When, during the fourth century, the weakened empire split asunder like an
overburdened scale whose beam is broken, this political divorce perpetuated
a moral separation that had existed for a long time. The opposition between
the Greco-Oriental and the Latin worlds manifests itself especially in
religion and in the attitude taken by the central power toward it.
Occidental paganism was almost exclusively Latin under the empire. After
the annexation of Spain, Gaul and Brittany, the old Iberian, Celtic and
other religions were unable to keep up the unequal struggle against the
more advanced religion of the conquerors. The marvelous rapidity with which
the literature of the civilizing Romans was accepted by the subject peoples
has frequently been pointed out. Its influence was felt in the temples as
well as in the forum; it transformed the prayers to the gods as well as the
conversation between men. Besides, it was part of the political program of
the Cæsars to make the adoption of the Roman divinities general, and the
government imposed the rules of its sacerdotal law as well as the
principles of its public and civil law upon its new subjects. The municipal
laws prescribed the election of pontiffs and augurs in common with the
judicial duumvirs. In Gaul druidism, with its oral traditions embodied in
{21} long poems, perished and disappeared less on account of the police
measures directed against it than in consequence of its voluntary
relinquishment by the Celts, as soon as they came under the ascendency of
Latin culture. In Spain it is difficult to find any traces of the
aboriginal religions. Even in Africa, where the Punic religion was far more
developed, it maintained itself only by assuming an entirely Roman
appearance. Baal became Saturn and Eshmoun Æsculapius. It is doubtful if
there was one temple in all the provinces of Italy and Gaul where, at the
time of the disappearance of idolatry, the ceremonies were celebrated
according to native rites and in the local idiom. To this exclusive
predominance of Latin is due the fact that it remained the only liturgic
language of the Occidental church, which here as in many other cases
perpetuated a preexisting condition and maintained a unity previously
established. By imposing her speech upon the inhabitants of Ireland and
Germany, Christian Rome simply continued the work of assimilation in the
barbarian provinces subject to her influence that she had begun while
pagan.[1]
In the Orient, however, the churches that are separate from the Greek
orthodoxy use, even to-day, a variety of dialects calling to mind the great
diversity of races formerly subject to Rome. In those times twenty
varieties of speech translated the religious thought of the peoples joined
under the dominion of the Cæsars. At the beginning of our era Hellenism had
not yet conquered the uplands of Anatolia,[2] nor central Syria, nor the
divisions of Egypt. Annexation to the empire might retard and in certain
regions weaken the power of expansion of Greek civilization, {22} but it
could not substitute Latin culture for it[3] except around the camps of the
legions guarding the frontier, and in a very few colonies. It especially
benefitted the individuality of each region. The native religions retained
all their prestige and independence. In their ancient sanctuaries that took
rank with the richest and most famous of the world, a powerful clergy
continued to practise ancestral devotions according to barbarian rites, and
frequently in a barbarian tongue. The traditional liturgy, everywhere
performed with scrupulous respect, remained Egyptian or Semitic, Phrygian
or Persian, according to the locality.
Neither pontifical law nor augural science ever obtained credit outside of
the Latin world. It is a characteristic fact that the worship of the
deified emperors, the only official worship required of every one by the
government as a proof of loyalty, should have originated of its own accord
in Asia, received its inspiration from the purest monarchic traditions, and
revived in form and spirit the veneration accorded to the Diadochi by their
subjects.
Not only were the gods of Egypt and Asia never supplanted like those of
Gaul or Spain, but they soon crossed the seas and gained worshipers in
every Latin province. Isis and Serapis, Cybele and Attis, the Syrian Baals,
Sabazius and Mithra were honored by brotherhoods of believers as far as the
remotest limits of Germany. The Oriental reaction that we perceive from the
beginning of our era, in studying the history of art, literature, and
philosophy, manifested itself with incomparably greater power in the
religious sphere. First, there was a slow infiltration of despised exotic
religions, then, toward the end of the first {23} century, the Orontes, the
Nile and the Halys, to use the words of Juvenal, flowed into the Tiber, to
the great indignation of the old Romans. Finally, a hundred years later, an
influx of Egyptian, Semitic and Persian beliefs and conceptions took place
that threatened to submerge all that the Greek and Roman genius had
laboriously built up. What called forth and permitted this spiritual
commotion, of which the triumph of Christianity was the outcome? Why was
the influence of the Orient strongest in the religious field? These
questions claim our attention. Like all great phenomena of history, this
particular one was determined by a number of influences that concurred in
producing it. In the mass of half-known particulars that brought it about,
certain factors or leading causes, of which every one has in turn been
considered the most important, may be distinguished.
If we yielded to the tendency of many excellent minds of to-day and
regarded history as the resultant of economic and social forces, it would
be easy to show their influence in that great religious movement. The
industrial and commercial preponderance of the Orient was manifest, for
there were situated the principal centers of production and export. The
ever increasing traffic with the Levant induced merchants to establish
themselves in Italy, in Gaul, in the Danubian countries, in Africa and in
Spain; in some cities they formed real colonies. The Syrian emigrants were
especially numerous. Compliant, quick and diligent, they went wherever they
expected profit, and their colonies, scattered as far as the north of Gaul,
were centers for the religious propaganda of paganism just as the Jewish
communities of the Diaspora were for Christian {24} preaching. Italy not
only bought her grain from Egypt, she imported men also; she ordered slaves
from Phrygia, Cappadocia, Syria and Alexandria to cultivate her depopulated
fields and perform the domestic duties in her palaces. Who can tell what
influence chambermaids from Antioch or Memphis gained over the minds of
their mistresses? At the same time the necessities of war removed officers
and men from the Euphrates to the Rhine or to the outskirts of the Sahara,
and everywhere they remained faithful to the gods of their far-away
country. The requirements of the government transferred functionaries and
their clerks, the latter frequently of servile birth, into the most distant
provinces. Finally, the ease of communication, due to the good roads,
increased the frequency and extent of travel.
Thus the exchange of products, men and ideas necessarily increased, and it
might be maintained that theocracy was a necessary consequence of the
mingling of the races, that the gods of the Orient followed the great
commercial and social currents, and that their establishment in the
Occident was a natural result of the movement that drew the excess
population of the Asiatic cities and rural districts into the less thickly
inhabited countries.
These reflections, which could be developed at some length, surely show the
way in which the Oriental religions spread. It is certain that the
merchants acted as missionaries in the seaports and places of commerce, the
soldiers on the frontiers and in the capital, the slaves in the city
homes,[4] in the rural districts and in public affairs. But while this
acquaints us with the means and the agents of the diffusion of those
religions, {25} it tells us nothing of the reasons for their adoption by
the Romans. We perceive the how, but not the why, of their sudden
expansion. Especially imperfect is our understanding of the reasons for the
difference between the Orient and the Occident pointed out above.
An example will make my meaning clear. A Celtic divinity, Epona,[5] was
held in particular honor as the protectress of horses, as we all know. The
Gallic horsemen worshiped her wherever they were cantoned; her monuments
have been found scattered from Scotland to Transylvania. And yet, although
this goddess enjoyed the same conditions as, for instance Jupiter
_Dolichenus_ whom the cohorts of Commagene introduced into Europe, it does
not appear that she ever received the homage of many strangers; it does not
appear, above all, that druidism ever assumed the shape of "mysteries of
Epona" into which Greeks and Romans would have asked to be initiated. It
was too deficient in the intrinsic strength of the Oriental religions, to
make proselytes.
Other historians and thinkers of to-day prefer to apply the laws of natural
science to religious phenomena; and the theories about the variation of
species find an unforeseen application here. It is maintained that the
immigration of Orientals, of Syrians in particular, was considerable enough
to provoke an alteration and rapid deterioration in the robust Italic and
Celtic races. In addition, a social status contrary to nature, and a bad
political régime effected the destruction of the strongest, the
extermination of the best and the ascendancy of the worst elements of the
population. This multitude, corrupted by deleterious cross-breeding and
weakened by bad selection, became unable to {26} oppose the invasion of the
Asiatic chimeras and aberrations. A lowering of the intellectual level and
the disappearance of the critical spirit accompanied the decline of morals
and the weakening of character. In the evolution of beliefs the triumph of
the Orient denoted a regression toward barbarism, a return to the remote
origins of faith and to the worship of natural forces. This is a brief
outline of explanations recently proposed and received with some favor.[6]
It cannot be denied that souls and morals appear to have become coarser
during the Roman decline. Society as a whole was deplorably lacking in
imagination, intellect and taste. It seemed afflicted with a kind of
cerebral anemia and incurable sterility. The impaired reason accepted the
coarsest superstitions, the most extreme asceticism and most extravagant
theurgy. It resembled an organism incapable of defending itself against
contagion. All this is partly true; but the theories summarized proceed
from an incorrect conception of things; in reality they are based on the
illusion that Asia, under the empire, was inferior to Europe. While the
triumph of the Oriental religions sometimes assumed the appearance of an
awakening of savagery, these religions in reality represented a more
advanced type in the evolution of religious forms than the ancient national
devotions. They were less primitive, less simple, and, if I may use the
expression, provided with more organs than the old Greco-Roman idolatry. We
have indicated this on previous occasions, and hope to bring it out with
perfect clearness in the course of these studies.
It is hardly necessary to state that a great religious conquest can be
explained only on moral grounds. {27} Whatever part must be ascribed to the
instinct of imitation and the contagion of example, in the last analysis we
are always face to face with a series of individual conversions. The
mysterious affinity of minds is as much due to reflection as to the
continued and almost unconscious influence of confused aspirations that
produce faith. The obscure gestation of a new ideal is accomplished with
pangs of anguish. Violent struggles must have disturbed the souls of the
masses when they were torn away from their old ancestral religions, or more
often from indifference, by those exacting gods who demanded a surrender of
the entire person, a _devotion_ in the etymological meaning of the word.
The consecration to Isis of the hero of Apuleius was the result of a call,
of an appeal, by the goddess who wanted the neophyte to enlist in her
sacred militia.[7]
If it is true that every conversion involves a psychological crisis, a
transformation of the intimate personality of the individual, this is
especially true of the propagation of the Oriental religions. Born outside
of the narrow limits of the Roman city, they grew up frequently in
hostility to it, and were international, consequently individual. The bond
that formerly kept devotion centered upon the city or the tribe, upon the
_gens_ or the family, was broken. In place of the ancient social groups
communities of initiates came into existence, who considered themselves
brothers no matter where they came from.[8] A god, conceived of as being
universal, received every mortal as his child. Whenever these religions had
any relation to the state they were no longer called upon to support old
municipal or social institutions, but to lend their strength to the {28}
authority of a sovereign regarded as the eternal lord of the whole world
jointly with God himself. In the circles of the mystics, Asiatics mingled
with Romans, and slaves with high functionaries. The adoption of the same
faith made the poor freedman the equal and sometimes the superior, of the
decurion and the _clarissimus_. All submitted to the same rules and
participated in the same festivities, in which the distinctions of an
aristocratic society and the differences of blood and country were
obliterated. The distinctions of race and nationality, of magistrate and
father of a family, of patrician and plebeian, of citizen and foreigner,
were abolished; all were but men, and in order to recruit members, those
religions worked upon man and his character.
In order to gain the masses and the cream of Roman society (as they did for
a whole century) the barbarian mysteries had to possess a powerful charm,
they had to satisfy the deep wants of the human soul, and their strength
had to be superior to that of the ancient Greco-Roman religion. To explain
the reasons for their victory we must try to reveal the nature of this
superiority--I mean their superiority in the struggle, without assuming
innate superiority.
I believe that we can define it by stating that those religions gave
greater satisfaction first, to the senses and passions, secondly, to the
intelligence, finally, and above all, to the conscience.
In the first place, they appealed more strongly to the senses. This was
their most obvious feature, and it has been pointed out more often than any
other. Perhaps there never was a religion so cold and prosaic as the Roman.
Being subordinated to politics, it sought, {29} above all, to secure the
protection of the gods for the state and to avert the effects of their
malevolence by the strict execution of appropriate practices. It entered
into a contract with the celestial powers from which mutual obligations
arose: sacrifices on one side, favors on the other. The pontiffs, who were
also magistrates, regulated the religious practices with the exact
precision of jurists;[9] as far as we know the prayers were all couched in
formulas as dry and verbose as notarial instruments. The liturgy reminds
one of the ancient civil law on account of the minuteness of its
prescriptions. This religion looked suspiciously at the abandonment of the
soul to the ecstasies of devotion. It repressed, by force if necessary, the
exuberant manifestations of too ardent faith and everything that was not in
keeping with the grave dignity befitting the relations of a _civis Romanus_
with a god. The Jews had the same scrupulous respect as the Romans for a
religious code and formulas of the past, "but in spite of their dry and
minute practices, the legalism of the Pharisees stirred the heart more
strongly than did Roman formalism."[10]
Lacking the recognized authority of official creeds, the Oriental religions
had to appeal to the passions of the individual in order to make
proselytes. They attracted men first by the disturbing seductiveness of
their mysteries, where terror and hope were evoked in turns, and charmed
them by the pomp of their festivities and the magnificence of their
processions. Men were fascinated by the languishing songs and intoxicating
melodies. Above all these religions taught men how to reach that blissful
state in which the soul was freed from the tyranny of the body and of
suffering, {30} and lost itself in raptures. They led to ecstasy either by
means of nervous tension resulting from continued maceration and fervent
contemplation or by more material means like the stimulation of vertiginous
dances and dizzy music, or even by the absorption of fermented liquors
after a long abstinence,[11] as in the case of the priests of the Great
Mother. In mysticism it is easy to descend from the sublime to the vile.
Even the gods, with whom the believers thought they were uniting themselves
in their mystic outbursts, were more human and sometimes more sensual than
those of the Occident. The latter had that quietude of soul in which the
philosophic morality of the Greeks saw a privilege of the sage; in the
serenity of Olympus they enjoyed perpetual youth; they were Immortals. The
divinities of the Orient, on the contrary, suffered and died, but only to
revive again.[12] Osiris, Attis and Adonis were mourned like mortals by
wife or mistress, Isis, Cybele or Astarte. With them the mystics moaned for
their deceased god and later, after he had revived, celebrated with
exultation his birth to a new life. Or else they joined in the passion of
Mithra, condemned to create the world in suffering. This common grief and
joy were often expressed with savage violence, by bloody mutilations, long
wails of despair, and extravagant acclamations. The manifestations of the
extreme fanaticism of those barbarian races that had not been touched by
Greek skepticism and the very ardor of their faith inflamed the souls of
the multitudes attracted by the exotic gods.
The Oriental religions touched every chord of sensibility and satisfied the
thirst for religious emotion that the austere Roman creed had been unable
to quench. {31} But at the same time they satisfied the intellect more
fully, and this is my second point.
In very early times Greece--later imitated by Rome--became resolutely
rationalistic: her greatest originality lies here. Her philosophy was
purely laical; thought was unrestrained by any sacred tradition; it even
pretended to pass judgment upon these traditions and condemned or approved
of them. Being sometimes hostile, sometimes indifferent and some times
conciliatory, it always remained independent of faith. But while Greece
thus freed herself from the fetters of a superannuated mythology, and
openly and boldly constructed those systems of metaphysics by means of
which she claimed to solve the enigmas of the universe, her religion lost
its vitality and dried up because it lacked the strengthening nourishment
of reflection. It became a thing devoid of sense, whose _raison d'être_ was
no longer understood; it embodied dead ideas and an obsolete conception of
the world. In Greece as well as at Rome it was reduced to a collection of
unintelligible rites, scrupulously and mechanically reproduced without
addition or omission because they had been practised by the ancestors of
long ago, and formulas hallowed by the _mos maiorum_, that were no longer
understood or sincerely cherished. Never did a people of advanced culture
have a more infantile religion.
The Oriental civilizations on the contrary were sacerdotal in character. As
in medieval Europe, the scholars of Asia and Egypt were priests. In the
temples the nature of the gods and of man were not the only subjects of
discussion; mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philology and history were
also studied. The successors of Berosus, a priest from Babylonia, and {32}
Manetho, a priest from Heliopolis, were considered deeply versed in all
intellectual disciplines as late as the time of Strabo.[13]
This state of affairs proved detrimental to the progress of science.
Researches were conducted according to preconceived ideas and were
perverted through strange prejudices. Astrology and magic were the
monstrous fruit of a hybrid union. But all this certainly gave religion a
power it had never possessed either in Greece or Rome.
All results of observation, all conquests of thought, were used by an
erudite clergy to attain the principal object of their activities, the
solution of the problem of the destiny of man and matter, and of the
relations of heaven and earth. An ever enlarging conception of the universe
kept transforming the modes of belief. Faith presumed to enslave both
physics and metaphysics. The credit of every discovery was given to the
gods. Thoth in Egypt and Bel in Chaldea were the revealers not only of
theology and the ritual, but of all human knowledge.[14] The names of the
Oriental Hipparchi and Euclids who solved the first problems of astronomy
and geometry were unknown; but a confused and grotesque literature made use
of the name and authority of Hermes Trismegistus. The doctrines of the
planetary spheres and the opposition of the four elements were made to
support systems of anthropology and of morality; the theorems of astronomy
were used to establish an alleged method of divination; formulas of
incantation, supposed to subject divine powers to the magician, were
combined with chemical experiments and medical prescriptions.
This intimate union of erudition and faith continued {33} in the Latin
world. Theology became more and more a process of deification of the
principles or agents discovered by science and a worship of time regarded
as the first cause, the stars whose course determined the events of this
world, the four elements whose innumerable combinations produced the
natural phenomena, and especially the sun which preserved heat, fertility
and life. The dogmas of the mysteries of Mithra were, to a certain extent,
the religious expression of Roman physics and astronomy. In all forms of
pantheism the knowledge of nature appears to be inseparable from that of
God.[15] Art itself complied more and more with the tendency to express
erudite ideas by subtle symbolism, and it represented in allegorical
figures the relations of divine powers and cosmic forces, like the sky, the
earth, the ocean, the planets, the constellations and the winds. The
sculptors engraved on stone everything man thought and taught. In a general
way the belief prevailed that redemption and salvation depended on the
revelation of certain truths, on a knowledge of the gods, of the world and
of our person, and piety became gnosis.[16]
But, you will say, since in the classic age philosophy also claimed to lead
to morality through instruction and to acquaint man with the supreme good,
why did it yield to Oriental religions that were in reality neither
original nor innovating? Quite right, and if a powerful rationalist school,
possessed of a good critical method, had led the minds, we may believe that
it would have checked the invasion of the barbarian mysteries or at least
limited their field of action. However, as has frequently been pointed out,
even in ancient Greece the philosophic critics had very little hold on {34}
popular religion obstinately faithful to its inherited superstitious forms.
But how many second century minds shared Lucian's skepticism in regard to
the dogmatic systems! The various sects were fighting each other for ever
so long without convincing one another of their alleged error. The satirist
of Samosata enjoyed opposing their exclusive pretensions while he himself
reclined on the "soft pillow of doubt." But only intelligent minds could
delight in doubt or surrender to it; the masses wanted certainties. There
was nothing to revive confidence in the power of a decrepit and threadbare
science. No great discovery transformed the conception of the universe.
Nature no longer betrayed her secrets, the earth remained unexplored and
the past inscrutable. Every branch of knowledge was forgotten. The world
cursed with sterility, could but repeat itself; it had the poignant
appreciation of its own decay and impotence. Tired of fruitless researches,
the mind surrendered to the necessity of believing. Since the intellect was
unable to formulate a consistent rule of life faith alone could supply it,
and the multitudes gravitated toward the temples, where the truths taught
to man in earlier days by the Oriental gods were revealed. The stanch
adherence of past generations to beliefs and rites of unlimited antiquity
seemed to guarantee their truth and efficacy. This current was so strong
that philosophy itself was swept toward mysticism and the neo-Platonist
school became a theurgy.
The Oriental mysteries, then, could stir the soul by arousing admiration
and terror, pity and enthusiasm in turn. They gave the intellect the
illusion of learned depth and absolute certainty and finally--our third
{35} point--they satisfied conscience as well as passion and reason. Among
the complex causes that guaranteed their domination, this was without doubt
the most effective.
In every period of their history the Romans, unlike the Greeks in this
respect, judged theories and institutions especially by their practical
results. They always had a soldier's and business man's contempt for
metaphysicians. It is a matter of frequent observation that the philosophy
of the Latin world neglected metaphysical speculations and concentrated its
attention on morals, just as later the Roman church left to the subtle
Hellenes the interminable controversies over the essence of the divine
logos and the double nature of Christ. Questions that could rouse and
divide her were those having a direct application to life, like the
doctrine of grace.
The old religion of the Romans had to respond to this demand of their
genius. Its poverty was honest.[17] Its mythology did not possess the
poetic charm of that of Greece, nor did its gods have the imperishable
beauty of the Olympians, but they were more moral, or at least pretended to
be. A large number were simply personified qualities, like chastity and
piety. With the aid of the censors they imposed the practice of the
national virtues, that is to say of the qualities useful to society,
temperance, courage, chastity, obedience to parents and magistrates,
reverence for the oath and the law, in fact, the practice of every form of
patriotism. During the last century of the republic the pontiff Scaevola,
one of the foremost men of his time, rejected as futile the divinities of
fable and poetry, as superfluous or obnoxious those of the philosophers and
the exegetists, {36} and reserved all his favors for those of the
statesmen, as the only ones fit for the people.[18] These were the ones
protecting the old customs, traditions and frequently even the old
privileges. But in the perpetual flux of things conservatism ever carries
with it a germ of death. Just as the law failed to maintain the integrity
of ancient principles, like the absolute power of the father of the family,
principles that were no longer in keeping with the social realities, so
religion witnessed the foundering of a system of ethics contrary to the
moral code that had slowly been established. The idea of collective
responsibility contained in a number of beliefs is one instance. If a
vestal violated her vow of chastity the divinity sent a pest that ceased
only on the day the culprit was punished. Sometimes the angry heavens
granted victory to the army only on condition that a general or soldier
dedicate himself to the infernal gods as an expiatory victim. However,
through the influence of the philosophers and the jurists the conviction
slowly gained ground that each one was responsible for his own misdeeds,
and that it was not equitable to make a whole city suffer for the crime of
an individual. People ceased to admit that the gods crushed the good as
well as the wicked in one punishment. Often, also, the divine anger was
thought to be as ridiculous in its manifestations as in its cause. The
rural superstitions of the country districts of Latium continued to live in
the pontifical code of the Roman people. If a lamb with two heads or a colt
with five legs was born, solemn supplications were prescribed to avert the
misfortunes foreboded by those terrifying prodigies.[19]
All these puerile and monstrous beliefs that burdened {37} the religion of
the Latins had thrown it into disrepute. Its morality no longer responded
to the new conception of justice beginning to prevail. As a rule Rome
remedied the poverty of her theology and ritual by taking what she needed
from the Greeks. But here this resource failed her because the poetic,
artistic and even intellectual religion of the Greeks was hardly moral. And
the fables of a mythology jeered at by the philosophers, parodied on the
stage and put to verse by libertine poets were anything but edifying.
Moreover--this was its second weakness--whatever morality it demanded of a
pious man went unrewarded. People no longer believed that the gods
continually intervened in the affairs of men to reveal hidden crimes and to
punish triumphant vice, or that Jupiter would hurl his thunderbolt to crush
the perjurer. At the time of the proscriptions and the civil wars under
Nero or Commodus it was more than plain that power and possessions were for
the strongest, the ablest or even the luckiest, and not for the wisest or
the most pious. The idea of reward or punishment beyond the grave found
little credit. The notions of future life were hazy, uncertain, doubtful
and contradictory. Everybody knows Juvenal's famous lines: "That there are
manes, a subterranean kingdom, a ferryman with a long pole, and black frogs
in the whirlpools of the Styx; that so many thousand men could cross the
waves in a single boat, to-day even children refuse to believe."[20]
After the fall of the republic indifference spread, the temples were
abandoned and threatened to tumble into ruins, the clergy found it
difficult to recruit members, the festivities, once so popular, fell into
desuetude, and {38} Varro, at the beginning of his _Antiquities_, expressed
his fear lest "the gods might perish, not from the blows of foreign
enemies, but from very neglect on the part of the citizens."[21] It is well
known that Augustus, prompted by political rather than by religious
reasons, attempted to revive the dying religion. His religious reforms
stood in close relation to his moral legislation and the establishment of
the imperial dignity. Their tendency was to bring the people back to the
pious practice of ancient virtues but also to chain them to the new
political order. The alliance of throne and altar in Europe dates from that
time.
This attempted reform failed entirely. Making religion an auxiliary to
moral policing is not a means of establishing its empire over souls. Formal
reverence for the official gods is not incompatible with absolute and
practical skepticism. The restoration attempted by Augustus is nevertheless
very characteristic because it is so consistent with the Roman spirit which
by temperament and tradition demanded that religion should support morality
and the state.
The Asiatic religions fulfilled the requirements. The change of régime,
although unwelcome, brought about a change of religion. The increasing
tendency of Cæsarism toward absolute monarchy made it lean more and more
upon the Oriental clergy. True to the traditions of the Achemenides and the
Pharaohs, those priests preached doctrines tending to elevate the sovereign
above humanity, and they supplied the emperors with dogmatic justification
for their despotism.[22]
It is a noteworthy fact that the rulers who most loudly proclaimed their
autocratic pretentions, like {39} Domitian and Commodus, were also those
that favored foreign creeds most openly.
But his selfish support merely sanctioned a power already established. The
propaganda of the Oriental religions was originally democratic and
sometimes even revolutionary like the Isis worship. Step by step they
advanced, always reaching higher social classes and appealing to popular
conscience rather than to the zeal of functionaries.
As a matter of fact all these religions, except that of Mithra, seem at
first sight to be far less austere than the Roman creed. We shall have
occasion to note that they contained coarse and immodest fables and
atrocious or vile rites. The Egyptian gods were expelled from Rome by
Augustus and Tiberius on the charge of being immoral, but they were called
immoral principally because they opposed a certain conception of the social
order. They gave little attention to the public interest but attached
considerable importance to the inner life and consequently to the value of
the individual. Two new things, in particular, were brought to Italy by the
Oriental priests: mysterious methods of purification, by which they claimed
to wash away the impurities of the soul, and the assurance that a blessed
immortality would be the reward of piety.[23]
These religions pretended to restore lost purity[24] to the soul either
through the performance of ritual ceremonies or through mortifications and
penance. They had a series of ablutions and lustrations supposed to restore
original innocence to the mystic. He had to wash himself in the sacred
water according to certain prescribed forms. This was really a magic rite,
because bodily purity acted sympathetically upon the soul, or {40} else it
was a real spiritual disinfection with the water driving out the evil
spirits that had caused pollution. The votary, again, might drink or
besprinkle himself with the blood of a slaughtered victim or of the priests
themselves, in which case the prevailing idea was that the liquid
circulating in the veins was a vivifying principle capable of imparting a
new existence.[25] These and similar rites[26] used in the mysteries were
supposed to regenerate the initiated person and to restore him to an
immaculate and incorruptible life.[27]
Purgation of the soul was not effected solely by liturgic acts but also by
self-denial and suffering.[28] The meaning of the term _expiatio_ changed.
Expiation, or atonement, was no longer accomplished by the exact
performance of certain ceremonies pleasing to the gods and required by a
sacred code like a penalty for damages, but by privation and personal
suffering. Abstinence, which prevented the introduction of deadly elements
into the system, and chastity, which preserved man from pollution and
debility, became means of getting rid of the domination of the evil powers
and of regaining heavenly favor.[29] Macerations, laborious pilgrimages,
public confessions, sometimes flagellations and mutilations, in fact all
forms of penance and mortifications uplifted the fallen man and brought him
nearer to the gods. In Phrygia a sinner would write his sin and the
punishment he suffered upon a stela for every one to see and would return
thanks to heaven that his prayer of repentance had been heard.[30] The
Syrian, who had offended his goddess by eating her sacred fish, dressed in
sordid rags, covered himself with a sack and sat in the public highway
humbly to proclaim his misdeed in order to obtain forgiveness.[31] {41}
"Three times, in the depths of winter," says Juvenal, "the devotee of Isis
will dive into the chilly waters of the Tiber, and shivering with cold,
will drag herself around the temple upon her bleeding knees; if the goddess
commands, she will go to the outskirts of Egypt to take water from the Nile
and empty it within the sanctuary."[32] This shows the introduction into
Europe of Oriental asceticism.
But there were impious acts and impure passions that contaminated and
defiled the soul. Since this infection could be destroyed only by
expiations prescribed by the gods, the extent of the sin and the character
of the necessary penance had to be estimated. It was the priest's
prerogative to judge the misdeeds and to impose the penalties. This
circumstance gave the clergy a very different character from the one it had
at Rome. The priest was no longer simply the guardian of sacred traditions,
the intermediary between man or the state and the gods, but also a
spiritual guide. He taught his flock the long series of obligations and
restrictions for shielding their weakness from the attacks of evil spirits.
He knew how to quiet remorse and scruples, and to restore the sinner to
spiritual calm. Being versed in sacred knowledge, he had the power of
reconciling the gods. Frequent sacred repasts maintained a spirit of
fellowship among the mystics of Cybele, Mithra or the Baals,[33] and a
daily service unceasingly revived the faith of the Isis worshipers. In
consequence, the clergy were entirely absorbed in their holy office and
lived only for and by their temples. Unlike the sacerdotal colleges of Rome
in which the secular and religious functions were not yet clearly
differentiated,[34] they were not an {42} administrative commission ruling
the sacred affairs of the state under the supervision of the senate; they
formed what might almost be called a caste of recluses distinguished from
ordinary men by their insignia, garb, habits and food, and constituting an
independent body with a hierarchy, formulary and even councils of their
own.[35] They did not return to every-day duties as private citizens or to
the direction of public affairs as magistrates as the ancient pontiffs had
done after the solemn festival service.
We can readily understand that these beliefs and institutions were bound to
establish the Oriental religions and their priests on a strong basis. Their
influence must have been especially powerful at the time of the Cæsars. The
laxity of morals at the beginning of our era has been exaggerated but it
was real. Many unhealthy symptoms told of a profound moral anarchy weighing
on a weakened and irresolute society. The farther we go toward the end of
the empire the more its energy seems to fail and the character of men to
weaken. The number of strong healthy minds incapable of a lasting
aberration and without need of guidance or comfort was growing ever
smaller. We note the spread of that feeling of exhaustion and debility
which follows the aberrations of passion, and the same weakness that led to
crime impelled men to seek absolution in the formal practices of
asceticism. They applied to the Oriental priests for spiritual remedies.
People flattered themselves that by performing the rites they would attain
a condition of felicity after death. All barbarian mysteries pretended to
reveal to their adherents the secret of blessed immortality. Participation
in the occult ceremonies of the sect was a {43} chief means of
salvation.[36] The vague and disheartening beliefs of ancient paganism in
regard to life after death were transformed into the firm hope of a
well-defined form of happiness.[37]
This faith in a personal survival of the soul and even of the body was
based upon a strong instinct of human nature, the instinct of
self-preservation. Social and moral conditions in the empire during its
decline gave it greater strength than it had ever possessed before.[38] The
third century saw so much suffering, anguish and violence, so much
unnecessary ruin and so many unpunished crimes, that the Roman world took
refuge in the expectation of a better existence in which all the iniquity
of this world would be retrieved. No earthly hope brightened life. The
tyranny of a corrupt bureaucracy choked all disposition for political
progress. Science stagnated and revealed no more unknown truths. Growing
poverty discouraged the spirit of enterprise. The idea gained ground that
humanity was afflicted with incurable decay, that nature was approaching
her doom and that the end of world was near.[39] We must remember all these
causes of discouragement and despondency to understand the power of the
idea, expressed so frequently, that the spirit animating man was forced by
bitter necessity to imprison itself in matter and that it was delivered
from its carnal captivity by death. In the heavy atmosphere of a period of
oppression and impotence the dejected soul longed with incredible ardor to
fly to the radiant abode of heaven.
To recapitulate, the Oriental religions acted upon the senses, the
intellect and the conscience at the same time, and therefore gained a hold
on the entire man. {44} Compared with the ancient creeds, they appear to
have offered greater beauty of ritual, greater truth of doctrine and a far
superior morality. The imposing ceremonial of their festivities and the
alternating pomp and sensuality, gloom and exaltation of their services
appealed especially to the simple and the humble, while the progressive
revelation of ancient wisdom, inherited from the old and distant Orient,
captivated the cultured mind. The emotions excited by these religions and
the consolations offered strongly attracted the women, who were the most
fervent and generous followers and most passionate propagandists[40] of the
religions of Isis and Cybele. Mithra was worshiped almost exclusively by
men, whom he subjected to a rigid moral discipline. Thus souls were gained
by the promise of spiritual purification and the prospect of eternal
happiness.
The worship of the Roman gods was a civic duty, the worship of the foreign
gods the expression of a personal belief. The latter were the objects of
the thoughts, feelings and intimate aspirations of the individual, not
merely of the traditional and, one might say, functional adoration of the
citizen. The ancient municipal devotions were connected with a number of
earthly interests that helped to support each other. They were one of
various forms of family spirit and patriotism and guaranteed the prosperity
of the community. The Oriental mysteries, directing the will toward an
ideal goal and exalting the inner spirit, were less mindful of economic
utility, but they could produce that vibration of the moral being that
caused emotions, stronger than any rational faculty, to gush forth from the
depths of the soul. Through a sudden illumination {45} they furnished the
intuition of a spiritual life whose intensity made all material happiness
appear insipid and contemptible. This stirring appeal of supernatural life
made the propaganda irresistible. The same ardent enthusiasm guaranteed at
the same time the uncontested domination of neo-Platonism among the
philosophers. Antiquity expired and a new era was born.
* * * * *
{46}