Untruth has imposed on men too long; it is time to pick out the few
truths that we can trace amid the clouds of legends which brood over
Roman history after Tacitus and Suetonius, and have almost always
enveloped the annals of other nations.
How can we believe, for instance, that the Romans, whose laws
exhibit to us a people of grave and severe character, exposed to
prostitution Christian virgins and young women of rank? It is a gross
misunderstanding of the austere dignity of the makers of our laws,
who punished so rigorously the frailties of their vestal virgins. The
“Sincere Acts” of Ruinart describe these indignities; but are we to
put the “Acts” of Ruinart on a level with the _Acts of the Apostles_?
These “Sincere Acts” say, according to the Bollandists, that there
were in the town of Ancyra seven Christian virgins, each about
seventy years old; that the governor Theodectes condemned them to be
handed over to the young men of the town; and that he changed the
sentence, as was proper, and compelled them to assist, naked, in the
mysteries of Diana--at which none ever assisted without a veil. St.
Theodotus--who, to tell the truth, kept a public-house, but was not
less zealous on that account--prayed ardently to God to take these
holy maidens out of life, lest they should succumb to temptation. God
heard him. The governor then had them thrown into a lake, with stones
round their necks, and they at once appeared to Theodotus and begged
him to see that their bodies were not eaten by fishes.
The holy publican and his companions went during the night to the
shore of the lake, which was guarded by soldiers. A heavenly torch
went before them, and when they came to the spot where the guards
were, a heavenly cavalier, armed from top to toe, chased the guards,
lance in hand. St. Theodotus drew from the lake the bodies of the
virgins. He was brought before the governor--and the celestial
cavalier did not prevent the soldiers from cutting off his head.
We repeat that we venerate the real martyrs, but it is not easy to
believe this story of the Bollandists and Ruinart.
Shall we tell the story of the young St. Romanus? He was cast into
the flames, says Eusebius, and certain Jews who were present insulted
Jesus Christ for allowing his followers to be burned, whereas God had
withdrawn Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace.
Hardly had the Jews spoken when Romanus emerged in triumph from the
flames. The emperor ordered that he should be pardoned, saying to the
judge that he did not want to fall foul of God. Curious words for
Diocletian! The judge, in spite of the emperor’s pardon, ordered the
tongue of Romanus to be cut out; and, although he had executioners,
he had this operation performed by a physician. The young Romanus,
who had stuttered from birth, spoke volubly as soon as his tongue was
cut out. The physician, to show that the operation had been properly
performed, took a man who was passing and cut off just as much of
his tongue as he had done in the case of Romanus, and the man died.
“Anatomy teaches us,” says the author, learnedly, “that a man cannot
live without a tongue.” If Eusebius really wrote this nonsense, and
the passage is not an interpolation, it is difficult to take his
history seriously.
Then there is the martyrdom of St. Felicitas and her seven children,
sent to death, it is said, by the wise and pius Antoninus. In
this case it seems probable that some writer with more zeal than
truthfulness has imitated the story of the Maccabees. The narrative
begins: “St. Felicitas was a Roman, and lived in the reign of
Antoninus.” From these words it is clear that the author was not a
contemporary of St. Felicitas. He says that the prætor sat to judge
them in the Campus Martius. The forgery is exposed by this statement.
The Campus Martius, which had once been used for the elections, then
served for reviews of the troops and for military games. Again, it is
said that after the trial the emperor entrusted the execution of the
sentence to various judges; which is quite opposed to all procedure
at that time or in our own.
Then there is a St. Hippolytus, who is supposed to have been dragged
by horses, like Hippolytus the son of Theseus. This punishment was
quite unknown to the Romans, and it is merely the similarity of name
that has led to the invention of the legend.
You will observe in these accounts of the martyrs, which were
composed entirely by the Christians themselves, that crowds of
Christians always go freely to the prison of the condemned, follow
him to the scaffold, receive his blood, bury his body, and work
miracles with his relics. If it were the religion alone that was
persecuted, would not the authorities have arrested these declared
Christians who assisted their condemned brethren, and who were
accused of performing magic with the martyred bodies? Would they not
have been treated as we treated the Waldensians, the Albigenses,
the Hussites, and the various sects of Protestants? We slew them
and burned them in crowds, without distinction of age or sex. Is
there, in any reliable account of the ancient persecutions, any
single feature that approaches our massacre of St. Bartholomew or the
Irish massacres? Is there a single one with any resemblance to the
annual festival that is still held at Toulouse--a cruel and damnable
festival, in which a whole people thanks God and congratulates itself
that it slew four thousand of its fellow-citizens two hundred years
ago?
I say it with a shudder, but it is true; it is we Christians who have
been the persecutors, the executioners, the assassins. And who were
our victims? Our brothers. It is we who have destroyed a hundred
towns, the crucifix or Bible in our hands, and have incessantly shed
blood and lit flames from the reign of Constantine to the fury of the
cannibals of the Cévènes.
We still occasionally send to the gibbet a few poor folk of Poitou,
Vivarais, Valence, or Montauban. Since 1745 [a period of seven years]
we have hanged eight of those men who are known as “preachers” or
“ministers of the gospel,” whose only crime was to have prayed God
for the king in their native dialect and given a drop of wine and a
morsel of leavened bread to a few silly peasants. These things are
not done at Paris, where pleasure is the only thing of consequence,
and people are ignorant of what is done in the provinces and abroad.
These trials are over in an hour; they are shorter than the trial of
a deserter. If the king were aware of them, he would put an end to
them.
Catholic priests are not treated thus in any Protestant country.
There are more than a hundred Catholic priests in England and
Ireland; they are known, and were untouched during the late war.
Shall we always be the last to embrace the wholesome ideas of other
nations? They have amended their ways; when shall we amend ours? It
took us sixty years to admit what Newton had demonstrated; we are
hardly beginning to save the lives of our children by inoculation;
and it is only recently that we have begun to act on sound principles
of agriculture. When shall we begin to act on sound principles of
humanity? How can we have the audacity to reproach the pagans with
making martyrs when we have been guilty of the same cruelty in the
same circumstances?
Suppose we grant that the Romans put to death numbers of Christians
on purely religious grounds. In that case the Romans were very
much to blame. Why should we be similarly unjust? Would we become
persecutors at the very time when we reproach them with persecuting?
If any man were so wanting in good faith, or so fanatical, as to say
to me: “Why do you come to expose our blunders and faults? Why do
you destroy our false miracles and false legends? They nourish the
piety of many people; there are such things as necessary errors;
do not tear out of the body an incurable ulcer if it would entail
the destruction of the body”; I should reply to this man: All these
false miracles by which you shake the trust that should be given
to real ones, all these absurd legends which you add to the truths
of the gospels, extinguish religion in the hearts of men. Too many
people who long for instruction, and have not the time to instruct
themselves, say: “The heads of my religion have deceived me,
therefore there is no religion. It is better to cast oneself into the
arms of nature than into those of error; I would rather depend on the
law of nature than on the inventions of men.” Some are so unfortunate
as to go even farther. They see that imposture put a curb on them,
and they will not have even the curb of truth. They lean to atheism.
They become depraved, because others have been false and cruel.
These, assuredly, are the consequences of all the pious frauds and
all the superstitions. The reasoning of men is, as a rule, only
half-reasoning. It is a very poor argument to say: “Voraginé, the
author of the _Golden Legend_, and the Jesuit Ribadeneira, compiler
of the _Flowers of the Saints_, wrote sheer nonsense; therefore there
is no God. The Catholics have murdered a certain number of Huguenots,
and the Huguenots have murdered a certain number of Catholics;
therefore there is no God. Men have made use of confession,
communion, and all the other sacraments, to commit the most horrible
crimes: therefore there is no God.” I should conclude, on the
contrary: Therefore there is a God who, after this transitory life,
in which we have known him so little, and committed so many crimes
in his name, will vouchsafe to console us for our misfortunes. For,
considering the wars of religion, the forty papal schisms (nearly
all of which were bloody), the impostures which have nearly all been
pernicious, the irreconcilable hatreds lit by differences of opinion,
and all the evils that false zeal has brought upon them, men have
long suffered hell in this world.