Authority, gentlemen, loves authority. The authoritaires, as we say
to-day, in the most diverse ranks, extend the hand to each other. Men as
conservative as the leaders of the Church of Rome must be strongly
tempted to favor public force, the effect of which is often for good,
as they must admit. This tendency had been manifest since the first days
of Christianity. Jesus had laid down the rule. The image of the money
was for him the supreme criterion of its lawfulness, beyond which there
was nothing to seek. In the height of the reign of Nero, St. Paul wrote,
"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power
but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever,
therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God." Some
years later, Peter, or the person who wrote in his name the Epistle
known as the First of Peter, expresses himself in an identical manner.
Clement was an equally devoted subject of the Roman Empire.
In fine, one of the traits of St. Luke (according to my idea there was a
bond between St. Luke and the spirit of the church at Rome) is his
respect of the imperial authority, and the precautions which he took not
to injure it. The author of the Acts evaded every thing which would
present the Romans as the enemies of Christ. On the contrary, he seeks
to show, that, under many circumstances, they defended St. Paul and the
Christians against the Jews. Never a disparaging word against the civil
magistrates. Luke loved to show how the Roman functionaries were
favorable to the new religion, sometimes even embracing it; and how
Roman justice was equitable, and superior to the passions of the local
powers. He insists upon the advantages which Paul owed to his title of
Roman citizen. If he ends his recital with the arrival of Paul at Rome,
it is perhaps in order not to recount the monstrosities of Nero.
Without doubt, there were in other parts of the empire devoted
Christians who sympathized entirely with the anger of the Jews, and
dreamed only of the destruction of the idolatrous city which they
identified with Babylon. Such were the authors of apocalypses and
sibylline writings. But the faithful of the great churches were of quite
a different way of thinking. In 70, the Church of Jerusalem, with a
sentiment more Christian than patriotic, left the revolutionary city,
and sought peace beyond the Jordan. In the revolt of Barkokébas, the
division was still more pronounced. Not a single Christian was willing
to take part in this attempt of blind despair. St. Justin in his
Apologies never combats the principle of empire. He desired that the
empire should examine the Christian doctrine, approve and countersign it
in some way, and condemn those who calumniated it. The most learned
doctor of the time of Marcus Aurelius, Meliton, Bishop of Sardis, made
still more decided advances, and undertook to show that there is always
in Christianity something to recommend it to a true Roman. In his
Treaty upon Truth, preserved in Syriac, Meliton expresses himself in the
same way as a bishop of the fourth century, explaining to one Theodosius
that his first duty is to establish by his authority the triumph of
truth (without telling us, alas! by what sign one recognizes truth). Let
the empire become Christian, and the persecuted of to-day would find
that the interference of the state in the domain of conscience is
perfectly legitimate.
The system of the apologists, so warmly sustained by Tertullian,
according to which the good emperors favored Christianity, and the bad
ones persecuted it, was already full blown. "Born together," said they,
"Christianity and the empire have grown up together, and prospered
together." Their interests, their sufferings, their fortunes, their
future,--all was in common. The apologists were advocates; and advocates
in all orders resemble each other. They have arguments for every
situation and all tastes. Nearly a hundred and fifty years rolled on
before these sweet and half sincere invitations were understood. But the
only impression they made in the time of Marcus Aurelius upon the mind
of one of the most enlightened leaders of the Church was as a prognostic
of the future. Christianity and the empire will become reconciled. They
are made for each other. The shade of Meliton will tremble with joy
when the empire becomes Christian, and the emperor takes in hand the
cause of truth.
Thus the Church already took more than one step toward empire. Through
politeness, without doubt, but only as a very legitimate consequence of
his principles, Meliton does not allow that an emperor can give an
unjust order. It was easy to believe that certain emperors had not been
absolutely opposed to Christianity. It is pleasant to relate that
Tiberius had proposed to place Jesus in the rank of the gods: it was the
senate which objected. The decided preference of Christianity for power
where it hopes for favors is already very transparent. It is shown,
contrary to all truth, that Hadrian and Antonine sought to repair the
evil done by Nero and Domitian. Tertullian and his generation say the
same thing of Marcus Aurelius. Tertullian doubted, it is true, whether
one could be at the same time a Cæsar and a Christian; but this
incompatibility a century later struck no one, and Constantine proved
that Meliton of Sardis was a very sagacious man when he discerned so
well--a century and a half in advance, seeing through the proconsular
persecutions--the possibility of a Christian Empire.
The hatred of Christianity and of the empire was that of men who must
one day love them. Under the Severi, the language of the Church remained
plaintive and tender, as it had been under the Antonines. The
apologists affixed a species of legitimism, a pretension that the Church
had always from the first saluted the emperor. "There were never among
us," said Tertullian, "partisans of Cassius, partisans of Albinus,
partisans of Niger." Foolish illusion! Certainly the revolt of Avidius
Cassius against Marcus Aurelius was a political crime, and the
Christians did well not to be involved in it. As for Severus, Albinus,
and Niger, it was success that decided between them; and the Church had
no other merit in attaching itself to Severus than that of seeing
clearly who would be the strongest. This pretended worship of legitimacy
was in truth only the worship of a fixed fact. The principle of St. Paul
bore fruit: "All power comes from God: he who holds the sword holds it
from God for good."
This correct attitude in regard to power clung to exterior necessities
as much as to the principles which the Church had received from its
founders. The Church was already a powerful association. It was
essentially conservative. It needed order and legal guaranties. This was
admirably shown in the act of Paul of Samos, Bishop of Antioch, under
Aurelian. The Bishop of Antioch had become a powerful personage at this
epoch. The goods of the Church were in his keeping: a crowd of men lived
on his favors. Paul was a brilliant man, somewhat mystical, worldly, a
great secular lord, seeking to render Christianity acceptable to men of
the world and authority. The Pietists, as might be expected, considered
him heretical, and dismissed him. Paul resisted, and refused to quit the
Episcopal house. See into what the most exalted sects are led! They were
in possession, and who could decide a question of proprietorship and
possession, if not the civil authority. Aurelian, about this time,
passed on his way towards Antioch; and the question was referred to him.
Here was seen this original spectacle of an infidel sovereign and
persecutor deputed to decide which was the true bishop. Aurelian showed
under these circumstances remarkably good sense for a layman. He
examined the correspondence of the two bishops, took note as to which
was in relation with Rome and Italy, and decided that he was the true
Bishop of Antioch.
Aurelian made some objections to the theological reasoning used on this
occasion; but one fact was evident: it was, that Christianity could not
live without the empire, and that the empire, on the other hand, could
not do better than adopt Christianity as its religion. The world desired
a religion of congregations, of churches, or of synagogues and
chapels,--a religion in which the essence of the worship should be
re-union, association, and fraternity. Christianity answered to all
these conditions. Its admirable worship, its well-organized clergy,
assured its future.
Several times in the third century this historical necessity fell short
of realization. This is seen most plainly under those Syrian emperors
whom their quality of foreigners and base origin placed beyond
prejudices, and who, in spite of their vices, inaugurated a largeness of
ideas and a tolerance hitherto unknown. Those Syrian women of
Emesa,--Julia Domna, Julia Mæsa, Julia Mammæa, Julia Soemia,--beautiful,
intelligent, perfectly fearless, and held by no tradition or social law,
hesitated at nothing. They did what Roman women would never have dared.
They entered the Senate, deliberated there, and governed the empire
effectively, dreaming of Semiramis and Nitocris. The Roman worship
seemed cold and insignificant to them. Not being bound by any family
reasons, and their imagination being more in harmony with Christianity
than with Italian Paganism, these women amused themselves with the
recitals of the deed of the gods upon earth. Philostratus enchanted them
with his "Life of Apollonius Tyane." Perhaps they had more than one
secret affinity with Christianity. Certainly Heliogabalus was mad; and
yet his chimera of a central, Monotheistic worship, established at Rome,
and absorbing all the other worships, proved that the narrow circle of
ideas of the Antonines was broken. Alexander Severus went still farther.
He was sympathetic with the Christians: not content with according them
liberty, he placed Jesus in his lararium with a touching eclecticism.
Peace seemed to be made, not, as under Constantine, by the defection of
one of the parties, but by a large reconciliation. The same thing was
seen again under Philip the Arab, in the East under Zenobia, and
generally under those emperors whose foreign origin placed them beyond
Roman patriotism.
The struggle redoubled in rage when those grand reformers, Diocletian
and Maximian, animated by the ancient spirit, believed themselves able
to give new life for the empire by holding it to the narrow circle of
Roman ideas. The Church triumphed through its martyrs. Roman pride was
humbled. Constantine saw the interior strength of the Church. The
population of Asia Minor, Syria, Thrace, and Macedonia, in a word the
eastern part of the empire, was already more than half Christian. His
mother, who had been a servant in an inn at Nicomedia, dazzled his eyes
with the picture of an Eastern empire having its centre near Nicæa or
Nicomedia, whose nerves should be the bishops and those multitudes of
poor matriculates of the Church who controlled opinion in large cities.
Constantine made the empire Christian. From the Occidental point of
view, that was astonishing; for the Christians were still but a feeble
minority in the West: in the Orient, the politics of Constantine was not
only natural, but commanded.
Wonderful thing! The city of Rome received from that politics the
heaviest blow it had ever suffered. Christianity was successful under
Constantine; but it was Oriental Christianity. In building a new Rome on
the Bosphorus, Constantine made the old Rome the capital of the West
alone. The cataclysms which followed, the invasions of the barbarians
who spared Constantinople, and fell upon Rome with all their weight,
reduced the ancient capital of the world to a limited and often humble
condition. That ecclesiastical primacy of Rome which burst with so much
effect upon the second and third centuries flourished no longer when the
Orient had an existence and a separate capital. Constantine was the real
author of the schism of the Latin Church and the Church of the Orient.
Rome took its revenge, principally by the seriousness and depth of its
spirit of organization. What men were St. Sylvester, St. Damasus, and
Gregory the Great! With an admirable courage they labored for the
conversion of the barbarians, attached them to themselves, and made them
their friends and subjects. The master-work of its politics was its
alliance with the Carlovingian house, and the bold stroke by which it
re-established in that house the empire which had been dead three
hundred years. The Church of Rome rose again more powerful than ever,
and became again the centre of all the grand affairs of the Occident
during eight centuries.
* * * * *
Here my task is ended, gentlemen. You will confide to others the care of
recounting the prodigious history of the feudal church, its grandeurs
and its abuses. Another still will show you the re-action against these
abuses,--Protestantism returning to the primitive idea of Christianity,
and dividing, in its turn, the Latin Church. Each one of these grand
historical pages will have its charm and its instruction. What I have
recounted to you is full of grandeur. One is impartial only to the dead.
Since Catholicism was an inimical power, a danger to the liberty of the
human mind, it was right to oppose it. Our age is the age of history,
because it is the age of doubt upon dogmatic matters: it is the age in
which, without entering into the discussion of systems, an enlightened
mind says to itself, "If, since right exists, and so many thousand
symbols have made the pretension of presenting the complete truth, and
if this pretension is always found vain, is it indeed probable that I
shall be more happy than so many others, and that the truth has awaited
my coming here below in order to make its definite revelation?" There is
no definite revelation. It is the touching effort of man to render his
destiny supportable. But its reward is not disdain, it is gratitude.
Whoever believes that he has something to teach us concerning our
destiny and our end should be welcome. Recall the account in your old
histories of the judicious and discreet words of the Saxon chief of
Northumbria, in the assembly where the question was discussed concerning
the adoption of the doctrine of the Roman missionaries.
"Perhaps thou rememberest, O king! something which happens sometimes in
the winter days, when thou art seated at table with thy captains and thy
men-at-arms; that a good fire is lighted, that thy chamber is very warm,
while it rains, snows, and blows without. There comes a little bird,
which crosses the chamber on the wing, entering at one door, and going
out by the other. The moment of this passage is full of sweetness for
him: he no more feels the rain nor the storm. The bird is gone in an
instant, and from the winter he passes again into the winter. Such seems
to me the life of men on this earth, and its course of a moment,
compared to the length of time which precedes and follows it. The time
before birth and after death is gloomy. It torments us by its
impossibility of comprehension: if, then, the new doctrine can teach us
any thing a little certain, it deserves to be considered."
Alas! the Roman missionaries did not bear this minimum of certainty,
with which the old Northumbrian chief, sage as he was, declared himself
content. Life always appears to us a short passage between two long
nights. Happy those who can sleep in the empty noise of menaces which
trouble at times the human conscience, and should no more than cradle
it! One thing is certain: it is the paternal smile which at certain
hours pierces nature, attesting that one eye regards us, and one heart
follows us. Let us guard ourselves from all absolute formula which might
become one day an obstacle to the free expansion of our spirits. There
is no religious communion which does not still possess some gifts of
life and pardon; but it is on the condition only that an humble docility
succeeds sympathetic adhesion. The comparison of the regiment, invented
by Clement Romanus, and since so many times repeated, ought to be
utterly abandoned.
You wished that I should recall to you the grandeurs of Catholicism in
its finest epoch. I thank you for it. Some associations of childhood,
the most profound of all, attach me to Catholicism; and, although I am
separated from it, I am often tempted to say, as Job said (at least in
our Latin version), "_Etiam si occideret me, in ipso sperabo._" This
great Catholic family is too numerous not to have still a grand future.
The strange excesses which it has supported during fifty years, this
unequalled pontificate of Pius IX., the most astonishing in history,
cannot be terminated in any ordinary way. There will be thunders and
lightnings such as accompany all the great judgment-days of God. And
will she have much to do in order to still remain acceptable to those
who love her,--this old mother, who will not die so soon? Perhaps she
will find, in order to arrest the arms of her conqueror, which is modern
reason, some magician's arts, some words such as Balder murmured.
The Catholic Church is a woman: let us distrust the charming words of
her agony. Let us imagine that she says to us, "My children, every thing
here below is but a symbol and a dream. In this world there is only one
little ray of light which pierces the darkness, and seems to be the
reflection of a benevolent will. Come into my bosom, where one finds
forgetfulness. For those who wish fetishes, I have them; to those who
wish works, I offer them; for those who wish intoxication of heart, I
have the milk of my breast, which will make drunk; for those who desire
love, I have an abundance; to those who crave irony, I pour out freely.
Come all: the time of dogmatic sadness is past. I have music and incense
for your funerals, flowers for your marriages, the joyous welcome of
bells for your new-born ones." Ah, well! if she should say that, our
embarrassment would be extreme. But she never will.
Your great and glorious England has resolved, gentlemen, the practical
part of the question. It is as easy to trace the line of conduct which
the state and individuals should follow in the same matter, as it is
impossible to arrive at a theoretic solution of the religious problem.
All this may be conveyed in a single word, gentlemen,--_liberty_. What
could be more simple? Faith does not control itself. We believe what we
believe true. No one is bound to believe what he thinks false, whether
it is false or not. To deny liberty of thought is a sort of
contradiction. From liberty of thought to the right to express one's
thought, there is but one step; for right is the same for all. I have no
right to prevent a person from expressing his mind; but no one has the
right to prevent me from expressing mine. Here is a theory which will
appear very humble to the learned doctors who believe themselves to be
in possession of absolute truth. We have a great advantage over them,
gentlemen. They are obliged to be persecutors in order to be consistent;
to us it is permitted to be tolerant,--tolerant for all, even for those,
who, if they could, would not be so to us. Yes, let us even make this
paradox: liberty is the best weapon against the enemies of liberty. Some
fanatics say to us with sincerity, "We take your liberty, because you
owe it to us according to your principles; but you shall not have ours,
because we do not owe it to you." Ah, well! let us give them liberty
all the same, and we do not imagine that in this exchange we shall be
duped. No: liberty is the great dissolvent of all fanaticisms. In giving
back liberty to my enemy, who would suppress me if he had the power, I
shall really make him the worst gift. I oblige him to drink a strong
beverage which shall turn his head, while I shall keep my own. Science
supports the strange _régime_ of liberty: fanaticism and superstition do
not support it. We do more harm to dogmatism by treating it with an
implacable sweetness than by persecuting it. By this sweetness we even
inculcate the principle which destroys all dogmatism at its root, by
understanding that all metaphysical controversy is sterile, and that,
for this reason, the truth for each one is as he believes it. The
essential, then, is not to silence dangerous teaching, and hush the
discordant voice: the essential is to place the human mind in a state in
which the mass can see the uselessness of its rage. When this spirit
becomes the atmosphere of society, the fanatic can no longer live. He is
conquered by a pervading gentleness. If, instead of conducting
Polyeuctus to punishment, the Roman magistrate had dismissed him
smiling, and taken him amicably by the hand, Polyeuctus would not have
continued: perhaps even in his old age he would have laughed at his
escapade, and would have become a man of good sense.