CALLISTA
A TALE OF THE THIRD CENTURY
BY
JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN
“Love thy God, and love Him only,
And thy breast will ne’er be lonely.
In that One Great Spirit meet
All things mighty, grave, and sweet.
Vainly strives the soul to mingle
With a being of our kind;
Vainly hearts with hearts are twined:
For the deepest still is single.
An impalpable resistance
Holds like natures still at distance.
Mortal: love that Holy One,
Or dwell for aye alone.”
DE VERE
_NEW IMPRESSION_
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1904
_All rights reserved_
_To_
_HENRY WILLIAM WILBERFORCE._
_To you alone, who have known me so long, and who love me so well, could I
venture to offer a trifle like this. But you will recognise the author in
his work, and take pleasure in the recognition._
_J. H. N._
ADVERTISEMENT.
It is hardly necessary to say that the following Tale is a simple fiction
from beginning to end. It has little in it of actual history, and not much
claim to antiquarian research; yet it has required more reading than may
appear at first sight.
It is an attempt to imagine and express, from a Catholic point of view,
the feelings and mutual relations of Christians and heathens at the period
to which it belongs, and it has been undertaken as the nearest approach
which the Author could make to a more important work suggested to him from
a high ecclesiastical quarter.
_September 13, 1855._
POSTSCRIPTS TO LATER EDITIONS.
_February 8, 1856._—Since the volume has been in print, the Author finds
that his name has got abroad. This gives him reason to add, that he wrote
great part of Chapters I., IV., and V., and sketched the character and
fortunes of Juba, in the early spring of 1848. He did no more till the end
of last July, when he suddenly resumed the thread of his tale, and has
been successful so far as this, that he has brought it to an end.
Without being able to lay his finger upon instances in point, he has some
misgiving lest, from a confusion between ancient histories and modern
travels, there should be inaccuracies, antiquarian or geographical, in
certain of his minor statements, which carry with them authority when they
cease to be anonymous.
_February 2, 1881.—October, 1888._—In a tale such as this, which professes
in the very first sentence of its Advertisement to be simple fiction from
beginning to end, details may be allowably filled up by the writer’s
imagination and coloured by his personal opinions and beliefs, the only
rule binding on him being this—that he has no right to contravene
acknowledged historical facts. Thus it is that Walter Scott exercises a
poet’s licence in drawing his Queen Elizabeth and his Claverhouse, and the
author of “Romola” has no misgivings in even imputing hypothetical motives
and intentions to Savonarola. Who, again, would quarrel with Mr. Lockhart,
writing in Scotland, for excluding Pope, or Bishops, or sacrificial rites
from his interesting Tale of Valerius?
Such was the understanding, as to what I might do and what I might not,
with which I wrote this story; and to make it clearer, I added in the
later editions of this Advertisement, that it was written “from a Catholic
point of view;” while in the earlier, bearing in mind the interests of
historical truth, and the anachronism which I had ventured on at page 82
in the date of Arnobius and Lactantius, I said that I had not “admitted
any actual interference with known facts without notice,” questions of
religious controversy, when I said it, not even coming into my thoughts. I
did not consider my Tale to be in any sense controversial, but to be
specially addressed to Catholic readers, and for their edification.
This being so, it was with no little surprise I found myself lately
accused of want of truth, because I have followed great authorities in
attributing to Christians of the middle of the third century what is
certainly to be found in the fourth,—devotions, representations, and
doctrines, declaratory of the high dignity of the Blessed Virgin. If I had
left out all mention of these, I should have been simply untrue to my idea
and apprehension of Primitive Christianity. To what positive and certain
facts do I run counter in so doing, even granting that I am indulging my
imagination? But I have allowed myself no such indulgence; I gave good
reasons long ago, in my “Letter to Dr. Pusey” (pp. 53–76), for what I
believe on this matter and for what I have in “Callista” described.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. SICCA VENERIA 1
II. CHRISTIANITY IN SICCA 14
III. AGELLIUS IN HIS COTTAGE 25
IV. JUBA 30
V. JUCUNDUS AT SUPPER 39
VI. GOTHS AND CHRISTIANS 51
VII. PERSECUTION IN THE OFFING 64
VIII. THE NEW GENERATION 80
IX. JUCUNDUS BAITS HIS TRAP 92
X. THE DIVINE CALLISTA 111
XI. CALLISTA’S PREACHING, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 122
XII. A DEATH 135
XIII. AND RESURRECTION 145
XIV. A SMALL CLOUD 159
XV. A VISITATION 168
XVI. WORSE AND WORSE 178
XVII. CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES 189
XVIII. AGELLIUS FLITS 199
XIX. A PASSAGE OF ARMS 212
XX. HE SHALL NOT LOSE HIS REWARD 226
XXI. STARTLING RUMOURS 235
XXII. JUCUNDUS PROPOUNDS HIS VIEW OF THE SITUATION 239
XXIII. GURTA 256
XXIV. A MOTHER’S BLESSING 266
XXV. CALLISTA IN DURANCE 274
XXVI. WHAT CAN IT ALL MEAN? 281
XXVII. AM I A CHRISTIAN? 291
XXVIII. A SICK CALL 305
XXIX. CONVERSION 317
XXX. TORRES VEDRAS 329
XXXI. THE BAPTISM 343
XXXII. THE IMPERIAL RESCRIPT 352
XXXIII. A GOOD CONFESSION 357
XXXIV. THE MARTYRDOM 366
XXXV. THE CORPO SANTO 371
XXXVI. LUX PERPETUA SANCTIS TUIS, DOMINE 377
CALLISTA;
A TALE OF THE THIRD CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
SICCA VENERIA.
In no province of the vast Roman empire, as it existed in the middle of
the third century, did Nature wear a richer or a more joyous garb than she
displayed in Proconsular Africa, a territory of which Carthage was the
metropolis, and Sicca might be considered the centre. The latter city,
which was the seat of a Roman colony, lay upon a precipitous or steep
bank, which led up along a chain of hills to a mountainous track in the
direction of the north and east. In striking contrast with this wild and
barren region was the view presented by the west and south, where for many
miles stretched a smiling champaign, exuberantly wooded, and varied with a
thousand hues, till it was terminated at length by the successive tiers of
the Atlas, and the dim and fantastic forms of the Numidian mountains. The
immediate neighbourhood of the city was occupied by gardens, vineyards,
corn-fields, and meadows, crossed or encircled here by noble avenues of
trees or the remains of primeval forests, there by the clustering groves
which wealth and luxury had created. This spacious plain, though level
when compared with the northern heights by which the city was backed, and
the peaks and crags which skirted the southern and western horizon, was
discovered, as light and shadow travelled with the sun, to be diversified
with hill and dale, upland and hollow; while orange gardens, orchards,
olive and palm plantations held their appropriate sites on the slopes or
the bottoms. Through the mass of green, which extended still more thickly
from the west round to the north, might be seen at intervals two solid
causeways tracking their persevering course to the Mediterranean coast,
the one to the ancient rival of Rome, the other to Hippo Regius in
Numidia. Tourists might have complained of the absence of water from the
scene; but the native peasant would have explained to them that the eye
alone had reason to be discontented, and that the thick foliage and the
uneven surface did but conceal what mother earth with no niggard bounty
supplied. The Bagradas, issuing from the spurs of the Atlas, made up in
depth what it wanted in breadth of bed, and ploughed the rich and yielding
mould with its rapid stream, till, after passing Sicca in its way, it fell
into the sea near Carthage. It was but the largest of a multitude of
others, most of them tributaries to it, deepening as much as they
increased it. While channels had been cut from the larger rills for the
irrigation of the open land, brooks, which sprang up in the gravel which
lay against the hills, had been artificially banked with cut stones or
paved with pebbles; and where neither springs nor rivulets were to be
found, wells had been dug, sometimes to the vast depth of as much as 200
fathoms, with such effect that the spurting column of water had in some
instances drowned the zealous workmen who had been the first to reach it.
And, while such were the resources of less favoured localities or seasons,
profuse rains descended over the whole region for one half of the year,
and the thick summer dews compensated by night for the daily tribute
extorted by an African sun.
At various distances over the undulating surface, and through the woods,
were seen the villas and the hamlets of that happy land. It was an age
when the pride of architecture had been indulged to the full; edifices,
public and private, mansions and temples, ran off far away from each
market-town or borough, as from a centre, some of stone or marble, but
most of them of that composite of fine earth, rammed tight by means of
frames, for which the Saracens were afterwards famous, and of which
specimens remain to this day, as hard in surface, as sharp at the angles,
as when they first were finished. Every here and there, on hill or crag,
crowned with basilicas and temples, radiant in the sun, might be seen the
cities of the province or of its neighbourhood, Thibursicumber, Thugga,
Laribus, Siguessa, Sufetula, and many others; while in the far distance,
on an elevated table-land under the Atlas, might be discerned the Colonia
Scillitana, famous about fifty years before the date of which we write for
the martyrdom of Speratus and his companions, who were beheaded at the
order of the proconsul for refusing to swear by the genius of Rome and the
emperor.
If the spectator now takes his stand, not in Sicca itself, but about a
quarter of a mile to the south-east, on the hill or knoll on which was
placed the cottage of Agellius, the city itself will enter into the
picture. Its name, Sicca Veneria, if it be derived (as some suppose) from
the Succoth benoth, or “tents of the daughters,” mentioned by the inspired
writer as an object of pagan worship in Samaria, shows that it owed its
foundation to the Phœnician colonists of the country. At any rate, the
Punic deities retained their hold upon the place; the temples of the
Tyrian Hercules and of Saturn, the scene of annual human sacrifices, were
conspicuous in its outline, though these and all other religious buildings
in it looked small beside the mysterious antique shrine devoted to the
sensual rites of the Syrian Astarte. Public baths and a theatre, a
capitol, imitative of Rome, a gymnasium, the long outline of a portico, an
equestrian statue in brass of the Emperor Severus, were grouped together
above the streets of a city, which, narrow and winding, ran up and down
across the hill. In its centre an extraordinary spring threw up
incessantly several tons of water every minute, and was inclosed by the
superstitious gratitude of the inhabitants with the peristylium of a
sacred place. At the extreme back, towards the north, which could not be
seen from the point of view where we last stationed ourselves, there was a
sheer descent of rock, bestowing on the city, when it was seen at a
distance on the Mediterranean side, the same bold and striking appearance
which attaches to Castro Giovanni, the ancient Enna, in the heart of
Sicily.
And now, withdrawing our eyes from the panorama, whether in its distant or
nearer objects, if we would at length contemplate the spot itself from
which we have been last surveying it, we shall find almost as much to
repay attention, and to elicit admiration. We stand in the midst of a farm
of some wealthy proprietor, consisting of a number of fields and gardens,
separated from each other by hedges of cactus or the aloe. At the foot of
the hill, which sloped down on the side furthest from Sicca to one of the
tributaries of the rich and turbid river of which we have spoken, a large
yard or garden, intersected with a hundred artificial rills, was devoted
to the cultivation of the beautiful and odoriferous _khennah_. A thick
grove of palms seemed to triumph in the refreshment of the water’s side,
and lifted up their thankful boughs towards heaven. The barley harvest in
the fields which lay higher up the hill was over, or at least was
finishing; and all that remained of the crop was the incessant and
importunate chirping of the _cicadæ_, and the rude booths of reeds and
bulrushes, now left to wither, in which the peasant boys found shelter
from the sun, while in an earlier month they frightened from the grain the
myriads of linnets, goldfinches, and other small birds who, as in other
countries, contested with the human proprietor the possession of it. On
the south-western slope lies a neat and carefully dressed vineyard, the
vine-stakes of which, dwarfish as they are, already cast long shadows on
the eastern side. Slaves are scattered over it, testifying to the
scorching power of the sun by their broad _petasus_, and to its oppressive
heat by the scanty _subligarium_, which reached from the belt or girdle to
the knees. They are engaged in cutting off useless twigs to which the last
showers of spring have given birth, and are twisting those which promise
fruit into positions where they will be safe both from the breeze and from
the sun. Everything gives token of that gracious and happy season which
the great Latin poets have hymned in their beautiful but heathen strains;
when, after the heavy rains, and raw mists, and piercing winds, and fitful
sun-gleams of a long six months, the mighty mother manifests herself anew,
and pours out the resources of her innermost being for the life and
enjoyment of every portion of the vast whole;—or, to apply the lines of a
modern bard—
“When the bare earth, till now
Desert and bare, unsightly, unadorned,
Brings forth the tender grass, whose verdure clads
Her universal face with pleasant green;
Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flower,
Opening their various colours, and make gay
Her bosom, swelling sweet; and, these scarce blown,
Forth flourishes the clustering vine, forth creeps
The swelling gourd, up stands the corny reed
Embattled in her fields, and the humble shrub,
And bush with frizzled hair implicit; last
Rise, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread
Their branches hung with copious fruit, or gem
Their blossoms; with high woods the hills are crowned
With tufts the valleys, and each fountain side
With borders long the rivers; that earth now
Seems like to heaven, a seat where gods might dwell,
Or wander with delight, and love to haunt
Her sacred shades.”
A snatch from some old Greek chant, with something of plaintiveness in the
tone, issues from the thicket just across the mule-path, cut deep in the
earth, which reaches from the city gate to the streamlet; and a youth, who
had the appearance of the assistant bailiff or _procurator_ of the farm,
leaped from it, and went over to the labourers, who were busy with the
vines. His eyes and hair and the cast of his features spoke of Europe; his
manner had something of shyness and reserve, rather than of rusticity; and
he wore a simple red tunic with half sleeves, descending to the knee, and
tightened round him by a belt. His legs and feet were protected by boots
which came half up his calf. He addressed one of the slaves, and his voice
was gentle and cheerful.
“Ah, Sansar!” he cried, “I don’t like your way of managing these branches
so well as my own; but it is a difficult thing to move an old fellow like
you. You never fasten together the shoots which you don’t cut off, they
are flying about quite wild, and the first ox that passes through the
field next month for the ploughing will break them off.”
He spoke in Latin; the man understood it, and answered him in the same
language, though with deviations from purity of accent and syntax, not
without parallel in the _talkee-talkee_ of the West Indian negro.
“Ay, ay, master,” he said, “ay, ay; but it’s all a mistake to use the
plough at all. The fork does the work much better, and no fear for the
grape. I hide the tendril under the leaf against the sun, which is the
only enemy we have to consider.”
“Ah! but the fork does not raise so much dust as the plough and the heavy
cattle which draw it,” returned Agellius; “and the said dust does more for
the protection of the tendril than the shade of the leaf.”
“But those huge beasts,” retorted the slave, “turn up great ridges, and
destroy the yard.”
“It’s no good arguing with an old vinedresser, who had formed his theory
before I was born,” said Agellius good-humouredly; and he passed on into a
garden beyond.
Here were other indications of the happy month through which the year was
now travelling. The garden, so to call it, was a space of several acres in
extent; it was one large bed of roses, and preparation was making for
extracting their essence, for which various parts of that country are to
this day celebrated. Here was another set of labourers, and a man of
middle age was surveying them at his leisure. His business-like, severe,
and off-hand manner bespoke the _villicus_ or bailiff himself.
“Always here,” said he, “as if you were a slave, not a Roman, my good
fellow; yet slaves have their Saturnalia; always serving, not worshipping
the all-bounteous and all-blessed. Why are you not taking holiday in the
town?”
“Why should I, sir?” asked Agellius; “don’t you recollect old Hiempsal’s
saying about ‘one foot in the slipper, and one in the shoe.’ Nothing would
be done well if I were a town-goer. You engaged me, I suppose, to be here,
not there.”
“Ah!” answered he, “but at this season the empire, the genius of Rome, the
customs of the country, demand it, and above all the great goddess Astarte
and her genial, jocund month. ‘Parturit almus ager;’ you know the verse;
do not be out of tune with Nature, nor clash and jar with the great system
of the universe.”
A cloud of confusion, or of distress, passed over Agellius’s face. He
seemed as if he wished to speak; at length he merely said, “It’s a fault
on the right side in a servant, I suppose.”
“I know the way of your people,” Vitricus replied, “Corybantians,
Phrygians, Jews, what do you call yourselves? There are so many fantastic
religions now-a-days. Hang yourself outright at your house-door, if you
are tired of living—and you are a sensible fellow. How can any man, whose
head sits right upon his shoulders, say that life is worth having, and not
worth enjoying?”
“I am a quiet being,” answered Agellius, “I like the country, which you
think so tame, and care little for the flaunting town. Tastes differ.”
“Town! you need not go to Sicca,” answered the bailiff, “all Sicca is out
of town. It has poured into the fields, and groves, and river side. Lift
up your eyes, man alive, open your ears, and let pleasure flow in. Be
passive under the sweet breath of the goddess, and she will fill you with
ecstasy.”
It was as Vitricus had said; the solemn feast-days of Astarte were in
course of celebration; of Astarte, the well-known divinity of Carthage and
its dependent cities, whom Heliogabalus had lately introduced to Rome, who
in her different aspects was at once Urania, Juno, and Aphrodite,
according as she embodied the idea of the philosopher, the statesman, or
the vulgar; lofty and intellectual as Urania, majestic and commanding as
Juno, seductive as the goddess of sensuality and excess.
“There goes the son of as good and frank a soldier as ever brandished
pilum,” said Vitricus to himself, “till in his last years some infernal
god took umbrage at him, and saddled him and his with one of those absurd
superstitions which are as plentiful here as serpents. He indeed was too
old himself to get much harm from it; but it shows its sour nature in
these young shoots. A good servant, but the plague’s in his bones, and he
will rot.”
His subordinate’s reflections were of a different character: “The very air
breathes sin to-day,” he cried; “oh that I did not find the taint of the
city in these works of God! Alas! sweet Nature, the child of the Almighty,
is made to do the fiend’s work, and does it better than the town. O ye
beautiful trees and fair flowers, O bright sun and balmy air, what a
bondage ye are in, and how do ye groan till you are redeemed from it! Ye
are bond-slaves, but not willingly, as man is; but how will you ever be
turned to nobler purpose? How is this vast, this solid establishment of
error, the incubus of many thousand years, ever to have an end? You
yourselves, dear ones, will come to nought first. Anyhow, the public way
is no place for me this evening. They’ll soon be back from their accursed
revelry.”
A sound of horns and voices had been heard from time to time through the
woods, as if proceeding from parties dispersed through them; and in the
growing twilight might be seen lights, glancing and wandering through the
foliage. The cottage in which Agellius dwelt was on the other side of the
hollow bridle-way which crossed the hill. To make for home he had first to
walk some little distance along it; and scarcely had he descended into it
for that purpose, when he found himself in the front of a band of
revellers, who were returning from some scene of impious festivity. They
were arrayed in holiday guise, as far as they studied dress at all; the
symbols of idolatry were on their foreheads and arms; some of them were
intoxicated, and most of them were women.
“Why have you not been worshipping, young fellow?” said one.
“Comely built,” said another, “but struck by the furies. I know the cut of
him.”
“By Astarte,” said a third, “he’s one of those sly Gnostics! I have seen
the chap before, with his hangdog look. He is one of Pluto’s whelps, first
cousin to Cerberus, and his name’s Channibal.”
On which they all began to shout out, “I say, Channibal, Channibal, here’s
a lad that knows you. Old fellow, come along with us;” and the speaker
made a dash at him.
On this Agellius, who was slowly making his way past them on the broken
and steep path, leapt up in two or three steps to the ridge, and went away
in security; when one woman cried out, “O the toad, I know him now; he is
a wizard; he eats little children; didn’t you see him make that sign? it’s
a charm. My sister did it; the fool left me to be one of them. She was
ever doing so” (mimicking the sign of the cross). “He’s a Christian,
blight him! he’ll turn us into beasts.”
“Cerberus, bite him!” said another, “he sucks blood;” and taking up a
stone, she made it whiz past his ear as he disappeared from view. A
general scream of contempt and hatred followed. “Where’s the ass’s head?
put out the lights, put out the lights! gibbet him! that’s why he has not
been with honest people down in the vale.” And then they struck up a
blasphemous song, the sentiments of which we are not going even to
conceive, much less to attempt in words.