IMPRISONMENT
Just before the curtain rings down for the last time upon the ancient
world, a figure crosses the stage which had deserved a better fate than
an untimely death and the unflattering appellation of “the Apostate.”
The Emperor Julian, to whom I refer, was a nephew of Constantine the
Great and was born in the new capital of the empire in the year 331. In
337 his famous uncle died. At once his three sons fell upon their common
heritage and upon each other with the fury of famished wolves.
To rid themselves of all those who might possibly lay claim to part of
the spoils, they ordered that those of their relatives who lived in or
near the city be murdered. Julian’s father was one of the victims. His
mother had died a few years after his birth. In this way, at the age
of six, the boy was left an orphan. An older half-brother, an invalid,
shared his loneliness and his lessons. These consisted mostly of lectures
upon the advantages of the Christian faith, given by a kindly but
uninspired old bishop by the name of Eusebius.
But when the children grew older, it was thought wiser to send them
a little further away where they would be less conspicuous and might
possibly escape the usual fate of junior Byzantine princes. They were
removed to a little village in the heart of Asia Minor. It was a dull
life, but it gave Julian a chance to learn many useful things. For his
neighbors, the Cappadocian mountaineers, were a simple people and still
believed in the gods of their ancestors.
There was not the slightest chance that the boy would ever hold a
responsible position and when he asked permission to devote himself to a
life of study, he was told to go ahead.
First of all he went to Nicomedia, one of the few places where the old
Greek philosophy continued to be taught. There he crammed his head so
full of literature and science that there was no space left for the
things he had learned from Eusebius.
Next he obtained leave to go to Athens, that he might study on the very
spot hallowed by the recollections of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle.
Meanwhile, his half-brother too had been assassinated and Constantius,
his cousin and the one and only remaining son of Constantine, remembering
that he and his cousin, the boy philosopher, were by this time the only
two surviving male members of the imperial family, sent for Julian,
received him kindly, married him, still in the kindest of spirits, to his
own sister, Helena, and ordered him to proceed to Gaul and defend that
province against the barbarians.
It seems that Julian had learned something more practical from his Greek
teachers than an ability to argue. When in the year 357 the Alamanni
threatened France, he destroyed their army near Strassburg, and for good
measure added all the country between the Meuse and the Rhine to his
own province and went to live in Paris, filled his library with a fresh
supply of books by his favorite authors and was as happy as his serious
nature allowed him to be.
When news of these victories reached the ears of the Emperor, little
Greek fire was wasted in celebration of the event. On the contrary,
elaborate plans were laid to get rid of a competitor who might be just a
trifle too successful.
But Julian was very popular with his soldiers. When they heard that
their commander-in-chief had been ordered to return home (a polite
invitation to come and have one’s head cut off), they invaded his palace
and then and there proclaimed him emperor. At the same time they let it
be known that they would kill him if he should refuse to accept.
Julian, like a sensible fellow, accepted.
Even at that late date, the Roman roads must have been in a remarkably
good state of preservation. Julian was able to break all records by the
speed with which he marched his troops from the heart of France to the
shores of the Bosphorus. But ere he reached the capital, he heard that
his cousin Constantius had died.
And in this way, a pagan once more became ruler of the western world.
Of course the thing which Julian had undertaken to do was impossible.
It is a strange thing indeed that so intelligent a man should have been
under the impression that the dead past could ever be brought back to
life by the use of force; that the age of Pericles could be revived by
reconstructing an exact replica of the Acropolis and populating the
deserted groves of the Academy with professors dressed up in togas of a
bygone age and talking to each other in a tongue that had disappeared
from the face of the earth more than five centuries before.
And yet that is exactly what Julian tried to do.
All his efforts during the two short years of his reign were directed
towards the reëstablishment of that ancient science which was now held in
profound contempt by the majority of his people; towards the rekindling
of a spirit of research in a world ruled by illiterate monks who felt
certain that everything worth knowing was contained in a single book and
that independent study and investigation could only lead to unbelief and
hell fire; towards the requickening of the joy-of-living among those who
had the vitality and the enthusiasm of ghosts.
Many a man of greater tenacity than Julian would have been driven to
madness and despair by the spirit of opposition which met him on all
sides. As for Julian, he simply went to pieces under it. Temporarily at
least he clung to the enlightened principles of his great ancestors. The
Christian rabble of Antioch might pelt him with stones and mud, yet he
refused to punish the city. Dull-witted monks might try to provoke him
into another era of persecution, yet the Emperor persistently continued
to instruct his officials “not to make any martyrs.”
In the year 363 a merciful Persian arrow made an end to this strange
career.
It was the best thing that could have happened to this, the last and
greatest of the Pagan rulers.
Had he lived any longer, his sense of tolerance and his hatred of
stupidity would have turned him into the most intolerant man of his age.
Now, from his cot in the hospital, he could reflect that during his
rule, not a single person had suffered death for his private opinions.
For this mercy, his Christian subjects rewarded him with their undying
hatred. They boasted that an arrow from one of his own soldiers (a
Christian legionary) had killed the Emperor and with rare delicacy
they composed eulogies in praise of the murderer. They told how, just
before he collapsed, Julian had confessed the errors of his ways and had
acknowledged the power of Christ. And they emptied the arsenal of foul
epithets with which the vocabulary of the fourth century was so richly
stocked to disgrace the fame of an honest man who had lived a life of
ascetic simplicity and had devoted all his energies to the happiness of
the people who had been entrusted to his care.
When he had been carried to his grave the Christian bishops could at last
consider themselves the veritable rulers of the Empire and immediately
began the task of destroying whatever opposition to their domination
might remain in isolated corners of Europe, Asia and Africa.
Under Valentinian and Valens, two brothers who ruled from 364 to 378, an
edict was passed forbidding all Romans to sacrifice animals to the old
Gods. The pagan priests were thereby deprived of their revenue and forced
to look for other employment.
But the regulations were mild compared to the law by which Theodosius
ordered all his subjects not only to accept the Christian doctrines,
but to accept them only in the form laid down by the “universal” or
“Catholic” church of which he had made himself the protector and which
was to have a monopoly in all matters spiritual.
All those who after the promulgation of this ordinance stuck to their
“erroneous opinions”—who persisted in their “insane heresies”—who
remained faithful to their “scandalous doctrines”—were to suffer the
consequences of their willful disobedience and were to be exiled or put
to death.
From then on the old world marched rapidly to its final doom. In Italy
and Gaul and Spain and England hardly a pagan temple remained. They were
either wrecked by the contractors who needed stones for new bridges and
streets and city-walls and water-works, or they were remodeled to serve
as meeting places for the Christians. The thousands of golden and silver
images which had been accumulated since the beginning of the Republic
were publicly confiscated and privately stolen and such statues as
remained were made into mortar.
The Serapeum of Alexandria, a temple which Greeks and Romans and
Egyptians alike had held in the greatest veneration for more than six
centuries, was razed to the ground. There remained the university,
famous all over the world ever since it had been founded by Alexander
the Great. It had continued to teach and explain the old philosophies
and as a result attracted a large number of students from all parts of
the Mediterranean. When it was not closed at the behest of the Bishop
of Alexandria, the monks of his diocese took the matter into their own
hands. They broke into the lecture rooms, lynched Hypatia, the last
of the great Platonic teachers, and threw her mutilated body into the
streets where it was left to the mercy of the dogs.
In Rome things went no better.
The temple of Jupiter was closed, the Sibylline books, the very basis of
the old Roman faith, were burned. The capital was left a ruin.
In Gaul, under the leadership of the famous bishop of Tours, the old Gods
were declared to be the predecessors of the Christian devils and their
temples were therefore ordered to be wiped off the face of the earth.
If, as sometimes happened in remote country districts, the peasants
rushed forth to the defense of their beloved shrines, the soldiers were
called out and by means of the ax and the gallows made an end to such
“insurrections of Satan.”
In Greece, the work of destruction proceeded more slowly. But finally in
the year 394, the Olympic games were abolished. As soon as this center of
Greek national life (after an uninterrupted existence of eleven hundred
and seventy years) had come to an end, the rest was comparatively easy.
One after the other, the philosophers were expelled from the country.
Finally, by order of the Emperor Justinian, the University of Athens was
closed. The funds established for its maintenance were confiscated. The
last seven professors, deprived of their livelihood, fled to Persia
where King Chosroes received them hospitably and allowed them to spend
the rest of their days peacefully playing the new and mysterious Indian
game called “chess.”
In the first half of the fifth century, archbishop Chrysostomus could
truthfully state that the works of the old authors and philosophers had
disappeared from the face of the earth. Cicero and Socrates and Virgil
and Homer (not to mention the mathematicians and the astronomers and
the physicians who were an object of special abomination to all good
Christians) lay forgotten in a thousand attics and cellars. Six hundred
years were to go by before they were called back to life, and in the
meantime the world would be obliged to subsist on such literary fare as
it pleased the theologians to place before it.
A strange diet, and not exactly (in the jargon of the medical faculty) a
balanced one.
For the Church, although triumphant over its pagan enemies, was beset by
many and serious tribulations. The poor peasant in Gaul and Lusitania,
clamoring to burn incense in honor of his ancient Gods, could be silenced
easily enough. He was a heathen and the law was on the side of the
Christian. But the Ostrogoth or the Alaman or the Longobard who declared
that Arius, the priest of Alexandria, was right in his opinion upon the
true nature of Christ and that Athanasius, the bishop of that same city
and Arius’ bitter enemy, was wrong (or vice versa)—the Longobard or Frank
who stoutly maintained that Christ was not “of the same nature” but of
a “like nature only” with God (or vice versa)—the Vandal or the Saxon
who insisted that Nestor spoke the truth when he called the Virgin Mary
the “mother of Christ” and not the “mother of God” (or vice versa)—the
Burgundian or Frisian who denied that Jesus was possessed of two natures,
one human and one divine (or vice versa)—all these simple-minded but
strong-armed barbarians who had accepted Christianity and were, outside
of their unfortunate errors of opinion, staunch friends and supporters
of the Church—these indeed could not be punished with a general anathema
and a threat of perpetual hell fire. They must be persuaded gently that
they were wrong and must be brought within the fold with charitable
expressions of love and devotion. But before all else they must be given
a definite creed that they might know for once and for all what they must
hold to be true and what they must reject as false.
It was that desire for unity of some sort in all matters pertaining to
the faith which finally caused those famous gatherings which have become
known as Oecumenical or Universal Councils, and which since the middle
of the fourth century have been called together at irregular intervals
to decide what doctrine is right and what doctrine contains the germ of
heresy and should therefore be adjudged erroneous, unsound, fallacious
and heretical.
The first of those Oecumenical councils was held in the town of Nicaea,
not far from the ruins of Troy, in the year 325. The second one,
fifty-six years later, was held in Constantinople. The third one in
the year 431 in Ephesus. Thereafter they followed each other in rapid
succession in Chalcedon, twice again in Constantinople, once more in
Nicaea and finally once again in Constantinople in the year 869.
After that, however, they were held in Rome or in some particular town of
western Europe designated by the Pope. For it was generally accepted from
the fourth century on that although the emperor had the technical right
to call together such meetings (a privilege which incidentally obliged
him to pay the traveling expenses of his faithful bishops) that very
serious attention should be paid to the suggestions made by the powerful
Bishop of Rome. And although we do not know with any degree of certainty
who occupied the chair in Nicaea, all later councils were dominated by
the Popes and the decisions of these holy gatherings were not regarded
as binding unless they had obtained the official approval of the supreme
pontiff himself or one of his delegates.
Hence we can now say farewell to Constantinople and travel to the more
congenial regions of the west.
The field of Tolerance and Intolerance has been fought over so repeatedly
by those who hold tolerance the greatest of all human virtues and those
who denounce it as an evidence of moral weakness, that I shall pay
very little attention to the purely theoretical aspects of the case.
Nevertheless it must be confessed that the champions of the Church follow
a plausible line of reasoning when they try to explain away the terrible
punishments which were inflicted upon all heretics.
“A church,” so they argue, “is like any other organization. It is
almost like a village or a tribe or a fortress. There must be a
commander-in-chief and there must be a definite set of laws and
by-laws, which all members are forced to obey. It follows that those
who swear allegiance to the Church make a tacit vow both to respect the
commander-in-chief and to obey the law. And if they find it impossible to
do this, they must suffer the consequences of their own decisions and get
out.”
All of which, so far, is perfectly true and reasonable.
If today a minister feels that he can no longer believe in the articles
of faith of the Baptist Church, he can turn Methodist, and if for some
reason he ceases to believe in the creed as laid down by the Methodist
Church, he can become a Unitarian or a Catholic or a Jew, or for that
matter, a Hindoo or a Turk. The world is wide. The door is open. There
is no one outside his own hungry family to say him nay.
But this is an age of steamships and railroad trains and unlimited
economic opportunities.
The world of the fifth century was not quite so simple. It was far from
easy to discover a region where the influence of the Bishop of Rome did
not make itself felt. One could of course go to Persia or to India, as
a good many heretics did, but the voyage was long and the chances of
survival were small. And this meant perpetual banishment for one’s self
and one’s children.
And finally, why should a man surrender his good right to believe what he
pleased if he felt sincerely that his conception of the idea of Christ
was the right one and that it was only a question of time for him to
convince the Church that its doctrines needed a slight modification?
For that was the crux of the whole matter.
The early Christians, both the faithful and the heretics, dealt with
ideas which had a relative and not a positive value.
A group of mathematicians, sending each other to the gallows because they
cannot agree upon the absolute value of x would be no more absurd than
a council of learned theologians trying to define the undefinable and
endeavoring to reduce the substance of God to a formula.
But so thoroughly had the spirit of self-righteousness and intolerance
got hold of the world that until very recently all those who advocated
tolerance upon the basis that “we cannot ever possibly know who is right
and who is wrong” did so at the risk of their lives and usually couched
their warnings in such careful Latin sentences that not more than one or
two of their most intelligent readers ever knew what they meant.