A 411771
RENAN
ROME
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128
R7
R593
1864

MIDHITAHLUTHUATHINDAMININ
18173
ARTES
LIBRARY
CIENTIA
VERITAS
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN |
TUEHOR
:
i
Prospectus of the
THEOLOGICAL TRANSLATION FUND.
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As it is important that the best results of recent theological
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bring out every year three 8vo volumes, which each Subscriber
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A Committee selected from the signataries of the original
Prospectus agreed upon the works to commence the series. Of
these, the following were published in
The First Year (1873): 3 vols., 21s.
1. KEIM (TH.), HISTORY OF JESUS OF NAZARA. Considered in its
connection with the National Life of Israel, and related in
detail. Second Edition, re-translated by Arthur Ransom.
Vol. I. Introduction; Survey of Sources; Sacred and Political
Groundwork; Religious Groundwork.
2. BAUR (F. C.), PAUL, THE APOSTLE OF JESUS CHRIST, his Life
and Work, his Epistles and Doctrine. A Contribution to a
Critical History of Primitive Christianity. Second Edition, by
Rev. Allan Menzies. Vol. I.
3. KUENEN (A.), THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL TO THE FALL OF THE
JEWISH STATE. Translated by A. H. May. Vol. I.
1
3
The Second Year (1874): 3 vols., 21s.
4. KUENEN'S RELIGION OF ISRAEL. Vol. II. Translated by A. H.
May.
5. BLEEK'S LECTURES ON THE APOCALYPSE. Edited by the Rev. Dr.
S. Davidson.
6. Baur's Paul; the second and concluding volume. Translated by
the Rev. Allan Menzies.
The Third Year (1875): 3 vols., 21s.
7. KUENEN'S RELIGION OF ISRAEL; the third and concluding volume.
8. ZELLER, THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES CRITICALLY EXAMINED. To
which is prefixed, Overbeck's Introduction from De Wette's
Handbook, translated by Joseph Dare, B.A. Vol. I.
9. EWALD'S COMMENTARY ON THE PROPHETS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Translated by the Rev. J. Frederick Smith. Vol. I. General
Introduction; Yoel, Amos, Hosea, and Zakharya 9-11.
The Fourth Year (1876): 3 vols., 21s.
10. ZELLER'S ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. Vol. II. and last.
11. KEIM'S HISTORY OF JESUS OF NAZARA. Vol. II. Translated by
the Rev. E. M. Geldart. The Sacred Youth; Self-recognition;
Decision.
12. EWALD'S PROPHETS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Vol. II. Yesaya,
Obadya, Mikha.
The Fifth Year (1877): 3 vols., 21s.
13. PAULINISM: a Contribution to the History of Primitive Christian
15.
Theology. By Professor O. Pfleiderer, of Jena. Translated by
E. Peters. 2 vols.
14. KEIM'S HISTORY OF JESUS OF NAZARA. Translated by A. Ransom.
Vol. III. The First Preaching; the Works of Jesus; the
Disciples; and the Apostolic Mission.
The Sixth Year (1878): 3 vols., 21s.
16. BAUR'S (F. C.), CHURCH HISTORY OF THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES.
Translated from the third German Edition. Edited by the
Rev. Allan Menzies (in 2 vols.). Vol. I.
17. HAUSRATH'S HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TIMES. The
Time of Jesus. Translated by the Revds. C. T. Poynting and
P. Quenzer (in 2 vols.). Vol. I.
18. EWALD'S COMMENTARY ON THE PROPHETS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Translated by the Rev. J. Frederick Smith. Vol. III. Nahum,
Ssephanya, Habaqquq, Zakharya 12-14, Yeremya.
4
The Seventh Year (1879): 3 vols., 21s.
19. KEIM'S HISTORY OF JESUS OF NAZARA. Vol. IV. The Galilean
Storms; Signs of the approaching Fall; Recognition of the
Messiah.
20. BAUR'S CHURCH HISTORY. Vol. II. and last.
21. EWALD'S COMMENTARY ON THE PROPHETS. Vol. IV. Hezeqiel,
Yesaya xl. lxvi.
The Eighth Year (1880): 3 vols., 21s.
22. HAUSRATH'S NEW TESTAMENT TIMES. The Time of Jesus. Vol.
II. and last.
23. EWALD'S COMMENTARY ON THE PSALMS. Translated by the Rev.
24. E. Johnson, M.A. 2 vols.
The Ninth Year (1881): 3 vols., 21s.
25. KEIM'S HISTORY OF JESUS OF NAZARA. Vol. V. The Messianic
Progress to Jerusalem.
26. EWALD'S COMMENTARY ON THE PROPHETS. Vol. V. and last.
Haggai, Zakharya, Malaki, Yona, Barukh, Daniel.
27. A PROTESTANT COMMENTARY ON THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TES-
TAMENT: with General and Special Introductions. Edited by
Professors P. W. Schmidt and F. von Holzendorff. Translated
from the Third German Edition by the Rev. F. H. Jones, B.A.
(in 3 vols.). Vol. I. Matthew to Acts.
The Tenth Year (1882): 3 vols., 21s.
28. EWALD'S COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF JOB. Translated by the
Rev. J. Frederick Smith (in 1 vol.).
29. PROTESTANT COMMENTARY. Vol. II. The Pauline Epistles to
Galatians.
30. KEIM'S HISTORY OF JESUS OF NAZARA.
Vol. VI. and last.
The Eleventh Year (1883-84): 3 vols., 21s.
31. PROTESTANT COMMENTARY. Vol. III. and last.
32. REVILLE (Professor ALB., D.D.) PROLEGOMENA OF THE HISTORY
OF RELIGIONS. Translated by A. S. Squire. With an Intro-
duction by Professor Max Müller.
33. SCHRADER (Professor E., D.D.) THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS
AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. Translated by Professor Owen C.
Whitehouse. Vol. I. Map.
The Twelfth Year (1885-86):
34. PFLEIDERER (Professor O.) THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION ON THE
BASIS OF ITS HISTORY. Translated by the Rev. Alex. Stewart
and the Rev. Allan Menzies. Vol. I. Spinoza to Schleiermacher.
Beyond these, the following Works are in the hands of Trans-
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SCHRADER (Professor E.) THE OLD TESTAMENT AND CUNEIFORM
INSCRIPTIONS. Vol. II.
PFLEIDERER'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. Translated by the Rev.
Alexander Stewart, of Dundee, and the Rev. Allan Menzies
Vols. II.—IV.
10
5
CONTENTS OF THE
THEOLOGICAL TRANSLATION FUND LIBRARY.
A Selection of Six or more volumes may be had on direct application
to the Publishers, at 7s. per volume.
1. Baur (F. C.) Church History of the First Three
Centuries. Translated from the Third German Edition. Edited
by the Rev. Allan Menzies. 2 vols. 8vo. 21s.
2. Baur (F. C.) Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, his
Life and Work, his Epistles and Doctrine. A Contribution to
a Critical History of Primitive Christianity. Second Edition.
By the Rev. Allan Menzies. 2 vols. 21s.
3. Bleek's Lectures on the Apocalypse. Edited by the
Rev. Dr. S. Davidson. 10s. 6d.
4. Ewald (H.) Commentary on the Prophets of the
Old Testament. Vol. I. Yoel, Amos, Hosea, Zakharya, c. 9-12.
Vol. II. Yesaya, Obadya, Mikha. Vol. III. Nahum, Ssephanya,
Habaqquq, Zakharya, c. 12—14, Yeremya. Vol. IV. Hezeqiel,
Yesaya, c. 40-66. Vol. V. Anonymous Pieces, Haggai, Zak-
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sanction, from the Second German Edition, by the Revs. C. T.
Poynting and P. Quenzer. 2 vols.
2 vols. 8vo. 21s.
8. Keim (Th.) History of Jesus of Nazara. Considered
in its connection with the National Life of Israel, and related
in detail. Vol. I. Survey of Sources, Paul, Gospels, the Sacred
Groundwork. Vol. II. The Sacred Youth, Self-recognition,
and Decision. Vol. III. The Galilean Springtime. Vol. IV.
The Galilean Storms, Recognition of the Messiah. Vol. V. The
Messianic Progress to Jerusalem, the Decisive Struggle, the
Farewell, the Last Supper. Vol. VI. The Messianic Death,
Burial and Resurrection, the Messianic Place in History. Trans-
lated by Arthur Ransom and the Rev. E. M. Geldart. 6 vols.
8vo. Each 10s. 6d.
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8vo.
9. Kuenen (A.) The Religion of Israel to the Fall of
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10. Pfleiderer (Professor O.) Paulinism: a Contribution to
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others. Vol. I. Introduction, the Gospels, the Acts. Vol. II.
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7
THE HIBBERT LECTURES.
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1881.-T. W. Rhys Davids. Lectures on the Origin and
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Charles Beard. 8vo, cloth. 10s. 6d.
on Christianity, and the
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1878.-Professor Max Müller. Lectures on the Origin
and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religions of India.
8vo, cloth. 10s. 6d.
8
Works published by the Hibbert Trustees.
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WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
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AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH,

THE HIBBERT LECTURES,
1880.

THE HIBBERT LECTURES, 1880.
LECTURES
ON THE INFLUENCE OF
THE INSTITUTIONS, THOUGHT AND CULTURE
OF
ROME,
ON
CHRISTIANITY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
BY
ERNEST RENAN,
OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY.
TRANSLATED BY CHARLES BEARD, B. A.

E PUR
SI
MUOVE
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON;
AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1884.
·
LONDON:
PRINTED BY O. GREEN AND SON, 178, strand.
PREFACE.
THE "Hibbert Lectures" have been instituted for the
purpose of providing a series of Lessons on the most impor-
tant chapters of the History of Religion. It is in this
connection that M. Max Müller has treated of the general
development of religion in India, that M. Le Page Renouf
has spoken of the religious function of Egypt. They form
in some sort a Chair of the Comparative History of Reli-
gion, but a Chair which is occupied every year by a new
Professor, who speaks only of that which he has made the
subject of special study. I therefore felt myself deeply
honoured when the Trustees of this useful Institution
invited me to continue a teaching so worthily begun. I
had long desired to see England, and to clasp the hand of
my many English friends. I accepted the invitation; and
certainly the kind welcome which I met with from a nation
which has always inspired me with the greatest esteem and
the highest sympathy, has been one of the rewards of my
vi
PREFACE.
"
life. The spectacle of a proud and strong people, in the
enjoyment of the largest liberty which humanity has
hitherto been able to make its own, has filled me with a
lively joy, and has confirmed me in the conviction that the
future of Europe, despite many a passing storm, belongs to
an ideal of light and peace.
Our society is sceptical only in appearance: it has its
own dogma, and that an excellent one, Liberty, respect for
the mind. This dogma will conquer every other; only we
must beware of believing that laws and decrees can assist
its triumphs. Let Liberty alone: fanatics fear her more
than they fear persecution: in her own unaided strength
she knows how to overcome her enemies.
PARIS, June, 1880.
E. R.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY THE WORK OF ROME ?
PAGE
1
LECTURE II.
The Legend of THE ROMAN CHURCH: PETER AND PAUL 39
LECTURE III.
ROME, THE CENTRE OF GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHO-
RITY
101
LECTURE IV.
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF CATHOLICISM
145
DR. MARTINEAU'S ADDRESS
207

LECTURE I.
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
THE WORK OF ROME?
B
LECTURE I.
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
THE WORK OF ROME?
Ir gave me both pride and pleasure to receive
from the Trustees of this noble Institution an invita-
tion to continue in this place a course of instruction
begun by my illustrious brother and friend, Max
Müller, a course the usefulness of which will become
more manifest from day to day. A broad and honest
idea always bears fruit. It is now more than thirty
years since the venerable Robert Hibbert left behind
him a legacy, intended to promote the progress of
enlightened Christianity, which in his view was
inseparable from the progress of science and reason.
Wisely interpreted, this foundation has become, in
B 2
4
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
the hands of intelligent administrators, the occasion
of Lectures upon all the chief epochs of the reli-
gious history of humanity. Why-the promoters of
this reform have rightly said—why should not the
method which has approved itself in all other de-
partments of intellectual culture, be applicable in
the domain of religion also? Why should the
pursuit of truth, without care of consequences,
be dangerous in theology, when it is accepted
by all in the domain of the social and natural
sciences? You have believed in truth, and you are
right. There is but one truth; and it is to show
ourselves something less than respectful to reve-
lation, to confess that, in regard to it, criticism is
compelled to modify the severity of its methods.
No; truth can dispense with politeness. I have
been happy to respond to your invitation, for I
understand duty to the truth exactly as you do.
Like you, I should think that I was insulting truth
if I allowed that it was necessary to treat it with a
certain indulgence. I believe, as you do, that the
worship which man owes to the ideal is research,—
scientific, independent, indifferent to results; and
THE WORK OF ROME?
5
LO
{
that the true method of rendering homage to truth
is to pursue it unremittingly, and with the firm
resolve to sacrifice everything to it.
Your desire is, that these Lectures should com-
bine to form one great historical presentation of the
efforts which the human race has made to resolve
the problems which surround it, and which deter-
mine its destiny. In the present condition of the
human mind, no one can hope to resolve these
problems; and we justly suspect all dogmatisın,
simply because it is dogmatic. We are willing to
admit that a religious or philosophical system may
and even must contain a certain element of absolute
truth; but we deny, even before we have examined
its claims, that it can possibly contain absolute truth
itself. What we love is history. History, well
written, is always good. For even if it could be
proved that man, in his efforts to lay hold of the
infinite, had been pursuing a chimera, the story of
his attempts, always more noble than successful,
could not fail to be useful. It proves that, in very
truth, man, in virtue of his aspirations, emerges
from the circle of his bounded life; it shows what
6
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
energy he has put forth for the pure love of the
good and the true; it teaches us to esteem him-
this poor disinherited creature-who, in addition to
the sufferings which nature lays upon him, lays
upon himself the torment of the unknown, the tor-
ment of doubt, the hard resistances of virtue, the
abstinences of a scrupulous conscience, the voluntary
punishments of the ascetic. And is all this simple
loss? This effort, unceasingly renewed, to attain
the unattainable, is it as vain as the infant's pursuit
of the always retreating object of its desire? I can
hardly believe it; and the faith which escapes me
when I examine in detail each of the religious
systems which divide the world among them, in
part returns to me when I reflect upon them as a
whole. All religions may be defective and partial;
but religion is none the less a divine element in
humanity, and the mark of a superior fate. No;
they have not laboured in vain, those great founders,
those reformers, those prophets of every age, who
have protested against the delusive evidence of a
fatality which closes us round, who have dashed
themselves against the wall of a gross materialism,
g%#3>$ttམན་
THE WORK OF ROME?
7
who have consumed their thought, who have given
their life for the accomplishment of a mission which
the spirit of their age laid upon them. If the fact
of the existence of martyrs does not prove that truth
is the exclusive possession of this or that sect (and
every sect can adduce a rich martyrology), yet, taken
in the general, it shows that religious zeal corre-
sponds to some mysterious reality. Such as we are,
we are all sons of the martyrs. Those who speak
most freely of scepticism are often the men of the
deepest and the sincerest convictions. Those who
in your own country have founded religious and poli-
tical liberty; those who have established throughout
the whole of Europe freedom of thought and of
research; those who have laboured to improve the
lot of mankind; those who doubtless will yet find
the means of improving it still more,—all have ex-
piated or will expiate their good deeds; for labour
for the happiness of humanity is never recompensed.
And still they will never lack imitators. There will
never be wanting to take up their work men who
cannot be stayed or turned aside, men possessed by
the Divine Spirit, who will sacrifice their personal
8
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
.
interests to truth and justice. Let them alone; they
have chosen the better part. Something assures me
that he who, hardly knowing why, has, out of simple
nobleness of nature, chosen for himself in this world
the essentially unproductive function of doing good,
is the truly wise man, and has discerned, with more
sagacity than the egotist, the legitimate employment
of life.
:
I.
You have asked of me that, in your presence, I
should retrace one of those pages of history which
put the thoughts that I have just uttered in the
clearest light. The origins of Christianity form the
most heroic episode of the history of humanity.
Never will man display more self-devotion or a
larger love of the ideal, than in the hundred and
fifty years which rolled away between the sweet
Galilean vision under Tiberius and the death of
Marcus Aurelius. Never was the religious con-
sciousness more eminently creative; never did it lay
down with more absolute authority the law of the
future. This extraordinary movement, with which
THE WORK OF ROME?
9
no other can be compared, came out of the heart of
Judaism. But it is doubtful whether Judaism alone
would have conquered the world. For this, it was
needful that the young and hardy school which
sprang from it, should be bold enough to repudiate
the greater part of the Mosaic ritual. It was, above
all, needful that the new movement should transfer
itself to the Greek and Latin world, and there,
awaiting the barbarians, should become, as it were,
a leaven in the midst of those European races, by
means of which humanity accomplishes its destiny.
What a noble subject will he have, who some day
will undertake the task of expounding to you the
share of Greece in this great common work! You
have asked me to explain to you the part of Rome.
There is a sense in which, in point of time, the
action of Rome comes first. It is only in the earlier
part of the third century that the Greek mind, in
the persons of Clement of Alexandria and of Origen,
really laid hold of Christianity. I hope to prove to
you that in the second century Rome exercised a
decisive influence on the Church of Jesus.
In one sense, Rome has propagated religion in the
10
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
world, as it has propagated civilization, as it has
spread the idea of a central government, extending
over a large part of the earth. But, in the same way
as the civilization which Rome propagated was not
the petty, narrow, austere culture of ancient Latium,
but the grand and large civilization which Greece
had created, so the religion to which it finally lent
its support was not the mean superstition which
satisfied the rude and primitive settlers on the Pala-
tine; it was Judaism-that is to say, precisely the
religion which Rome most hated and despised, the
religion which, two or three times over, she believed
that she had finally vanquished, and supplanted by
her own national worship.
This old faith of Latium, which for ages satisfied
a race whose intellectual and moral wants were
limited, and with whom manners and social bearing
almost held the place of religion, was a somewhat
pitiful thing. A more false conception of Deity is
nowhere to be found: in the Roman, as in the
majority of the old Italian cults, prayer is a magic
1 See the excellent exposition of M. Gaston Boissier, La Reli-
gion Romaine, Vol. i. p. 1 et seq.: Paris, 1874.
THE WORK OF ROME?
11
formula, producing its effect by its own inherent
quality, and without reference to the moral disposi-
tion of the worshipper: no one prays except for his
own private advantage: there are registers called
indigitamenta, containing the list of gods who pro-
vide for all the wants of men. Worshippers must
beware of mistakes: if the god is not addressed by
his true name, that by which he is pleased to be
invoked, he is capable of misunderstanding or of
thwarting the petition. Now these gods, who are in
some sort the forces of the world, are innumerable.
There is a little god who causes the infant to utter
its first cry (vaticanus); there is another who presides
over its first word (fabulinus); one who teaches the
baby to eat (educa), another to drink (potina); finally,
one who keeps it quiet in its cradle (cuba). In short,
the good woman in Petronius was right when, speak-
ing of Campania, she said: "This country is so
peopled with divinities, that a god is easier to find
in it than a man." In addition to all this, there is
an endless series of allegories or deified abstractions:
Fear, Cough, Fever, Male Fortune, Patrician Mo-
desty, Plebeian Modesty, the Safety of the Age, the
1
12
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
Genius of the Custom-house,¹ and above all (mark—
this is in truth the great God of Rome), the Safety
of the Roman People. It was, in the full force of
the word, a civil religion. It was essentially the
religion of the State: there was no priesthood dis-
tinct from State functions: the State was the true
God of Rome. The father had over the son the right
of life and death; but if the son held the least
important office, and the father met him in the road,
he dismounted from his horse and bowed down
before him.
The consequence of this essentially political cha-
racter of Roman religion was, that it always remained
aristocratic. A man became pontiff as he became
prætor or consul: when he was a candidate for
religious office, he underwent no examination, he
passed no period of probation in a seminary, he
was not asked if he had an ecclesiastical vocation.
He proved that he had served his country well, and
had fought br..vely in this or that battle. There
was no sacerdotal spirit: these civil pontiffs con-
1 Or rather, of Indirect Taxes, GENIO PORTORII PU-
BLICI. Ann. de l'Inst. Arch. de Rome, 1868, pp. 8, 9.
THE WORK OF ROME?
13
tinued to be what they had been, cold, practical
men, without the slightest idea that their functions
at all cut them off from the rest of the world. In
every respect the religion of Rome was the reverse
of a theocracy. The Civil Law regulates actions; it
does not occupy itself with ideas; and so one result
of Roman religion was, that Rome never had the
faintest conception of dogma. The exact observance
of rites compels the Deity, who, if the petition be
presented in proper form, has no inquiry to make
into piety or the feelings of the heart. More than
this: devoutness is a defect; it implies a dangerous
exaltation in the popular mind.
larity-this is what is wanted.
Calm, order, regu-
Anything beyond
this is excess (superstitio). Cato absolutely forbids
that slaves should be allowed to entertain any sen-
timent of piety. "Know," he says, "that the
master sacrifices for the whole household." Can
anything be more civil, lay, peremptory, than this?
Men must not fail in what is due to the gods; but
they must not give them more than their due: that
is the superstitio which the true Roman abhorred
as much as he abhorred impiety.
14
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
Could there be, I ask you, a religion less capable
than this of becoming the religion of the human
race? Not only was entrance to the priesthood
forbidden to plebeians; they were shut out from
public worship. In that long struggle for civil
equality which fills Roman history, religion is the
great argument alleged against the friends of revo-
lution. "How could you possibly become prætor
or consul?" it was said. "You do not possess the
right of taking the auspices." And thus the people
had very little attachment to religion. Every popu-
lar victory is, as we should say, followed by an
anti-clerical reaction. On the other hand, the aris-
tocracy always remained faithful to a worship which
gave a divine sanction to its privileges.
The question arose in a much more decisive
shape when the Roman people, in the exercise of
their masculine and patriotic virtues, had conquered
all the nations on the shores of the Mediterranean.
What interest could an African, a Gaul, a Syrian
take in a worship which concerned only a very
small number of haughty and often tyrannical
families? Everywhere the local cults continued to
THE WORK OF ROME?
15
exist; but Augustus, who was even more a reli-
gious organizer than a great politician, gave uni-
versal currency to the Roman idea by instituting
the worship of Rome. The altars of Rome and of
Augustus became the centre of an hierarchical orga-
nization of flamens and Augustal sevirs,¹ which,
to a much greater extent than is commonly sup-
posed, furnished the basis for the division of dioceses
and ecclesiastical provinces. Augustus admits all
local gods as Lares: more than this, he permits that
to the number of Lares in each house, at each cross-
way, should be added another Lar, the Genius of the
Emperor. Thanks to this confraternity, all local gods,
all private divinities, became Augustal gods. It was
an admirable promotion for them. But this great
attempt to produce a religion of the Roman State,
was evidently incapable of satisfying the religious
wants of the heart. And, besides, there was one
God, who could in no wise accommodate himself to
this fraternal equality-the God of the Jews. It
was impossible to pass off Jehovah as a Lar, and to
associate with Him the Genius of the Emperor.
¹ That is, colleges of priests, consisting of six members.
16
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
The moment this was perceived, it was plain that a
battle would have to be fought between the Roman
State and this uncompromising and refractory God,
who did not lend himself to the accommodating
transformations exacted by the policy of the age.
Here, then, is the most extraordinary of histori-
cal phenomena, the highest expression of the irony
of history—that the worship which Rome has spread
abroad in the world is by no means that of the old
Jupiter Capitolinus or Latiaris; still less the wor-
ship of Augustus or of the Genius of the Empire;
it is the worship of Jehovah. It is Judaism in its
Christian form that Rome has unconsciously propa-
gated, and that with such vigour, as, after a certain
time has elapsed, to make Romanism and Christian-
ity almost synonymous terms.
Certainly, I must repeat, it is more than doubt-
ful whether pure Judaism, the Judaism which was
developed in a Talmudic form and which still pre-
serves so much of its power, would ever have had so
extraordinary a fortune. The Jewish propaganda
was made by means of Christianity. But we are alto-
gether ignorant of religious history-a fact which
I hope some other lecturer will prove to you at a
THE WORK OF ROME?
17
future time—if we do not lay it down as a funda-
mental principle, that Christianity at its origin is
no other than Judaism, with its fertile principles of
almsgiving and charity, with its absolute faith in
the future of humanity, with that joy of heart of
which Judaism has always held the secret-and
denuded only of the distinctive observances and
features which had been invented to give a charac-
ter of its own to the peculiar religion of the children
of Israel.
II.
If we study the progress of primitive Christian
missions, we shall find that they all take a Western
direction, or, to put it in another way, that they find
both theatre and limit in the Roman Empire. With
exception of some small portions of the territory,
subject to the Arsacidæ, between the Euphrates
and the Tigris, the Parthian Empire received no
Christian missions in the first century. The Tigris
was, on the side of the East, a boundary which
Christianity did not pass till the age of the Sas-
sanidæ. This fact, of capital importance, was deter-
mined by two great causes, the Mediterranean Sea
and the Roman Empire.
C
18
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
For a thousand years the Mediterranean had been
the great highway where all civilizations and all
ideas had met and mingled. The Romans, in clear-
ing it of pirates, had made it an unequalled means
of communication. It was, in some sort, the railway
of those times. A numerous coasting marine facili-
tated intercourse along the shores of this great lake.
The comparative security offered by the roads of the
Empire, the protection afforded by public function-
aries, the diffusion of the Jews throughout all the
shores of the Mediterranean, the use of the Greek
language in the Eastern half of that sea, the unity
of civilization which first the Greeks and afterwards
the Romans had there created, made the map of the
Empire the map also of the countries reserved for
Christian missions and destined to become Christian.
The Roman world became the Christian world; and
there is a sense in which we may say that the
founders of the Empire were the founders of the
Christian monarchy, or at least that they determined
its outline and area. Every province conquered by
the Roman Empire was a province conquered for
Christianity. Think of the Apostles in face of an
THE WORK OF ROME?
19
Asia Minor, a Greece, an Italy, divided into a hun-
dred little republics; of a Gaul, a Spain, an Africa,
in possession of old national institutions-and it is
no longer possible to conceive of their success, or
even to understand how their project could have
had its birth. The unity of the Empire was the
condition precedent of any great religious prose-
lytism which should set itself above nationalities.
In the fourth century the Empire felt this fully: it
became Christian: it saw that Christianity was the
religion which it had made without knowing it, the
religion bounded by its frontiers, identified with
itself, capable of infusing into it a second life. The
Church, on its side, became completely Roman, and
has remained up to our own day, as it were, a rem-
nant of the Empire. Throughout all the Middle
Ages, the Church is no other than the old Rome,
regaining its authority over the barbarians who
have conquered it,-imposing upon them its decre-
tals, as it formerly imposed its laws,-governing
them by its cardinals, as it once governed them by
its imperial legates and its proconsuls.
In creating, then, its vast empire, Rome laid down
c 2
20
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
the material condition of the propagation of Chris-
tianity. Above all, it created the moral state which
supplied to the new doctrine both atmosphere and
medium. In killing politics all over the world, it
created what we may call socialism and religion.
After the frightful wars which for ages had torn the
earth in pieces, the Empire was an era of prosperity
and welfare such as had never before been known;
we may even add, without paradox, that it was an
era of liberty. On the one hand, liberty of trade
and of industry-a liberty of which the Greek re-
publics had no conception-became possible. On
the other, liberty of thought gained greatly by
the new government. This is a kind of liberty
which often finds it more advantageous to treat with
kings or princes than with jealous and narrow-minded
citizens. The ancient republics did not possess it.
Without it, the Greeks-thanks to the incomparable
power of their genius-accomplished great things;
but we must not forget that Athens undoubtedly
had an Inquisition of her own.¹ The King Archon
1 Study the character of Euthyphron in Plato.
¡
THE WORK OF ROME?
21
was the Inquisitor: the Royal Porch, the Holy
Office whence issued the accusations of "impiety."
Arraignments of this nature were very numerous :.
it is the kind of case which we meet with oftenest
in the Attic orators. Not only philosophical crimes,
such as the denial of God or of Providence, but the
slightest offences against municipal cults, the preach-
ing of foreign religions, the most puerile infractions
of the scrupulous legislation of the Mysteries, were
punished with death. The gods whom Aristophanes
scoffed at on the stage, sometimes slew the scoffers.
They killed Socrates, they all but killed Alcibiades.
Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Diagoras of Melos, Prodicus
of Ceos, Stilpo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aspasia,
Euripides, were more or less seriously disquieted.
Liberty of thought was, in fact, the child of the
dynasties which were founded upon the Macedonian
conquests. It was the Attali, the Ptolemies, who
first gave thinkers the freedom which none of the
old republics had accorded to them. The Roman
Empire continued the same tradition. It is true
that under the Empire more than one arbitrary
decree was directed against the philosophers, but it
22
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
was in every case the result of their meddling with
politics. We search in vain, in the collection of
Roman laws before Constantine, for any enactment
aimed at free thought, or in the history of the Em-
perors for a prosecution of abstract doctrine. Not a
single savant was disturbed. Men whom the Middle
Ages would have burned-such as Galen, Lucian,
Plotinus-lived in peace, protected by the law. The
Empire inaugurated a period of liberty, in so far as
it abolished the absolute sovereignty of the family,
the city, the tribe, and replaced or modified these
sovereignties by that of the State. Now, absolute
power is vexatious in precise proportion to the
narrowness of the area over which it is exercised.
The old republics, the feudal system, tyrannized
over the individual much more than the State has
ever done. It is true that the Roman Empire, at
various epochs, sternly persecuted Christianity, but
nevertheless it did not arrest its progress. But the
republics would have made it impossible: even
Judaism, but for the pressure of Roman authority,
would have been strong enough to stifle it. It was
the Roman magistrates who prevented the Pharisees
from killing Christianity.
THE WORK OF ROME?
23
Large conceptions of universal fraternity, for the
most part the issue of Stoicism, as well as a kind of
general sentiment of humanity, were the product of
the less strict government and the less exclusive
education to which the individual was subjected.
Men dreamed of a new era and of new worlds.1 The
wealth of the community was great, and, in spite
of the imperfectness of current economical doctrines,
ease and comfort were wide-spread. Public morals
were not what they are often supposed to have been.
In Rome, it is true, every vice flaunted itself with
revolting cynicism: the public games, especially,
had introduced a frightful corruption. Certain coun-
tries-for example, Egypt-had descended to the
lowest moral depth. But in most of the provinces
existed a middle class, among whom kindness, con-
jugal fidelity, domestic virtue, probity, were gene-
ral.2 Is there anywhere an ideal of family life,
1 Virgil, Ecl. iv. Seneca, Medea, 375 et seq.
2 The epitaphs of women contain the most touching expres-
sions. "Mater omnium hominum, parens omnibus subveniens,”
in Renier, Inscr. de l'Algérie, No. 1987. Comp. ibid. No.
2756. Mommsen, Inscr. R.N. No. 1431. "Duobus virtutis et
24
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
among the honest inhabitants of small towns, more
charming than that of which Plutarch has left us
the picture? What goodnatured kindness! what
gentleness of manners! what chaste and amiable
simplicity! Chæronea was evidently not the only
spot where life was so pure and so innocent.
The habits of the people, even elsewhere than at
Rome, had still some taint of cruelty-either a rem-
nant of ancient manners, which were everywhere
sanguinary, or a special result of Roman hardness.
But there was progress in this respect too. What
sweet and pure sentiment, what mood of melancholy
tenderness, has not found its finest expression in the
verses of Virgil or of Tibullus? The world was
becoming more supple, losing its old stiffness, acquir-
ing softness and sensibility. Maxims of humanity
were gaining currency: equality, the abstract idea
of the rights of man, was boldly preached by Stoic-
castitatis exemplis :" Not. et Mém. de la Soc. de Constantine,
1865, p. 158. "Affectionis plena erga omnes homines:" Le
Blant, Inser. Chr. de la Gaule, pp. 172, 173. “Ob egregiam
ad omnes homines mansuetudinem." See the inscr. of Urbanilla,
in Guérin, Voy. Archéol. dans la rég. de Tunis, i. 289; and the
delicious inscription, Orelli, No. 4648.
THE WORK OF ROME?
25
7727
ism. Woman was becoming more and more mistress
of herself: humaner methods of treating slaves came
into vogue:¹ Seneca took his meals with his.2 The
slave is no longer that necessarily grotesque and
mischievous being whom the Latin Comedy brought
upon the stage to excite the laughter of the audience,
and whom Cato recommended should be treated as a
beast of burthen. Now, times are completely changed.
The slave is morally equal to his master: he is
allowed to be capable of virtue, of faithfulness, of
devotion; and he gives proofs that he is so. Preju-
dices as to noble birth were passing away. Even
under the worst Emperors, many just and humane
laws were enacted. Tiberius was an able financier :
he founded a Credit Fonciers upon excellent princi-
ples. Nero introduced into the system of taxation,
which up to that time had been barbarous and unjust,
1 Tacit. Ann. xiv. 42 et seq. Sueton. Claudius, 25. Dio
Cassius, lx. 29. Plin. Epist. viii. 16. Inscript. of Lanuvium,
col. 2, lines 1-4 (in Mommsen, De Coll. et Sodal. Rom.).
Seneca Rhet. Controv. iii. 21, viii. 6. Seneca Phil. Epist. xlvii.
De Benef. iii. 18 et seq. Columella, De re rusticâ, i. 8. Plutarch,
Cato the Elder, 5; De Irâ, 11.
2 Epist. xlvii. 13.
3 Tacit. Ann. vi. 17; conf. iv. 6.
26
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
*
improvements which shame even our own age.¹
The progress of legislation was not inconsiderable,
although capital punishment was still stupidly fre-
quent. Almsgiving, the love of the poor, universal
sympathy, came to be looked upon as virtues.2
III.
At the same time, I understand and share the
indignation of sincere liberals against a system of
government which subjected the world to a frightful
despotism. But is it our fault that the wants of
humanity are diverse, its aspirations many, its aims
contradictory? Politics are not everything here
1 Tacit. Ann. xiii. 50, 51. Sueton. Nero, 10.
2 Epitaph of the Jeweller Evhodus (hominis boni, misericordis,
amantis pauperes): Corpus Inscr. Lat. No. 1027. Inscription
of the age of Augustus. (Conf. Egger, Mém. d'Hist. anc. et
de phil. 351 et seq.). Perrot, Expl. de la Galatie, &c. 118, 119
(πτωχοὺς φιλέοντα).
(πTwɣoùs piλéovta). Funeral oration of Matidia by Hadrian:
Mem. of the Acad. of Berlin, 1863, p. 489. Mommsen, Inscr. Regni
Neap. Nos. 1431, 2868, 4880. Seneca Rhet. Controv. i. 1, iii. 19,
iv. 27, viii. 6. Seneca Phil. De Clem. ii. 5, 6; De Benef. i. 1,
ii. 11, iv. 14, vii. 31. Conf. Le Blant, Inscr. Chr. de la Gaule,
ii. 23 et seq. Orelli, No. 4657. Fea, Framm. de' Fasti Consol.
p. 90. R. Garrucci, Cimitero degli ant. Ebrei, p. 44.
THE WORK OF ROME?
27
below. What the world wanted, after the frightful
butcheries of antiquity, was gentleness, humanity.
Of heroism, it had had enough: those masculine
goddesses, for ever brandishing a spear from the
height of an Acropolis, no longer awoke any senti-
ment. The earth, as in the days of Cadmus, had
devoured its noblest sons: the finest races of Greece
had perished by mutual slaughter: Peloponnesus
was a desert. The gentle voice of Virgil well ex-
pressed the general cry of humanity-Peace! Pity!
The establishment of Christianity answered to this
cry of all tender and weary spirits. But Christian-
ity could be born and spread abroad only at an
epoch when men had no longer a native country.
If there is anything which the founders of the
Church entirely lacked, it was patriotism. They are
not cosmopolitan, for the whole planet is to them a
place of exile: they are idealists in the most abso-
lute sense of the word. A country is a composite
whole, made up of soul and body. Remembrances,
usages, legends, misfortunes, hopes, common regrets
-these are the soul; the soil, the race, the language,
the mountains, the rivers, the characteristic produc-
28
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
tions, are the body. But from all this no men were
ever more completely detached than the first Chris-
tians. They had no affection for Judea: at the end
of a few years they have forgotten Galilee: the glory
of Greece and of Rome is to them matter of in-
difference. The countries in which Christianity first
established itself-Syria, Cyprus, Asia Minor-no
longer recollected a time at which they had been
free. Greece and Rome still cherished a strong
feeling of nationality. But in Rome, patriotism
lived only in the bosom of a few families; in Greece,
except at Corinth, a city which, after its destruction
by Mummius and its rebuilding by Cæsar, was a
collection of people of every race and kind, Chris-
tianity did not prosper. The really Greek countries,
then as now very jealous, very much absorbed in
the recollection of their past, lent themselves but
little to the new preaching, and were never enthu-
siastically Christian. On the contrary, those soft,
gay, voluptuous lands of Asia, of Syria, lands of
pleasure, of carelessness, of easy morals, accustomed
to receive life and regulation from without, had
neither pride to give up nor traditions to forget.

THE WORK OF ROME?
29
The oldest capitals of Christianity-Antioch, Ephe-
sus, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome-were, if I may
use the phrase, common cities, cities after the fashion
of modern Alexandria, where all races flowed toge-
ther, and where the marriage between man and the
soil, which makes the nation, was entirely dissolved.
The importance given to social questions is always
in an inverse ratio to the strength of political pre-
occupations. Socialism gets the upper hand when
patriotism grows weak. Christianity was that break-
ing forth of social and religious ideas which became
inevitable as soon as Augustus had put an end to
political struggles. Like Islam, a universal religion,
Christianity must be, in its essence, the enemy of
nationalities. How many ages, how many schisms
have been necessary, before National Churches could
be founded in connection with a religion which was
from the first the denial of any earthly country,
which was born at a time when cities and citizens
had alike ceased to exist, and which the old, strong,
rigid republics of Greece and of Rome would most
certainly have cast out as a poison that would slay
the State!

30
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
And this was one of the causes of the greatness
of the new religion. Humanity is a many-sided,
changeful thing, urged this way and that by oppos-
ing desires. Country is great, and holy are the
heroes of Marathon and Thermopyla. But, never-
theless, country is not everything here below. We
are men and sons of God, before we are Frenchmen
or Germans. The kingdom of God-that eternal
dream which will never be torn from the heart of
man-is the protest against all that in patriotism
is too exclusive. The organization of humanity,
with a view to its moral improvement and its highest
happiness, is a legitimate idea. But the State under-
stands, and can understand, only the organization of
egotism. Nor is this a matter of indifference, for
egotism is the most powerful of human motives and
the easiest to set in motion. But it is not enough.
The governments who have started with the hypo-
thesis that man is wholly made up of sordid instincts,
have been self-deceived. To him who belongs to a
great race, self-devotion is as natural as egotism.
And religion is the organization of self-devotion.
Let no one, therefore, hope to dispense with religion
THE WORK OF ROME?
31
and religious associations. Each step in advance
made by modern society renders this want more
imperious. A great increase and deepening of reli-
gious sentiment was thus a consequence of the Roman
peace established by Augustus: Augustus felt it:
but what satisfaction, I ask, of the religious wants
which had been called forth, was afforded by the
institutions which Rome believed to be eternal ?
Surely, hardly any. All these ancient worships,
while very different in their origin, had one feature
in common-an equal inability to develop a theo-
logical instruction, a practical morality, an edifying
preaching, a pastoral ministry which should be really
advantageous to the people. The pagan temple was
in no degree what the synagogue and the church
were at their best period: I mean the common home,
the school, the hostelry, the almshouse, the shelter
where the poor sought refuge. It was a cold cella
into which men went but seldom, and where they
learned nothing. The affectation which induced the
Roman patricians to distinguish "religion"-that
is to say, their own worship-from "superstition,"
which was the worship of strangers, appears to us

32
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
puerile. All pagan cults were essentially super-
stitious. The peasant of our own day, who drops a
coin into the box of a miraculous chapel, who asks
the aid of a particular saint for his oxen or his
horses, who drinks a certain water to cure a special
disease, is, in so far, pagan. Almost all our super-
stitions are the remains of a religion anterior to
Christianity, and which Christianity has not been
able entirely to root out. If at the present day we
wished to recover a living image of paganism, we
should have to look for it in some village lying for-
gotten in the depths of a country district altogether
behind the times.
As the only guardians of the pagan cults were
interested sacristans and a variable popular tradition,
they could not fail to degenerate into adulation.
Augustus, though with some reserve, permitted
himself to be worshipped in the provinces. Tiberius
allowed the ignoble rivalry of the Asian towns, as
to which should have the honour of building him a
temple, to be decided in his own presence.1 The
1 Tacit. Ann. iv. 55, 56. Conf. Valer. Max. prol.
THE WORK OF ROME?
33
extravagant impieties of Caligula called forth no
reaction: beyond the limits of Judaism, not a single
priest was found who cared to resist such follies.
Sprung for the most part from a primitive worship
of natural forces, repeatedly transformed by popular
imagination and admixture of every kind, pagan reli-
gions were limited by their own past. It was impos-
sible to get out of them, what was never in them,-
Theism, edification. The Fathers of the Church make
us smile when they hold up to reprobation the mis-
deeds of Saturn as the father of a family, of Jupiter
as a husband. But certainly it was more ridiculous
still to make Jupiter (that is to say, the atmosphere)
into a moral God who enjoins, forbids, recompenses,
punishes. In a world which aspired to possess a
catechism, what could be made of a worship like
that of Venus, which, having its origin in an ancient
ocial necessity of the first Phoenician navigations
of the Mediterranean, became, as time went on, an
outrage upon what was continually more and more
regarded as the essence of religion?
This is the explanation of the singular attraction
which, about the beginning of the Christian era,

D
34
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
drew the populations of the ancient world to the
religions of the East. These religions had something
deeper in them than those of Greece and Rome:
they addressed themselves more fully to the religious
sentiment. Almost all of them stood in some rela-
tion to the condition of the soul in another life, and
it was believed that they held the warrant of immor-
tality. Hence the favour in which the Thracian
and Sabazian mysteries, the thiasi and the confrater-
nities of all kinds, were held. It was not so chilly
in these little circles, where men pressed closely
together, as in the great icy world of that day.
Little religions, like the worship of Psyche, whose
sole object was consolation for human mortality, had
a momentary prevalence. The beautiful Egyptian
worships, which hid a real emptiness beneath a great
splendour of ritual, counted devotees in every part
of the Empire. Isis and Serapis had altars even in
the ends of the world. A visitor to the ruins of
Pompeii might be tempted to believe that the prin-
cipal worship which obtained there was that of Isis.
These little Egyptian temples had their assiduous
worshippers, among whom were many of the same

THE WORK OF ROME?
:
35
class as the friends of Catullus and Tibullus. There
was a morning service: a kind of mass, celebrated
by a priest, shorn and beardless: there were sprin-
klings of holy water: possibly benediction in the
evening. All this occupied, amused, soothed. What
could any one want more?
But it was, above all, the Mithraic worship which
in the second and third centuries attained an extra-
ordinary prevalence. I sometimes permit myself to
say that, if Christianity had not carried the day,
Mithraicism would have become the religion of the
world. It had its mysterious meetings: its chapels,
which bore a strong resemblance to little churches.
It forged a very lasting bond of brotherhood between
its initiates it had a Eucharist, a Supper so like
the Christian mysteries, that good Justin Martyr,
the Apologist, can find only one explanation of the
apparent identity, namely, that Satan, in order to
deceive the human race, determined to imitate the
Christian ceremonies, and so stole them.2 A Mithraic
1 See Boissier, Relig. Rom. pp. 374 et seq.
2 Justin, Apol. i. 66; Dial. 70, 78. Celsus, in Origen, Contra
Celsum, vi. 22.
:
D 2
36
IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY
sepulchre in the Roman Catacombs is as edifying,
and presents as elevated a mysticism, as the Chris-
tian tombs.¹ There were Mithraic devotees who,
even after the triumph of Christianity, bravely de-
fended the sincerity of their faith.2 Men gathered
into groups round these strange gods, but not about
the gods of Greece or of Italy. Only small sects
found and build up. It is so pleasant to believe
that one belongs to a little aristocracy of the truth
-to imagine that, with only a very few others, one
holds the deposit of good. Each foolish sect of our
own time imparts more consolation to its adepts
than could the soundest philosophy. In its day,
the Abracadabra has been the medium of religious
enjoyment, and a little goodwill may find in it a
sublime theology.
We shall see, nevertheless, in our next Lecture,
that the religious supremacy of the future belonged
neither to Serapis nor to Mithra. The predestined
2 Garrucci, in Vol. iv. of Melanges d'Archéol Chrét. des P. P.
Martin et Cahier: Paris, 1856.
8 Inscription in De Rossi, Bullettino di Arch. Crist. 1867,
p. 76. Henzen, in the Bulletin de Corresp. Arch. April, 1868.
?
THE WORK OF ROME?
37
religion was silently growing in Judea. What could
have more astonished the most sagacious of the
Romans, had it been told to them, or what could
have disgusted them more? But in history, incre-
dible predictions have so often been accomplished,
so often has sagacity been mistaken, as to warrant
us, whenever we attempt to foretel the future, in
paying very little attention to the preferences or
repulsions of what are called enlightened and sensi-
ble men.
..
:)
.
LECTURE I1.
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
PETER AND PAUL.
:

LECTURE IL
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
PETER AND PAUL.
In our last Lecture we attempted to describe the
difficult situation in regard to all religious questions
in which the Roman Empire found itself in the first
century. In the vast collection of peoples of which
the Empire was made up, existed highly developed
religious wants, a genuine moral progress, which
gave birth to the desire of a pure worship, without
superstitious practices or bloody sacrifices; a ten-
dency to Monotheism, the effect of which was to
make the old mythological tales ridiculous; a general
sentiment of sympathy and charity, which inspired
the wish for association, the need of meeting for
mutual prayer and consolation and help, and to
assure oneself that after death brethren would lay
42
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
one in the grave and celebrate a friendly meal in
one's remembrance. Asia Minor, Greece, Syria,
Egypt, contained masses of poor people, very respect-
able in their way, humble and without distinction,
but disgusted with the spectacle offered to the
world by the Roman aristocracy, and full of horror
at those hideous performances of the amphitheatre
in which Rome had made her executions a public
amusement. There arose an immense protest of the
moral consciousness of the human race, and there
was no priest to become its interpreter, no God with
pity in his heart to answer the sighs of poor, suffer-
ing humanity. Slavery, in spite of the remonstrances
of the wise, was still very hard. Claudius thought
that he had done a very humane thing in enacting
that the master who had turned out of his house an
old and sick slave, should lose all right of property
in him if the poor wretch should chance to recover.
Who could think that these gods without bowels,
the offspring of primeval joy and imagination, had
any remedies for such evils? Men wanted a
Father in heaven,, who should take count of their
efforts and assure them a recompence. Men wanted
PETER AND PAUL.
43
a future of righteousness, in which the earth should
belong to the feeble and the poor; they wanted the
assurance that human suffering is not all loss, but
that beyond this sad horizon, dimmed by tears, are
happy plains where sorrow shall one day find its
consolation.
This was exactly what Judaism had. In its insti-
tution of the synagogue-and do not forget that out
of the synagogue arose the church-it reduced asso-
ciation to practice in a more powerful form than had
ever before been the case. Its worship was, at least
in appearance, pure Deism. It had no images. For
idols it had nothing but contempt and sarcasm. But
what more than all else characterized the Jew, was
his confident belief in a brilliant and happy future
for humanity. Having no definite idea of the im-
mortality of the soul, or of recompence and retribu-
tion in another life, the Jew, taught by the old
prophets, was, as it were, intoxicated with the sen-
timent of justice. And he desired justice here
below, upon this earth. Not very confident in his
1 See the fine words of the 2nd Epistle attributed to Peter,
iii. 13: καινοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ γῆν καινὴν προσδοκῶμεν ἐν οἷς
δικαιοσύνη κατοικει,
44 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
expectations of that eternity which makes resigna-
tion so easy to the Christian, he chides Jehovah,
reproaches Him with His indolence, asks Him how
He can leave the earth so long in the hands of the
ungodly. As for himself, he does not doubt that the
earth will one day be his own, and that his law will
ensure the universal reign of justice and love.
It is the Jew who will win the day: to him
belongs the future. Hope-what the Jew calls
tiqva-this assurance of something which is by no
means proved, but to which we attach ourselves
all the more eagerly because we have no certainty
of it was the very soul of the Jew. His Psalms
were like one continuous harp note, filling his life
with harmony and melancholy faith: his prophets
had the words of eternity: the second Isaiah, for
instance, the prophet of the Captivity, depicted the
future in the brightest colours that have ever been
revealed to the dreams of man. The Thora, mean-
while, laid down the conditions of happiness (under-
stand, of happiness here below) in the observance of
the moral law, in the spirit of the family, in the love
of duty.
PETER AND PAUL.
45
I.
The establishment of the Jews in Rome dates from
about sixty years B.C. They multiplied rapidly.
Cicero represents resistance to them as an act of
courage.1 Cæsar favoured them, and found them
faithful. The mob hated them, thought them male-
volent, accused them of forming a secret society, the
members of which unscrupulously sought their own
advancement, to the injury of others. But these
superficial judgments were not universal: the Jews
had as many friends as detractors: men felt that
there was something superior about them. The poor
Jewish pedlar of the Trastevere often came home at
night rich with alms from pious hands: women
especially were drawn towards these ragged mission-
aries. Juvenal reckons among the vices with which
he reproaches the ladies of his time, an inclination
towards the Jewish religion.2 The word of Zecha-
riah³ was verified to the letter; the world laid hold
1 Pro Flacco, 28.
2 Juv. Sat. vi. 546 et seq.
8 Zech. viii. 23.
46 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
of the skirt of the Jew, and said to him, Lead us to
Jerusalem.
The chief Jewish quarter lay beyond the Tiber;1
that is to say, in the poorest and dirtiest part of the
city,2 probably not far from what is now the Porta
Portese. There, then as now, was the port of Rome,
the place where the merchandize brought from Ostia
1 Philo, Leg. ad Caium, § 23. Martial, i. xlii. (xxxv.) 3. The
Jews continued to inhabit the Trastevere until the 15th and 16th
century (Bosio, Rom. Sott. 1. ii. ch. xxii.; conf. Corp. Inscr. Gr.
No. 9907). It is at the same time certain that under the Emperors
they inhabited many other quarters of the city, and particularly
the Campus Martius (Corp. Nos. 9905, 9906; Orelli, 2522;
Garrucci, Dissert. Arch. ii. 163), outside the Porta Capena (Juv.
Sat. iii. 11 et seq.; Garrucci, Cimitero, p. 4), the island of the
Tiber and the beggars' bridge (Juv. iv. 115, v. 8, xiv. 134;
Martial, x. v. 3), and perhaps the Suburra (Corp. No. 6447).
2 Martial, i. xlii. 3, vi. xciii. 4. Juv. Sat. xiv. 201 et seq.
3 The principal Jewish cemetery of Rome was found in this
neighbourhood by Bosio in 1602. Bosio, op. cit. ii. xxii.
Aringhi, Roma Sott. i. ii. 23. Conf. Corp. Inser. Gr. Nos. 9901
et seq., inscriptions found for the most part in the quarter. The
trace of this catacomb is lost: F. Marchi searched for it in
vain. Two other Jewish catacombs have since been found at
Rome, on the Via Appia, near St. Sebastian. Garrucci, Cimitero
degli antichi Ebrei (Roma, 1862); Dissert. Arch. ii. (Roma, 1866),
150 et seq. De Rossi, Bull. di Arch. Crist. 1867, 3, 16.
PETER AND PAUL.
47
on lighters was unloaded. It was a quarter of Jews
and Syrians, "nations born for servitude," as Cicero
says.1 The first nucleus of the Jewish population
of Rome consisted of freedmen,2 for the most part
descendants of prisoners whom Pompey had carried
thither. They had passed through a period of slavery
without any change in their religious habits. An
admirable thing in Judaism is that simplicity of
faith, the result of which is that the Jew, transported
a thousand leagues from his country, and after many
generations, is a Jew still. The intercourse of the
Roman synagogues with Jerusalem was constant.3
The first colony had been reinforced by numerous
emigrants. These poor people landed by hundreds
4
1 Provinc. cons. 5.
2 Philo, l. c. Tacit. Ann. ii. 85.
Tacit. Ann. ii. 85. The inscriptions confirm
this. Lévy, op. cit. p. 287. Conf. Mommsen, Inscr. Regni
Neap. No. 6467 (Captiva is doubtful). De Rossi, Bull. 1864,
70, 92, 93. Conf. Acts vi. 9.
3 Cicero, Pro Flacco, 28.
4 Jos. Ant. xvii. iii. 5, xi. 1. Dio Cassius, xxxvii. 17. Tacit.
Ann. ii. 85. Sueton. Tib. 36. Mommsen, Inscr. Regni Neap.
No. 6467. There were in Rome at least four synagogues, two
of which bore the names of Augustus and Agrippa (Herod
48
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
on the Ripa, and lived together in the Trastevere
hard by, acting as porters, huckstering, bartering
tapers for broken glass, and offering to the proud
Italian population a type which at a later period
must have become too familiar to them, that of the
accomplished mendicant.¹ A Roman who respected
himself never set foot in this abject quarter. It was
a kind of "liberty" given up to despised classes and
disgusting occupations; it was there that hides were
tanned, that the entrails of animals were prepared
for food, that rubbish of all kinds was put to rot.2
So the poor creatures lived quietly enough in this
forgotten corner, in the midst of bales of merchandize,
of low public-houses, of the litter-carriers (Syri) who
Agrippa?). Corp. Inscr. Gr. 6447, 9902, 9903, 9904, 9905,
9906, 9907, 9909. Orelli, 2522. Garrucci, Cimitero, pp. 38-40;
Dissert. Arch. ii. 161, 162, 163, 185. De Rossi, Bull. 1867, p. 16.
1 Philo, Leg. ad Caium, § 23. Juv. iii. 14, 296, vi. 542.
Mart. i. xlii. 3 et seq., x. iii. 3, 4, xii. lvii. 13, 14. Statius,
Silvæ, i. vi. 72-74. The Jewish burial-places at Rome showed
signs of great poverty. Bosio, Roma Sott. pp. 190 et seq. Lévy,
Epigraph. Beiträge zur Gesch. der Juden, 283.
2 Nardini, Roma antica, iii. 328-330 (4th ed.). Martial,
vi. xciii. 4.
PETER AND PAUL.
49
had their head-quarters there.1 The police never
came near them, unless their quarrels took place too
often or ended in bloodshed. Few quarters of Rome
were as free as this: politics never entered it. At
ordinary times, not only was worship celebrated
without interruption, but the work of conversion
went on easily and quickly.2
Protected by the contempt which they inspired,
and not very sensitive to the mockeries of more
fashionable people, the Jews of the Trastevere thus
lived a very active social and religious life. They
had schools of hakamim:3 nowhere was the ritual
and ceremonial part of the Law more scrupulously
observed. The synagogues were more completely
1 Castra lecticariorum, in the treatises De regionibus urbis
Romæ, regio xiv.; Canina, Roma antica, pp. 553, 554. Conf.
Forcellini, s. v. lecticarius. The Syrus of the Latin comedies is
usually a lecticarius.
2 Josephus, Ant. xiv. x. 8; Acts xxviii. 31.
3 Conf. Corp. Inscr. Gr. No. 9908.
57, 58.
Garrucci, Cimitero, pp.
4 Conf. Hor. Sat. i. ix. 69 et seq. Sueton. Augustus, 76.
Seneca, Epist. xcv. 47. Persius, v. 179 et seq. Juvenal, xiv.
96 et seq. Martial, iv. iv. 6. The Jewish epigraphy of Rome
bears witness to a population of a very precise ritual observance.
E
1
50
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
organized than any others which we know.1 The
titles "father and mother of the synagogue" were
held in high esteem.2 Rich female converts took
Biblical names: they carried over their slaves to
Judaism with them: they listened to expositions of
Scripture by the doctors, built houses of prayer, and
showed themselves proud of the consideration which
they enjoyed in this little society.3 The poor Jew,
as he asked an alms with trembling voice, found the
opportunity of insinuating into the ear of the great
Lévy, Epig. Beit. pp. 285 et seq. Note the epithet piλévrodos
(Corp. No. 9904; Garrucci, Dissert. ii. 180, 185, 191, 192),
answering to Ps. cxix. 48, and similar passages. Conf. Mommsen,
Inscr. Regni Neap. No. 6467 (notwithstanding Garrucci, Cim.
pp. 24, 25). The Jews carefully avoided the use of the letters
D. M. on tombstones. They had also in Italy manufactures of
lamps for their own use. (See Jewish lamp of the Parent Museum,
found at Baiæ.)
1 Corp. Nos. 9902 et seq. Garrucci, Cim. pp. 35 et seq., 67
et seq. Diss. Arch. ii. 161 et seq., 177, 181.
2 Corp. Nos. 9904, 9905, 9908, 9909 (conf. Rénier, Inscr. de
l'Algerie, No. 3340). Orelli, No. 2522 (conf. Gruter, p. 323, 3).
Garrucci, Cim. pp. 52, 53.
³ Orelli, 2522, 2523.
Dissert. Arch. ii. 166.
507.
Lévy, pp. 285, 311, 313. Garrucci,
Graetz, Gesch. der Juden, iv. 123, 506,


PETER AND PAUL.
51
!
Roman lady a word or two of the Law, and often
gained the matron, who opened to him a hand full
of small coin.¹ To keep the Sabbath and the Jewish
festivals is, with Horace, a trait which marks a man
of feeble mind—that is to say, puts him among the
crowd: unus multorum.2 Universal benevolence, the
happiness of a last repose among the just, the assist-
ance of the poor, purity of morals, the sweetness of the
family life, the calm acceptance of the sleep of death
these are the sentiments which we find expressed
in the Jewish, with the same peculiar accent of
touching unction, of humility, of assured hope, as
in the Christian inscriptions. There were, indeed,
Jews who were rich and powerful men of the world;
1 Juvenal, vi. 542 et seq.
3
2 Hor. Sat. i. ix. 71, 72.
Corp. Inscr. Gr. 9904 et seq. Garrucci, Cimitero, pp. 31 et seq.,
67 et seq., especially p. 68. Dissert. ii. 153 et seq. Notice par-
ticularly the beautiful expressions, piλotévηs (Garrucci, Dissert.
ii. 185; conf. Les Apôtres, p. 320, note 4), piλólaos (Corp.
No. 9904. Garrucci, Dissert. p. 185; conf. 2 Macc. xv. 14),
concresconius, conlaboronius (Garr. Diss. ii. 160, 161). The
formulas of Jewish and Christian epigraphy are strangely analo-
gous. It is true that the greater part of the Jewish inscriptions
just quoted are much later than the reign of Claudius. But the
spirit of the Jewish colony in Rome cannot have greatly changed.
E 2


52
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
such as Tiberius Alexander, who attained the greatest
honours which the Empire had to give, more than
once exercised a very important influence upon
public affairs, and even, to the great annoyance of
the Romans, had his statue in the Forum.1 But
such as he were no longer good Jews. The Herods,
too, although ostentatiously observing their national
rites at Rome,2 were far from being genuine Israel-
ites, if for no other reason, on account of their rela-
tions with pagans. The faithful poor looked upon
these worldly brethren as renegades; as in our own
day we may see Polish or Hungarian Jews treating
with severity the Israelites in high places who for-
sake the synagogue, and bring up their children as
Protestants, in the hope of thus liberating them
from a contracted social circle.
A world of ideas was thus in motion upon the com-
mon quay where the merchandize of the whole earth
was heaped up; but it was all lost to view in the
1 M. Renier thinks that it is to Tiberius Alexander that
Juvenal refers, i. 129—131, arabarches for alabarches. Mém. de
l'Acad. des Inscr. Vol. xxvi. Pt. i. 294 et seq.
2 Persius, v. 179 et seq. The allusion is to the hanucca.
PETER AND PAUL.
53
tumult of a city as large as London and Paris.¹ We
may be sure that the proud patricians who in their
walks on the Aventine cast a glance on the other
side of the Tiber, never suspected that the future
was being made ready in that mass of hovels which
lay at the foot of the Janiculum.2 Near the port
was a kind of lodging-house, well known to the
people and the soldiers under the name of the Taberna
Meritoria. There, to attract gazers, was shown what
pretended to be a spring of oil flowing from the
rock. From a very early date the Christians looked
upon this spring of oil as symbolical: they alleged
that its appearance had been simultaneous with
the birth of Jesus. At a later period the Taberna
seems to have been turned into a church.4 Under
Alexander Severus, we find the Christians and the
1 Platner and Bunsen, Beschreibung der Stadt Rom. i. 183,
185. The excavations recently made near the agger of Servius
Tullius prove an almost incredibly large population.


2 Conf. Tacit. Hist. v. 5.
3 Orosius, vi. 18, 20. The lesser Christian Martyrology (ed.
Rosweide), July 9. Vid. Forcellini, s. v. meritorius.
4 According to Roman tradition, the Church of St. Maria
in Trastevere has succeeded the Taberna. Vid. Nardini, Roma
antica, iii. 336, 337. Platner and Bunsen, iii. Pt. iii. 659, 660.
54
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
innkeepers contending for the possession of a locality
which had formerly been public, and which that
excellent Emperor adjudged to the Christians.¹ We
feel that we have here the birthplace of an old
popular tradition of Christianity. Claudius, struck
by "the progress of foreign superstitions," thought
it an act of sound political conservatism to re-esta-
blish the haruspices. In a report made to the Senate,
he complained of the indifference of the age to good
discipline and the ancient usages of Italy. The
Senate invited the Pontiffs to inquire which of the
old practices it would be most advantageous to re-
establish. All went well, and men believed that
these respectable impostures were safe for all time
to come.
It was natural that the capital should ho
heard the name of Christ some time before the
intermediate countries were evangelized, as a high
summit is lighted up when the valleys which lie
between it and the sun are yet dark. Rome was

1 Lampridius, Vita Alex. Sever. 49. Conf. Anastasius Bibl.
Vitæ Pontif. Rom. xvii. (ed. Bianchini), taking note of the
observations of Platner.
.

PETER AND PAUL.
55
the meeting-place of all Oriental worships, the point
upon the shores of the Mediterranean with which
Syrians stood in the closest relation. They came
thither in enormous numbers. Like all poor popula-
tions, who storm the walls of the great cities where
they seek their fortune, they were humble and oblig-
ing. They all spoke Greek: the old Roman citizens,
attached to the ancestral manners, were overwhelmed
by this flood of foreigners, and lost ground every day.
We admit, then, that about the year 50 of our era,
certain Syrian Jews, already converted to Christian-
ity, entered the capital of the Empire, and commu-
nicated to the comrades whom they found there the
faith which made them happy. No one in Rome
that day suspected that the founder of a second
Empire, another Romulus, was lying upon straw at
the Port. Others soon followed: letters from Syria,
brought by the new-comers, spoke of the movement
as one that was constantly gaining strength. All
these people smelt of garlic:1 these ancestors of
Roman prelates were poor, dirty proletaires, without
1 Fotentes Judæi. Amm. Marc. xxii. 5.
56 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
distinction, without manners, clad in filthy gaber-
dines, having the bad breath of men whose food is
insufficient. Their haunts exhaled that odour of
wretchedness which arises from human beings who
are coarsely clothed, badly fed, closely crowded.1
We know the names of the two Jews who had most
to do with this movement. They were a pious
couple, Aquila, a Jew of Pontus, practising the same
handicraft of tent-making as Paul, and Priscilla his
wife. Driven from Rome, they took refuge at
Corinth, where they soon became the intimate friends
and zealous fellow-workers of St. Paul. Aquila and
Priscilla are thus the two oldest members of the
Church of Rome known to us. There they are
hardly remembered.2 Legend, always unjust, be-
cause always moulded by reasons of policy, has ex-
pelled from the Christian Pantheon these two obscure
1 Juvenal, iii. 14. Mart. iv. iv. 7.
2 The attribution of the ancient "title of St. Prisca" on the
Aventine to Priscilla, wife of Aquila, is the result of a mistake.
Vid. De Rossi (Bull. di Arch. Crist. 1867, 44 et seq.), who is
unable to trace the identification further back than the eighth
century.


PETER AND PAUL.
57
artizans, to award the honour of founding the Church
of Rome to a name more fully answering to its proud
pretensions. We, however, may discern the true
starting-point of Western Christianity, not in the
pompous basilica which has been dedicated to St.
Peter, but in the ancient ghetto of the Porta Portese.
It is the trace of these poor wandering Jews, bring-
ing with them from Syria the religion of the world,
these labouring men, dreaming in their wretchedness
of the kingdom of God, that we must try to recover.
We do not deny to Rome her essential pre-eminence:
she was probably the first city of the Western world,
and even of Europe, where Christianity established
itself. But in place of those proud basilicas, with
their insolent motto, Christus vincit, Christus regnat,
Christus imperat, she would do well to build a humble
chapel in memory of the two good Jews who first
uttered
upon her quays the name of Jesus.
In any case, a fact of capital importance which we
must notice at this stage of our inquiry is, that the
Church of Rome was not, like the Churches of Asia
Minor, of Macedonia and of Greece, a Pauline foun-
dation. It was a Jewish-Christian product, attaching


58
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH •
itself directly to the Church of Jerusalem.¹ In it,
Paul will never be on his own ground: he will feel
the presence in this great Church of many weak-
nesses, which he will treat with indulgence, but
which will offend his lofty idealism.2 Given to cir-
cumcision and to external observances; Ebionite¹
both in its love of abstinences 5 and in its doctrine;
more Jewish than Christian in its conception of the
person and death of Jesus; 6 strongly attached to
millenarianism,”—the Roman Church displays from
3
1 Acts xviii. 2. Commentary (of the deacon Hilary) on the
Epp. of St. Paul, at the end of the Works of St. Ambrose,
Benedict. Ed. Vol. ii. Pt. ii. (Paris, 1686), col. 25, 30. This
Commentary is the production of a writer well acquainted with
the traditions of the Roman Church.
2 Rom. xiv. xv. 1-13.
3 Rom. xiv. xv. 8. Conf. Tacit. Hist. v. 5.
4 Epiphan. Hær. xxx. 18. Conf. xxx. 2, 15, 16, 17.
5 Rom. xiv. Pseudo-Clem. Hom. xiv. 1.
6 Commentary of Hilary, cited above, ibid. Conf. the asser-
tion of Artemo in Eusebius, H. E. v. 28.
(a work of Roman origin) xvi. 14 et seq.

Pseudo-Clem. Hom.
7 This is the reason why the Judeo-Christian and millenarian
literature has been more fully preserved in Latin than in Greek
(4th Book of Esdras, Leptogenesis, Assumption of Moses). The
Greek fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries were very hostile to
PETER AND PAUL.
59
the beginning the essential characteristics which
distinguished it throughout its long and marvellous
history. The legitimate daughter of Jerusalem, the
Roman Church will always have a certain ascetic
and sacerdotal character, opposed to the Protestant
tendency of Paul. Peter will be her real head:
afterwards, as the political and hierarchical spirit of
old Rome penetrates her, she will truly become the
New Jerusalem-the city of the Pontificate, of a
hieratic and solemn religion, of material sacraments
alone sufficient for justification-the city of ascetics
after the manner of James Obliam, with his hardened
knees and the plate of gold on his forehead. She
will be the Church of authority. If we are to believe

this literature, even to the Apocalypse. The Greek Church
depends more directly upon Paul than the Latin: in the East,
Paul actually destroyed his enemies. Note the favourable recep-
tion which Montanism (a heresy which had elements in common
with Jewish Christianity), and other sects of the same kind, met
with in Rome. Tertullian, Adv. Prax. 1. St. Hippolytus (?)
Philosophum. ix. 7, 12, 13 et seq. Especially vid. in Eusebius,
H. E. all that relates to the heresy of Artemo and Theodotus,
and note the principle of the Artemonites, according to which
the traditional doctrine of the Church of Rome had been altered
after the time of Zephyrinus.
60
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
}
her, the only satisfactory evidence of an apostolical
mission will be to show a letter signed by apostles,
and to produce a certificate of orthodoxy.¹ The good
and the evil which the Church of Jerusalem did to a
nascent Christianity, the Church of Rome will do to
the universal Church. In vain Paul will address to
her his noble Epistle, expounding the mystery of the
Cross of Christ and salvation by faith alone. She
will hardly understand it. But Luther, fourteen
centuries and a half later, will understand it, and
will open a new era in the secular series of the alter-
nate triumphs of Peter and of Paul.
II.
An event of capital importance in the history of
the world took place in the year 61. Paul, a pri-
soner, was taken to Rome, there to prosecute the
appeal which he had made to the tribunal of the
Emperor. A sort of profound instinct had always
made Paul long to take this journey. His arrival in
Rome was an event in his life almost as decisive as

¹ Vid. the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (a Roman work), par-
ticularly Hom. xvii.

PETER AND PAUL.
61
his conversion. In it he believed himself to have
attained the highest point of his apostolical career,
and doubtless remembered the dream in which, after
one of his days of struggle, Christ had appeared to
him and said, "Be of good cheer, Paul; for as thou
hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear
witness also at Rome."1
You are not ignorant of the profound divisions
which, in this first age of the foundation of Chris-
tianity, parted the disciples of Jesus-divisions so
profound, that none of the differences which now
separate the orthodox from the heretics and schisma-
tics of the whole world, are to be compared with the
disagreement between Peter and Paul. The Church
of Jerusalem, obstinately attached to Judaism, re-
fused all communion to the uncircumcised, no matter
how devout they might be. Paul, on the contrary,
declared that to maintain the old law was to do a
wrong to Jesus, inasmuch as it was equivalent to
supposing that, over and above his merits, something
else could contribute to the justification of the faith-
1 Acts xix. 21, xxiii. 11.

62
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
ful. However strange it may appear, it is certain
that the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, with James
at their head, organized active missions to counteract
the effect of those of Paul, and that the emissaries
of these ardent conservatives followed in some sort
upon the track of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Peter
belonged to the party of Jerusalem, to which he con-
tributed that kind of timid moderation which appears
to have been the basis of his character.1 Did Peter
also come to Rome? Once, this question was one
of the most burning that could be raised. Formerly,
religious history was only a department of theology,
and written, not to narrate, but to prove. In the
great rebellion, animated by so much courageous
and ardent conviction, which in the sixteenth cen-
tury roused half Europe against the court of Rome,
men gradually elevated the denial of Peter's resi-
dence at Rome into a kind of dogma. The Bishop
of Rome is the successor of St. Peter, said the Catho-
1 The rivalry of Peter and Paul is the capital discovery of
Christian Baur and the Tübingen school; but these ingenious
critics have not only gravely overstated their thesis, but have
weakened it by the adduction of arguments which have really
nothing to do with the question.

PETER AND PAUL.
63
lics, and as such the head of Christendom.
What
more efficacious way of refuting this reasoning than
by maintaining that Peter never set foot in Rome?
For ourselves, we may approach the question with
the most perfect impartiality. We have not the
slightest belief that Jesus intended to set a chief of
any kind over his Church. To begin at the begin-
ning, it is doubtful whether the idea of the Church,
as it was developed at a later time, ever existed in
the mind of the Founder of Christianity. The word
ecclesia occurs only in the Gospel of Matthew. What,
at all events, is quite certain is, that the idea of the
episcopos, in the form which it took in the second
century, was no part of the thought of Jesus. It is
himself who, during his brief Galilean apparition,
is the living episcopos: afterwards the Spirit will
inspire each individual soul until the Master's return.
Even if any idea of an ecclesia and an episcopos can
be ascribed to Jesus, it is absolutely indubitable
that he never dreamed of the future episcopos of the
city of Rome, that impious city, that centre of all
the earth's impurity, of whose existence he was
possibly hardly aware, and which he must have

64
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCII:
looked upon in the same sombre light as did all
other Jews. If there is anything in the world which
Jesus did not institute, it is the Papacy; that is,
the idea that the Church is a monarchy. We may,
then, discuss the question of Peter's coming to Rome
entirely at our ease: the answer fastens upon us no
dogmatic consequences: nor from it, whatever it
may be, shall we be able to infer that Leo XIII.
either is or is not supreme over Christian consciences.
Whether Peter was at Rome or not, is a matter which
has neither moral nor political interest for us. It is
a curious historical question, and we must not seek
to import any other significance into it.
Let us say, in the first place, that the unfortunate
chronological scheme which, according to Catholics,
brings Peter to Rome in the year 42, and makes the
duration of his Pontificate twenty-two or twenty-
three years, a scheme borrowed from Eusebius and
Jerome, is open to the most decisive objections.
Nothing can be less admissible. To remove all doubt
on the subject, it is only necessary to recollect that
the persecution which Peter suffered at Jerusalem
at the hands of Herod Agrippa I. took place in the

PETER AND PAUL.
65
very year in which that monarch died, namely, in
44.1 It would be a work of supererogation to con-
trovert at length a theory which cannot now boast
a single rational advocate. We may indeed go
further, and affirm that Peter had not yet arrived
in Rome when Paul was brought there, that is to
say, in the year 61. The Epistle of Paul to the
Romans, written about the year 58, or which could
not have been written, at most, more than two years
and a half before Paul's arrival at Rome, is an im-
portant branch of the evidence; it is impossible to
imagine that St. Paul could have written to the
disciples, of whom Peter was the head, without
making the least mention of him. The last chapter
of the Acts of the Apostles is still more decisive.
This chapter, and especially verses 17 to 29, are
unintelligible if Peter was at Rome when Paul came
there. We may take it, then, as absolutely certain
that Peter did not come to Rome before Paul, that is
to say, before the year 61, as nearly as we can fix it.
But did he come to Rome after Paul? This is
1 Acts xii. Jos. Ant. xix. viii. 2,
F

66
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
what no one has yet been able to prove. Not only
is there no impossibility in this later journey of
Peter to Rome, but strong reasons militate in its
favour. Besides the evidence of the Fathers of the
second and third century, which is not without
weight, three arguments, the force of which appears
to me to be not contemptible, may be adduced on
that side.
1. It cannot be denied that Peter died a martyr's
death. The evidence of the fourth Gospel, of Cle-
ment of Rome, of the fragment which is called the
Canon of Muratori, of Dionysius of Corinth, of Caius,
of Tertullian, leaves no room for doubt.1
Even if
Canon of
Dionysius
¹ John xxi. 18, 19, compared with xii. 32, 33, xiii. 36, pas-
sages on any hypothesis written before the year 150, and the
more decisive in that they are indirect, and suppose the fact in
question to be universally known. 2 Peter i. 14.
Muratori, 1. 36, 37. Clem. Rom. Ad. Cor. i. ch. 5.
of Corinth and Caius, priest of Rome, quoted by Eusebius, H. E.
ii. 25. Tertull. Præsc. 36; Adv. Marc. iv. 5; Scorpiace, 15.
Luke xxii. 32, 33, compared with the passage in the Canon of
Muratori previously quoted, and with John xiii. 36-38, furnishes
much matter for reflection. Conf. Macarius Magnes, bk. iv. § 4
(still unedited). Rev. xviii. 20 is also strongly on the side of
the text.

PETER AND PAUL.
67
the fourth Gospel be apocryphal, even if the twenty-
first chapter were added to it at a later date, it does
not alter the case. It is clear that, in the passage
in which Jesus announces to Peter that he will die
the same death as himself, we have the expression of
an opinion strongly held in the Church about the
year 120 or 130, and to which allusion was made
as to a thing which everybody knew. Now it is not
to be supposed that St. Peter suffered martyrdom
elsewhere than in Rome. Indeed, it was only in
Rome that the persecution of Nero was violent. The
martyrdom of Peter at Jerusalem or at Antioch is
much less explicable.
2. Our second argument is drawn from the first
Epistle attributed to Peter, v. 13. Babylon in
this passage is plainly Rome. If the Epistle is
authentic, the passage is decisive. If it is apocry-
phal, the inference which we may draw from it is
not less convincing. The author, whoever he may
be, wishes to make his readers believe that the
work in question is the work of Peter. Conse-
quently, to give probability to his forgery, he deals
with local circumstances in a way accordant with
F 2

68
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
what he knew, and with what men at that time
believed that they knew, of the life of Peter. If,
in such a frame of mind, he has dated the letter
from Rome, it means that, when it was written, the
received opinion was that Peter had lived at Rome.
On any hypothesis, the first Epistle of Peter is a
work of great antiquity, which very soon attained
a position of high authority in the Church.
3. The scheme which lies at the basis of the Ebion-
ite Acts of St. Peter is also well worth consideration.
This scheme shows us St. Peter everywhere follow-
ing Simon the Magician (by whom we are to under-
stand St. Paul), with a view of contending against
his false doctrines. M. Lipsius¹ has applied an
admirable critical sagacity to the analysis of this
curious legend. He has shown that the foundation
of the different editions which have come down to
us was a primitive narrative, written about the year
130, a narrative which brings Peter to Rome in order
that he may overcome Simon Paul at the very centre
1 Römische Petrussage, pp. 13 et seq., especially pp. 16, 18,
41, 42. Conf. Recogn. i. 74, iii. 65. Apocryphal letter of Cle-
ment to James at the beginning of the Homilies, ch. i.

PETER AND PAUL.
69
of his influence, and, after having brought to confu-
sion this father of all error, may die there. It seems
difficult to suppose that the Ebionite author, at so
early a date, would have made Peter's journey to
Rome of so much importance, if that journey had had
no foundation in fact. The scheme of the Ebionite
legend must, in spite of the fables which are mixed
up with it, have had a basis of reality. It is quite
possible that St. Peter may have come to Rome, as
he came to Antioch, in the track of Paul, and in
part with a view of neutralizing his influence. The
Christian community about the year 60 was in a
state of mind very unlike the quiet expectation of
the twenty years which followed the death of Jesus.
The missions of Paul, and the ease with which the
Jews made their journeys, had brought distant expe-
ditions into fashion. The apostle Philip is indicated
by an old and persistent tradition as having gone to
settle at Hierapolis, in Asia Minor.
I therefore look upon the tradition of Peter's resi-
dence in Rome as probably true; but I believe that
it was of short duration, and that the apostle suffered
martyrdom soon after his arrival in the Eternal City.
:

70
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
III.
You are not ignorant of the mystery which en-
shrouds those events of the primitive history of
Christianity which we would willingly know in
exactest outline. The deaths of the apostles Peter
and Paul are covered by a veil which will never be
penetrated. The most probable supposition is that
both disappeared in the great massacre of the Chris-
tians which was ordered by Nero. As to this last
fact, the doubt which so often attends our investiga-
tions into the origins of Christianity is absolutely
impossible, for the monstrous story is told us by
Tacitus, in a passage the authenticity of which can-
not be disputed.
On the 19th of July, in the year 64, a fire of
extraordinary violence broke out in Rome.¹ It began
near the Porta Capena, in the part of the Circus
Sueton. Nero, 31, 38, 39;
Plin. Hist. Nat. xvii. 1 (1).
1 Tacitus, Ann. xv. 38—44, 52.
Vesp. 8. Dio Cassius, lxii. 16-18.
Euseb. Chron. ad ann. 65. Orelli, Inscr. No. 736, which appears
quite authentic. Sulpicius Severus (ii. 29) copies Tacitus almost
word for word. Orosius (vii. 7) for the most part follows Sue-
tonius.

PETER AND PAUL.
71
Maximus contiguous to the Palatine and the Cœlian
Hills. This quarter of the city contained many
shops, full of inflammable materials, whence the
flames spread with frightful rapidity. From this
point the fire made the round of the Palatine, ravaged
the Velabrum, the Forum, the Carinæ, mounted the
hills, committed great damage on the Palatine, re-
descended into the valleys, devouring for six days
and seven nights closely compact quarters, pierced
by tortuous streets. An enormous pulling down of
houses, which was effected at the foot of the Esqui-
line, stopped it for awhile; but it burned up again,
and lasted three days longer. The number of deaths
was considerable. Of the fourteen "regions" into
which the city was divided, three were wholly de-
stroyed, seven others reduced to blackened walls.
Rome was a city singularly closely built and very
densely peopled. The disaster was frightful, and
such as men had never known the like.
Nero was at Antium when the fire broke out. He
did not return to the city until the moment at which
the conflagration was drawing near to his "domus
transitoria." It was impossible to save anything

72
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
from the flames. The imperial palaces of the Pala-
tine, the "domus transitoria" itself, with its depen-
dencies, all the surrounding quarter, were over-
whelmed. Nero plainly did not make any great
effort to save his mansion. The sublime horror of
the spectacle carried him out of himself. At a later
period, men said that he had watched the flames
from the height of a tower, and that there, clad in
theatrical attire and with a lyre in his hand, he had
sung, in the pathetic metre of the ancient elegy, the
ruin of Ilium.1
1 The account of Tacitus (Ann. xv. 39) does not mention this
circumstance. Tacitus, it is true, speaks of a report that Nero,
during the fire, sang. the ruin of Troy "in his private theatre."
If this was so, it could only be at Antium, which would be very
awkward. It is plain that Tacitus mentions the report without
adopting it. The accounts of Suetonius and of Dion do not agree
as to details: one places the scene at the Esquiline, the other at
the Palatine. The anecdote no doubt arose from the poem entitled
Troica which Nero composed and read in public the year after the
fire, and which could be understood in a double sense, like the
poem of Lucan," Catacausmus Iliacus," written about the same
time. Dio. Cass. Ixii. 29. Servius ad Virg. Georg. iii. 36. Æn. v.
370. Persius, i. 123. Stat. Silv. ii. vii. 58-61. Juvenal, viii. 221.
Petron. p. 105 (ed. Bücheler). The impropriety of such allusions
struck everybody, and gave rise to the phrase that Nero "had
played the lyre upon the ruins of his country." (The expression

PETER AND PAUL.
73
This was a legend, the product of time and suc-
cessive exaggerations. But a matter upon which all
were agreed from the first was, that Nero had ordered
the fire, or at least had rekindled it when it was
about to die out. It was believed that persons
belonging to his household had been seen setting
fire to buildings on all sides. In certain places, it
was said, the flames had been kindled by men pre-
tending to be drunk. The conflagration seemed as
if it had begun at the same moment in more quarters
than one.
Men told the tale that, during the fire,
soldiers and watchmen, whose business it was to put
it out, had been seen to stir it up, and to thwart the
patriæ ruinis is in Tacit. Ann. xv. 42.) This phrase became an
anecdote; and as legend is usually born of an apt word, a true
sentiment, changed into a reality by help of violence done to
time and space, the poem Troica was put back to the actual date
of the catastrophe. The anecdote offered an almost insurmount-
able difficulty to those who, like Tacitus, knew that when the
fire broke out Nero was at Antium; and to make their story less
inconsistent with fact, they supposed that he had sung his elegy
'on a private stage." Those who did not know that, for the
greater part of the time that the fire lasted, Nero was at Antium,
transported the scene of the anecdote to Rome, where each chose
for it the most theatrical locale that he could find. The pretended
Torre di Nerone that is now shown belongs to the middle ages.
66

74
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
efforts which were made to extinguish it; and all
this with an air of menace, as persons who were
obeying superior commands.¹ Massive constructions
of stone, close to the imperial residence, the site of
which Nero was known to covet, were knocked to
pieces as in a siege. When the conflagration began
for the second time, it was in buildings belonging to
Tigellinus. What confirmed suspicion was, that after
the fire, Nero, under pretext of removing the ruins
at his own expense, in order that the sites might be
left free to their owners, undertook the task of carry-
ing away the building materials, and allowed no one
to come near as he executed it. Things were much
worse when he was seen to grasp his own advantage
among the ruins of the city, and his new palace,
that Golden House which had so long been the play-
thing of his delirious imagination, rose upon the site
of the old temporary residence, enlarged by the area
which the fire had cleared.2 Men thought that his
object had been to prepare the site of this new
1 It is possible that these were malefactors, increasing the dis-
order for purposes of plunder.
2 Sueton. Nero, 31, 38.

PETER AND PAUL.
75
palace, to justify a long-meditated reconstruction,
to procure funds by the appropriation of whatever
was left by the fire; in a word, to satisfy the foolish
vanity which would willingly have had Rome to
rebuild, that it might henceforth date from his reign
and be known as Neropolis.
Every respectable inhabitant of the city was out-
raged. The most precious antiquities of Rome, the
houses of old captains still decorated with triumphal
spoils, the holiest objects, the trophies, the ancient
ex votos, the most venerated temples, all that be-
longed to the ancestral Roman worship, had disap-
peared. There was an universal mourning for the
recollections and the legends of the land. It was in
vain that Nero undertook at his own cost to relieve
the misery which he had caused: it was in vain that
he pointed out that all that had been done really
amounted to no more than a clearing and a cleansing,
and that the new city would be far superior to the
old: no true Roman would believe him: all, to
whom a city was something more than a mere heap
of stones, were wounded to the heart: the conscience
of the country was hurt. This temple, built by


76 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
Evander, this, by Servius Tullius: the sacred en-
closure of Jupiter Stator, the palace of Numa: these
penates of the Roman people, these monuments of so
many victories, these masterpieces of Greek art,
how could their loss be repaired? In comparison
with them, what was the worth of these ostentatious
splendours, these vast monumental perspectives,
these straight lines without end? Ceremonies of
expiation were gone through: the Sibylline books
were consulted: the women especially celebrated
various piacula. But there remained the secret feel-
ing that a crime, an infamy, had been committed.
An infernal idea then suggested itself to Nero's
mind. He looked to see if there were not some-
where in the world wretches whom the citizens of
Rome hated still more bitterly than himself, and
upon whom he could divert the odium of the fire.
He thought of the Christians. The horror which
they showed for the temples and buildings most
venerated by the Romans, rendered it a plausible
idea that they had been the authors of a fire, one
effect of which had been to destroy these sanctuaries.
Their gloomy air in presence of the monuments was

PETER AND PAUL.
77
like an insult to the land. Rome was a highly reli-
gious city, in which any one who protested against
the national worship was soon conspicuous. We must
remember that some rigid Jews went so far as to be
unwilling to touch any coin which bore an effigy,
and thought it as great a crime to look at or to carry
an image as to carve one. Others refused to pass
through a gate of the city which was surmounted by
a statue. All this kind of thing excited the people's
mockery and ill-will. Possibly the talk of the Chris-
tians about the great final conflagration,¹ their sinis-
ter prophecies, their way of repeating that the world
was soon coming to an end, and that by fire, contri-
buted to fix upon them the character of incendiaries.
It may even be surmised that some of the faithful
had committed imprudences, and that there was
a pretext for accusing them of wishing to justify
their oracles at any cost, by preparing an earthly
prelude to the fires of heaven.
In four years and a half more, the Apocalypse
1 Conf. Carmina Sibyllina, iv. 172 et seq. (a passage written
about the year 75); also 2 Pet. iii. 7—13.


78
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
will celebrate in song a burning of Rome, to which
in all probability the event of 64 will furnish more
than one circumstance. The destruction of Rome
by fire was indeed a dream of both Jews and Chris-
tians; but it was no more than a dream: it was
enough for those pious sectaries to behold in spirit
saints and angels applauding from the height of
heaven what they regarded as a just expiation.¹
The first step taken was to arrest a certain num-
ber of persons who were suspected of belonging to
the new sect, and to crowd them together in an
imprisonment2 which was itself a severe punishment.3
They confessed their faith,-a confession that might
be looked upon as also a confession of the crime
judged to be inseparable from it. These first arrests
were followed by many others.4 The majority of
the accused appear to have been proselytes, who
observed the precepts and agreements of the treaty
1 Rev. xviii.
2 σvvn@poioon, Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. 6.
3 Shepherd of Hermas, i. vis. iii. 2.
4 Multitudo ingens, Tacit. Ann. xv. 44. Toλù λOOS EKλEKT@V,
π
Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. 6. öxlos πoλús, Rev. vii. 9, 14.


PETER AND PAUL.
79
of Jerusalem.¹ It is not to be supposed that any
true Christians informed against their brethren; but
papers may have been seized; neophytes, hardly yet
fully initiated, may have been weak under torture.
Men were surprised at the number of adherents
which these obscure doctrines had gained, and spoke
of the fact almost with terror. But all sensible
people found the evidence which connected the
Christians with the fire extremely weak. Their
true crime, it was said, was hatred of the human
However convinced that the conflagration
was the work of Nero, many grave Romans saw in
this cast of the police net a means of freeing the city
from a deadly pest. Tacitus, notwithstanding some
gleam of pity, is of this opinion.2 As to Suetonius,
he counts among the praiseworthy actions of Nero
the punishments which he inflicted on the adherents
of the new and maleficent superstition.3
race.
The punishments were frightful. Such refine-
ments of cruelty had never before been seen. Almost
¹ Rev. xii. 17, which appears to be an allusion to the atro-
cities of the year 64.
2 Ann. xv. 44.
8 Nero, 16.

80
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
all the Christians who had been arrested were humi-
liores, persons of no condition. The punishment of
these miserable creatures, whose crime was high
treason or sacrilege, was to be delivered to wild
beasts, or to be burned alive in the amphitheatre,¹
with the addition of cruel scourgings.2 One of the
most hideous features of Roman manners was to
make a festival of public executions, a spectacle of
3
4
butchery. The amphitheatres were turned into
places of execution: the tribunals furnished forth
the arena.
The criminals of the whole world were
1 Paul, Sentent. v. xxix. 1, “Humiliores bestiis objiciuntur vel
vivi exuruntur: honestiores capite puniuntur." Ulpian, Digest.
1. 6, pr., ad legem Juliam peculatus (xlviii. 13). Conf. Dearρi-
Cóμevoi, Heb. x. 33; Jos. B. J. vii. iii. 1. Letter of the churches
of Vienne and Lyons in Euseb. H. E. v. 1. Mart. Polyc. 2, 3, 4,
11-13. Tertull. Apol. 12, 40. Lactant. De mortibus Persecut.
13, 21. Death in the circus was the punishment of criminal
slaves. Petron. pp. 145, 146 (ed. Bücheler).
2 Herm. Pastor, i. vis. iii. 2.
of Lyons (Eus. H. E. v. 1, 36) and
3 Philo, In Flaccum, § 10.
Nero, 12.
Conf. the Acts of the Martyrs
of Africa, § 18 (Ruinart, p. 100).
Jos. B.J. viii. iii. 1. Sueton.
4 The amphitheatres of this age were of wood. Their construc-
tion in stone dates from the Flavian Emperors. Sueton. Vesp. 9.
*
PETER AND PAUL.
81.
brought to Rome for the supply of the circus and
the amusement of the people.¹
To the cruelty of punishment, on this occasion
was added derision.
a festival, to which,
The victims were reserved for
beyond doubt, an expiatory
The ludus matutinus, conse-
.3
character was given.
crated to the combats of wild animals,² saw a pro-
cession without precedent. Criminals, covered with
the skins of beasts, were thrown into the arena, and
there torn to pieces by dogs; others were crucified ;3
others, clad in garments saturated with oil or pitch
or resin, were fastened to gibbets and reserved to
illuminate the festival of the night. When the day
declined, these living flambeaux were lighted. Nero
lent for the show his magnificent gardens beyond the
1 Martyrium S. Ignatii, 2, eis répy Tоû dýμov.
2 Seneca, Epist. 7. Sueton. Claud. 34. Martial, x. xxv. xiii.
XCV. Tertull. Apol. 15. Conf. Ovid, Metam. xi. 26. Virgil
(redeunt spectacula mane). Orelli, Nos. 2553, 2554. The mar-
tyrs of Carthage (§ 17) took their last meal at night.
3 The reading aut flammandi atque gives room for doubt (vid.
Bernays, Ueber die Chronik des Sulp. Sev. pp. 54, 55, note), but
without important results. Perhaps the second aut is superfluous.
Flammandi, in the sense of ut flammarentur, is right.

G

82
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
Tiber, on the site of what is now the Borgo, the Piazza
and Basilica of St. Peter.¹ Here was a circus, begun
by Caligula and continued by Claudius. The central
point of the spina was marked by an obelisk brought
from Heliopolis-that which now rises in the centre
of the Piazza of St. Peter's.2 This spot had already
witnessed massacres by torch-light. Caligula, as he
took his walks, had there caused to be beheaded by
night a certain number of consular personages, sena-
tors and Roman ladies. The idea of substituting for
torches human bodies impregnated with inflammable
substances, might appear ingenious. As a punish-
ment, this method of burning alive was not new:
what was called the tunica molesta was the ordinary
1 The "pré Noiron" of the middle ages.
2 Sueton. Claud. 21. Tacit. Ann. xiv. 14. Pliny, Hist. Nat.
xv. xl. (76), xxxvi. xi. (15). This circus was the naumachia,
spoken of in the Acts of Peter. Conf. Platner and Bunsen,
Beschreibung der Stadt Rom. ii. i. 39. The obelisk was removed
by Sixtus V. It was formerly in the Sacristy of St. Peter's.
3 Senec. De Ira, iii. 18.
4 Juvenal, Sat. i. 155, 156, viii. 233-235. Martial, Epigr.
x. xxv. 5. Conf. Seneca, De Ira, iii. 3. Notice the uri of the
gladiators' engagement. Hor. Sat. ii. vii. 58. Petron. p. 149
(ed. Bücheler). Seneca, Epist. 37.

PETER AND PAUL.
83
penalty of arson: but it had never before been made
a method of artificial illumination. By the light
of these hideous torches, Nero, who had brought
night races into fashion,¹ showed himself in the
arena, sometimes in his jockey's dress mingling with
the people, sometimes driving his chariot and bid-
ding for applause. Signs of public compassion were,
however, not wholly wanting. Even those who
thought the Christians guilty, and openly declared
that they deserved condign punishment, held these
cruel pleasures in horror. Wise men would have
done no more than public utility demanded. They
would have purged the city of dangerous cha-
racters, while avoiding the appearance of sacrific-
ing so many criminals to the ferocity of a single
man.2
1 Sueton. Nero, 35.
2 Tacit. Ann. xv. 44. Sueton. Nero, 16. Clem. Rom. Ad Cor.
1. 6. Tertull. Apol. 5 (he appeals to the official commentarii);
Ad Nat. 1. 7. Scorpiace, 15. Euseb. H. E. ii. 22, 25. Chron.
ad ann. 13 Ner. Lactant. De Mortibus Persecut. 2. Sulp. Sev.
Hist. Sacra, ii. 29. Oros. vii. 7. Gregory of Tours, i. 24. Georg.
Syncell. Chron. p. 339. The echo of this persecution and allu-
sions to the tortures suffered by the Christians are to be found in
G 2

84 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
Women, virgins, were involved in these horrible
games.1 The nameless indignities which they suf
fered formed part of the festival. Under Nero,
a custom had grown up of compelling criminals
in the amphitheatre to play mythological parts,
ending in the death of the actors. These hideous
operas, in which mechanical science was applied
to produce prodigious effects, 2 were a novelty.
The unfortunate one was brought into the area,
richly clad as the god or hero who was devoted to
death, and there represented, in the circumstances
of his punishment, some tragical scene of the fables
Rev. vi. 9 et seq., vii. 9 et seq., xii. 10-12 and even 17, xiii.
7, 10, 15, 16, xiv. 12, 13, xvi. 6, xvii. 6, xviii. 24, xx. 4; Heb.
x. 32 et seq.; Herm. Pastor, i. vis. iii. c. 2; Carm. Sibyll. iv. 136,
v. 136 et seq., 385 et seq.; possibly in Matt. xxiv. 9 (0λífıs).
We shall show presently that the Apocalypse directly arose out
of the persecution of Nero. The inscription relating to this per-
secution (Orelli, No. 730) is a forgery.
1 Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. 6. Aia îλov Siwx0eîσaɩ yvvâikes
Δαναΐδες καὶ Δίρκαι, αἰκίσματα δεινὰ καὶ ἀνόσια παθουσαι ἐπὶ τὸν
τῆς πίστεως βέβαιον δρόμον κατήντησαν, καὶ ἔλαβον γέρας γεννᾶιον
αἱ ἀσθενεῖς τῷ σώματι.

2 Martial, Spectac. xxi.
A

PETER AND PAUL.
85
consecrated by sculptors and by poets.1 Sometimes
it was Hercules Furens, burning upon Mount Eta,
and tearing from his skin the shirt of burning pitch;
sometimes, Orpheus torn in pieces by a bear, Dæda-
lus falling from heaven and devoured by wild beasts,
Pasiphaé suffering the embraces of the bull, Attys
mutilated; 2 sometimes there were horrible masque-
rades, in which the men were accoutred as priests of
Saturn, with the red cloak upon their backs-the
women, as priestesses of Ceres, wearing fillets on
their foreheads;³ and again, dramatic pieces, in the
course of which the hero was actually put to death,
as, for instance, Laureolus, or representations of
tragic actions, such as that of Mucius Scævola.4 At
the conclusion, Mercury, with a rod of iron reddened
¹ Martial, Spectac. v. (conf. Sueton. Nero, 12; Apuleius, Me-
tam. i. 10), viii. (conf. Sueton. 7. c.), xxi. Tertullian, Apol. 15
(conf. 9). Ad nationes, i. 10. The tunica molesta usually implied
the representation of Hercules upon Mount Eta (Juven. viii. 235;
Martial, x. xxv. 5).
2 Perhaps he was confounded with Adonis, killed by the wild
boar.
3 Acts of the Martyrs of Africa, § 18.
4 Martial, Epigr. viii. xxx., x. xxv.


86
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
in the fire, touched each corpse for the purpose of
detecting any sign of life; while masked attendants,
representing Pluto or Orcas, dragged off the dead by
the feet, killing with mallets those that still quivered.¹
The most respectable Christian ladies were com-
pelled to bear a part in these horrors. Some played
the part of the Danaids, others that of Dirce.2 It is
difficult to see how the tale of the Danaids could
furnish materials for a sanguinary spectacle. The
punishment which all mythological tradition assigns
to those guilty women, and in the endurance of
which they were exhibited,³ was not sufficiently
cruel to minister to the pleasures of Nero and the
habitual spectators of his amphitheatre. Perhaps
they passed in procession, carrying their urns, and
received the fatal blow from an actor who represented
Lynceus.5 Perhaps Amymone, one of their number,
1 Tertull. Apol. 15. Conf. Sueton. Nero, 36.
2 Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. 6.
³ Pausanias, x. xxxi. 9, 11.
Vid. the notes of Hefele.
Museo Pio-Clem. iv. plate 36.
4 Museo Pio-Clem. ii. 2. Guigniaut, Rel. de l'Ant. pl. No. 606a.
Conf. Bulletino dell. Inst. di corr. Arch. 1848, 119-123.
5 Schol. on Euripides, Hecuba, 886. Conf. Servius ad Virg.
En. x. 497.


PETER AND PAUL.
87
was exhibited as pursued by a satyr, and violated
by Neptune.¹ Possibly these poor creatures went
through the whole series of the punishments of Tar-
tarus under the eyes of the audience, and died at last
after hours of torture. Representations of hell were
the fashion. Some years earlier, certain Egyptians
and Nubians had been very successful in Rome in
giving exhibitions by night, in which were shown
in due order the horrors of the under-world,² as dis-
played in the pictures of the royal tombs at Thebes,
and especially in that of Sethi I.
As to the punishment of the Dirces, there is no
doubt whatever. Every one knows the colossal
group called the Farnese Bull, now in the Museum
of Naples. Amphion and Zethus are binding Dirce
to the horns of an untamed bull, which is about to
drag her over the rocks and the briars of Citharon.3
1 Hygin. Fabulæ, 169. Conf. for what follows, 179.
2 Sueton. Caius, 57.
³ Real Museo Borbonico, xiv. pl. iv. v. Guignaut, Rel. de l'Ant.
pl. 728, 728a. Gargiulo, i. Nos. 1—3, iii. No. 23. Conf. Me-
morie della R. Accademia Ercolanese, iii. 386 et seq., iv. Pt. i.,
vii. 1 et seq. Raoul-Rochette, Choix de Peint. de Pompéi, pl.
xxiii. 277-288. Ann. de l'Institut de corr. Arch. xi. (1839),
88
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
This indifferent work of Rhodian sculpture, trans-
ported to Rome about the time of Augustus, was
the object of universal admiration.1 What finer
subject for that hideous kind of art, which the
cruelty of the times had brought into fashion, the
representation of celebrated statues by tableaux
vivants? An inscription and a fresco at Pompeii
seem to prove that, when the criminal was a woman,2
this terrible scene was often represented in the
arena. Naked and bound by the hair³ to the horns
of a furious bull,4 the miserable creatures glutted
287, 292. Helbig, Wandgemälde, Nos. 1151, 1152, 1153. Jahn,
Archæol. Zeitung, 1853, Nos. 36 et seq.
¹ Pliny, xxxvi. v. (4). Vid. Brunn, quoted above, p. 129,
note 3.
2 “Videt... memorandi spectaculi scenam non tauro sed asino
dependentem Dircen aniculam." Apul. Metam. vi. 127 (ed.
Oudendorp, 435, 436). Conf. Lucian, Lucius, 23 (read ypaûv
Δίρκην οὐκ ἐκ ταύρου ἀλλ' ἐξ ὄνου). Especially vid. Memorie
della R. Accademia Ercolanese, vii. plate in the first Memoir,
where the punishment seems to be represented as a spectacle
(observation of M. Minervini).
3 "Dircen ad taurum crinibus religatam necant." Hygin.
Fabulæ, Feb. 8.
4
* Compare the punishment of St. Blandina, exposed in a net
to a bull; and that of St. Perpetua and St. Felicita, also exposed
I
PETER AND PAUL.
89
the lustful gaze of a savage people. Some of the
Christian women thus immolated were feeble in
body:1 their courage was superhuman: but the in-
famous crowd had eyes only for their mangled
bowels, their torn bosoms.
Next to the day on which Jesus died on Golgotha,
the day of the festival in the gardens of Nero-we
may fix it as the first of August, 64-was the most
solemn in the history of Christianity. The solidity
of a construction is in proportion to the sum of
virtue, of sacrifice, of self-devotion, which has been
built into its foundations. Only fanatics can found
anything: Judaism still exists because of the intense
ardour of its prophets and its zealots; Christianity,
because of the courage of its first witnesses. The
orgy of Nero was the great baptism of blood which
marked out Rome, as the city of martyrs, to play a
special part in the history of Christianity, and to
become its second holy place. It was the taking
possession of the Vatican Hill by a triumphant army
in a net to a mad cow. Letter in Euseb. H. E. v. 1. Martyrs
of Africa, § 20.


1 Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. 6.
90
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
of a kind which the world had not yet known. The
hateful madman who governed the world did not
perceive that he was the founder of a new order of
things, and had signed for all future time a charter,
the results of which would be claimed for mankind
after the lapse of 1800 years.
IV.
I have already said that we can without impro-
bability connect the deaths of the apostles Peter and
Paul with the event which I have just narrated.
The one historical fact by which we can explain
the martyrdom of Peter is that of which Tacitus
speaks.1 Solid reasons lead us to believe that Paul
also suffered martyrdom at Rome.2 It is, then,

1 Ann. xv. 44. Read attentively Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. § 5, 6,
in the edition of Hilgenfeld. The πολὺ πλῆθος ἐκλεκτῶν, the
Danaids and the Dirces certainly suffered at Rome; now these
martyrs are, as it were, mingled up and confounded with the
apostles Peter and Paul (σvvn@poíoln).
2 The words of Clement of Rome, μαρτυρήσας ἐπὶ τῶν ἡγου
μένων οὕτως ἀπηλλάγη του κόσμου, do not necessarily imply a
violent death (conf. Acts xxiii. 11), but the whole of the passage,
especially ews Oaváτo [v λ0ov], in part conjectural, does prboa-
bly imply it, and the parallel with the paprupoas of Peter also.

PETER AND PAUL.
91
natural to refer his death also to the episode of
July-August, 64.1 As to the manner in which
indicates it. Dionysius of Corinth, Caius, priest of Rome, and
Tertullian (1.c. note 1), believe that Paul suffered martyrdom.
In the same way, the author of the Epistle of Ignatius to the
Ephesians, § 12 (passage wanting in the Syriac). Conf. Commod.
Carmen, 821.
¹ The strongest evidence of this is found in Clem. Rom. Ad
Cor. i. 5, 6. The author of this Epistle, which was certainly
written at Rome a few years after the death of the apostles (5,
initio), probably between the years 93 and 96, establishes a con-
nection between the execution of Peter and that of Paul, that of
the πολὺ πλῆθος ἐκλεκτῶν, that of the Danaids and the Dirces,
by the expression τούτοις τοῖς ἀνδράσιν συνηθροίσθη implying
a whole batch of irregular arrests--and, above all, by the common
cause to which all these deaths are attributed, namely, "jealousy."
Now it is clear that the πολὺ πλῆθος ἐκλεκτῶν, the Danaids and
the Dirces, suffered in the persecution of July-August, 64. Dio-
nysius of Corinth, quoted by Eusebius (H. E. ii. 25), says that
Peter and Paul died at Rome about the same time (κarà TÒV
avтòv kaιpóv); it is true that the force of his testimony is weak-
ened by the tale which he seems to tell of Peter's apostolate at
Corinth, and of the journeys of Peter and Paul in company. We
detect in him the presence of a systematic theory, having for its
object the association of Peter and Paul in the apostolate of the
Gentiles. Tertull. Præscr. 36; Adv. Marc. iv. 5; and Commod.
Carmen, 821, also associate the two apostles in their death. Conf.
Iren. Adv. Hær. iii. i. 1, iii. 3. Euseb. H. E. ii. 22, 25, iii. 1.
Chron. 13th year of Nero: Lactant. De Mortibus Persecut. 2. Inst.
Div. iv. 21. Jerome, De Viris ill. 5. Euthalius, in Zaccagni, Coll.

92
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
the two apostles suffered, we know certainly that
Peter was crucified.¹ According to some ancient
monum. vet. Eccl. Gr. p. 532. Sulpic. Sever. Hist. Sacra, ii. 29.
Bede, De rat. temp. 303 (ed. Giles). All the Roman tradition
(Caius, in Euseb. H. E. ii. 25). Liber Pontificalis, ed. Bianchini,
articles Peter and Cornelius; but note the contradictions. Acts
of Peter and Paul attributed to St. Linus, Bibl. Max. patr. ii.
Pt. i. p. 69c. Acts published by Tischendorf, § 84. Other Acts
of Peter, quoted by Bosio, Roma Sott. 74 et seq., place the mar-
tyrdom or the grave of Peter in the circus of Nero ("inter duas
metas, sub Terebintho, prope Naumachiam, in Vaticano, juxta
obeliscum Neronis in monte, juxta Palatium Neronianum (the
circus) in territorio triumphali"), that is, precisely in the place
which was the scene of the atrocities of August, 64. (Vid. Plat-
ner and Bunsen, ii. i. 39–41.) Lastly, the tradition of Peter's
crucifixion head downwards answers to Tacit. Ann. xv. 44. The
belief that Peter and Paul suffered on the same day established
itself at Rome, though not without dissent. (Council of Rome
under Gelasius, Labbe, Concil. iv. col. 1262; Jerome, De Viris
ill. 5.) Prudentius, St. Augustine and others, make the two
apostles die on the same day of the calendar, with a year between
them. Euseb. (Chron. ad ann. Neronis 13) and Jerome (l.c.)
assign the death of both apostles to the year 68, but as the result
of argument, not following tradition. Vid. Tillemont, Mem. i.
note 40, on St. Peter. Zonaras, xi. 13. Laud, Anecd. Syr. i. 116.
1 John xxi. 18, 19 (conf. John xii. 32, 33, xiii. 36). Tertull.
Adv. Marc. iv. 5. Præscr. 36. Scorpiace, 15. Euseb. H.E. ii. 25.
Lactant. De Mortibus Persecut. 2. · Orosius, vii. 7. Note that
Tacitus, Ann. xv. 44, counts crucibus affixi among those who
suffered. It is true that alterations proposed in the text of this

PETER AND PAUL.
93
texts, his wife died with him, and he saw her led
out to execution.¹ A story accepted ever since the
third century declares that, too humble to claim
equality with Jesus, he begged to be crucified with
his head downwards.2 As the characteristic of the
butchery of 64 was the invention of odious novelties
in torture, it is possible that Peter may really have
been exhibited to the mob in this horrible posture.
Seneca mentions cases in which tyrants have been
known to turn the heads of crucified persons earth-
wards. At a later period, Christian piety would
see a mystic refinement in what was only a whim-
sical caprice of the executioner. Possibly the phrase
of the fourth Gospel may contain some allusion to

3
passage (Bernays, 165, note 2) would strike out of the catalogue
those who were only crucified; but Sulpicius Severus (ii. 29),
who almost copies Tacitus, and a Tacitus more correct than ours,
in agreement with Hermas (i. vis. iii. 2), expressly enumerates
cruces (σTavρoús) among the punishments.
1 Clem. Alex. Strom. vii. 11.
2 Acta Petri et Pauli, c. 81 (conf. Pseudo-Linus, 69, 70).
Euseb. H. E. iii. 1 (after Origen). Euseb. Dem. Ev. iii. 5. Jerome,
De Viris ill. 1.
3 Consol. ad Marciam, 20 (written under Claudius).
4 Rufin. transl. of Euseb. H. E. l.c.
94
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
the peculiarity of Peter's punishment: 1 "Thou shalt
stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee,
and carry thee whither thou wouldst not." Paul,
as belonging to a higher rank in society (honestior),
had his head cut off.2 It is possible also that he
suffered after a regular process of trial, and was
not involved in the summary condemnation of the
victims of Nero's festival.
3
All this, I repeat, is both doubtful and of no great
importance. But true or not, the legend became
an article of faith. At the beginning of the third
century were already to be seen, not far from Rome,
two monuments to which the names of the apostles
Peter and Paul were attached. One, that of St.
Peter, was situated at the foot of the Vatican
Hill; the other, that of St. Paul, on the way to
1 The girding of the loins with a napkin was by no means a
rule in crucifixion. The passage in the Gospel of Nicodemus,
Pt. i. A, ch. x., refers to a very modern conception of the cruci-
fixion of Jesus.
2 Tertull. Præscr. 36. Scorp. 15. Euseb. H.E. ii. 25. Lac-
tant. De Mortibus Persecut. 2. Orosius, vii. 7. Euthalius in
Conf. Paul, Sentent. xxix. 1.
Zaccagni, 427, 522, 531-537.
3 Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. 5, μαρτυρήσας ἐπὶ τῶν ἡγουμένων.
PETER AND PAUL.
95
Ostia. They were called, in oratorical phrase, the
"trophies" of the apostles.¹ They were probably
cellæ or memoriæ dedicated to the two Saints. Simi-
lar monuments existed and were publicly recognized
before the time of Constantine;2 but we are to sup-
pose that these "trophies" were known only to the
faithful. Possibly they were no other than that
Terebinth of the Vatican with which for ages the
memory of Peter was associated, that Pine of the
Aqua Salvia which was, according to one tradition,
the centre of all recollections of Paul.3 At a later
period, these "trophies" became the tombs of the
apostles. About the middle of the third century,
1 Caius, quoted by Euseb. H. E. ii. 25. All that relates to the
construction of the memoria of St. Peter at the Vatican by Anen-
cletus (Liber Pontificalis, art. Anencletus) is legendary. Vid.
Lipsius, Chronol. der Röm. Bischöfe, p. 269 et seq., comparing
with it the text of Bianchini.
2 Euseb. Vita Const. ii. 40. Conf. De Rossi, Roma Sott. 209,
210. The publicity of the Christian cemeteries is a fact beyond
doubt.
3 Acta Petri et Pauli, 80 (text of the MSS. of Paris, Tischen-
dorf, p. 35 note). Nevertheless, the Aqua Salvia are too far
from the Basilica of St. Paul without the Walls, to permit of the
identification of the two sites.
96
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
two bodies, which universal veneration holds to be
those of the apostles,¹ actually make their appear-
1 Kalendarium liberianum, 3 Kal. Jun. (Abh. der Kön. Sächs.
Ges. phil-hist. Class. i. 632). Inscription of Damasus, Gruter,
ii. 1163. Liber Pontificalis (text of Bianchini and Lipsius (arts.
Peter, Cornelius, Damasus, and all the articles from Linus to
Victor, except two. The Liber Pontificalis contradicts itself.
Nothing is more obscure than the removals of bodies made by
St. Cornelius. It is said that he did no more than bring back
the bodies of the apostles to their first resting-place. Why should
they ever have been removed from it? The reason alleged, so
far as the body of Peter is concerned, taken from Lamprid. Heliog.
23, has very little force, and none at all is brought forward in
the case of Paul. The proximity of the Jewish cemetery of the
Vigna Randanini inclines me to believe that the two bodies
which were presented as those of the apostles were taken from the
catacombs of the Appian Way by St. Cornelius (A.D. 251—253),
at a time when the great persecution of Decius had raised the
care of martyrs' bodies into an ecclesiastical duty, and had excited
the zeal of the good Lucina, who was probably content with in-
conclusive proofs, and possibly could not refrain from committing
some trifling pious frauds. The traditions as to the remaining of
the bodies of the apostles at the catacomb of St. Sebastian, at the
place which was called par excellence Catacumbas (Kaтà tumbas)
Marchi, Monum. delle arti Cristiane primitive, 199-220), are
thus explained. Vid. Liber Pontificalis, arts. Cornelius, Dama-
sus, Adrian I., Nicholas I. Bede, De temp. rat. 309 (ed Giles).
Acts of St. Sebastian and others. Bosio, 247, 248, 251-256,
259,260. Acta SS. Jan. ii. 258, 278. Gruter, 1172, No. 12.
De Rossi, Roma Sott. i. 236 et seq., 240, 242. Catal. Imp. Rom
PETER AND PAUL.
97
!
ance, brought most likely from the catacombs of the
Appian Way, where there was more than one Jewish
cemetery.¹ In the fourth century, those bodies
repose where the two "trophies" stood.2 Above
in Roncalli. Vetustiora Lat. Script. Chronica (Padua, 1787),
ii. 248. Some MSS. of the Acta Petri et Pauli seem to wish to
reconcile opposing accounts. Tischendorf, Acta Apost. Apoc. 38,
39, note. Lipsius, Die Quellen der Röm. Petrussage, 99. Mabil-
lon, Liturgia Gallicana, 159. Conf. Gregory the Great, Epist.
iv. xxx. (Opera, ii. col. 710, ed. Benedict.). Acts of Mar Scher-
bil, in Cureton, Ancient. Syr. Docum. 61 et seq. (trans.).
1 Two are known to exist, at a distance of 200 or 300 metres,
one to the north, the other to the south of the place (ad Cata-
cumbas), whence, according to the tradition, the bodies of Peter
and Paul were taken. De Rossi, Bull. 1867, pp. 3, 16. This
is a strong reason for believing that the spot called κατὰ τυμβάς,
or ad tumbas, which at the beginning of the third century was
believed to contain the graves of the apostles, formed part of a
vast subterranean Jewish cemetery, situated in the bend which
the Appian Way makes near St. Sebastian. The centre of all
the Christian burials of the three first centuries was in this region.
De Rossi, Roma Sott. Vol. ii. passim.
2 Euseb. H. E. ii. 25. Note that the meaning of Koμητýpov
is tomb. Eusebius admits that by трóαια Caius means tombs.
The Roman tradition was almost in agreement as to the fact that
both Peter and Paul had been buried near the place where they
were put to death. Bosio, Roma Sott. 74 et seq., 197 et seq.
In the case of martyrs, the place of execution and the place of
burial were often confounded. Vid. Hegesipp. in Euseb. H.E.
II
98
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH:
the trophies are then raised two basilicas; one of
which has become the present Basilica of St. Peter,
while the other, that of St. Paul without the Walls,
has preserved its main features down to our own
day.
Did the "trophies" which the Christians vene-
rated in the second century really designate the
places at which the two apostles suffered? It is
not unlikely that Paul, in the latter part of his life,
inhabited the suburb which extended outside the
Porta Lavernalis, on the road to Ostia. On the
ii. xxiii. 18. Liber Pontif. arts. Peter, Cornelius. Acta Petri et
Pauli, § 84. It is nevertheless probable that the above-named
tradition arose from the fact that, after the final translation of
the two bodies and the building of the basilicas, men were under
the temptation to believe and say that the relics had always been
on the spot where they were offered to the piety of the faithful.
Conf. Euthalius in Zaccagni, 522, 523.
1 Conf. Kalendarium Lib. I.c. Liber Pontif. art. Cornelius.
Acta Petri et Pauli, 80. The place pointed out in these passages
is the site of the Basilica of St. Paul, which has doubtless
succeeded the Tрóπαιον of Caius. It is at a comparatively modern
epoch that the belief arose that St. Paul had been beheaded
almost two miles further off, Ad Aquas Salvias or Ad guttam
jugiter manantem, now St. Paul alle tre Fontane, one of the most
striking scenes of the Roman Campagna. Gregory the Great,
PETER AND PAUL.
99
other hand, the ghost of Peter, if Christian legend
may be trusted, always wanders round the foot of
the Vatican Hill, the gardens and the circus of Nero,
and especially round the obelisk. The reason of
this is, if we choose to think so, that the circus in
question preserved the remembrance of the martyrs
of 64, with whom, in the absence of more precise
evidence, Christian tradition associated Peter. We
prefer to believe that there is some solid ground for
the tradition,2 and that the former place of the obe-
lisk, now marked by an inscription, in the Sacristy
of St. Peter's, indicates, with tolerable accuracy, the
spot where Peter, in his frightful agony on the
cross, glutted the eyes of a populace greedy of
sights of suffering. But this is, after all, a ques-
tion of very secondary importance. If the Vatican
Basilica does not really cover the sepulchre of the
Epist. xiv. xiv. (Opp. ii. col. 1273, ed. Benedict.). Acta Petri et
Pauli, 80 (according to some MSS., Tischendorf, 35, note). Acta
SS. Junii, v. 43.
1 Bosio, Roma Sott. 74 et seq. Lipsius, Röm. Petrussage, 102
et seq.
2 The claims of S. Pietro in Montorio in regard to this matter
are unsupported by evidence.
H 2
Uor M
100
THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
apostle Peter, it not the less points out to our recol-
lection one of the most sacred sites of Christendom.
The spot which the bad taste of the seventeenth
century has occupied by a theatrical arcade was a
second Calvary, which, even if it were not the place
of Peter's crucifixion, saw-it is impossible to doubt
it-the martyrdoms of the Danaids and the Dirces.
We shall show in our next Lecture how legend
resolved all these doubts, and in what way the
Church concluded a reconciliation between Peter
and Paul, which possibly had been already sketched
out by the hand of death. This was the price at
which success was to be bought. Apparently inca-
pable of alliance, the Judeo-Christianity of Peter
and the Hellenism of Paul were yet equally neces-
sary to the success of the future work. Judeo-
Christianity represented the conservative spirit,
without which nothing is solid; Hellenism, the
movement and the progress, without which nothing
has any real existence. Life is the result of a con-
flict between these opposite forces. Death comes
equally by excess or absence of the breath of revo-
lution.
MoU
LECTURE III.
ROME, THE CENTRE OF GROWING
ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
LECTURE III.
ROME, THE CENTRE OF GROWING
ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
1.
ALMOST all the nations designed to play the part
of civilizers on the great scale-as, for instance,
Judea, Greece, the Italy of the Renaissance-exer-
cise their full influence on the world only after they
have fallen victims to their own greatness. They
must first die: then the world lives by them, assi-
milating what they have created at the cost of their
own fever and suffering. Nations, indeed, have to
choose between the slow, quiet, obscure destiny of
one who lives for himself, and the stormy and trou-
bled career of one who lives for humanity. The
people in the midst of which social and religious
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ROME, THE CENTRE OF
questions strive for solution, is almost always poli-
tically weak. Every country which dreams of a
kingdom of God, which lives for general ideas,
which attempts a work of universal concern, sacri-
fices in the act its particular fate, weakens and
destroys its possibility of playing a great earthly
part. No one, with impunity, can burn with an
inward fire. In order that Judea might make a
religious conquest of the world, it was necessary
that she should be blotted out from the roll of
nations. A revolution of extraordinary violence.
broke out in Judea in the year 66. For four years,
the strange race which seems to have been created
that it might distrust alike those who bless and
those who curse it, was in a state of convulsion,
before which the historian must pause with the
respect due to all that is mysterious.
The causes of this crisis were of old standing,
and the crisis itself inevitable. The Mosaic Law,
the work of lofty idealists, possessed by a powerful
socialistic thought, but the least politic of men, was,
like Islam, exclusive of a civil society, existing side
by side with the religious. This Law, which appears
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
105
to have taken the form in which we now read it, in
the eighth century B.C., would, even if the Assyrian
conquest had never taken place, have broken into
fragments the little kingdom of the descendants of
David. From the time that the prophetic element
took the upper hand, the kingdom of Judah, on
unfriendly terms with all its neighbours, full of
enduring hatred for Tyre, at enmity with Edom,
Moab and Ammon, had no longer any possibility of
life in it. I repeat, a nation which devotes itself to
social and religious problems, loses itself in politics.
The day when Israel became "a peculiar treasure"
unto God, "a kingdom of priests, a holy nation,"1
it was decreed that it should never be a people like
any other. It is impossible to unite contradictory
destinies: excellence is always atoned for by abase-
ment.
The empire of the Achæmenidæ gave Israel a brief
repose. In this great feudal system, tolerant of all
provincial differences, and strongly analogous to the
Khalifat of Bagdad and the Ottoman Empire, the
1 Exod. xix. 5, 6.
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ROME, THE CENTRE OF
Under
Jews found themselves more at ease than anywhere
else. The rule of the Ptolemies, in the third cen-
tury B.C., seems also to have been favourable to
them. It was not so with the Seleucidæ.
them, Antioch became the centre of an active Hel-
lenic propaganda: Antiochus Epiphanes thought it
his duty to mark his power by setting up every-
where the statue of the Olympian Zeus. Then
broke out the first great Jewish rebellion against
profane civilization. Israel had patiently borne the
annihilation of his political existence from the time
of Nabuchodonosor; but he was excited beyond
all bounds when he saw his religious institutions
in danger. A race, not generally warlike, was
fired with heroic ardour: without regular army,
without generals, without strategy, it overcame the
Seleucidæ, maintained its revealed Law, and won
for itself a second period of independence. At the
same time, the Asmonean dynasty was always
troubled by deep, inward vices: it lasted only for
a century. The fate of the Jewish people was not
to form a separate nationality: it is a race which
always cherishes a dream of something that tran-
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
107
•
scends nations: its ideal is not the city, but the
synagogue, the free congregation. It is the same
with Islam, which, while creating an immense
empire, has at the same time destroyed all nation-
ality in the sense in which we understand the
word-among its subjugated peoples, and has left
them no other country than the mosque and the
zaouia.
To such a social state the name of theocracy is
often given, and rightly, if by that is understood
that the basal idea of Semitic religion, and of the
empires that have sprung from it, is the kingdom
of God, regarded as the universal Sovereign and sole
Master of the world. But among these peoples the
word theocracy is not synonymous with the rule of
priests. The priest, properly so called, plays only
an unimportant part in the history of Judaism and
of Islamism. Power belongs to the representative
of God, to him whom God inspires, to the prophet,
to the saint, to whoever has received a mission
from heaven, and who proves his mission by the
truest of all miracles, success. In default of a
prophet, it attaches to the maker of apocalypses,
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ROME, THE CENTRE OF
and apocryphal books attributed to old prophets, to
the doctor who interprets the Divine law, to the
chief of the synagogue, more often still to the head
of the family, who keeps the deposit of the Law,
and hands it on to his children. Royalty, the civil
power, do not count for much in a social organization
of this kind. And such an organization never works
better than when the individuals who submit them-
selves to it are spread abroad as tolerated strangers
through a great and diverse empire. It is in the
nature of Judaism, inasmuch as it cannot evolve
from itself the principle of military power, to
remain in a condition of political subordination.
Its essence has been to form communities, which,
with their code and their private magistracy, exist
in the heart of other states, until modern libe-
ralism introduces the principle of equality before
the law.
The Roman rule, established in Judea in the year
63 B.C., by the arms of Pompey, seemed at first to
realize some of the conditions of Jewish life. It was
not at this period the policy of Rome to assimilate
to herself the peoples which she annexed, one after
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
109
た
​the other, to her vast empire. While she took from
them the right of peace and war, she claimed for
herself only a deciding voice in great politi-
cal questions. Under the last degenerate rulers
of the Asmonean dynasty, as well as under the
Herods, the Jewish nation preserved a semi-inde-
pendence, in which its religious life was respected.
But the moral crisis through which the people was
passing was too violent. When men have reached
a certain degree of religious fanaticism, they are
ungovernable. It must also be admitted that the
tendency of Rome always was to strengthen her
rule in the East. The little vassal royalties, which
she had at first preserved, disappeared from day to
day, and the provinces were absorbed in the Empire.
From the year 6 A.D., Judea was administered by
procurators, who were subordinated to the imperial
legati of Syria, and who governed side by side with
the Herods. The impossibility of such a system
made itself more manifest every day. The Herods,
in the East, had no great reputation as men of
genuine patriotism and piety. The administrative
habits of the Romans, even on their most reasonable
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ROME, THE CENTRE OF
,
side, were hateful to the Jews. Generally speaking,
the Romans showed the greatest consideration for
the fastidious scruples of the nation; but this was
not enough things had come to such a pass that it
was impossible to move in any direction without
raising a question of Mosaic Law. Absolute reli-
gions, such as Islamism, Judaism, suffer no partition
of authority. If they are not supreme, they com-
plain that they are persecuted. If conscious of being
protected, they grow exacting, and attempt to make
life impossible to all religions round about them.
I should be leaving the path which I have marked
out for myself if I were to tell you the story, as
Josephus has preserved it, of that strange struggle,
the terror in Jerusalem, with Simon Bar Gioras
commanding the town, and John of Giskhala, and
his assassins, master of the temple. Fanatical move-
ments are far from excluding hatred, jealousy, mis-
trust, from the minds of those who are the actors in
them: men of very deep and passionate convictions,
when associated together, are prone to suspect each
other. And this very fact constitutes a force; for
mutual suspicion breeds terror among men, binds
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
111
them together as with an iron chain, prevents mo-
ments of weakness and fallings away. It is only an
artificial policy, one not based on conviction, which
preserves the show of agreement and courtesy.
Interest creates a coterie; principles make divisions,
inspire the desire to expel, to decimate, to slay
opponents. Those who bring superficial ideas to the
judgment of human affairs, think that the revolution
is lost when revolutionaries, as the phrase goes,
begin to eat one another up. On the contrary, it is
a proof that the revolution still possesses all its
energy, and is directed by an impersonal ardour.
Never was this more clearly seen than in the terrible
drama of Jerusalem. The actors in it seem to have
made a compact of mutual slaughter. As in those
hellish revels in which, as the Middle Ages believed,
Satan forms the ring, and drags towards a mysterious
abyss long lines of men, dancing hand in hand
to their fate, the revolution allows no one to fall
out of the mad whirl which it leads. Behind the
dancers is terror: by turns maddening and mad-
dened, they approach the gulf: none can draw back,
for behind each is a hidden sword, which, at the
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ROME, THE CENTRE OF
very moment when he would willingly stop, drives
him onward.
But what is strangest is, that these madmen are
not altogether mistaken. The enthusiasts of Jeru-
salem, who at the very moment that she was in
flames declared her to be eternal, were nearer the
truth than the men who believed them to be only
vulgar assassins. They were wrong as to the imme-
diate military question, but right as to the far-off
religious result. Those days of trouble really marked
the moment at which Jerusalem became the spiritual
capital of the world. The Apocalypse, the burning
expression of the love which she inspired, has taken
its place among the religious books of humanity, and
has consecrated for ever the image of "the beloved
city." Ah! we ought never to say beforehand who,
in the time to come, is to be saint or scoundrel, fool
or sage! Jerusalem, a city of ordinary citizens,
would have developed, one cannot tell for how long,
only an ordinary history. It was because she had
the incomparable honour of being the cradle of
Christianity that she was the victim of John of
Giskhala and Simon Bar Gioras, in semblance the
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
113
scourges of their country, in reality the instruments
of her apotheosis. These zealots, whom Josephus
regards as robbers and murderers, were politicians
of the lowest class, incapable soldiers; but they
heroically lost a country which it was impossible to
save. They lost a material city; they opened the
reign of the spiritual Jerusalem, more glorious in her
desolation than in the days of Herod and of Solomon.
What, indeed, did the conservatives, the Sadducees,
desire? A paltry thing: the perpetuation of a city
of priests, such as Emesa, Tyana, Comana. Of a
truth, they were not wrong when they declared that
the uprising of enthusiasm was the ruin of the nation.
Revolution and Messianism destroyed the national
existence of the Jewish people; but Revolution and
Messianism were not the less that people's calling,
the contribution which it made to the universal work
of civilization.
II.
The victory of Rome was complete. A captain
of our race, of our blood, a man like ourselves,¹ at
1 The Flavii had their origin in Cisalpine Gaul. The portraits
of Titus and Vespasian show us two ordinary faces, of the kind
which we are most accustomed to see.
I
·
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ROME, THE CENTRE OF
the head of legions, in whose muster-roll, if we
could read it, we should find the names of more
than one of our ancestors, had just crushed the for-
tress of Semitism, and inflicted on the theocracy, that
formidable enemy of civilization, the greatest defeat
which it had ever suffered. It was the triumph of
the Roman Law, or rather of rational law-a pro-
duct of philosophy which presupposed no revelation,
over the Jewish Thora, the fruit of a revelation.
This Law, of which the roots were partly Greek,
but to the development of which the practical Latin
genius had so largely contributed, was the admirable
gift which Rome, in exchange for their independence,
made to the nations whom she conquered. Every
victory of Rome was a victory of reason. She offered
to the world a principle, preferable in many respects
to that of the Jews-I mean the principle of the
secular state, resting upon a purely civil conception
of society.
The triumph of Titus was, then, legitimate in
more ways than one; and yet never was triumph
less useful. The deplorable religious nullity of
Rome rendered his victory unfruitful. It did not
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
115
retard by a day the progress of Judaism: it did not
give the religion of the Empire one chance the more
of successful struggle against this formidable rival.
The national existence of the Jewish people was
irretrievably lost; but this was a piece of good
fortune. The true glory of Judaism was the Chris-
tianity then in act of birth. And for Christianity,
the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple was an
advantage above all other.
If the reasoning which Tacitus ascribes to Titus
is correctly reported,¹ the victorious general ima-
gined that the destruction of the temple would be
the ruin of Christianity as well as of Judaism.
There never was a greater mistake. The Romans
1 M. Jacob Bernays (Ueber die Chronik des Sulpicius Severus,
Berlin, 1861, pp. 48 et seq.) has proved that the passage of Sulp.
Sev. ii. xxx. 6, 7, is taken almost word for word from the lost por-
tion of the Histories of Tacitus. Tacitus had himself derived his
information from the book which Antonius Julianus, one of the
officers of the Council of War, wrote under the title De Judais
(Minutius Felix, Octav. 33. Tillemont, Hist. des Emp. i. 588).
Orosius, like Sulpicius Severus, had in his hands the complete
text of the Histories; but he speaks vaguely, diu deliberavit. He
ends, however, by attributing the fire to Titus, incendit ac diruit
(vii. 9).
I 2
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ROME, THE CENTRE OF
thought that in tearing away the root, they were at
the same time tearing away the sucker; but the
sucker had already become a tree, with an indepen-
dent life of its own. If the temple had remained,
Christianity would certainly have been arrested in
its development. The temple, still standing, would
have continued to be the centre of all Jewish activi-
ties. They would never have ceased to look upon
it as earth's most sacred spot; to resort to it in
pilgrimage; to bring thither their tribute. The
church of Jerusalem, assembled about the sacred
enclosure, would have continued, in virtue of its
primacy, to receive the homage of the whole world,
to persecute the Christians of the Pauline churches,
to exact circumcision and the practice of the Mosaic
Law from all who desired to call themselves disciples
of Jesus. All fruitful missionary effort would have
been forbidden: letters of obedience, signed at Jeru-
salem, would have been exacted from all wander-
ing preachers. A centre of infallible authority, a
patriarchate, residing in a kind of College of Car-
1 See the letters at the head of the Pseudo-Clementine
Homilies.
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 117
dinals, under the presidency of such persons as
James, pure Jews, men belonging to the family of
Jesus, would have been established,¹ and would
have become an immense danger to the nascent
Church. The very fact that Paul, after so much ill
usage, always remains in connection with the church
of Jerusalem, shows what difficulties would have
attended a rupture with those holy personages.
Such a schism would have been thought an enormity.
Separation from Judaism would have been impos-
sible, and yet that separation was the necessary con-
dition of the existence of the new religion, as the
cutting of the umbilical cord is the condition of the
1 In our own time, an analogous state of things is producing
itself in connection with Judaism, and seems likely to acquire
considerable importance. The Jews of Jerusalem all pass for
hakamim, or learned men, having no other occupation than medi-
tation upon the Law. As such, they have a right to alms, and
look upon themselves as entitled to support from Jews of the
whole world. Beggars on their behalf go about all the East, and
even the rich Israelites of Europe conceive themselves obliged to
assist their needs. On the other side, the decisions of the Great
Rabbi of Jerusalem tend to acquire universal authority, although
formerly all doctors were equal, or at all events their credit de-
pended on their reputation. In this way it is possible that at some
future time Jerusalem may become the doctrinal centre of Judaism.
1
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ROME, THE CENTRE OF
existence of a new being. The mother would have
killed the child. On the other hand, the temple
once destroyed, the Christians no longer bear it in
mind: before long they will look upon it as a pro-
fane spot:1 Jesus will be all in all to them.
By the same blow, the Christian church at Jeru-
salem was reduced to a secondary importance. It
is seen to form itself anew around the centre from
which its strength proceeds, the desposyni, the mem-
bers of the family of Jesus, the sons of Cleopas; but
its day of royalty is past. This focus of hatred and
exclusiveness once destroyed, the mutual approach
of opposing parties in the church of Jesus will be-
come easy. Peter and Paul will be reconciled of
their own accord, and the terrible duality of nascent
Christianity will cease to be a mortal wound. Lost
in the depths of Batanea, of the Hauran, the little
group which attached itself to the kinsmen of Jesus,
to James, to Cleopas, becomes the Ebionite sect and
slowly disappears.
1 "Ecclesia Dei jam per totum orbem uberrime germinante,
hoc (templum) tanquam effœtum ac vacuum nullique usui bono
commodum arbitrio Dei auferendum fuit." Orosius, vii. 9.
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 119
δεσπόσυνοι.
These kinsmen of Jesus were pious people, quiet,
mild, modest, labouring with their hands,¹ faithful
to the severest principles of Jesus in regard to
poverty,2 but at the same time very rigid Jews,
who prized above every other advantage the title of
children of Israel. Men held them in great rever-
ence, giving them a name the Greek equivalent of
which was SeoTÓσVVOL. From the year 70 to about
the year 110, they virtually governed the churches
beyond Jordan, and formed a kind of Christian
senate. The immense danger to nascent Christianity
involved in these genealogical prejudices needs no
proof. A species of Christian noblesse was in course
of formation. In the political order, a nobility is
almost necessary to the state, for politics have to do
with coarse contentions which make them more a
material than an ideal thing. A state is thoroughly
strong only when a certain number of communities,
1 Hegesippus in Euseb. H. E. iii. 20.
2 Gospel of the Hebrews, ed. Hilgenfeld, 16, 17, 25. Recognit.
ii. 29.
3 Of this St. James furnished the ideal.
attributed to him.
See the Epistle
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ROME, THE CENTRE OF
in the exercise of a traditional privilege, acknowledge
it to be both their interest and their duty to attend
to its affairs, to represent it, to defend it. But in
the ideal order, birth is nothing: the measure of
each man's value is furnished by the truth which he
discovers and the good which he realizes. Institu-
tions which have a religious, literary, moral object,
are ruined when considerations of family, caste, here-
dity, come to prevail in them. The nephews and
the cousins of Jesus would have caused the destruc-
tion of Christianity, if the Pauline churches had not
already been strong enough to act as a counterpoise
to this aristocracy, the tendency of which would
have been to confine respectability to itself, and to
have treated all converts as intruders. Claims such
as those which the descendants of Ali put forward
in Islam would have been made. Islam would cer-
tainly have perished in the troubles caused by the
family of the Prophet, if the result of the struggles
of the first century of the Hegira had not been to
push back into the second rank all who had held a
place too near the person of the founder. The true
heirs of a great man are not his kinsmen in blood,
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 121
but those who continue his work. Looking on the
tradition of Jesus as their own private property,
the little coterie of Nazarenes would have certainly
smothered it. Happily, this narrow circle disap-
peared before long: in the depths of the Hauran,
the kinsmen of Jesus were soon forgotten. They
lost all importance, and Jesus was left to his true
family, to the only family whom he ever acknow-
ledged, those who "hear the word of God and keep
it."1 Many passages in the Gospels, in which the
family of Jesus is represented in a light that can
hardly be called favourable, possibly arose from the
antipathy which the aristocratic pretensions of the
desposyni could not fail to inspire in those around
them.
III.
In proportion as the Church of Jerusalem falls,
the Church of Rome rises; or to put the fact in a
better way, a phenomenon that plainly shows itself
in the years that follow the victory of Titus is, that
the Church of Rome becomes more and more the
1 Luke xi. 28.
+
122
!
ROME, THE CENTRE OF
heir of the Church of Jerusalem, and takes its place.
The spirit of the two Churches is the same; but
what was a danger at Jerusalem becomes an advan-
tage at Rome. The taste for tradition and hierarchy,
the respect for authority, are in some sort trans-
planted from the courts of the Temple to the West.
James, the brother of the Lord, had been a quasi
Pope at Jerusalem; Rome is about to take up the
part of James. We are to have the Pope of Rome;
without Titus we should have had the Pope o
Jerusalem. But there is this great difference be-
tween them, that while the Pope of Jerusalem would
have smothered Christianity at the end of a century
or two, the Pope of Rome has made it the religion
of the world.
The truth of what I have said is illustrated in a
very important personage, who appears to have
been at the head of the Roman Church in the last
years of the first century, and in regard to whom I
am happy to find myself in accord with one of your
ablest and most enlightened critics, Dr. Lightfoot:1
1 St. Clement of Rome: with an Appendix containing the
newly-recovered portions; with Introductions, Notes and Transla-
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
123
I mean Clement of Rome. In the half shadow in
which he remains, enveloped and as it were lost in
the luminous dust of a fine historic distance, Clement
is one of the great figures of a nascent Christianity:
we might liken him to some head in fresco of
Giotto's, old and faded, but still to be recognized
by its golden glory and the pure and mild brilliance
of its indistinct features.
Everything leads us to believe that Clement was
of Jewish origin. He seems to have been born at
Rome, of one of those Palestinian families which
for one or more generations had inhabited the capi-
tal of the world.2 His knowledge of cosmography3
tions: London, 1877. The system of the school of Tübingen
in regard to Clement is deeply impressed with a character of
subtlety and exaggeration.
1 Note especially, in his letter, the expression, 8 TαTηρ ýµŵv
'Iakúß (ch. 4), and what he says of the temple of Jerusalem
(ch. 40, 41).
2 Ch. 40, 41. The author of the latter speaks of the temple
as standing, although he knew it only from books.
3 See especially ch. 20, and in particular the passage upon
"the worlds lying behind the ocean.” Note the comparison of
the Phoenix, ch. 29.
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ROME, THE CENTRE OF
=
and secular history¹ testifies to a careful education.
Without having any decisive proof of the fact, we
may admit that he had been at an early period in
relation with the apostles, and especially with Peter.2
The high rank which he held in the purely spiritual
hierarchy of the Church of his times, and the
unequalled credit which he enjoyed, are beyond
doubt. His approval was a law in itself. All
parties claimed his leadership and desired to shelter
themselves beneath his authority. It is probable
that he was one of the chief actors in the great
work which was in process of accomplishment-I
mean the posthumous reconciliation of Peter and
Paul, and the fusion of the two parties,-a fusion
without which the work of Christ must have
perished. He is the first type of Pope which Church
history presents to us. His lofty personality, which
1 Ch. 55.
2 Irenæus, l.c. Irenæus requires the reality of these relations
to support his thesis as to the apostolical tradition. Tertull.
Præscr. 32. Origen, De Princ. ii. 6. Rufinus, De adult. libr.
Orig. p. 50 (Delarue, Vol. iv. app.).
3 Pseudo-Hermas, vis. ii. 4.
ས་;
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 125
!
legend makes more lofty still, was, after that of
Peter, the holiest figure of primitive Christian Rome.
Succeeding ages looked upon his venerable face as
that of a mild and grave legislator, a perpetual
homily of submission and respect.
Already the idea of a certain primacy belonging
to his Church was beginning to make its way to the
light. The right of warning other churches and
of composing their differences was conceded to it.
Similar privileges-so at least it was believed¹-had
been accorded to Peter by the other disciples. Thus
a bond which gradually grew closer was established
between Peter and Rome. Grave dissensions tore in
pieces the Church of Corinth.2 The Roman Church,
consulted as to these troubles, replied in a letter which
is still extant. It is anonymous, but a very ancient
tradition assigns the composition of it to Clement.
The Church of Corinth had changed very little
since the time of Paul. Its spirit of pride, of dis-
putation, of fickleness, was the same. We feel that
the principal opposition to the hierarchy arose from
2 Luke xxii. 32.
8 Hegesipp. in Euseb. H. E. iii. 16, iv. 22.
126
ROME, THE CENTRE OF
!
the Greek character, always mobile, undisciplined,
unable to convert a mob into a flock.
Women,
children were in full revolt. Transcendental doctors
fancied themselves in possession of profound views
upon every subject, of mystic secrets, analogous to
the "speaking with tongues" and the "discernment
of spirits." Those who were honoured by these
supernatural gifts despised the presbyteri, and aspired
to take their place. Corinth had a respectable body
of presbyters, but one which did not aim at high
mysticism. The claim of the illuminated was to cast
it into the shade and to assume its office: some pres-
byteri were actually deprived.¹ The struggle began
between the established hierarchy on one side and
personal revelations on the other, a struggle which
is to fill all the history of the Church; for the privi-
leged soul always finds it hard to bear that, in spite
of the favours with which it is honoured, a clergy
which is at once coarse-minded and ignorant of the
spiritual life should authoritatively rule it. Finally,
the innovators, proud to excess of their lofty virtue,
1
¹ Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. c. 44.
:
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 127
exalted chastity to the point of depreciating mar-
riage.¹ It was, as we see, the heresy of individual
mysticism, maintaining the rights of the spirit against
authority, and, on the strength of direct relations
with the Deity, claiming superiority over common
mortals and the ordinary clergy.
The Roman Church was henceforth the Church of
order, of rule, of subordination. Its fundamental
principle was, that humility and submission were of
more account than the sublimest gifts.2 Its letter
to the Corinthians is the first manifesto of the prin-
ciple of authority made within the Christian Church.3
1 Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. ch. 38, 48. Conf. ch. 1, 21.
2 Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. ch. 38, 48.
3 Few writings are as authentic. Dionys. of Corinth (in Eus.
H. E. iv. xxiii. 11). Hegesipp. (in Eus. H. E. iii. xvi. iv. xxii. 1).
Iren. (Adv. Hær. iii. iii. 3). Clem. Alex. (Strom. i. 7, iv. 17-19,
v. 12, vi. 8). Origen (De Princ. ii. 6. Selecta in Ezech. viii. 3.
Opp. Vol. vi. 36, iv. 153).
Opp. Vol. iii. 422. In Johann. i. 28.
Euseb. (H.E. iii. xvi. xxxviii. 1, vi. xiii. 6). Down to a recent
date, the work was known only by the celebrated Codex Alexan-
drinus in the British Museum. In this copy there were two
pages wanting. In 1879, Philotheus Bryennius, Metropolitan
of Serræ, published it in a complete form, after a MS. of the
library of St. Sepulchre, in the Fanar (Constantinople, 8vo).
Vid. the recent publications of Hilgenfeld, of Gebhardt and
1
128
ROME, THE CENTRE OF
Some years ago, a great outcry was raised against
a French Archbishop, then a senator, who said from
the tribune, "My clergy is my regiment." Clement
had said the same thing long before. Order and
obedience—this is the supreme law of the family and
of the church. "Let us consider the soldiers who
serve under our sovereigns,¹ with what order, what
punctuality, what submission, they execute the com-
Harnack (Leipzig, 1876), of Lightfoot (London, 1877). In the
Cod. Alex. the work is expressly attributed to Clement (index
at the beginning of the volume). In the MS. of the Fanar, the
same ascription forms part of the title-page. The pretended
second letter to the Corinthians, preserved in the same volumes,
and complete only in the second, is not by Clement. Irenæus
(1.c.), Clem. Alex. (Strom. v. 12), Origen, speak of only one
letter of Clement's to the Corinthians. Conf. Euseb. H. E.
iii. 38. Jerome, De Vir. ill. 16. Photius, cxii. cxiii. The so-
called second Epistle is rather a sermon than a letter. It belongs
to the second century. Vid. Journal des Savants, Jan. 1877.
Other unauthentic letters circulated under the sanction of the
name of Clement. Epiph. Hær. xxii. 6, xxx. 15. Hilgenfeld,
N.T. extra Can. Rec. i. 61, 74-76. Conf. Zeitsch. für Kir-
chengeschichte, i. 272 et seq., 329 et seq.
1 Ch. 37. It has been proposed to read roîs yovμévois avτôv.
But the two MSS. have uov. Besides, the passage in ch. 61,
wanting in the Cod. Alex., in agreement with the Syriac, TOîs
τε ἄρχουσι καὶ ἡγουμένοις ἡμῶν, fully justifies the reading of ch.
37. Vid. Journal des Savants, Jan. 1877, pp. 8, 9.
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 129
mands given to them. All are not prefects, or tri-
bunes, or centurions, but each in his own rank obeys
the orders of the emperor and his leaders. The great
cannot exist without the small, nor the small with-
out the great. In all things there is a mixture of
different elements, and in this mixture there is profit.
Let us take our body as an example. The head
without the feet is nothing, nor the feet without the
head. The least of our organs are necessary and
serve the whole body; all conspire together and obey
one principle of subordination for the preservation
of the whole."
The history of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is one of
a three-fold abdication: first, the community of the
faithful abandoning all power to the elders or presby-
teri; the presbyteral body then concentrating itself
in a single person, who is the episcopos; finally, the
episcopi of the Latin Church recognizing one among
themselves, the Pope, as chief. This last stage of
progress, if progress it can be called, has been
reached only in our own day. The creation of the
episcopate is the work of the second century. The
absorption of the Church by the presbyteri was an
K
130
ROME, THE CENTRE OF
accomplished fact before the end of the first. In the
Epistle of Clement of Rome, it is not the episcopate,
but the presbyteral body, which is in question.¹ We
find no trace as yet of a presbyteros superior to and
about to dethrone the rest. But the author loudly
proclaims that the presbyters, the clergy, are anterior
to the people. The apostles, in founding churches,
have chosen by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost
"the bishops and deacons of the believers that are
to be." The powers proceeding from the apostles
have been transmitted by a regular succession. No
church, therefore, has the right of depriving its
elders.2 In the church, the rich have no privileges.
In like manner, those who have been favoured with
mysterious gifts, far from thinking themselves above
the hierarchy, ought to be most submissive.
Men were approaching the great question, "What
is the essential element in the Church? Is it the
1 Ch. 39. The words πрeσßúτepoɩ, émiσkóπoɩ (ch. 42, 44) are
synonymous in our Epistle, as in Phil. i. 1; Acts xx. 17 et seq.,
28. The words ἡγουμένοι, προηγούμενοι have the same meaning.
Conf. Heb. xiii. 7, 17, 24.
2 Ch. 44.
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 131
.
people? the clergy? the inspired soul?" The ques-
tion had been already asked in Paul's time, and
he had solved the problem in the only true way,
namely, by mutual charity. Our Epistle solves it
in the sense of pure Catholicism. The apostolical
credential is everything: the right of the people is
reduced to nothing. We may well say, therefore,
that Catholicism had its origin in Rome, for it was
the Roman Church that first formulated its law.
Precedence does not belong to spiritual gifts, or to
science, or to distinction; it belongs to the hierarchy,
to powers transmitted by the channel of canonical
ordination, attaching itself to the apostles by an
unbroken chain. Men felt that the free Church,
such as Jesus had conceived it, such as Paul still
understood it to be,2 was an anarchic Utopia, holding
no promise of the future. With evangelical liberty,
disorder went hand in hand: they did not see that,
in the long run, hierarchy meant uniformity and
death.
1
1 Matt. xviii. 20.
2 2 Cor. i. 21.
K 2
132
ROME, THE CENTRE OF
IV.
I look upon the Gospel of Luke as having been
written at Rome at no great distance from the social
circle of which Clement was a member. Clement
had probably seen neither Peter nor Paul. His
large practical good sense showed him that, for the
safety of the Christian Church, the reconciliation of
the two founders was necessary. Did he inspire
St. Luke, who appears to have stood in some kind of
relation to him, or did these two pious souls spon-
taneously agree as to the direction which it was
expedient to give to Christian opinion? We have
no records which enable us to answer the question.
All that we certainly know is, that the reconciliation
was the work of Rome.2 Rome had two churches,
one descending from Peter, the other from Paul. To
the numerous converts who came to Jesus, these by
the channel of the school of Peter, those by the
¹ Legend makes him sometimes the disciple of Peter, some-
times of Paul.
2 Note in Luke the Latin words, τρίστεγος, σουδάρια, σιμι
κίνθια.
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 133
!
channel of the school of Paul, and who were equally
tempted to cry, "What, are there then two Christs?"
it was necessary to be able to say, "No; Peter and
Paul were absolutely at one: the Christianity of the
one is the Christianity of the other." It may be
that with this view a turn was given to the evan-
gelical legend of the miraculous draught of fishes.¹
According to the account of Luke, the nets of Peter
were not large enough to hold the multitude of fishes
that were willing to be taken: Peter is obliged to
call his fellow-fishermen to his aid: a second boat,
that of Paul and his friends, is filled like the first,
and the take of the kingdom of God is large to
overflowing.
The lives of the two apostles began to fade away
from men's minds. All who had known them were
gone, and for the most part without leaving any
record behind. Upon this virgin canvas men were
free to paint what picture they would. Friends and
enemies alike took advantage of the general igno-
rance to invent arguments in support of their theories
¹ Luke v. 1-11. Conf. Mark i. 14, 19; Matt. iv. 12—17.
134
ROME, THE CENTRE OF
and to gratify their animosities. A vast Ebionite
legend arose in Rome, and, under the name of
"The Preaching" or "The Journeys of Peter,"
took a fixed shape about the year 130 A.D., that is
to say, 66 years, more or less, after the death of the
apostles.1 The journeys and the preaching of Peter
were its main subject. It told of the mission of the
head of the apostles, chiefly on the coast of Phoenicia,
the conversions which he had effected, and his strug-
gles, especially with the great Antichrist, Simon of
Gitton, who at this time was the spectre of the
Christian consciousness. But often, in ambiguous
phrase, another person was indicated under this
abhorred name-the false apostle Paul, the enemy
of the Law, the destroyer of the true Church.2
And the true Church was that of Jerusalem, with
James, the brother of the Lord, at its head. No
1 Vid. Lipsius, Römische Petrussage, already quoted.
2 Vid. Homilies, ii. 17, 22 et seq., xvi. 15, 16, xvii. 17, 18, 19
(conf. Gal. ii. 11). It is beyond doubt, whatever the critics of
the Tübingen school may say, that Simon of Gitton was a real
person, and that he often figures on his own account in the
Pseudo-Clementine romance, as we have it. But the passages
above quoted cannot refer exclusively to him.
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
135
apostleship was worth anything unless it could show
letters proceeding from this central college. Paul
had no such letters: he was therefore an intruder
into the fold. He was the "enemy" who followed
the steps of the true sower that he might sow tares.¹
With what force, then, did Peter lay bare his im-
postures, his lying stories of personal revelations,
his ascent into the third heaven,2 his pretence of
knowing about Jesus what the hearers of the gospel
had not heard, the exaggerated conception which he
and his disciples cherished of the divinity of Jesus !³
At Antioch, above all, the triumph of Peter was
complete. Simon had succeeded in turning away
the people of that city from the truth. By a series
of clever manœuvres, Peter induces a victim of
Simon's enchantments, to whom the magician had
given his own likeness, to recant in these words:
1 Matt. xiii. 24 et seq. Epiph. Hær. xxx. 16, seems to imply
Ehionite writings in which Paul was referred to by name.
2 Recogn. ii. 65. Conf. 2 Cor. xi. 14 with Recogn. ii. 18; the
σkevos ekλoyŷs of Recogn. iii. 49 with Acts ix. 15, &c. Note
also Acta Petri et Pauli, ch. 63–66.
3 Homilies, xvi. xvii. xviii.
136
ROME, THE CENTRE OF
"I have lied as to Peter: he is the true apostle of
the Prophet sent by God for the salvation of the
world. This night angels have scourged me for my
calumnies against him. Do not listen to me if, after
this, I speak against him."1 Naturally, all Antioch
returns to Peter, and curses his rival.
These eccentricities of ignorant sectaries would
have passed away without result anywhere but at
Rome; but in the capital of the world whatever
related to Peter was of importance. In spite of its
heresies, the book of "The Preaching of Peter" was
deeply interesting to the orthodox. In it was pro-
claimed the primacy of Peter. It was insulting, it
is true, to St. Paul, but a touch here and there might
tone down whatever was offensive in its attack.
Many attempts, therefore, were made to lessen the
singularities of the new book, and to adapt it to
Catholic wants. This fashion of remoulding books,
to adapt them to the opinions of a sect, was common
and approved.2 Little by little, the force of circum-
stances made itself felt: all sensible men saw that
1 Homilics, xx. 12-23.
2 Contestatio Jac. 5.
12

140
ROME, THE CENTRE OF
of conciliation, and it was they who triumphed.
The obstinate Ebionites remained in Judaism, and
shared its immobility. Rome was the point at which
this great transformation was effected. Already the
high Christian destiny of this wonderful city was
writing itself in luminous characters.
The deaths of the two apostles, in especial, occu-
pied the minds of both parties, and gave occasion to
very various manipulations of the story. The web
of legend was woven by an instinctive force, almost
as little to be resisted as that which had directed
the formation of the legend of Jesus. The end of
the life of Peter and Paul was determined à priori.
It was maintained that Christ had announced the
martyrdom of Peter, as he had predicted the death
of the sons of Zebedee.¹ Men felt a desire to asso-
ciate in death the two men whose reconciliation they
had compelled. It was wished—and here, perhaps,
the wish was not far from the truth-that they
should die together, or at all events in connection
with the same train of circumstances. The places
¹ John xii. 32, 33, xiii. 36, xxi. 18, 19. Conf. Matt. xx.
22, 23; Mark x. 38, 39.

GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
139
of the Acts,¹ that Peter had converted the first fruits
of the Gentiles, and had taken the lead in freeing
them from the yoke of the Law.2 It was admitted
that Peter and Paul had been the two chiefs, the two
founders of the Church of Rome. They became the
two members of an inseparable pair, twin luminaries
like the sun and moon. What one taught, the other
had taught also: they had always been at one: they
had combated the same enemies: they had both been
victims of the treachery of Simon the Magician: at
Rome they had lived like two brothers: the Church
of Rome had been their common work.3 The supre-
macy of that Church was in this way established for
ages to come.4
From the reconciliation of parties and the lulling
to rest of primitive dissensions, there resulted a grand
unity-the Catholic Church, the Church at once of
Peter and of Paul, ignorant of the rivalries which
had marked the first century of Christianity. The
churches of Paul had manifested most of the spirit
1 Acts x. xv. 7.
2 Acts xv. 7 et seq.
3 Acta Petri et Pauli, 5, 22, 26, 60, 72. Conf. 2 Peter ii. 9.
4 Irenæus, Adv. Hær. iii. iii. 2.
138
ROME, THE CENTRE OF
of Christians repudiated Paul. But concessions are
usually made by the strong. In reality, each day
as it came gave the victory to Paul. Every Gentile
that was converted weighed down the balance on his
side. Except in Syria, the Jewish Christians were, as
it were, drowned in the flood of new converts. The
Pauline churches prospered: they had a good sense,
a solidity of mind, pecuniary resources, which the
others had not. The Ebionite churches, on the con-
trary, grew poorer from day to day. The money of
the Pauline churches was applied to keep alive the
boastful poor, who, though unable to earn their own
livelihood, possessed the living tradition of the pri-
mitive spirit. Whatever there was among them of
lofty piety, of severe morals, the Christian commu-
nities of heathen origin admired, imitated, made
their own. Before long it came to this, that so far
as the most eminent personages of the Church of
Rome were concerned, no distinction could be made.
The mild and conciliatory, spirit which had once
been represented by Clement of Rome and St. Luke,
prevailed. The treaty of peace was sealed. It was
agreed, in conformity with the system of the author
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 137
the only salvation for the work of Jesus lay in
completely reconciling the two chiefs of Christian
preaching. Even so late as the fifth century, Paul
still had implacable enemies in the Nazarenes;
and in the same way he had fanatical disciples like
Marcion. But between these obstinate sections, on
the right hand and on the left, there was a fusion of
many moderate men who, though owing their Chris-
tianity to one of the two schools and remaining
attached to it, fully recognized the right of others
to call themselves Christians. James, the partizan
of an uncompromising Judaism, was sacrificed:
although he would have been the true chief of the
circumcision, Peter, who had shown himself much
less offensive to the disciples of Paul, was preferred
before him. It is only among the Jewish Christians
that James still retained a few fiery partizans.¹
It is difficult to say who gained most by this
reconciliation. The concessions came principally
from the side of Paul: all his disciples admitted the
claims of Peter without difficulty, while the majority
1 Epiph. Hær. xxx. 16.
·
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 141
which were believed to have been sanctified by this
bloody drama were early fixed upon, and consecrated
by memoriæ. In cases of this kind, what the people
wishes always prevails in the end. Legend retro-
spectively makes history what it ought to have been,
but what it never really is. Only recently, there
was no place of popular resort in Italy where the
portraits of Victor Emmanuel and Pius IX. were
not to be seen side by side; and the general belief
would have it that these two men-the representa-
tive of the principles whose reconciliation an almost
universal feeling thinks necessary to Italy—were at
the bottom on very good terms. If in our age such
views were allowed to impress themselves upon
history, we should read some day, in documents
making a serious claim upon our belief, that Victor
Emmanuel, Pius IX.-and Garibaldi would pro-
bably make the third-saw one another secretly,
understood one another, loved one another. The
association of Voltaire with Rousseau has been
brought about by necessities of the same kind. In
like manner, in the middle ages, it was repeatedly
sought to prove, with a view of appeasing the hatred
142
ROME, THE CENTRE OF
of the Dominicans and the Franciscans, that the
founders of these two orders had been like two
brothers, living together in the most affectionate
relations, that their two rules had been at first but
one, and that St. Dominic had girded himself with
the cord of St. Francis.1
In all that concerns Peter and Paul, the work of
legend was rich and rapid. Rome, with all its
suburbs—and especially the road to Ostia-was full
of recollections which claimed to have their origin
in the last days of the two apostles. A host of
touching circumstances-the flight of Peter, the
vision of Jesus bearing his cross, the iterum crucifigi,
the last farewell of Peter and Paul, Peter's meeting
with his wife, Paul at the Aqua Salvia, Plautilla
sending the kerchief with which her hair was tied
to bind the eyes of Paul-all this made a beautiful
narrative, which only wanted a narrator, a man at
once of genius and a simple mind. But it was too
late: the vein of the first Christian literature was
1 Dante, Parad. xi. 28 et seq. Wadding, Ann. i. 293 et seq.,
iii. 380 et seq. Acta SS. Maii, ii. 827 et seq. Aug. i. 442, 484
et seq., 960, 976. Oct. ii. 869 et seq., 876 et seq.
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
143
exhausted: the serenity of the author of the Acts
was lost it was impossible to rise to a higher tone
than that of legend and romance. It was impossible
to choose among a host of versions equally apocry-
phal: it was useless to seek to place these feeble
narratives under the shelter of the most venerable
names (Pseudo-Linus, Pseudo-Marcellus): the Roman
legend of Peter and Paul never emerged from the
sporadic stage. It was recounted by pious guides
rather than seriously read. It was a purely local
matter: no version of it was set apart to be read in
churches: none became authoritative.
Almost all of you will some day go to Rome, or,
if you have already been there, will return once
more. Well, if you retain any recollection of these
Lectures, go, in memory of me, to the Aquæ Salviæ,
alle Tre Fontane, beyond St. Paul without the Walls.
It is one of the most beautiful spots in the Roman
Campagna, solitary, moist, green and sad. A deep
depression in the soil, crowned by those grand hori-
zontal lines which no sign of life disturbs, thither
brings a spring of clear and cold water. Fever is in
the air we breathe, the humidity of the grave. There
144
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
.
the monks of La Trappe have established themselves,
and conscientiously pursue their religious suicide.
Sit there awhile-not too long-and while the Trap-
pist gives you to drink of the water which rises from
the three fountains that mark where Paul's head
struck the earth, think of him who came to talk of
these legends with you, and to whom you listened
so courteously and with so kind an attention.
LECTURE IV.
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF CATHOLICISM.
L
•
LECTURE IV.
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF CATHOLICISM.
In the primitive Christian community, the impor-
tance of Churches was in proportion to their apos-
tolical nobility: nothing could be simpler. The
guarantee of orthodoxy was the diadoche, the epis-
copal succession by which the great Churches were
connected with the apostles. A direct succession
was a very strong warrant of agreement in doctrine;
the greatest possible importance was attached to it.
But what shall we say of a Church founded both by
Peter and by Paul? It is clear that such a Church
would be regarded as having a real superiority over
all others. To have succeeded in establishing this
belief was the masterpiece of that cleverness which
characterized the Church of Rome. By the time
L 2
148
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
of Antoninus Pius, almost everybody had come to
believe that Peter and Paul had, in perfect agree-
ment, founded Christianity at Rome, and had sealed
the work with their blood. The ecclesiastical destiny
of Rome was thenceforth fixed. When her part in
the profane world was played out, this extraordinary
city was destined to play another and a sacred part,
a part like that of Jerusalem. The Christianity which
she has so cruelly fought against, she will succeed
in turning to her own advantage. So hardly does
humanity escape from those upon whom fortune has
laid the great secular task regere imperio populos!
Rome, under Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aure-
lius, was at the epoch of her highest greatness:1 her
world-wide rule seemed uncontested: no cloud was
to be seen upon the horizon. Far from slackening,
the movement which impelled provincials, especially
from the East, to crowd within her walls, increased
in intensity. The Greek-speaking population was
1 De Rossi, Piante iconografiche e prospettiche di Roma
(Rome, 1879), pp. 46 et seq. The customs' limit of Marcus
Aurelius determined the circuit of the wall of Aurelian—that is
to say, of the actual enclosure.
CATHOLICISM.
149
more numerous than it had ever been. The insinu-
ating græculus, with his universal cleverness, drove
the Italian out of great households: Latin literature
declined from day to day: Greek became the literary,
religious, philosophical language of the enlightened,
as it was already the dialect of the lower classes.
The importance of the Church of Rome was measured
by that of the city itself. Hyginus, its head, enjoyed
the respect of all Christendom. Whoever wished to
make a place for himself in the eye of the world
aspired to come to Rome: nothing was consecrated
that had not taken a certificate at this universal
exhibition of the products of the universe.
Gnosticism, with its ambition to set the fashion
of Christian preaching, especially yielded to this
impulse. No Gnostic school had its origin in Rome,
but almost all came thither to fail.
the first who tried the adventure.
Valentinus was
It is even pos-
sible that this audacious sectary may have cherished
the idea of seating himself on the episcopal throne
of the unrivalled city. He showed himself with all
the external appearances of Catholicism, and preached
in the eccentric fashion of which he was the inventor.
150
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
His success was not great: his pretentious philoso-
phy, his restless curiosity, scandalized the faithful.
Hyginus drove the innovator from the Christian
pulpit. From that time forward the Roman Church
gave tokens of the purely practical tendency which
was ever afterwards to distinguish her, and showed
herself ready to sacrifice, without regret, knowledge
and ability to edification.
The centre of a future Catholic orthodoxy was
plainly here. Pius, who succeeded Hyginus, showed
the same firmness in defending the purity of the
faith. Cerdo, Marcion, Valentinus, Marcellinus, are
removed from the Church by the sentence of Pius.
In the reign of Antoninus, the germ of the Papacy
already exists in a very definite form. The Church
of Rome shows itself increasingly indifferent to those
visionary speculations which were the delight of
minds full of the intellectual activity of the Greeks,
but at the same time corrupted by the dreams of the
East. The organization of Christian society was the
chief work pursued at Rome. That wonderful city
brought to this task the exclusively practical genius
and the powerful moral energy which she has applied
CATHOLICISM.
151
in so many different ways. Almost careless of spe-
culation, decisively hostile to novelties of doctrine,
she presided as a mistress already practised in the
art, over all the changes which took place in the
discipline and the hierarchy of the Church.
I.
What was in process of development in the Chris-
tian Church, about the year 120 or 130, was the
episcopate. Now the creation of the episcopate was
evidently the work of Rome. Every ecclesia sup-
poses a little hierarchy, a committee, as we say now,
a president, assessors, and a small staff of servants.
Democratic clubs take care that these offices shall
be held for as short a time and confer as little power
as possible; but the result of this is a character of
precariousness attaching to their action, so that no
club ever survives the circumstances which have
called it into existence. The Jewish synagogue
was a much more continuous thing, although its
staff never developed into a clergy.
This was
partly the result of the subordinate position which
for centuries Judaism occupied pressure from
152
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
without counteracted the effect of divisions within.
Under the same absence of direction, the Christian
Church would no doubt have failed to fulfil its
destiny. If men had continued to look upon eccle-
siastical powers as emanating from the Church itself,1
the Church would have lost all its hieratic and theo-
cratic character. On the contrary, it was decreed
that the clergy should seize upon the Church, and
should put themselves in its place. Speaking in its
name, always presenting themselves as the sole depo-
sitary of its powers, the clergy will constitute its
force, but at the same time will be the worm that
eats away its strength, and the principal cause of
its future decay.
History, I repeat, can show no example of a more
complete transformation than that which took place
in the government of the Christian Church about the
time of Hadrian and Antoninus. What happened is
what would happen in a club if the members abdi-
cated in favour of the Committee, and the Committee
in turn abdicated in favour of the President, in such
1 Certain words of Jesus (Matt. xviii. 17-20) seemed to
imply some such idea. But we must remember that only
Matthew puts the word ecclesia into the mouth of Jesus.

CATHOLICISM.
153
a manner as to leave neither the members nor even
the elders any deliberative voice, any influence, any
k
control of funds, and to enable the President to say, cute relied
"I alone am the club." The presbyteri (elders) or wh
episcopi (superintending officers) very quickly became
the only representatives of the Church, while, almost per lile
immediately afterwards, another still more important
revolution was effected. Among the presbyteri or
episcopi, there was one who, in virtue of habitually
occupying the first seat, absorbed the powers of the
rest, and became in a special way the presbyteros
or episcopos. Public worship contributed largely to
establish this unity. The eucharistic act could be
performed only by a single person, and to that person
gave a great importance.¹ This episcopos became,
with surprising rapidity, the chief of the body of
presbyters, and consequently of the whole Church.
His cathedra, shaped like an arm-chair and standing
out of the line, became a seat of honour, the token
of primacy.2 Each church has thenceforward only
¹ Letter of Irenæus to Victor, in Euseb. H. E. v. xxiv. 17.
2 Ep. Petri ad Jac. 1. Ep. Clem. ad Jac. 2, 3, 6, 12, 16,
17, 19. Ignat. ad Philad. 3.
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ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
one chief presbyteros, who, to the exclusion of the
rest, takes the name of episcopos.1 By the side of
this bishop we see deacons, widows, a council of
presbyters:2 but the important step has been taken;
the bishop alone is the successor of the apostles; the
faithful have entirely disappeared. The apostolic
authority, believed to be transmitted by the imposi-
tion of hands, has destroyed the authority of the
community.5 The bishops of the different churches
will afterwards enter into communication with one
another, and will shape the universal Church into a
species of oligarchy, which will hold meetings, will
censure its own members, will decide questions of
1 Conf. 1 Tim. iii. 1 et seq., v. 17-19, and especially Tit. i,
5, 6, 7. Conf. Phil. i. 1. In Clement of Rome (ch. 42) we
have only priests and deacons.
oi oùv
2 Πολύκαρπος καὶ οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ πρεσβύτεροι. Subscription of
the Ep. of Polycarp.
3
Προστάτης . . . προφήτης, θιασάρχης, ξυναγωγεὺς καὶ πάντα
μóvos avτòs ov, Lucian, Peregr. 11.
μόνος αὐτὸς ὤν,
भ
4 ἐπίθεσις τῶν χειρῶν, which has nothing to do with χειροτονία.
1 Tim. iv. 14. Paul has given his orders to Timothy and
Titus: these give their orders to the presbyteri or episcopi of the
churches which they found. Tit. i. 5. These apostolic delegates
have power over the presbyteri. 1 Tim. v. 17-19.
CATHOLICISM.
155
faith, and will, in and by itself, constitute a true
sovereign power.
Before a hundred years had passed, the change
was all but accomplished. When Hegesippus, in
the second half of the second century, made his tour
of Christendom, he found bishops everywhere: the
only question which he raises is one of canonical
succession: the living sentiment of churches no
longer exists.1 This revolution, however, was effected
not without protest: the author of "The Shepherd,"
for instance, still attempts to maintain the primitive
equality of the presbyteri against the growing autho-
rity of the bishops.2 But the aristocratic tendency
finally prevailed. On one side are the pastors, on
the other the flock. The primitive equality is gone;
to tell the truth, it had lasted only for a day. Hence-
forth the Church is only an instrument in the hands
of those who direct it; and these directors derive
their power, not from the community, but from a
3 In Euseb. H.E. iv. xxii. 1—3.
2
* Пρwтокalεdρíтai (Hermas, Shepherd, vis. iii. 9). Irenæus
(in Euseb. H. E. v. xxiv. 14) stills calls the bishops of Rome
presbyteri (οἱ πρεσβύτεροι, οἱ προστάντες τῆς ἐκκλησίας).
156
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
spiritual heredity,¹ a succession claiming to go back
to the apostles in an uninterrupted line. We already
feel that the representative system will never be,
in any degree whatever, the law of the Christian
Church.
It was the episcopate which, without any inter-
vention of the civil power, without any support from
police or courts of law, thus set order above liberty
in a society which was originally founded on indi-
vidual inspiration. And this is why the Ebionites,
who had no bishops, had also no idea of Catho-
licity. At first sight, the work of Jesus did not
seem likely to survive: it was a chaos. Founded
upon a belief in the approaching end of the world,
which the years as they rolled away could not but
show to be mistaken, his congregation appeared to
have nothing before it but to dissolve into anarchy.
Freedom of prophecy, charismata, speaking with
tongues, the inspiration of the individual-less than
all this would have sufficed to reduce it to the
proportions of an ephemeral congregation. Indivi-
1
Διαδόχη.
1
CATHOLICISM.
157
dual inspiration creates, but at once destroys whatever
it has created. After liberty must come order. The
work of Jesus may be considered as safe from the
day on which it was admitted that the Church had
a power of its own, a power representing that of
Jesus.1 Thenceforth the Church dominates the indi-
vidual, and if necessary casts him out from her
bosom. Soon the Church, an unstable and fluctuat-
ing body, is personified in the elders: the powers of
the Church become the powers of a clergy, who are
the dispensers of the grace in which God communi-
cates with the faithful. Inspiration passes over from
the individual to the community. The Church be-
comes all in Christianity: one step more, and the
Bishop becomes all in the Church. Obedience, first
to the Church, at a later period to the Bishop,
becomes the first of duties: novelty is the mark of
error: to the Christian, schism will henceforth be
the worst of crimes.
In one sense, we may say that this was a falling
away-a lessening of the spontaneity which had
་་
1 Matt. xviii, 17-20.
.0

158
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
been up to that time eminently creative. It was
plain that ecclesiastical forms were about to absorb,
to smother the work of Jesus, that all the free
manifestations of the Christian life would soon be
brought to a stand. Under the censure of the
episcopate, speaking with tongues, prophecy, the
creation of legends, the production of sacred books,
will be failing and exhausted powers; the charismata
will be reduced to official sacraments. Nevertheless,
in another sense, this transformation was the essen-
tial condition of the energy of Christianity. And a
concentration of powers became at once necessary
when these churches grew to be tolerably numerous:
the relations between these little pious societies were
possible only so long as they had acknowledged re-
presentatives entitled to act for them. It is besides
indisputable that, without the episcopate, churches
brought into union for a moment by the recollec-
tion of Jesus, would soon have been scattered.
Divergences of doctrine, differences in turn of mind,
above all, rivalries, unsatisfied self-appreciations,
would have produced their characteristic result of
disunion and disintegration without end. Like
CATHOLICISM.
159
Mithraicism and so many other forms of belief to
which it has not been given to conquer time, Chris-
tianity would have disappeared at the end of three
or four hundred years. Democracy is sometimes
eminently creative; but it is on condition that out
of it are evolved conservative and aristocratic insti-
tutions which prevent the indefinite prolongation of
the revolutionary fever.
This is the true miracle of nascent Christianity.
It evolved order, hierarchy, authority, obedience
from the voluntary subjection of wills: it organized
the crowd; it disciplined anarchy. What effected
this miracle, which astonishes us quite otherwise
than pretended infringements of the laws of physical
nature? It was the spirit of Jesus, strongly grafted
into his disciples; the spirit of sweetness, of self-
abnegation, of forgetfulness of the present; that
unique pursuit of inward joys which kills ambition;
that preference boldly given to childhood; those
words perpetually repeated as from the lips of Jesus,
"And whosoever will be chief among you, let him
be your servant." The impression left by the apos-
tles contributed hardly less to the same result. The
160
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
apostles and their immediate delegates had undis-
puted power over the Church. Now, the episcopate
was held to be the heir of apostolic powers.1 The
apostles lived and governed after their death. The
idea that the president of the Church derives his
authority from the members of the Church who have
elected him, never once appears in the literature of
this age. Thus, in virtue of the supernatural origin
of its power, the Church avoids whatever is frail and
transitory in all delegated authority. Legislative
and executive authority may spring from the multi-
tude; but sacraments, the dispensations of heavenly
grace, have nothing in common with universal suf-
frage. Such privileges descend from heaven, or, to
adopt the Christian formula, from Jesus Christ, the
fountain of all grace and all good.
But, to speak with perfect accuracy, the bishop
had never been elected by the whole community.
The nomination by the Holy Spirit,2 that is to say,
the secret employment of electoral manoeuvres, ex-
1 Clem. Rom. Ep. i. c. 42, 44.
2 Clem. Alex. Quis dives salvetur, 42.
CATHOLICISM.
161
cusable on the supposition of an extreme simplicity
of mind, sufficed for the spontaneous enthusiasm of
the first churches. When the apostolic age had
passed away, and it was necessary that an ecclesias-
tical decision should supply the place of that kind
of divine right which was supposed to belong to the
apostles and their immediate disciples,¹ the elders
chose their president from among themselves, and
offered him to the acclamations of the people.2 As
this choice was never made without some previous
collection of opinions, the acclamation, or rather the
vote by show of hands, was in fact only a formality;
but it was enough to preserve the recollection of the
evangelical ideal, according to which the spirit of
Jesus really resided in the whole community.
election of deacons was in like manner a double

3
1 Tit. i. 5; 1 Tim. v. 22.
tur, 42.
2 Clem. Rom. Ep. i. ch. 44.
The
Clem. Alex. Quis dives salve-
3 Xepoτovía. In Acts xiv. 23, and 2 Cor. viii. 19, as indeed
χειροτονία.
in many passages of Greek classical authors, xepoтoveîv has, by
extension, the sense of "to choose," without implying the actual
assemblage and show of hands. Conf. Const. Apost. vii. 31.
4 Matt. xviii. 17-20.
M
162
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
process. The nomination was made by the bishop,
but the approbation of the community was necessary
to the validity of the choice.¹ A general law of the
Church is, that the inferior never elects his superior.
This it is which in our own day, in the midst of the
absolutely contrary tendency of modern democracy,
endows the Church with so great an energy of
reaction.
This movement towards hierarchy and episcopacy
was especially felt in the churches of Paul. The
Jewish-Christian churches, on a lower level of vitality,
remained synagogues, and did not so decisively tend
to clericalism. On this account it was that argu-
ments on behalf of the doctrine which it was desired
to inculcate were conveyed in writings ascribed to
Paul. An Epistle of St. Paul was an authority of
extraordinary weight. Many passages in his authen-
tic letters already made much of the hierarchy, of
respect for the authority of elders. But to furnish
arguments of a still more decisive kind, three short
letters, supposed to be written by Paul to his disci-

1 Const. Apost. iii. 15, vii. 31.
CATHOLICISM.
163
ples Timothy and Titus, were put forth. The author
of these apocryphal writings had not the Acts of the
Apostles in his hands; he had only a vague know-
ledge of the apostolical journeys of Paul,¹ and was
unacquainted with their details. As very few per-
sons had more accurate notions on the subject than
himself, this did not compromise him much; while,
again, the critical faculty was at that time so utterly
wanting, that no one dreamed of deciding any sub-
ject of debate by a comparison of documents.
These three short letters, evidently the work of
one pen and probably composed at Rome,2 are an
early treatise on ecclesiastical duties, a first sketch
of false decretals, a code of law for the use of church-
men.3 The episcopate is a great thing indeed. The
bishop is, as it were, a model of perfection proposed
to his subordinates.5 He must therefore be blameless
1 I have shown this in my St. Paul, Introd. pp. xxiii-lii.
2 Vid. St. Paul, Introd. pp. li, lii.
3 "In ordinatione ecclesiasticæ disciplinæ sanctificatæ sunt."
Canon of Muratori, 1. 61, 62.
4 1 Tim. iii.; Tit. i. The bishop is called eоû oiкovóμos,
Tit. i. 7.
5 1 Tim. iv. 12; Tit. ii. 7, 8.
M 2
164
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
1s.
3d.
d.
1s.
1s.
in the eyes both of the faithful and of strangers.
His family must be grave like himself. If any man
knows not how to rule his own household, how shall
he govern the Church of God? Orthodox above all,
attached to the true faith, the sworn enemy of error,
the bishop exhorts, instructs. For such functions it
is not right to choose either a new convert, lest his
too rapid elevation lead him astray, or a man capable
of passionate anger, or one who exercises a profession
which is not in good repute. Even unbelievers
ought to respect the bishop, and to have nothing to
allege against him.
Thanks to the Church of Rome, the religion of
Jesus thus acquired a certain solidity and consis-
tency. The great danger of Gnosticism, which
threatened to divide Christendom into innumerable
sects, was averted. The phrase "Catholic Church"1
breaks upon us from all sides at once, as the name
of the great communion which is destined thence-
1 ἐκκλησία καθολική. Letter of the Church of Smyrna on
the martyrdom of Polycarp, title, § 8, 16. Celsus, in Origen,
v. 59, ý μeɣáλn ékkλŋoía. Conf. Canon of Muratori, 1. 55, 57,
61, 62, 66, 69.
μεγάλη ἐκκλησία.
CATHOLICISM.
165
forth to come down the ages in unbroken unity.
And the character of this catholicity is already suffi-
ciently visible.
The Montanists are regarded as
sectaries; the Marcionites are convicted of falsifying
apostolical doctrine; the different Gnostic schools
are more and more repelled from the bosom of the
general Church. There is, then, something which
is neither Montanism, nor Marcionism, nor Gnos-
ticism-unsectarian Christianity, the Christianity of
the majority of bishops, resisting and using all the
sects, having, if you will, none but negative charac-
teristics, but by those very negative characteristics
preserved from pietistic aberrations and dissolvent
rationalism. Christianity, like every other party
that wishes to live, disciplines itself, cuts off its own
excesses. It joins to an exalted mysticism a fund
of good sense and moderation which will be fatal to
millenarianism, charismata, speaking with tongues,
all the primitive spiritual phenomena. A handful
of fanatics, such as the Montanists, affronting martyr-
dom, discouraging penitence, condemning marriage-
these are not the Church. The juste milieu triumphs:
it will not be given to radicals of any kind to destroy
166
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
the work of Jesus. The Church is everybody's affair,
not the privilege of an aristocracy. The pietist aris-
tocracy of the Phrygian sects, the speculative aris-
tocracy of the Gnostics, must alike submit to the
rejection of their claims.
In the midst of the enormous variety of opinions
of which the first Christian century is full, a fixed
point thus constitutes itself, the opinion of Catho-
licity. To convict the heretic, it is not necessary to
argue with him. It is enough to prove to him that
he is not in communion with the Catholic Church,
with the great Churches which can show an undis-
puted succession of bishops from the apostles.¹ Quod
semper quod ubique becomes the absolute rule of truth.
The argument of prescription, to which Tertullian is
afterwards to give so eloquent a force, sums up all
the Catholic controversy. To prove to any one that
he is an innovator, a late comer in theology, is to
prove that he is wrong. An insufficient rule, after
all: for, by a singular irony of fate, the very doctor
who, in so imperious a way, drew out this method
of refutation, himself died a heretic.
1 Iren. iii. iv. 1. Tertull. Præscr. 36.
CATHOLICISM.
167
Correspondence between churches soon became
customary.¹ The circular letters of the heads of the
great Churches, read on Sunday in the assembly of
the faithful, were in some sort a continuation of the
apostolical literature. The ecclesiastical province,
implying the presidency of the great Churches, ap-
peared in germ. The church, like the synagogue
and the mosque, is a thing that essentially belongs
to the city. Christianity, like Judaism and Islam-
ism, is to be a religion of towns. The final resistance
which it has to encounter will come from the coun-
tryman, the paganus. The rural Christians, who
were very few in number, no doubt frequented the
church of the neighbouring town.2 The Roman
municipium thus gave local limits to the Church.
As the country and the small towns received the
gospel from the cities, they also received from them
their clergy, who were always subordinate to the
bishop of the great town. Thus among the towns,
the civitas, the great town, alone has a real church,
1 We may recal the discussion on the subject of Montanism,
the observance of Easter, &c. Above all, see Euseb. H. E. v. 25.
2 Justin. Apol. i. 67.
168
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
with an episcopos; the small town remains in eccle-
siastical dependence upon the great one.¹ This
primacy of great towns was a fact of capital impor-
tance. The great town once converted, the small
town and the country followed the movement. The
diocese 2 was thus the original unit of the Christian
organization. As to the ecclesiastical province, it
answered in general to the Roman province; the
divisions set up by the worship of Rome and of
Augustus, were here the secret law which deter-
mined all. The towns which had a flamen, or
archiereus, are those which at a later time had an
archbishop; the flamen civitatis, whose special charge
was the worship of the Lares, became the bishop;
after the third century, he possesses the civil and
political powers in the civitas, to which the bishop
will succeed. The flamen, in a word, occupied in
the city the same rank as the bishop afterwards did
1 Council of Ancyra (315).
2 The word Tapoɩkía is almost synonymous with church or
diocese. Title of the Letter of the Church of Smyrna on the mar-
tyrdom of Polycarp. Iren. in Euseb. H. E. v. xxiv. 14; compare
9, and i. i. 1; iii. xxviii. 3; iv. xv. 2 ; v. v. 8; xxiii. 2; vi. xi. 1.
3 In the Acts of the Martyrs, the flamen is often the persecutor.
CATHOLICISM.
169
.
in the diocese.1 Thus it comes to pass that the
ecclesiastical geography of a country is almost iden-
tical with its geography in the Roman period. The
map of bishoprics and archbishoprics is that of the
ancient civitates, in their order of political subordi-
nation. The Empire was, as it were, the mould
in which the new religion took shape. The inner
framework, the limits, the hierarchical divisions of
the Church, were those of the Empire. There is
hardly any difference to be perceived between the
old rolls of the Roman administration and the regis-
ters of the Church in the middle ages, or even in
our own day.
Thus these great organisms, which have become
so essential a part of the moral and political life
of the European peoples, were all created by the
simple and sincere men whose faith has become
inseparable from the moral culture of humanity.
Under Marcus Aurelius, the episcopate is com-
pletely ripe the Papacy exists in germ. Ecume-
nical Councils were not yet possible; only the
1 Renier and Allmer, Revue Épigr. No. 4, p. 62.
170
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
Christian Empire could permit these great assem-
blies: but the Provincial Synod was brought to
bear upon the Montanist and the Paschal contro-
versies: the presidency of the Bishop of the capital
of the province was admitted without dispute.
A work which well shows the rapid progress of
this inner movement towards the constitution, or,
let us rather say, the exaggeration of hierarchical
authority, is the correspondence ascribed to St.
Ignatius, to which the letter of St. Polycarp is pos-
sibly an appendix.1 Who better than these two
great bishops and martyrs, whose memory was
everywhere held in reverence, could counsel the
faithful to submission and order?
"Obey the Bishop as Jesus Christ obeyed the
Father, and the body of Presbyters as the Apostles:
revere the deacons as you would the
would the very command-
ment of God. Let no one do anything in whatever
¹ The objections to the authenticity of these Epistles are not
lessened by bringing down the martyrdom of Ignatius to the
time of Hadrian or of Antoninus, as Harnack (Die Zeit des
Ignatius, Leipzig, 1878) has lately done. It is in their style
and turn of thought that the apocryphal character of these letters
shows itself.
1
CATHOLICISM.
171
concerns the Church without the Bishop. As regards
the Eucharist, that must be held to be good which
is administered by the Bishop, or by him to whom
the Bishop has entrusted it. Wherever the Bishop
is visible, there let the people be: in the same way
as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Church Catho-
lic. Without the Bishop it is not allowed either to
baptize or to celebrate the agapé; on the contrary,
the approbation of the Bishop is the mark of what
is well pleasing to God, the firm and sure rule to
follow in practice."1 "It is proper, then, that you
should agree with the opinion of the Bishop, as you
do. For your venerable body of presbyters, worthy
of God, stands in the same relation to the Bishop
as do the strings to the lyre. Wherefore in your
agreement and concordant love Jesus Christ is
sung."2
This was written about the year 160 or 170. A
purely ecclesiastical piety took the place of the
ancient ardour which for more than a hundred years
had been kindled by the recollection of Jesus. Or-
1 Ignat. Ep. ad Smyrn. 8. Conf. Ep. ad Philad. 1.
2 Ignat. Ep. ad Eph. 4.
172
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
thodoxy is now the chief good: docility is salvation :
the old man must bend before the bishop, even if he
be young.¹ It was thus that, by pushing to an ex-
treme the principles of Paul, men arrived at ideas
which would have revolted Paul. Would he, who
was unwilling to listen for a moment to salvation
by works, ever have admitted that a man could be
saved by simple submission to his superiors?
II.
Rome was the place in which this great idea of
Catholicity was worked out. More and more every
day it became the capital of Christianity, and took
the place of Jerusalem as the religious centre of
humanity. Its Church claimed a precedence over
others which was generally recognized.2 All the
doubtful questions which agitated the Christian con-
1 See especially the reputed Epistle of Ignatius to Polycarp,
and the Epistle of Polycarp himself. Ignat. ad Eph. 3, 5; ad
Magn. 3-7, 13; ad Trall. 2, 3, 12; ad Philad. 1-4, 7, 8; a
Smyrn. 8, 9; ad Polyc. 6.
2 Iren. iii. iii. Tertull. Præscr. 21, 36. Cyprian, Ep. 52, 55
(ecclesiam principalem unde unitas sacerdotum exorta est), 67,
71, 75 (Firmilian).
CATHOLICISM.
173
science came to Rome to ask for arbitration, if not
decision. Men argued, certainly not in a very logical
way, that as Christ had made Cephas the corner-
stone of his Church, the privilege ought to be inhe-
rited by his successors. By an unequalled tour de
force, the Church of Rome had succeeded in giving
itself the name of the Church of Paul also. A new
and equally mythical duality replaced that of Romu-
lus and Remus. The Bishop of Rome became the
Bishop of bishops, he who admonished all others.
Rome proclaims her right-a dangerous right-of
excommunicating those who do not walk step by
step with her. The poor Artemonites-a kind of
Arians before Arius-have great reason to complain
of the injustice of fate, which has branded them as
heretics, although up to the time of Victor the whole
Church of Rome was of one mind with them.¹ From
that time forth, the Church of Rome put herself
above history. At the end of the second century
we can already recognize, by signs which it is im-
possible to mistake, the spirit which in 1870 will
proclaim the infallibility of the Pope. The writing
1 Euseb. H.E. v. xxviii. 3.
174
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
of which the fragment known as the Canon of Mura-
tori formed a part, and which was produced at Rome
about the year 180 A.D., shows us Rome already
defining the canon of Scripture, alleging the martyr-
dom of Peter as the foundation of Catholicity, repu-
diating Montanism and Gnosticism alike. Irenæus
refutes all heresies by reference to the belief of this
Church, "the greatest, the oldest, the most illus-
trious, which possesses, in virtue of an unbroken
succession, the true tradition of the apostles Peter
and Paul, and to which, because of its Primacy, all
the rest of the Church ought to have recourse."1
A material cause greatly contributed to the pre-
eminence which all the churches recognized as
belonging to the Church of Rome. This Church
was extremely rich: its wealth, ably administered,
furnished funds to other churches, both for purposes
of charity and the propagation of the faith. Con-
fessors condemned to labour in the mines received
help from Rome.2 There, in some sort, was the
1 Irenæus, iii. iii. 2.
2 Dionys. of Corinth, in Euseb. H. E. iv. xxiii. 9, 10. Conf.
Dionys. of Alex. in Euseb. H. E. vii. v. 2. Basil. Ep. 220,
and the reflection of Euseb. H. E. iv. xxiii. 9.
CATHOLICISM.
175
common treasury of Christianity. The Sunday's
collection, a constant practice of the Church of
Rome, was in all likelihood already established. A
wonderful spirit of direction animated this little
community, to which Judea, Greece, Latium, seemed,
in view of a prodigious future, to have contributed
the most various gifts. While Jewish Monotheism
furnished the immovable base of the new foundation,
and Greece continued in Gnosticism her work of
free speculation, Rome applied herself with asto-
nishing success to the task of government. Every
kind of authority, every kind of artifice, served her
to that end. Policy never recoils from fraud, and
policy had already found a home in the most secret
councils of the Church of Rome. The vein of apo-
cryphal literature was constantly worked; writ-
ings published under the guarantee of Rome, and
ascribed sometimes to apostles, sometimes to apos-
tolical personages such as Clement and Hermas, were
received with confiding faith throughout the Chris-
tian world.
This precedence of the Church of Rome only
became more marked in the third century. The
176
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
·
Bishops of Rome showed a rare ability, in avoiding
theological questions, while they kept themselves to
the front in all matters of organization and adminis-
tration. The tradition of the Roman Church passes
for the most ancient of all.1 Cornelius takes the first
place in the affair of Novatianism: we see him, in
especial, depriving Italian bishops and nominating
their successors.2 Rome was also the central autho-
rity of the African churches.³
And already this authority was becoming over-
weening. We see this in the Paschal controversy.
The question was a much graver one than we should
now be disposed to believe. In the earliest times,
all Christians continued to make the Jewish Passover
their chief festival. They celebrated it on the same
day as the Jews, the 14th of Nisan, no matter in
what part of the week that day might fall. Con-
vinced, in accordance with the account of all ancient
Gospels, that Jesus on the eve of his death had eaten
1 εὐξάμενος τὴν ἀρχαιοτάτην Ῥωμαίων ἐκκλησίαν ἰδεῖν. Ori-
gen, in Euseb. H. E. vi. xiv. 10.
2 Letter of Cornelius, in Euseb. H. E. vi. xliii. 8, 10
3 Tertull. Præscr. 21. Cyprian, Ep. 52, 55, 71, 75 (Firmilian).
CATHOLICISM.
177
the Passover with his disciples, they regarded such
a solemnity as much more a commemoration of the
Supper than a memorial of the Resurrection. But in
proportion as Christianity more and more separated
itself from Judaism, this way of looking at the matter
became less easy. First, a new tradition gained
currency, to the effect that Jesus before his death
had not eaten the Passover, but had died on the
very day of the Passover, thus substituting himself
for the Paschal Lamb. But beyond this, a purely
Jewish festival wounded the Christian conscience,
especially in the Pauline churches. The great Chris-
tian festival was the Resurrection of Jesus, which in
any case must have taken place on the Sunday after
the Jewish Passover. In conformity with this idea,
men celebrated the festival of Easter on the Sunday
which followed the Friday next after the 14th of
Nisan.
At Rome this custom prevailed, at least subse-
quently to the pontificates of Xystus and Telesphorus
(about the year 126). In Asia, opinion was much
divided. Conservatives, such as Polycarp, Melito
and all the older school, adhered to the ancient
N
178
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
Jewish practice, as in conformity with the first
Gospels and the usage of the apostles John and
Philip. This was the object of the journey to Rome
which Polycarp undertook about the year 154, in
the papacy of Anicetus. The meeting between Poly-
carp and Anicetus was very friendly. The discus-
sion on certain points appears to have been somewhat
sharp, but an understanding was arrived at. Poly-
carp could not persuade Anicetus to give up a usage
which had been that of preceding Bishops of Rome.
Anicetus, on the other side, held his hand when
Polycarp informed him that he derived his rule from
John and the other apostles, with whom, he alleged,
he had lived on a footing of familiarity. The two
religious chiefs remained in full communion with
one another: Anicetus even did honour to Polycarp
in an almost unexampled way. He requested Poly-
carp, in the assembly of the faithful at Rome, to
pronounce for him, and in his presence, the words.
of eucharistic consecration, 1 These zealous men

1 Irenæus, letter to Victor, loc. cit.
The verb παρεχώρησε,
implying the giving up of a right, cannot mean that Anicetus
simply gave the consecrated bread and wine to Polycarp.

CATHOLICISM.
179
were animated by too noble a feeling to allow them
to base unity of heart upon uniformity of external
rites and observances.
Unfortunately, at a later period Rome addressed
herself with great obstinacy to the task of making her
usage universal. About the year 196, the question
arose in a more decisive form than ever.¹ The churches
of Asia persisted in their old practice: Rome, always
eager for unity, desired to assimilate it to her own.
On the invitation of Pope Victor,2 meetings of
bishops were held, a vast correspondence was ex-
changed. But the bishops of Asia, strong in the tra-
ditions of two apostles and so many illustrious men,
would not yield. Polycrates, the aged Bishop of
Ephesus, wrote in their name a somewhat stern letter
to Victor and the Church of Rome. The incredible
design which the rather severe terms of this epistle
3
1 Euseb. H. E. v. xxiii. xxiv. xxv. Jerome, Chron. Schone,
pp. 174, 177.
De viris ill. ch. 35, 43-45. Anatolius, in
Bucherius, De Cycl. pp. 443 et seq. Labbe's Councils, i. 600,
Photius, ch. 120.
2 Polycrates, in Euseb. H. E. v. xxiv. 8.
3 Euseb. H.E. v. xxiv. 2 et seq. Conf. iii. xxxi. 3.
X
N 2
180
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
suggested to the mind of Victor, is a sufficient proof
that the Papacy was already born, and well born.
He claimed the right to excommunicate, to separate
from the universal Church, its most illustrious
pro-
vince, because it did not make its traditions bend
before the Roman discipline. He published a decree
by which the churches of Asia were put under the
ban of the Christian community. But the other
bishops set themselves against this violent measure,
and recalled Victor to charity.2 Irenæus of Lyons,
in particular, who, under the prevailing influences of
the region to which he had migrated, had accepted
for himself and his Gaulish churches the Western
custom, could not endure the thought that the
mother churches of Asia, to which he felt himself
attached by the tenderest ties, should be separated
from the body of the universal Church. He ener-
getically dissuaded Victor from excommunicating
churches which adhered to the tradition of their
fathers, and recalled to his mind the example of his
more tolerant predecessors. This act of singular
1 στηλιτεύει διὰ γραμμάτων, ἀκοινωνήτους ἀνακηρύττων.
2 Eusebius had their letters in his possession.
...
CATHOLICISM.
181
good sense prevented the schism of East and West
from taking place in the second century. Irenæus
wrote to bishops in every direction; and the churches
of Asia were left free to do as they would.
In one sense, the procedure which this debate
involved was more important than the debate itself.
A consequence of the difference was, that the Church
was led to entertain a clearer conception of its own
organization. And, in the first place, it was evi-
dent that the laity no longer counted for anything.
Bishops alone interfere, give advice. They assemble
in provincial synods, presided over by the bishop of
the capital of the province,¹-the archbishop of the
future, sometimes by the oldest among them. The
synodical assembly resolves upon a letter which is
despatched to other churches. It is a kind of
experiment in federative organization, an attempt to
resolve difficulties by means of provincial assemblies,
presided over by bishops, and afterwards communi-
cating with one another. At a later period, the
records of this great debate will be searched with a
1 Thus the Bishop of Cæsarea took precedence of the Bishop
of Jerusalem.
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ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
view of finding precedents as to questions of the
presidency of synods, and of ecclesiastical hierarchy
in general. Among all churches, that of Rome
appears to possess a special right of initiative. But
this initiative was far from being synonymous with
infallibility; for Eusebius declares that he had read
letters in which bishops strongly blamed Victor's
conduct.1
III.
Authority loves authority: the possessors of autho-
rity of every kind hold out a hand to one another.
Men as conservative as were the heads of the Church
of Rome must have felt a strong temptation towards
reconciliation with the power of the State, which
they admitted to be often exerted for good. This
tendency had been noticeable from the earliest days
of Christianity. Jesus himself had laid down the
rule. For him, the image and superscription on the
coin were the ultimate criterion of legitimate power,
a criterion which left no room for further inquiry.
While Nero was upon the throne, Paul wrote: "Let
1 Euseb. Η. Ε. v. xxiv. 10 : πληκτικώτερον καθαπτομένων
Toi Bíktopos. Conf. Socrat. v. 22.
•

CATHOLICISM.
183
every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For
there is no power but of God: the powers that be
are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth
the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. . . . Wilt
thou, then, not be afraid of the power? Do that
which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the
same; for he is the minister of God to thee for
good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid;
for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the
minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon
him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be
subject, not only for wrath, but for conscience' sake.
For for this cause pay ye tribute also; for they are
God's ministers,¹ attending continually upon this
very thing."2
Some years afterwards, Peter, or whoever wrote
in his name the work known as his First Epistle,
expresses himself in almost identical terms: "Sub-
mit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the
Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme,
or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by
1 Λειτουργοί θεοῦ. 2 Rom. xiii. 1-7; conf. Tit. iii. 1.

184
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the
praise of them that do well."1 In the same way,
Clement is a subject of the Roman Empire, whose
loyalty cannot be surpassed. The submission which
is due to bishops and elders, the Christian ought
to pay to the powers of the world. At the very
moment of Nero's most diabolical atrocities, we have
just heard Peter and Paul declare that the mon-
ster's power came from God. Clement, at the time
when Domitian was raging most cruelly against the
Church and the human race, holds him likewise to
be the lieutenant of God. In that part of his Epistle
which has been recently recovered, he thus speaks: 2
"It is Thou, Master Supreme, who by Thy great and
unspeakable power hast given to our sovereigns,
and to those who ruie us upon earth, the power of
royalty, that we, knowing the glory and the honour
which Thou hast imparted to them, may be submis-
sive to them, and in no wise run counter to Thy
will. Give Thou to them, O Lord, health, peace,
concord, stability, that they may exercise without
1 1 Pet. ii. 13 et seq.
2 Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. ch. 61.

CATHOLICISM.
185
hindrance the sovereignty which Thou hast confided
to them. . . . . Direct, Lord, their will according to
that which is good and well-pleasing in Thy sight,
in order that, piously exercising in peace and mild-
ness the power which Thou hast given them, they
may find Thee propitious."
Lastly, a characteristic of St. Luke—and you
know that in my view there is a connection between
St. Luke and the spirit of the Church of Rome-is
his respect for the imperial authority, and the pre-
cautions which he takes not to offend it. The author
of the Acts avoids whatever might present the
Romans in the light of enemies of Christianity. On
the contrary, he tries to show that in many cases
they defended St. Paul and the Christians against
the Jews.1 He never utters a word that could be
offensive to the civil magistrate. He loves to show
how the Roman functionaries were favourable to the
new sect, and sometimes even joined it;2 how equit-
able Roman justice is, and how superior to the
¹ Acts xxiv. 7, 17, xxv. 9, 16, 25, xxviii. 17, 18.
2 The centurion Cornelius, the proconsul Paulus.

186
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
passions of merely local authorities.¹ He insists
upon the advantage which Paul derived from his
Roman citizenship.2 If he closes his narrative with
the arrival of Paul in Rome, it is possibly in order
to avoid the necessity of recounting the atrocities
of Nero. Luke nowhere allows that the Christians
were compromised before the law. If Paul had not
appealed to the Emperor, he "might have been set
at liberty." A legal arrière pensée, in full accord
with the age of Trajan, pre-occupies him: he wishes
to create precedents, to show that there is no ground
for persecuting those whom Roman tribunals have
so often acquitted.
It must be confessed that there were in other
parts of the Empire fanatics who fully shared the
anger of the Jews, and dreamed of the destruction
of the idolatrous city, which they identified with
Babylon. Such were the authors of Apocalypses
and Sibylline verses. But the faithful of the great
Churches entertained very different sentiments. In
1 Acts xiii. 7 et seq., xviii. 12 et seq., xix. 35 et seq., xxiv.
7, 17, xxv. 9, 16, 25, xxvii. 2, xxviii. 17, 18.
2 Acts xvi. 37 et seq., xxii. 26 et seq.

CATHOLICISM.
187
the year 70, the Church of Jerusalem, yielding
to a feeling which was more Christian than
patriotic, abandoned the revolutionary city, and
departed to seek peace beyond the Jordan. In the
revolt of Barchochbas, the separation was still more
marked. Not a single Christian was found to take
part in that attempt of a blind despair. Justin
Martyr, in his Apologies, never contends against
the principle of the Empire: what he wants is,
that the Empire should examine Christian doctrine,
should approve it, should in some sort countersign
it, and should condemn those who calumniate it.¹
The first doctor of the age of Marcus Aurelius,
Melito, Bishop of Sardes, makes still more decisive
advances to the State, and applies himself to show
that Christianity has that in it which should recom-
mend it to the favour of a true Roman. In his
treatise on Truth, preserved in a Syriac version,2
Melito expresses himself as a Bishop of the fourth
century might do, explaining to one Theodorus that
1 Justin Martyr, Apol. ii. 14.
2 Cureton, Spicil. Syr. pp. 48 et seq.

188.
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
his first duty is to use his authority to procure the
triumph of truth, without, alas! telling us by what
tokens truth is to be recognized. Let the Empire
become Christian, and the persecuted of the present
time will find the interference of the State in the
domain of conscience perfectly legitimate. In other
passages, Melito is still more complaisant to the
powers that be.
•
"A thing that has never before been seen," says
he, "is that the race of pious men is now perse-
cuted, hunted through Asia in virtue of new edicts.¹
Impudent sycophants and lovers of other men's
goods, making a pretext of existing decrees, practise
robbery publicly, watching day and night to lay
hold of those who have done no wrong. . . . .
If these things are being done by thy order, let
it be well, For a just king cannot, under any
circumstances, devise what is unjust.
And we
willingly accept such a death as the lot which we
have deserved. One request we make unto thee,
that after having thine own self examined those
1 Fragment in Euseb. H. E. iv. xxvi. 1, 7 et seq.

CATHOLICISM.
189
who are brought before thee as actors in rebellion,
thou wouldst be pleased to judge whether they de-
serve death, or if they are not rather worthy to live
in peace, under the protection of the law. . . . . For
our philosophy first had its birth among the bar-
barians, but the fact that the moment at which it
began to flourish among the people of thy states
coincided with the great reign of Augustus, thy
ancestor, was a happy augury for the Empire.
For from this time the Roman power grew into
something great and splendid, of which thou, with
thy son,¹ art and shalt be the heir, the subject of
our prayers, if only thou art willing to protect this
philosophy, which has been in some sort the foster-
sister of the Empire, since it was born with its
founder, and has been honoured by thine ancestors
on an equality with other worships. And it is the
greatest proof that our doctrine has been destined
to flourish, side by side with the progress of thy
glorious Empire, that from the time of its appear-
ance all has wonderfully succeeded with you. Nero
1 These words are addressed to Marcus Aurelius. The son
who is spoken of is Commodus.
190
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
and Domitian only, deceived by certain calumnious
men, showed ill-will towards our religion; and these
calumnies, as is usually the case, were afterwards
accepted without examination. But their error has
been corrected by thy pious fathers,¹ who in frequent
rescripts have repressed the zeal of those who wished
to adopt rigorous means against us. . . . . . As to
thyself, who cherishest the same feelings towards us
as they, only in a still more philanthropic and phi-
losophical way, we are confident that thou wilt do
as we ask of thee."
The system of the Apologists, so warmly main-
tained by Tertullian,2 according to which the good
Emperors favoured Christianity and the bad Empe-
rors persecuted it, was already, as we see, fully
developed. Born together, Christianity and Rome
had together grown great and prospered. Their
interests, their sufferings, their fortune, their future,
all were in common.3 The Apologists were advo-
1 Hadrian and Antoninus Pius.
2 Tertull. Apol. 5. Conf. Apol. 21.
3 The author of the Sibylline poem, contained in Books
xi.-xiv., expresses the same idea; xii. 30-36, 230-235.

CATHOLICISM.
191
cates, and advocates of all kinds are alike. They
have arguments for every situation and for every
taste. Almost 150 years will roll away before these
honeyed and not too sincere invitations find a hear-
ing. But the very fact that in the reign of Marcus
Aurelius they suggest themselves to the mind of one
of the most enlightened chiefs of the Church, is
a prognostic of the future. Christianity and the
Empire will be reconciled: they are formed for
one another. The shade of Melito will thrill with
joy when the Empire becomes Christian, and the
Emperor takes in hand the cause of "the truth."
In this way the Church made more than one step
towards the Empire. For politeness' sake, no doubt,
but also as a legitimate deduction from his princi-
ples, Melito does not admit that an Emperor can
give an unjust order. Men were willing to have it.
believed, though contrary to all truth, that certain
Emperors had not been absolutely opposed to Chris-
tianity: they loved to tell how Tiberius had pro-
posed to the Senate to place Jesus among the gods,
and how it was the Senate that had been unwilling.¹
1 Tertull. Apol. 5.
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ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
The decided preference shown by Christianity for
powers that be, whenever it can hope to share their
favour, is already plain enough. A violent attempt
is made to show, in despite of facts, that Hadrian
and Antoninus endeavoured to repair the evil done
by Nero and Domitian. Tertullian and his genera-
tion will say the same kind of thing of Marcus
Aurelius.¹ Tertullian, it is true, will have his doubts
as to whether it is possible to be Cæsar and Chris-
tian at once; but a century afterwards, this incom-
patibility will strike no one; and Constantine will
prove how great was the sagacity of Melito of Sardes
when, a century and a half beforehand, he foresaw,
across so many proconsular persecutions, the possi-
bility of a Christian empire.
The hatred between Christianity and the Empire
was the hatred of those who are some day to become
lovers. Under the Severi, the language of the
Church remained what it had been under the Anto-
nines, plaintive and tender. The Apologists parade
a kind of legitimism: they claim for the Church
that it has always, from the first, recognized the
1 Tertull. Apol. 5.

CATHOLICISM.
193
!
us,"
true Emperor. "There have never been among us,
says Tertullian, "partizans of Cassius, partizans of
Albinus, partizans of Niger." A slight illusion!
Certainly the revolt of Avidius Cassius against
Marcus Aurelius was a political crime, in which
the Christians did well to take no part. As to
Severus, Albinus and Niger, success was the only
thing which gave one a preference over the rest;
and the Church, in attaching itself to Severus, can
claim no other merit than that of adroitly divining
which would turn out strongest. This pretended
regard for legitimacy was at bottom only the worship
of accomplished fact. St. Paul's principle was bear-
ing fruit.
All power comes from God: he who
holds the sword, holds it of God for good.
This correct attitude towards secular powers was
due to external necessities quite as much as to the
principles which the Church had received from its
founders. The Church was already a powerful asso-
ciation: it was essentially conservative: it had need
of order and legal guarantees. This is admirably
1 Tertull. Ad Scap. 3.
0

194
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
·
seen in the affair of Paul of Samosata, Bishop of
Antioch under Aurelian.¹ Even at this period the
Bishop of Antioch might be regarded as a powerful
personage. The wealth of the Church was in his
hands: a crowd of people lived upon his favour.
Paul was a brilliant man, little inclined to mysti-
cism, worldly, a secular "grand seigneur," trying
to make Christianity acceptable to men of the world
and people in authority. The pietists, as might be
expected, found out that he was a heretic, and pro-
cured his deprivation. Paul resisted, and refused
to leave his episcopal palace. This is the point at
which the haughtiest sects are vulnerable: they
hold property; and how can a question of property
or of usufruct be determined except by the civil
power? Aurelian, about this time, came to Antioch:
the question was referred to him; and the world
saw the strange sight of an unbelieving and perse-
cuting sovereign called upon to decide who was the
true Bishop. Aurelian, under these circumstances,
gave proof of the possession of a layman's good
1 Euseb. H.E. vii. 36.
CATHOLICISM.
195
sense to a very remarkable degree. He had the
correspondence of the two Bishops brought to him;
noticed which was in communion with Rome and
Italy, and decided that he was the true Bishop of
Antioch. Aurelian's theological reasoning in this
case is open to many objections; but two things be-
came evident, first that Christianity could no longer
live without the Empire, and next that the Empire
could do nothing better than adopt Christianity
as its religion. The world wanted a religion of
congregations, of churches, of synagogues, of chapels
-a religion the essence of whose worship should be
union, association, fraternity. All these conditions
Christianity fulfilled. Its admirable worship, its
pure morality, its wisely organized clergy, made the
future its own.
More than once in the third century this historical
necessity all but realized itself. This was especially
the case under those Syrian Emperors whose foreign
birth and low origin freed them from the influence
of prejudice, and who, in spite of their vices, inau-
gurated a breadth of ideas and a toleration which
up to that time had been unknown. These Syrian

o 2

196
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
women of Emesa, Julia Domna, Julia Maesa, Julia
Mammea, Julia Soemia, young, intelligent, hardy
and almost utopian in conception, held back by no
social tradition or convention, stop at nothing: they
do what no Roman woman has ever dared to do;
they enter the Senate, take part in its deliberations,
actually govern the Empire, dream of Semiramis
and Nitocris. The Roman worship is in their eyes
cold and unmeaning: not being attached to it by
any ancestral ties, and feeling their religious ima-
gination more in harmony with Christianity than
with Italian paganism, these women take pleasure
in stories of gods who visit the earth. Philostratus
enchants them with his Apollonius: possibly they
may have had secret affinities with Christianity in
more directions than one. It is true that Helioga-
balus was a madman; yet, nevertheless, his wild
dream of a central monotheistic worship established
at Rome, and absorbing all other worships, showed
that the narrow circle of ideas in which the Anto-
nines had lived was broken through. Alexander
Severus went further: he had a fellow-feeling with
the Christians: not content with granting them

CATHOLICISM.
197
liberty, he showed a touching eclecticism when he
placed the image of Jesus in his lararium. Peace
seemed to be concluded, not, as in the time of Con-
stantine, by the defeat of one of the opposing parties,
but by a broad reconciliation. The same thing took
place again under Philip the Arabian, in the East
under Zenobia, and in general under the Emperors
whom foreign birth excluded from the circle of
Roman patriotism.
The struggle became one of life and death when
those great reformers, Diocletian and Maximian, ani-
mated by the ancient spirit, imagined that they could
give a fresh life to the Roman Empire, while still
keeping within the narrow round of Roman ideas.
The Church triumphed in its martyrs: the Roman
pride gave way: Constantine saw the inner force of
the Church: the populations of Asia Minor, of Syria,
of Thrace, of Macedonia-in a word, of the Eastern
part of the Empire, were already more than half
Christian. The mother of Constantine, who had
been a servant-maid in an inn at Nicomedia, held
up before his eyes the image of an Eastern Empire,
with its centre about Nicæa or Nicomedia, whose
198
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
-
strength should lie in the bishops, and in those
masses of the poor, affiliated to the Church, who
in the large towns directed public opinion. Con-
stantine made the Empire Christian. When we
look at this from the point of view of the West, we
are astonished, for there the Christians were as yet
only a weak minority. But in the East, the policy
of Constantine was not only natural, but compelled
by circumstance.
Strange to say, it was from this policy that the
city of Rome received the heaviest blow that ever
fell upon it. Christianity succeeded with Constan-
tine, but it was Eastern Christianity. In building
a new Rome on the Bosporus, Constantine reduced
old Rome to the position of being capital of the
West only. The cataclysms that followed, the inva-
sions of barbarians which spared Constantinople to
fall with their full weight upon Rome, compelled the
ancient metropolis of the world to play a narrow,
often a humble part. That Roman primacy, which
is so brilliant a fact in the second and third century,
ceases to exist as soon as the East has a separate
existence and a separate capital. Constantine is the

CATHOLICISM.
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true author of the schism between the Latin and the
Eastern Church.
Rome's first revenge is take
in the gravity and
What men are St.
depth of her organizing spirit.
Sylvester, St. Damasus, St. Gregory the Great!
With admirable courage, Rome labours for the con-
version of the barbarians; she attaches them to
herself; she makes them her clients, her subjects.
The masterpiece of her policy was her alliance with
the Carolingian house, and the bold stroke by which
she revived in that family the Empire which had
been dead for 300 years. The Church of Rome then
lifts herself up, more powerful than ever, and again,
for eight centuries more, becomes the centre of all
Western politics and life.
At this point my task comes to an end, and you
will entrust to others that of narrating to you the
wonderful story of the feudal Church, its greatness
and its abuses. Some other guide will then show
you the reaction against these abuses, Protestantism
in its turn dividing the Latin Church, and in a sense
returning to the primitive conception of Jesus. Each

200
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
of these great pages of history will have its own
charm and its own lesson. That of which I have
told you the tale is full of grandeur. We are im-
partial only towards the dead. As long as Catho-
licism was a hostile power, a danger to liberty and
the human mind, it was right to contend against it.
Still, when history is used as a weapon of war, it is
never well told. Our age is the age of history, for
it is the age of doubt as to matters of dogma: it is
the age in which the enlightened mind, refusing to
enter upon the discussion of systems, says to itself:
"If, ever since the birth of reason, so many thousand
creeds have claimed to set forth the whole truth, and
those claims have always been adjudged to be vain,
is it likely that I should be more fortunate than
so many others, and that the truth should have
waited for my coming to make its final self-revela-
tion ?" There is no final revelation: there is only
a pathetic attempt of that poor disinherited crea-
ture, man, to make his fate tolerable. But the just
inference from this is not disdain, but goodwill.
Whoever thinks that he has anything to teach us as
to our destiny and our end, ought to be welcome.

CATHOLICISM.
201
Recal to your memories the judicious and discreet
advice of the Northumbrian chief to the assembly
which was debating the adoption of the doctrine
brought by the Roman missionaries:
for
"I will tell you, O King, what methinks man's
life is like. Sometimes, when your hall is lit up
supper on a wild winter's evening, and warmed
by a fire in the midst, a sparrow flies in by one door,
takes shelter for a moment in the warmth, and then
flies out again by another door, and is lost in the
stormy darkness. No one in the hall sees the bird
before it enters, nor after it has gone forth; it is
only seen while it hovers near the fire. Even
so,
I
ween, as to this brief span of our life in this world:
what has gone before it, what will come after it-of
this we know nothing. If the strange teacher can
tell us, by all means let him be heard."1
Alas! the missionaries of Rome did not bring
with them even the minimum of certainty with
which the old Northumbrian chief, like the true
sage which he was, resolved to be content. Happy
1 Bede, Hist. Eccles. ii. 12. Translation given by Canon
Bright, "Chapters of early English Church History," p. 116.
i

202
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
!
he who allows himself to fall asleep to the idle
sound of the threats which formerly terrified the
human conscience, and now ought only to lull it to
rest. One thing alone is certain: the Fatherly
smile which every now and then gleams through
Nature, bearing witness that an Eye looks down
upon us, that a Heart follows us. Let us beware
of every absolute formula which may one day be-
come an obstacle to the free development of our
minds. There is no religious communion which
does not still possess the gifts of life and of grace;
but it is on condition that humble docility is followed
by sympathetic adhesion. The metaphor of the regi-
ment, which Clement of Rome originated, and which
has since been so often repeated, must be absolutely
given up.
It has been your will that I should recal to you
the grandeur of Catholicism at its finest period. I
thank you for it. Ties of childhood, the closest of
all ties, bind me to Catholicism; and I am often
tempted to say of it what Job said (at least in our
Latin version), Etiam si occiderit me in ipso sperabo.
This family is too large not to have a future before

CATHOLICISM.
203
it still. The strange excesses to which during the
last fifty years it has lent itself, this unparalleled
Pontificate of Pius IX., the most astonishing in
history, cannot come to a commonplace end. There
will be thunders and lightnings such as always
accompany the great days of God's judgments. And
this old mother, who cannot die yet, will have much
to do in order to remain still possible, still accept-
able to those who have loved her. It may be that,
to stay the progress of the modern thought which is
her conqueror, she will have recourse to the arts of
the sorceress, to words such as those which Balder
murmured on his funeral pile. The Catholic Church
is a woman: let us distrust the magic words of her
agony. What if some day she rouses herself to say
to us: "My children, all here below is but symbol
and dream. The only thing that is clear in this
world is a tiny ray of azure light which gleams
across the darkness, and seems as if it were the
reflection of a benevolent Will. Come to my bosom:
forgetfulness is there. For those who want fetishes,
I have fetishes: to whomsoever desires good works,
I offer good works: for those who wish the intoxi-
204
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF
cation of the heart, I have the milk of my breasts,
which intoxicates. For whoso want love and hate
also, I abound in both; and if any one desires irony,
I pour it from a full cup. Come, one and all: the
time of dogmatic sadness is past: I have music
and incense for your burials, flowers for your wed-
dings, the joyous welcome of my bells for your
newly-born." Well, if she spoke thus, we should
be sorely perplexed. But she will not speak thus.
Your great and glorious England has resolved the
practical part of the problem. Just as it is impos-
sible to find the theoretical solution of the religious
question, is it easy to trace the line of conduct which
in such matters the State and the individual ought
to pursue. It is all summed up in one word, Liberty.
What can be simpler? Faith cannot be prescribed:
a man believes what he thinks to be true; and no
one can hold as truth what his mind leads him,
rightly or wrongly, to find untrue. To deny liberty
of thought is a species of contradiction. But from
liberty of thought to the right of saying what one
thinks, is only a single step. For the right of all is
the same I have no right to forbid any man to
CATHOLICISM.
205
express his opinion; no man has the right to forbid
me to express mine. This is a theory which will
appear very commonplace to the transcendental doc-
tors who believe themselves to be in possession of
absolute truth. But we have one great advantage
over them. To be consistent, they are compelled to
persecute; while to us it is permitted to be tolerant,
-tolerant to all, even to those who, if they could,
would not be tolerant to us. Yes, let us dare even
this paradox: liberty is the best weapon against the
enemies of liberty. Some say to us in all sincerity:
"We accept liberty from you, because, in accordance
with your principles, you owe it us; but you shall
not have it from us, because we do not owe it you."
Well, let us give them liberty notwithstanding,
nor imagine that we shall be overreached in the
bargain. No; liberty is the great dissolvent of all
fanaticisms. When I claim liberty for my foe, for
the man who would put me down if he had the
power, I really offer him the most fatal of all gifts.
I compel him to drink a strong draught that will
turn his head, while I keep sober. Science presup-
poses the virile rule of liberty: fanaticism, super-
:

206
ROME, THE CAPITAL OF CATHOLICISM.
stition cannot bear it. We do more harm to dog-
matism by treating it with implacable mildness than
by persecuting it, for by this mildness we incul-
cate the principle which cuts up dogmatism by the
root,—the principle, namely, that all metaphysical
controversy is barren, and that, in this region of
thought, truth is for each what he thinks that he
can dimly discern. The essential thing is, not to
silence this dangerous teaching, to hush that dis-
cordant voice, but so to educate the human mind as
to enable the multitude to see the futility of these
angry controversies. When this spirit becomes the
atmosphere of society, fanaticism can no longer
exist. It is conquered by the general yieldingness.
If instead of ordering Polyeucte to the scaffold, the
judge, with a smile and a friendly shake of the hand,
had let him go, Polyeucte would not have persevered
in his obstinacy; he might even have become a man
of common sense, and lived to smile, in his old age,
at the hot-headed folly of his youth.

DR. MARTINEAU'S ADDRESS.
Jorm

Mau
DR. MARTINEAU'S ADDRESS.
*
Ar the close of the Lectures, the thanks of the
Trustees were conveyed to M. Renan in the follow-
ing Address by Dr. James Martineau :
M. RENAN: I sincerely wish that the Hibbert
Trustees had selected as the organ of their final
thanks to you some one whose word would be more
adequate than mine to the eminence of the Lecturer
and the interest of the occasion. I cannot, however,
disobey them, sharing, as I do, their gratitude for a
visit, of which the benefit to us has been rendered,
I fear, at the cost of some suffering to you; and
sharing also the delight of your hearers in following
a series of historical sketches, at once constituted
into a whole by a tissue of philosophical conceptions,
and separately rich in picturesque colouring and
Р
210
DR. MARTINEAU'S ADDRESS.
dramatic situations, and presented with that marvel-
lous charm of literary form, in the command of which
the French are the first among European nations,
and, may I not add, M. Renan among the French.
I know not how it may be with others; but to
me the interest of these Lectures has been deepened
by a number of resemblances which they suggested
between the age which they depicted and our own.
The break-up of traditional beliefs which you so
powerfully described, the severance of the higher
culture from the still recognized religion, are surely
phenomena largely repeated in the modern European
mind. The unsatisfied wants and eager tentatives
which found expression in the ethics of the philoso-
phical schools of the Empire, are evident again in
the anxieties, and throughout the conflicts, and even
behind the levities, of contemporary thought. The
introduction of foreign gods into Roman recognition
is not without its counterpart in our keener curiosity
about foreign religions: if we do not reserve a niche
for their divinities, we find a publisher for their
sacred books, and use Paternoster Row as our Pan-
theon. During the ancient suspense of faith, the
DR. MARTINEAU'S ADDRESS.
211
question seemed to lie between Hellenism and
Judaism, as now we hear that the alternative is,
Catholicism or Agnosticism. The answer of history
then was, that the victory should belong to neither
and yet to both; the Christianity which won the
crown blending in itself what was universal in either.
May we not predict a similar result to the strife of
modern tendencies, and expect the emergence of
some faith remote alike from medieval orthodoxy
and present negations; so that "neither in this
mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, will men worship
the Father," but on some height of thought and
piety veiled as yet in cloud?
These are, perhaps, fanciful analogies; for I am
aware how illusory such historical parallels are apt
to be. At all events, they suffice to show us that
we are living in a critical age, which sifts the pro-
ducts of the past, rather than in a creative age,
which takes the initiative of an original and affluent
future. It is only in such an age that Lectures like
these have an important place. They assume that
Religion is a permanent and powerful element in
human life; that it involves beliefs about the rela-
212
DR. MARTINEAU'S ADDRESS.
tions between finite things and the infinite; that
these beliefs cannot be uniform and stationary
through the changing contents of finite experience,
and the changing capacity of thought for adjusting
their relations; that it is of great importance to save
religion from discordance with knowledge, by open-
ing to it a possibility of movement pari passu; and
that it is useful for this end to compare together
religions of different source and different age, so as
to obtain an insight into the human and historical
conditions of their existence. Their opposite errors
will thus cancel one another; and what is obsolete,
what is partial, what is false in all, will withdraw
in favour of whatever residual truth is enshrined
within the withered husk. No doubt, we gain thus
nothing but an eclectic result: but a critical age is
incompetent to more; and, in doing this, prepares a
clear space for the returning forces of the creative
spirit.
For large help towards such preparations, accept,
Monsieur, this expression of acknowledgment; and
forgive its English gaucherie. I know, indeed, that
I may rely on your benevolence to translate it into
DR. MARTINEAU'S ADDRESS.
213
something better than it is; for in listening yester-
day to the neat and elegant sentences that came
through your lips from the feeble and unpolished
Clement of Rome, I could not but feel that he had
found a generous interpreter. I must pray you to
extend the same grace to me, and translate my poor
words into what I might have said, had I at com.
mand the Parisian language and culture of to-day.
I need this indulgence: for, alas! I have lost all
that I should have derived from France-the land
of my forefathers-except my name and my descent,
and, let me add, my ready homage to all such genius
and learning as have placed M. Renan among her
foremost scholars and most brilliant litterateurs.
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