I.

The establishment of the Jews at Rome dated nearly sixty years before

Jesus Christ. They multiplied rapidly. Cicero represented it as an act

of courage to dare to oppose them. Cæsar favored them, and found them

faithful. The people detested them, thought them malevolent, accused

them of forming a secret society whose members were advanced at any

price, to the detriment of others. But all did not approve these

superficial judgments. The Jews had as many friends as detractors:

something superior was noticeable in them. The poor Jewish colporter of

the Trastevere often in the evening returned home rich with the

charities received from a pious hand. Women, above all, were attracted

by these missionaries in rags. Juvenal counts the weakness towards the

Jewish religion among the vices of the ladies of his time. The word of

Zachariah was verified to the letter: the world seized upon the garments

of the Jews, and said, "Lead us to Jerusalem."

The principal Jewish quarter of Rome was situated beyond the Tiber, that

is to say, in the poorest and dirtiest part of the city, probably near

the present _Porta Portese_. There, or rather opposite to the foot of

the Aventine, the gate of Rome was formerly situated, where the

merchandise brought from Ostia in barges was discharged. It was a

quarter of Jews and Syrians,--"nations born for servitude," as Cicero

said. The nucleus of the Jewish population at Rome was formed, in truth,

of freedmen, descended, for the most part, from those prisoners whom

Pompey had carried there. They had passed through slavery, without

changing their religious customs in the least. That which is admirable

in Judaism is that simplicity of faith which makes the Jew, transported

a thousand leagues from his country, at the end of several generations,

always a very Jew. The intercourse between the synagogues of Rome and

Jerusalem was continual. The first colony had been re-enforced with

numerous emigrants. These poor men disembarked by hundreds at the Ripa,

and lived together in the adjacent quarter of the Trastevere, serving as

street-porters, engaged in small affairs, exchanging matches for broken

glasses, and showing to the proud Italiote populations a type which

later became too familiar to them,--that of the beggar accomplished in

his art. A Roman who respected himself never placed his foot in these

abject quarters. It was as a suburb given up to despised classes and to

infectious employments: the tanneries, the gut-works, the rotting vats

were banished there. These unhappy people lived tranquilly enough in

this remote corner, in the midst of bales of merchandise, low inns, and

porters of manure (_Syri_), who had there their general headquarters.

The police only entered there when affrays were bloody, or occurred too

often. Few quarters of Rome were so free: politics had nothing to do

there. Worship was not only practised there in ordinary times without

obstacles, but its propagation was also accomplished with great

facility.

Protected by the disdain which they inspired, caring little, moreover,

for the railleries of the men of the world, the Jews of the Trastevere

led a very active religious and social life. They had some schools of

_hakamin_: nowhere was the ritual and ceremonial of the law observed

more scrupulously: the organization of the synagogue was the most

complete ever known. The titles of "father and mother" of the synagogues

were much prized. Some rich converts took biblical names; they brought

their slaves into the church with them, they had the Scriptures

explained by the doctors, built places of prayer, and manifested their

pride of the consideration which they enjoyed in this little world. The

poor Jew found the means, while begging with a trembling voice, to

whisper in the ear of the great Roman lady some words of the law, and

frequently won over the matron who opened to him her hand full of small

coin. To observe the sabbath and the Jewish feasts was to Horace the

trait which classed a man in the crowd of weak minds. The universal

benevolence, the happiness of reposing with the just, the assistance of

the poor, the purity of manners, the gentle acceptance of death

considered as a sleep, are some of the sentiments which are found in the

Jewish inscriptions, with that particular accent of touching unction, of

certain hope, which characterizes the Christian inscriptions. There have

been many rich and powerful Jews in the world, such as Tiberius

Alexander, who arrived at the greatest honors of the empire, who

exercised two or three times the strongest influence upon public

affairs, and even had, to the great grief of the Romans, his statue in

the Forum; but those were not good Jews. The Herods, though practising

their worship at Rome with much show, were also far from being true

Israelites, even if their only sins were their relations with the

Pagans.

A world of ideas was thus set in motion on the vulgar quay where the

merchandise of the whole world was piled up; but all that would be lost

in a great city like Paris. Undoubtedly the proud patricians, who, in

their promenades on the Aventine, cast their eyes upon the other side of

the Tiber, did not imagine the future that was forming itself in that

little cluster of poor houses at the foot of Janiculum.

Near the port was a sort of lodging-house well known to the people and

the soldiers under the name of _Taberna Meritoria_. In order to attract

the loungers, a pretended spring of oil coming out of a rock was shown

there. From a very early time this spring of oil was considered by the

Christians as symbolic: it was pretended that its appearance was

coincident with the birth of Jesus. It seems that later the _Taberna_

became a church. Under Alexander Severus we find the Christians and the

inn-keepers in a contest over a place which formerly had been public:

that good emperor gave it to the Christians. This is probably the origin

of the Church of the Santa Maria of the Trastevere.

It is natural that the capital should have fully accepted the name of

Jesus before the intermediate countries could be evangelized, as a high

summit is lighted up while the valleys between it and the sun are still

obscure. Rome was the rendezvous for all the Oriental worships,--the

point upon the coast of the Mediterranean with which the Syrians had the

most intercourse. They arrived there in enormous bands. Like all the

poor populations rising for the assault of the great cities to which

they come to seek their fortunes, they were serviceable and humble. All

the world spoke Greek. The ancient Roman plebeians, attached to the old

customs, lost ground each day, drowned as they were in this wave of

strangers.

We admit then, that towards the year 50 of our era, some Syrian Jews,

already Christians, entered the capital of the empire, and communicated

the faith which rendered them happy to their companions. At this time no

one suspected that the founder of a second empire was in Rome,--a second

Romulus, lodging at the port in a bed of straw. A little band was

formed. These ancestors of the Roman prelates were poor, dirty, common

people, without distinction, without manners, clothed with fetid

garments, having the bad breath of men who are badly fed. Their

dwellings had that odor of misery which is exhaled from persons grossly

clothed and nourished, and huddled together in narrow rooms. We know the

names of two Jews who were the most prominent in these movements. They

were Aquila, a Jew, originally from Pontus, who was like St. Paul an

upholsterer, and Priscilla his wife,--a pious couple. Banished from Rome

they took refuge at Corinth, where they soon became the intimate friends

of St. Paul, and zealous workers with him. Thus Aquila and Priscilla are

the most ancient known members of the Church of Rome. There is scarcely

a souvenir of them there. Tradition, always unjust, because it is always

ruled by political motives, has expelled these two obscure workmen from

the Christian Pantheon in order to attribute the honor of the foundation

of the Church of Rome to a name more in keeping with its proud

pretensions. We do not see the original point of the origin of

Occidental Christianity in the theatrical Basilica consecrated to St.

Peter: it is at that ancient _Ghetto_, the _Porta Portese_. It is in

tracing these poor vagabond Jews, who bore with them the religion of the

world,--these suffering men, dreaming in their misery of the kingdom of

God,--that we shall find it again. We do not dispute with Rome its

essential title. Rome was probably the first point in the Western World,

and even in Europe, where Christianity was established.

But, instead of these lofty basilicas, in place of these insulting

devices,--_Christus vincit_, _Christus regnat_, _Christus imperat_,--it

would be better to raise a poor chapel to these good Jews who first

pronounced on the quay of Rome the name of Jesus.

A capital trait, which it is important to note in any case, is, that the

Church of Rome was not, like the churches of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and

Greece, a foundation of the school of Paul. It was fundamentally

Judæan-Christian, re-attaching itself directly to the Church of

Jerusalem. Paul here will never be on his own ground: he will find in

this great church many weaknesses which he will treat with indulgence,

but which will wound his exalted idealism. Attached to circumcision and

outward observances, Ebionite through its taste for abstinences, and by

its doctrine concerning the person and death of Jesus more Jewish than

Christian, leaning strongly towards Millenarianism, the Roman Church

showed, since its first days, the essential traits which will

distinguish it through its long history. Own daughter of Jerusalem, the

Roman Church will always have an ascetic, sacerdotal character, opposed

to the Protestant tendencies of Paul. Peter will be its veritable head;

then, the political and hierarchical spirit of old Rome penetrating it,

it will indeed become the new Jerusalem, the city of the Pontificate, of

the hieratic and solemn religion, of the material sacraments which

justify of themselves, the city of the ascetics of the manner of Jacques

Ohliam with his callous knees and his plate of gold upon his brow. It

will be the authoritative church. If we can believe it, the only mark of

the apostolic mission will be to show a letter signed by the apostles,

to produce a certificate of orthodoxy. The good and the evil which the

Church of Jerusalem did in giving birth to Christianity, the Church of

Rome will do for the Universal Church. It is in vain that Paul will

address to it his beautiful epistle to explain the mystery of the cross

of Jesus and of salvation by faith alone. The Church of Rome will

scarcely comprehend it; but Luther four and a half centuries later will

comprehend it, and will open a new era in a secular series of the

alternate triumphs of Peter and Paul.