WHETHER THE ROMANS
ENCOURAGED TOLERATION.
Among the ancient Romans, from the days of Romulus to those in which
the Christians began to dispute with the priests of the empire, we
do not find a single instance of any person being persecuted on
account of his sentiments. Cicero doubted everything, Lucretius
denied everything, and yet neither the one nor the other underwent
the least reproach from their fellow-citizens; nay, so far did this
licence go, that Pliny, the naturalist, begins his book by denying
the existence of a God, and saying, that if there be one, it must be
the sun. Cicero, in speaking of hell, says: _Non est una tam excors
quæ credat_ (“There is not even an old woman so silly as to believe
it”). Juvenal says: _Nec pueri credunt_ (“Nor do the children believe
it”). And the following maxim was publicly repeated in the Roman
theatre: _Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil_ (“Naught after
death; even death itself is naught”). While we abhor these maxims,
let us pardon them in a people who were never enlightened by the holy
truths of the Gospel; and, while we own them to be false and impious,
let us, however, confess that the Romans were great friends to
toleration, seeing that such tenets never excited any commotions.
_Deorum offensa diis curæ_, was the grand principle of the senate and
people of Rome, that illustrious nation employing their attention
wholly to conquer, govern and civilize the universe. They were our
legislators as well as our conquerors; and even Cæsar, who reduced
us to his subjection, and gave us laws and games, never attempted to
compel us to quit our Druids for him, though supreme pontiff of a
nation whose subjects we were now become.
The Romans themselves did not profess all kinds of religion,
therefore they did not give public sanction to all, but they
permitted them. Under Numa nothing material was the object of their
worship. They had neither statues nor pictures; in process of time,
however, some were erected to the _Dii Majorum Gentium_, with which
the Greeks brought them into acquaintance. That law in the twelve
tables, _Deos peregrinos ne colunto_, was confined to the allowing
no public worship to be paid, except to the superior and inferior
deities, approved by the senate. The Egyptian goddess Isis had a
temple in Rome at the time of Tiberius, who demolished it because
its priests, having been bribed by Mundus, suffered him to lie with
a lady called Paulina in the temple itself, under the name and form
of the god Anubis. Indeed this story is to be found only in Josephus,
who did not live at that time, and was moreover a credulous and
exaggerating writer; and there is very little probability that
in so enlightened an age as that of Tiberius, a lady of the first
distinction in Rome could be so weak as to believe that a god
cohabited with her.
But whether this anecdote be true or false, this one thing is
certain, that the Egyptian idolatry was in the possession of a temple
in Rome with the public consent. The Jews had also lived as traders
in that city ever since the Punic war; they had their synagogues
there in the time of Augustus, and almost always continued to have
them in the same manner as they now have in modern Rome. Can we
desire a stronger instance that the Romans looked upon toleration as
the most sacred of all the laws of nations?
We are told that as soon as the Christian religion began to make its
appearance, its followers were persecuted by these very Romans who
persecuted no one. This fact, however, appears to me to be evidently
false, and I desire no better authority than that of St. Paul
himself. In the Acts of the Apostles[15] we are told that St. Paul,
being accused by the Jews of attempting to overturn the Mosaic law by
that of Jesus Christ, St. James proposed to him to shave his head and
go into the temple with four Jews and purify himself with them, “That
all men may know,” says he, “that those things whereof they were
informed concerning thee, are nothing, but that thou thyself dost
keep the law of Moses.”
Accordingly, we find that St. Paul, though a Christian, submitted
to perform these Jewish ceremonies for the space of seven days; but
before the expiration of this time, the Jews of Asia, who knew him
again, seeing him in the temple, not only with Jews but Gentiles
also, cried out that he had polluted the holy place, and laid hands
upon him, drew him out of the temple, and carried him before the
Governor Felix; they afterwards accused him at the judgment-seat of
Festus, whither the Jews came in crowds demanding his death. But
Festus answered them: “It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver
any man to die, before that he which is accused have the accusers
face to face, and have licence to answer for himself.”[16]
These words of the Roman magistrate are the more remarkable as he
appears to have been no favorer of St. Paul, but rather to have held
him in contempt, for, imposed upon by the false lights of his own
reason, he took him for a person beside himself; nay, he expressly
says to him, “Much learning hath made thee mad.”[17] Festus then was
entirely guided by the equity of the Roman law in taking under his
protection a stranger for whom he could have no regard.
Here then we have the word of God itself declaring that the Romans
were a just people, and no persecutors. Besides, it was not the
Romans who laid violent hands on St. Paul, but the Jews. St. James,
the brother of Jesus, was stoned to death by order of a Sadducee Jew,
and not by that of a Roman judge. It was the Jews alone who put St.
Stephen to death;[18] and though St. Paul held the clothes of those
who stoned him, he certainly did not act then as a Roman citizen.
The primitive Christians had certainly no cause of complaint against
the Romans; the Jews, from whom they at that time began to separate
themselves, were their only enemies. Every one knows the implacable
hatred all sectaries bore to those who quit their sect. There
doubtless were several tumults in the synagogues in Rome. Suetonius,
in his life of Claudius, has these words, _Judæos impulsore Christo
assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit_. He is wrong in saying that it
was at the instigation of Christ they raised commotions in Rome; but
he could not be acquainted with all the circumstances relating to
a people who were held in such contempt in Rome as the Jews were;
and, however mistaken he may have been in this particular, yet he is
right as to the occasion of these commotions. Suetonius wrote in the
reign of Adrian in the second century, when the Christians were not
distinguished from the Jews by the Romans; therefore this passage
of Suetonius is a proof that the Romans, so far from oppressing the
primitive Christians, chastised the Jews who persecuted them, being
desirous that the Jewish synagogue in Rome should show the same
indulgence to its dissenting brethren as it received itself from
the Roman Senate; and we find from Dion Cassius and Ulpian, that
the Jews who were thus banished from Rome returned soon after, and
even attained to several honors and dignities, notwithstanding the
laws which excluded them therefrom.[19] Can it be believed, that
after the destruction of Jerusalem, the emperors would have loaded
the Jews with their favors, and have persecuted and put to death the
Christians, whom they looked upon as a sect of the Jews?
Nero is said to have been a great persecutor of the Christians. But
Tacitus tells us that they were accused of having set fire to the
city of Rome, and were thereupon given up to the resentment of the
populace. But had religion anything to do with this charge? No,
certainly. We might as well say that the Chinese, whom the Dutch
murdered a few years ago in Batavia, were slaughtered on account of
their religion. And nothing but a strong desire to deceive ourselves
can possibly make us attribute to persecution the sufferings of a
few half-Jews and half-Christians under Nero.[20]
Several Christians afterwards suffered martyrdom; it is not easy
to say on what particular account they were condemned, but I can
venture to assert that none suffered under the first Cæsars merely on
the account of religion, for they tolerated all beliefs; therefore,
why should they seek out and persecute an obscure people, who had a
worship peculiar to themselves, at the time they licensed all others?
The Emperors Titus, Trajan, Antoninus, and Decius were not
barbarians; how then can we imagine that they would have deprived
the Christians alone of that liberty with which they indulged every
other nation, or that they would even have troubled them for having
concealed mysteries, while the worshippers of Isis, Mithra, and the
Goddess of Assyria, whose rites were all of them equally unknown
to the Romans, were suffered to perform them without hindrance?
Certainly, the persecutions the Christians suffered must have arisen
from other causes, and from some private pique, enforced by reasons
of state.
For instance, when St. Laurence refused to deliver to Cornelius
Secularius, the Roman prefect, the money belonging to the Christians
which he had in his custody, was it not very natural for the prefect
and the emperor to be incensed at this refusal? They did not know
that St. Laurence had distributed this money among the poor, in acts
of charity and benevolence; therefore they considered him only as a
refractory person, and punished him accordingly.[21]
Again, let us consider the martyrdom of St. Polyeuctes. Can he be
said to have suffered on account of religion only? He enters a
temple, where the people are employed in offering thanksgivings to
their gods on account of the victory gained by the Emperor Decius;
he insults the priests and overturns and breaks in pieces the altar
and statues. Is there a country in the world where so gross an
insult would have been passed over? The Christian who publicly tore
the edict of the Emperor Diocletian, and by that act brought on the
great persecution against his brethren in the two last years of this
prince’s reign, had not, surely, a zeal according to knowledge, but
was the unhappy cause of all the disasters that befell his party.
This inconsiderate zeal, which was often breaking forth, and was
condemned even by several of the Fathers of the Church, was probably
the occasion of all those persecutions we read of.
Certainly, I would not make a comparison between the first
sacramentarians and the primitive Christians, as error should never
be ranked in the same class with truth, but it is well known that
Farrel, the predecessor of Calvin, did the very same thing at Arles
which St. Polyeuctes had done before him in Armenia. The townsmen
were carrying the statue of St. Anthony, the hermit, in procession
through the streets; Farrel and some of his followers in a fit of
zeal fell upon the monks who were carrying the image, beat them, made
them take to their heels, and, having seized upon St. Anthony, threw
him into the river. Assuredly Farrel deserved death for this flagrant
outrage upon the public peace, but he had the good luck to escape by
flight. Now, had he only told those monks in the open streets that he
did not believe that a raven had brought half a loaf to St. Anthony,
nor that this hermit had had conversation with centaurs and satyrs,
he would have deserved a severe reprimand for troubling the public
peace; but if the night after the procession he had quietly examined
the story in his own room, no one could have found any fault with him
for it.
But, indeed, can we suppose that the Romans, after permitting the
infamous Antinous to be ranked among their demi-gods, would have
massacred and thrown to wild beasts those against whom they had no
other cause of reproach than having peaceably worshipped a just
Deity? Or would those very Romans, who worshipped a supreme and
all-powerful God,[22] master of all the subordinate deities, and
distinguished by the title of _Deus optimus maximus_, would they, I
say, have persecuted such who professed to worship only one God?
There appears little reason to believe that there ever was an
inquisition instituted against the Christians under the Roman
emperors; I mean, that they were ever judicially examined on the
subject of their faith; neither do we find that Jew, Syrian, Egyptian
bards, Druids, or philosophers were ever troubled on this account.
The primitive martyrs then were men who opposed the worship of false
gods. But, however wise or pious they might be in rejecting the
belief of such absurd fictions, if, not content with worshipping the
true God in spirit and in truth, they offered a violent and public
outrage to the received religion of the government under which they
lived, however absurd that religion might be, impartiality obliges us
to confess that they themselves were the first persecutors.
Tertullian, in his Apology,[23] says that the Christians were
looked upon as a turbulent and seditious sect. This accusation is
doubtless unjust; but it serves to prove that the civil power did
not set itself against the Christians purely on account of their
religion. In another place,[24] he says that the Christians refused
to adorn the doors of their houses with laurel branches on the days
of public rejoicing for the victories of the emperors. Now this
blamable particularity might not, without some reason, be taken for
disaffection to the government.
The first judicial act of severity we find exercised against
the Christians was that of Domitian; but this extended only to
banishment, which did not last above a year, for, says the author
above quoted, _Facile cœptum repressit restitutis quos ipse
relegaverat_. Lactantius, so remarkable for his passionate and
pompous style, acknowledges that from the time of Domitian to that
of Decius the Church continued in a peaceable and flourishing
condition. This long tranquillity, says he,[25] was interrupted by
that execrable animal Decius, who began to oppress the Church: _Post
multos annos extitit execrabile animal Decius qui vexaret ecclesiam_.
I shall not here enter into a discussion of the opinion of the
learned Mr. Dodwell concerning the small number of martyrs; but
if the Romans had been such violent persecutors of the Christian
religion, if their senate had condemned so many of its innocent
votaries to perish by the most unheard-of tortures, plunging them
alive in boiling oil, and exposing their wives and daughters naked
to the wild beasts in the circus, how happened it that they suffered
all the first bishops of Rome to live unmolested? St. Ireneus reckons
only one martyr among all these bishops, namely, Telesphorus, who
suffered in the year 139 of our vulgar era; nor have we any positive
proof of this Telesphorus being put to death. Zephirinus governed the
flock in Rome for eighteen years successively, and died peaceably in
the year 219. It is true that in the ancient martyrologies we find
almost all the first popes ranked as martyrs, but the word martyr is
there taken only in its original and true signification, which is a
witness and not a sufferer.
Moreover, we can hardly reconcile this rage of persecution with
the liberty granted the Christians, of assembling no less than
fifty-six councils in the course of the first three centuries, as is
acknowledged by all ecclesiastical writers.
That there were persecutions, is doubtless; but if they had been as
violent as represented, it is hardly probable that Tertullian, who
wrote with so much energy against the established religion, would
have been suffered to die peaceably in his bed. It is certain that
none of the emperors ever read his “Apology,” as an obscure work
composed in Africa can hardly be supposed to have come into the hands
of the governors of the world; but then, it might have been shown to
their proconsuls in Africa, and have drawn down their resentment upon
the author; nevertheless, we do not find that he suffered martyrdom.
Origen taught the Christian religion publicly in Alexandria, and yet
was not put to death for it. And this very Origen himself, who spoke
with so much freedom both to the heathens and the Christians, and
who, while he taught Jesus to the one, denied the triple Godhead to
the other, expressly acknowledges, in his third book against Celsus,
that “There were very few who suffered martyrdom, and those at a
great distance of time from one another; notwithstanding,” says he,
“that the Christians leave nothing undone to make their religion
generally embraced, running from city to city, and from town to town,
to make converts.”
It must be confessed that these continual peregrinations might
readily give cause to the priests, who were their enemies, to accuse
them of a design to raise disturbances; and yet we find that these
missions were tolerated even among the Egyptians, who have ever
been a turbulent, factious, and mean people, and who tore a Roman
to death for having killed a cat; in a word, a nation at all times
contemptible, whatever may have been said to the contrary by the
admirers of pyramids.[26]
What person could do more to call down upon him the resentment of
both ecclesiastical and civil power than St. Gregory Thaumaturgos,
the disciple of Origen? This same St. Gregory had a vision during
the night-time, in which an old man appeared to him sent from God,
accompanied by a woman shining with glory; the first of these was
St. John the Evangelist, and the other the Holy Virgin. St. John
dictated to him a creed, which Gregory afterwards went about to
preach. In his way he passed through Neo-Cæsarea, where the rain
obliged him to stay all night, and he took up his lodging near a
temple famous for its oracles. Here he made several signs of the
cross. The high priest coming the next morning into the temple was
surprised to find that the oracle did not give its answer as usual,
upon which he invoked the spirits of the place, who appearing, told
him that they could no longer inhabit that mansion, as St. Gregory
had passed a night there and had made signs of the cross, upon
which the high priest caused Gregory to be seized, who gave him to
understand that he could drive out or cause to enter the familiar
spirits wherever he pleased. “If so,” said the high priest, “pray
send them back here again.” Then St. Gregory, tearing a leaf from a
little book he held in his hand, wrote these words upon it: “Gregory
to Satan: I command thee to enter again into this temple.” The paper
being laid upon the altar, the demons, in obedience to the saint’s
mandate, gave their oracles that day as usual, after which they
remained silent.
This story is related by St. Gregory of Nyssa in his life of St.
Gregory Thaumaturgos. Certainly, the idolatrous priests had great
reason to be offended with St. Gregory, and might have delivered him
over to the secular power as one who was their greatest enemy, and
yet we do not find that they offered him any hurt.
The history of St. Cyprian informs us that he was the first bishop
of Carthage who suffered martyrdom; this was A. D. 258, consequently
no bishop of Carthage had been put to death on account of religion
for a great length of time. The history of this saint does not inform
us what charge was brought against him, who were his enemies, or how
he incurred the displeasure of the proconsul of Africa. We find St.
Cyprian thus writing to Cornelius, bishop of Rome: “There has been
a tumult of the people lately at Carthage, in which it was twice
proposed to throw me to the lions.” It might possibly happen that
the blind resentment of the people of Carthage did at length cause
Cyprian to be put to death, for, certainly, he was never condemned
to suffer for his religion by the Emperor Gallus, who lived at so
great a distance, and, moreover, permitted Cornelius to exercise his
episcopal function under his very eye.
So many and various are the hidden causes that are frequently blended
with the apparent one, in the persecution of an individual, that it
is hardly possible for posterity to discover the true source of the
misfortunes that befell even the most considerable personages, much
less that of the sufferings of a private person, hardly known to any
but those of his own sect.
And here let it be observed that neither St. Gregory Thaumaturgos
nor St. Denis, bishop of Alexandria, who were both contemporaries of
St. Cyprian, suffered the slightest persecution. How then happened
it that, being certainly as well known as the bishop of Carthage,
they were suffered to live unmolested, while he was delivered over
to punishment? May we not fairly infer that the one fell a victim to
personal and powerful enemies, either in consequence of a malicious
accusation, or from reasons of state, which frequently interfere in
religious matters, while the other had the good fortune to escape the
designs of wicked men?
We cannot, with any degree of probability, suppose that the charge
of being a Christian was the only cause of St. Ignatius being put to
death, under the just and merciful Trajan, since we find that several
of his own religion were suffered to accompany and minister comfort
to him on his way to Rome.[27] There had been frequent seditions
in Antioch, a city remarkable for the turbulent disposition of
its inhabitants; here Ignatius privately acted as bishop over the
Christians. It might happen that some of these disturbances, being
maliciously imputed to the innocent Christians, had occasioned the
government to take cognizance of them, and that the judge might have
been mistaken, as it often happens.
St. Simeon, for example, was accused before King Sapor of being a
spy to the Romans. The history of his martyrdom tells us that Sapor
proposed to him to worship the sun, whereas every one knows that the
Persians paid no divine honors to that planet, but only considered
it as an emblem of the good principle, the Orasmades, or Sovereign
Creator, whom they all adored.
Any one of the least tolerating spirit cannot help his indignation
from rising against those writers who accused Diocletian of
persecuting the Christians after his accession to the empire. Here
we need only refer to Eusebius of Cæsarea, whose testimony certainly
cannot be rejected. The favorite, the panegyrist of Constantine, and
the declared enemy of the emperors his predecessors, is certainly
entitled to our credit when he justifies those very emperors. The
following are his own words:[28]
“The emperors had for a long time given the Christians great marks of
their favor and benevolence; they had entrusted them with the care
of whole provinces; many of them lived within the imperial palace;
and some of the emperors even married Christian women; Diocletian, in
particular, espoused Prisca, whose daughter was wife to Maximianus
Galerius,” etc.
Let this authentic testimony make us cautious how we fall too readily
into calumny; and from this let any impartial person judge, if the
persecution raised by Galerius, after nineteen years of continued
clemency and favor to the Christians, must not have been occasioned
by some intrigues with which we are at present unacquainted.
From this also we may perceive the absurdity of that fabulous story
of the Theban legion, said to have been all massacred for their
religion. Can anything be more ridiculous than to make this legion
be brought from Asia by the great St. Bernard? It is altogether
impossible that this legion should have been sent for from Asia to
quiet a tumult in Gaul, a year after that tumult was suppressed,
and not less so that six thousand foot and seven hundred horse
should have suffered themselves to be all murdered in a place where
two hundred men only might have kept off a whole army. The account
of this pretended butchery is introduced with all the marks of
imposture: “When the earth groaned under the tyranny of Diocletian,
heaven was peopled with martyrs.” Now, this event, such as it is
related, is supposed to have happened in 286, the very time in which
Diocletian most favored the Christians, and that the Roman Empire
was in a state of the greatest tranquillity. But to cut short this
matter at once, no such legion as the Theban ever existed; the Romans
were too haughty and too wise to form a corps of those Egyptians, who
served only as slaves in Rome, _Vernæ Canopi_; we may as well suppose
them to have had a Jewish legion. We have the names of two and thirty
legions that formed the principal military force of the Roman Empire,
and it is very certain the Theban legion is not to be found among
them. In a word, we may rank this story with the acrostic verses of
the Sibyls, which are said to have foretold the miracles wrought by
Jesus Christ, and with many other like spurious productions, which
false zeal has trumped up to impose upon credulity.