If one studies in fact the progress of the primitive Christian missions,
he remarks that they are all directed towards the West: in other words,
they take the Roman Empire as their theatre and limit. If one excepts
some small portions of the vassal territory of the Arsacidæ, lying
between the Euphrates and the Tigris, the empire of the Parthians
received no Christian missions during the first century. The Tigris was
an eastern boundary which Christianity did not pass under the Sassanidæ.
Two great causes--the Mediterranean and the Roman Empire--determined
this capital fact.
The Mediterranean had been, during a thousand years, the great route on
which all civilizations and all ideas had passed each other. The Romans,
having freed it from piracy, had made it an unequalled way of
communication. It was in a sense the railroad of that time. A numerous
marine of coasting-vessels rendered the voyages along the borders of
this great lake very easy. The relative security which the routes of the
empire afforded, the sure guaranties found in the public powers, the
scattering of the Jews over all the coasts of the Mediterranean, the use
of the Greek tongue in the eastern portion of this sea, the unity of
civilization which the Greeks first, and then the Romans, had created,
made the map of the empire also the map of the countries reserved to the
Christian missions and destined to become Christian. The Roman _orbis_
became the Christian _orbis_ in the sense in which it may be said that
the founders of the empire were the founders of the Christian monarchy,
or, at least, that they have drawn its outlines. Every province
conquered by the Roman Empire became a province conquered by
Christianity. Let the figures of the apostles be imagined in the
presence of Asia Minor, of Greece, of Italy divided into a hundred
little republics, of Gaul, of Spain, of Africa, of Egypt, with its old
national institutions, and their success can no more be thought of, or
rather it would seem that their project could never have had birth. The
union of the empire was the necessary preliminary condition of all great
religious propagandism, placing it above nationalities. The empire
recognized this in the fourth century. It became Christian. It saw that
Christianity was the religion which it had accepted without knowing
it,--the religion limited by its frontiers, identified with it, capable
of bringing it a second life.
The Church, on its side, made itself entirely Roman, and has remained to
this day a fragment of the empire. During the middle ages the Church was
the old Rome, seizing again its authority over the barbarians, imposing
on them its decretals, as formerly it had imposed its laws, governing
them by its cardinals, as it had before governed through its imperial
legates and proconsuls.
In creating its vast empire, Rome imposed, then, the material condition
of the propagation of Christianity. She raised up, above all, the moral
state which served as an atmosphere and a medium for the new doctrine.
While destroying politics everywhere, it created what may be called
socialism and religion. At the close of the frightful wars which for
some centuries had rent the world, the empire had an era of prosperity
and of welfare such as it had never known: we may even be permitted to
add (without a paradox) liberty. Liberty of thought, at least, increased
under this new _régime_. This liberty is often more prosperous under a
king or a prince than under the jealous and narrow-minded plebeian. The
ancient republics did not have it. The Greeks did great things without
it, thanks to the incomparable power of their genius; but it must not be
forgotten that Athens had a fine and noble Inquisition. The king Archon
was the inquisitor; the royal Portico was the holy office in which the
accusations of impiety were adjudged. These were the cases in which the
Attic orators were most frequently engaged. Not only philosophical
crimes, such as the denial of God or of a Providence, but the lightest
attaint of the municipal worship, the preaching of strange religions,
the most puerile infractions of the scrupulous legislation of the
mysteries, were crimes guilty of death. The gods whom Aristophanes
mocked on the stage sometimes destroyed. They destroyed Socrates; they
failed to kill Alcibiades. Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Diagoras of Melas,
Prodicus of Ceos, Stilpo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aspasia, Euripides,
were more or less seriously disturbed. Liberty of thought was, in truth,
the fruit of the royalties resulting from the Macedonian conquest. It
was the Attali, the Ptolemies, who first gave to men of thought the
freedom which no one of the old republics had ever offered them. The
Roman Empire held to the same traditions. There was under the empire
more than one arbitrary law against the philosophers; but these always
resulted from their meddling with political affairs. In the laws of the
Romans, before the time of Constantine, no clause is found against the
liberty of thought; in the history of the emperors, no process of
abstract doctrine. No _savant_ was disturbed in his researches. Men
whom the middle ages would have burned, such as Galen, Lucian, Plotinus,
lived tranquilly, protected by law. The empire inaugurated a period of
liberty in the sense that it destroyed the absolute sovereignty of the
family, the city, the tribe, and replaced or modified these
sovereignties by those of the State. Now, an absolute power is as much
more vexatious as the circle in which it is exercised is more narrow.
The ancient republics, the feudalities, tyrannized over the individual
much more than did the State. Unquestionably the Roman Empire persecuted
Christianity severely at times; but at least it did not destroy it. Now
the republics would have rendered it impossible. Judaism, if it had not
been under the Roman authority, would have stifled it. It was the Roman
magistrates who hindered the Pharisees from killing Christianity. Some
lofty ideas of universal brotherhood--results, in the main, of
stoicism,--a sort of general sentiment of humanity, were the fruit of
the least narrow _régime_ and of the least exclusive education to which
the individual was submitted. The people dreamed of a new era and new
worlds. The public riches were great; and, in spite of the imperfection
of the economical doctrines of the time, there was general comfort.
General customs were not such as are often imagined. It is true, that,
in Rome, all the vices were publicly displayed with a revolting
cynicism: the spectacles, above all, had introduced a frightful
corruption. Certain countries, as Egypt, had descended to the lowest
baseness. But there existed in most of the provinces a middle class, in
which goodness, conjugal fidelity, the domestic virtues, and uprightness
were commonly practised. Does there anywhere exist, in a world of honest
people in small villages, an ideal of family life more charming than
that which Plutarch has left us? What good fellowship! What sweetness of
manners! What chaste and attractive simplicity! Chæronea was evidently
not the only place where life was so pure and so innocent.
The customs, even outside of Rome, were still somewhat cruel, either
through the remaining spirit of ancient manners, everywhere sanguinary,
or through the special influence of Roman harshness. But there was
progress during this period. What sweet and pure sentiment, what feeling
of melancholy tenderness, has not found expression by the pen of Virgil
or of Tibullus? The world unbent, lost its ancient severity, and
acquired some softness and tenderness. Some maxims for humanity were
spread abroad. Equality and the abstract idea of the rights of man were
boldly preached by stoicism. Woman became more and more the mistress of
herself. The precepts for the treatment of slaves were improved. The
slave was no longer that necessarily grotesque and wicked being which
the Latin comedy introduced in order to provoke bursts of laughter, and
whom Cato recommended to be treated as a beast of burden. Now, times are
much changed. The slave is morally equal to his master: it is admitted
that he is capable of virtue, of fidelity, of devotion, and he gives
proofs of it. The prejudices concerning noble birth grow less. Some very
humane and just laws are made, even under the worst emperors. Tiberius
was a skilful financier: he founded upon an excellent basis an
establishment of _crédit foncier_. Nero inaugurated in the system of
taxation, until then unjust and barbarous, some improvements which shame
even our own time. Legislation was considerably advanced, while the
punishment of death was stupidly prodigal. Love of the poor, sympathy
for all, and almsgiving, came to be considered virtues.