. We
do not find that he had accompanied Jesus on his last sojourn to
Jerusalem. He probably went there with the apostles, when the latter
quitted Galilee.
It is very remarkable that the family of Jesus, some of whose members
during his life had been incredulous and hostile to his mission,
constituted now a part of the Church, and held in it a very exalted
position. One is led to suppose that the reconciliation took place
during the sojourn of the apostles in Galilee. The celebrity which had
attached itself to the name of their relative, those who believed in
him, and were assured of having seen him after he had arisen, served to
make an impression on their minds. From the time of the definite
establishment of the apostles at Jerusalem, we find with them Mary, the
mother of Jesus, and the brothers of Jesus. In what concerns Mary, it
appears that John, thinking in this to obey a recommendation of the
Master, had adopted and taken her to his own home. He perhaps took her
back to Jerusalem. This woman, whose personal history and character have
remained veiled in obscurity, assumed hence great importance. The words
that the evangelist put into the mouth of some unknown woman, "Blessed
is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked," began
to be verified. It is probable that Mary survived her son a few years.
As for the brothers of Jesus, their history is wrapped in obscurity.
Jesus had several brothers and sisters. It seemed probable, however,
that in the class of persons which were called "Brothers of the Lord"
there were included relations in the second degree. The question is only
of moment so far as it concerns James, whom we see playing a great part
in the first thirty years of Christianity.
The apostles henceforth separated no more, except to make temporary
journeys. Jerusalem became their head-quarters; they seemed to be afraid
to disperse, while certain acts served to reveal in them the
prepossession of being opposed to return again into Galilee, which
latter had dissolved its little society. An express order of Jesus is
supposed to have interdicted their quitting Jerusalem, before, at least,
the great manifestations which were to take place. People's thoughts
were turned with great force toward a promise which it was supposed
Jesus had made. During his lifetime Jesus, it was said, had often spoken
of the Holy Spirit, which was understood to mean a personification of
divine wisdom. He had promised his disciples that the Spirit would nerve
them in the combats that they would have to engage in, would be their
inspirer in difficulties, and their advocate if they had to speak in
public. Sometimes it was supposed that Jesus suddenly presented himself
in the midst of his disciples assembled, and breathed on them out of his
own mouth a current of vivifying air. At other times the disappearance
of Jesus was regarded as a premonition of the coming of the Spirit. Many
people established an intimate connection between this descent and the
restoration of the kingdom of Israel.
The affection that the disciples had the one for the other, while Jesus
was alive, was thus enhanced tenfold after his death. They formed a very
small and very retired society, and lived exclusively by themselves. At
Jerusalem they numbered about one hundred and twenty. Their piety was
active, and, as yet, completely restrained by the forms of Jewish
piety. The Temple was then the chief place of devotion. They worked, no
doubt, for a living; but at that time manual labor in Jewish society
engaged very few. Everyone had a trade, but that trade by no means
hindered a man from being educated and well-bred.
The dominant idea in the Christian community, at the moment at which we
are now arrived, was the coming of the Holy Spirit. People were believed
to receive it in the form of a mysterious breath, which passed over the
assembly. Every inward consolation, every bold movement, every flush of
enthusiasm, every feeling of lively and pleasant gayety, which was
experienced without knowing whence it came, was the work of the Spirit.
These simple consciences referred, as usual, to some exterior cause the
exquisite sentiments which were being created in them. When all were
assembled, and when they awaited in silence inspiration from on high, a
murmur, any noise whatever, was believed to be the coming of the Spirit.
In the early times, it was the apparitions of Jesus which were produced
in this manner. Now the turn of ideas had changed. It was the divine
breath which passed over the little Church, and filled it with a
celestial effluvium. These beliefs were strengthened by notions drawn
from the Old Testament. The prophetic spirit is represented in the
Hebrew books as a breathing which penetrates man and inspires him. In
the beautiful vision of Elijah, God passes by in the form of a gentle
wind, which produces a slight rustling noise.
Among all these "descents of the Spirit," which appear to have been
frequent enough, there was one which left a profound impression on the
nascent Church. One day, when the brethren were assembled, a
thunder-storm burst forth. A violent wind threw open the windows: the
heavens were on fire. Thunder-storms, in these countries, are
accompanied by prodigious sheets of lightning; the atmosphere is, as it
were, everywhere furrowed with ridges of flame. Whether the electric
fluid had penetrated the room itself or whether a dazzling flash of
lightning had suddenly illuminated the faces of all, everyone was
convinced that the Spirit had entered, and that it had alighted on the
head of each in the form of tongues of fire. The idea that the Spirit
had alighted on them in the form of jets of flame, resembling tongues of
fire, gave rise to a series of singular ideas, which took a foremost
place in the thought of the period.
The tongues of fire appeared a striking symbol. People were convinced
that God desired to signify in this manner that he poured out upon the
apostles his most precious gifts of eloquence and of inspiration. But
they did not stop there. Jerusalem was, like the majority of the large
cities of the East, a city in which many languages were spoken. The
diversity of tongues was one of the difficulties which one found there
in the way of propagating a universal form of faith. One of the things,
moreover, which alarmed the apostles, at the commencement of a ministry
destined to embrace the world, was the number of languages which were
spoken there: they were asking themselves incessantly how they could
learn so many tongues. "The gift of tongues" became thus a marvellous
privilege. It was believed that the preaching of the Gospel would clear
away the obstacle which was created by the diversity of idioms. There
was in this a liberal idea; they meant to imply that the Gospel should
have no language of its own; that it should be translatable into every
tongue; and that the translation should be of the same value as the
original.
The custom of living together, holding the same faith, and indulging the
same expectation, necessarily produced many common habits. All lived in
common, having but one heart and one mind. No one possessed anything
which was his own. On becoming a disciple of Jesus, one sold one's goods
and made a gift of the proceeds to the society. The chiefs of the
society then distributed the common possessions to each, according to
his needs. They lived in the same quarter. They took their meals
together, and continued to attach to them the mystic sense that Jesus
had prescribed. They passed long hours in prayers. Their prayers were
sometimes improvised aloud, but more often meditated in silence. The
concord was perfect; no dogmatic quarrels, no disputes in regard to
precedence. The tender recollection of Jesus effaced all dissensions.
Joy, lively and deep-seated, was in every heart. Their morals were
austere, but pervaded by a soft and tender sentiment. They assembled in
houses to pray and to devote themselves to ecstatic exercises. The
recollection of these two or three first years remained and seemed to
them like a terrestrial paradise, which Christianity will pursue
henceforth in all its dreams and to which it will vainly endeavor to
return. Such an organization could only be applicable to a very small
church.
The apostles chosen by Jesus, and who were supposed to have received
from him a special mandate to announce to the world the kingdom of God,
had, in the little community, an incontestable superiority. One of the
first cares, as soon as they saw the sect settle quietly down at
Jerusalem, was to fill the vacancy that Judas of Kerioth had left in its
ranks. The opinion that the latter had betrayed his master, and had been
the cause of his death, became more and more general. The legend was
mixed up with him, and every day one heard of some new circumstance
which enhanced the black-heartedness of his deed. In order to replace
him, it was resolved to have recourse to a vote of some sort. The sole
condition was that the candidate should be chosen from the groups of the
oldest disciples, who had been witnesses of the whole series of events,
from the time of the baptism of John. This reduced considerably the
number of those eligible. Two only were found in the ranks, Joseph
Bar-Saba, who bore the name of Justus, and Matthias. The lot fell upon
Matthias, who was accounted as one of the Twelve. But this was the sole
instance of such a replacing.
The body of Twelve lived, generally, permanently at Jerusalem. Till
about the year 60 the apostles did not leave the holy city except upon
temporary missions. This explains the obscurity in which the majority of
the members of the central council remained. Very few of them had a
_rôle_. This council was a kind of sacred college or senate, destined
only to represent tradition and a spirit of conservatism. It finished by
being relieved of every active function, so that its members had nothing
to do but to preach and pray; but as yet the brilliant feats of
preaching had not fallen to their lot. Their names were hardly known
outside Jerusalem, and about the year 70 or 80 the lists which were
given of these chosen Twelve agreed only in the principal names.
The "Brothers of the Lord" appear often by the side of the "apostles,"
although they were distinct from them. Their authority, however, was
equal to that of the apostles. Here two groups constituted, in the
nascent Church, a sort of aristocracy founded solely on the more or less
intimate relations that their members had had with the Master. These
were the men whom Paul denominated "the pillars" of the Church at
Jerusalem. For the rest, we see that no distinctions in the
ecclesiastical hierarchy yet existed. The title was nothing; the
personal authority was everything. The principle of ecclesiastical
celibacy was already established, but it required time to bring all
these germs to their complete development. Peter and Philip were married
and had sons and daughters.
The term used to designate the assembly of the faithful was the Hebrew
_Kahal_, which was rendered by the essentially democratic word
_Ecclesia_, which is the convocation of the people in the ancient
Grecian cities, the summons to the Pnyx or the _Agora_. Commencing with
the second or the third century before Jesus Christ, the words of the
Athenian democracy became a sort of common law in Hellenic language;
many of these terms, on account of their having been used in the Greek
confraternities, entered into the Christian vocabulary. It was, in
reality, the popular life, which, restrained for centuries, resumed its
power under forms altogether different. The primitive Church was, in its
way, a little democracy.
The power which was ascribed to the Church assembled and to its chiefs
was enormous. The Church conferred every mission, and was guided solely
in its choice by the signs given by the Spirit. Its authority went as
far as decreeing death. It is recorded that at the voice of Peter
several delinquents had fallen back and expired immediately. St. Paul, a
little later, was not afraid, in excommunicating a fornicator, "to
deliver him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit
may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." Excommunication was held to
be equivalent to a sentence of death. The apostles were believed to be
invested with supernatural powers. In pronouncing such condemnations,
they thought that their anathemas could not fail but be effectual. The
terrible impression which their excommunications produced, and the
hatred manifested by the brethren against all the members thus cut off,
were sufficient, in fact, in many cases, to bring about death, or at
least to compel the culprit to expatriate himself. Accounts like those
of the death of Ananias and Sapphira did not excite any scruple. The
idea of the civil power was so foreign to all that world placed without
the pale of the Roman law, people were so persuaded that the Church was
a complete society, sufficient in itself, that no person saw, in a
miracle leading to death or the mutilation of an individual, an outrage
punishable by the civil law. Enthusiasm and faith covered all, excused
everything. But the frightful danger which these theocratic maxims laid
up in store for the future is readily perceived. The Church is armed
with a sword; excommunication is a sentence of death. There was
henceforth in the world a power outside that of the State, which
disposed of the life of citizens.
Peter had among the apostles a certain precedence, derived directly from
his zeal and his activity. In these first years he was hardly ever
separate from John, son of Zebedee. They went almost always together,
and their amity was doubtless the corner-stone of the new faith. James,
the brother of the Lord, almost equalled them in authority, at least
among a fraction of the Church.
It is needless to remark that this little group of simple people had no
speculative theology. Jesus wisely kept himself far removed from all
metaphysics. He had only one dogma, his own divine Sonship and the
divinity of his mission. The whole symbol of the primitive Church might
be embraced in one line: "Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God." This
belief rested upon a peremptory argument--the fact of the resurrection,
of which the disciples claimed to be witnesses. To attest the
resurrection of Jesus was the task which all considered as being
specially imposed upon them. It was, however, very soon put forth that
the Master had predicted this event. Different sayings of his were
recalled, which were represented as having not been well understood, and
in which was seen, on second thoughts, an announcement of the
Resurrection. The belief in the near glorious manifestation of Jesus was
universal. The secret word which the brethren used among themselves, in
order to be recognized and confirmed, was _maran-atha_, "the Lord is at
hand."
Jesus, with his exquisite tact in religious matters, had instituted no
new ritual. The new sect had not yet any special ceremonies. The
practices of piety were Jewish. The assemblies had, in a strict sense,
nothing liturgic. They were the meetings of confraternities, at which
prayers were offered up, devoted themselves to _glossolaly_ or prophecy,
and the reading of correspondence. There was nothing yet of
sacerdotalism. There was no priest (_cohen_); the _presbyter_ was the
"elder," nothing more. The only priest was Jesus: in another sense, all
the faithful were priests. Fasting was considered a very meritorious
practice. Baptism was the token of admission to the sect. The rite was
the same as administered by John, but it was administered in the name of
Jesus. Baptism was, however, considered an insufficient initiation. It
had to be followed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which were effected
by means of a prayer, offered up by the apostles, upon the head of the
new convert, accompanied by the imposition of hands.
This imposition of hands, already so familiar to Jesus, was the
sacramental act _par excellence_. It conferred inspiration, universal
illumination, the power to produce prodigies, prophesying, and the
speaking of languages. It was what was called the Baptism of the Spirit.
It was supposed to recall a saying of Jesus: "John baptized you with
water; but as for you, you shall be baptized by the Spirit." Gradually
all these ideas became amalgamated, and baptism was conferred "in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." But it is not
probable that this formula, in the early days in which we now are, was
yet employed. We see the simplicity of this primitive Christian worship.
Neither Jesus nor the apostles had invented it. Certain Jewish sects had
adopted, before them, these grave and solemn ceremonies, which appeared
to have come in part from Chaldæa, where they are still practised with
special liturgies by the Sabeans or Mendaites. The religion of Persia
embraced also many rites of the same description.
The beliefs in popular medicine, which constituted a part of the force
of Jesus, were continued in his disciples. The power of healing was one
of the marvellous gifts conferred by the Spirit. The first Christians,
like almost all the Jews of the time, looked upon diseases as the
punishment of a transgression, or the work of a malignant demon. The
apostles passed, just as Jesus did, for powerful exorcists. People
imagined that the anointings of oil administered by the apostles, with
imposition of hands and invocation of the name of Jesus, were
all-powerful to wash away the sins which were the cause of disease, and
to heal the afflicted one. Oil has always been in the East the medicine
_par excellence_. For the rest, the simple imposition of the hands of
the apostles was reputed to have the same effect. This imposition was
made by immediate contact. Nor is it impossible that, in certain cases,
the heat of the hands, being communicated suddenly to the head, insured
to the sick person a little relief.
The sect being young and not numerous, the question of deaths was not
taken into account until later on. The effect caused by the first
demises which took place in the ranks of the brethren was strange.
People were troubled by the manner of the deaths. It was asked whether
they were less favored than those who were reserved to see with their
eyes the advent of the Son of Man? They came generally to consider the
interval between death and the resurrection as a kind of blank in the
consciousness of the defunct. At the time of which we speak, belief in
the resurrection almost alone prevailed. The funeral rite was
undoubtedly the Jewish rite. No importance was attached to it; no
inscription indicated the name of the dead. The great resurrection was
near; the bodies of the faithful had only to make in the rock a very
short sojourn. It did not require much persuasion to put people in
accord on the question as to whether the resurrection was to be
universal, that is to say, whether it would embrace the good and the
bad, or whether it would apply to the elect only. One of the most
remarkable phenomena of the new religion was the reappearance of
prophecy. For a long time people had spoken but little of prophets in
Israel. That particular species of inspiration seemed to revive in the
little sect. The primitive Church had several prophets and prophetesses
analogous to those of the Old Testament. The psalmists also reappeared.
The model of our Christian psalms is without doubt given in the
canticles which Luke loved to disseminate in his gospel, and which were
copied from the canticles of the Old Testament. These psalms and
prophecies are, as regards form, destitute of originality, but an
admirable spirit of gentleness and of piety animates and pervades them.
It is like a faint echo of the last productions of the sacred lyre of
Israel. The Book of Psalms was in a measure the calyx from which the
Christian bee sucked its first juice. The Pentateuch, on the contrary,
was, as it would seem, little read and little studied; there was
substituted for it allegories after the manner of the Jewish
_midraschim_ in which all the historic sense of the books was
suppressed.
The music which was sung to the new hymns was probably that species of
sobbing, without distinct notes, which is still the music of the Greek
Church, of the Maronites, and in general of the Christians of the East.
It is less a musical modulation than a manner of forcing the voice and
of emitting by the nose a sort of moaning in which all the inflections
follow each other with rapidity. That odd melopoeia was executed
standing, with the eyes fixed, the eyebrows crumpled, the brow knit, and
with an appearance of effort. The word _amen_, in particular, was given
out in a quivering, trembling voice. That word played a great part in
the liturgy. In imitation of the Jews, the new adherents employed it to
mark the assent of the multitude to the words of the prophet or the
precentor. People, perhaps, already attributed to it some secret virtues
and pronounced it with a certain emphasis. We do not know whether that
primitive ecclesiastical song was accompanied by instruments. As to the
inward chant, by which the faithful "made melody in their hearts," and
which was but the overflowing of those tender, ardent, pensive souls, it
was doubtless executed like the _catilenes_ of the Lollards of the
Middle Ages, in medium voice. In general, it was joyousness which was
poured out in these hymns.